You Begin Casting Lawsuit.... It Fizzles!

Massivly Multiplayer Online (MMO) games, while exploding in popularity, are also gather critics. By critics, I mean angry spouses. Their player bases are famous for doing little but slaving away, killing monster after repetitive monster, slowing grinding away at that elusive progress bar. Everything else is placed on hold, be it feeding or bathing, in pursuit of "just one more level". Or so they say.

Enter Craig Smallwood, who, after five years of a crippling addiction to the mmo Lineage II, was left a hollow shell of a man who was “unable to function independently in usual daily activities such as getting up, getting dressed, bathing or communicating with family and friends". For having his life stolen from him, he has filed suit against he creators of Lineage II, NCsoft for making their game too addictive, and not warning people of the dangers of their product.

Of the millions of people who play these games every day, only a small fraction experience problems that affect their daily lives. These issues are not caused by the games, but by something else. If someone becomes cloistered from normal social contact, the game only brings out their issue, instead of creating it. Dependancies and addictions are the result of a lack. No one ever became an alcoholic without a reason to drink. 

Yet, mmo's are some of the most manipulative games ever made. They are meticulously constructed Skinner Boxes, giving the player just enough food pellets to keep them shelling out for their monthly subscription. There's always something more to grasp, some new shiny sword to randomly appear in a treasure chest. The player is never allowed to be completely satiated, lest he cancel his subscription and play something else. 

Yet, even with this manipulation, mmo's are not drugs. They're not far removed from a well-paced hollywood thriller, with a diverse cast crafted to appeal to targeted demographics. We are not the malleable victims that lawyers would have us think. We do not purchase everything we see in advertisements, and we do not repeat every action we see on tv. We are more then mindless consumers, but reasoning people who can control their actions.

There's more to the story then what first fills the ear. When you dig deeper into the suit that Smallwood filed, you'll find that he was involved in trading in-game money for real-world money, a practice that was strictly forbidden by NCsoft. As a result, half his accounts where banned. That couldn't have anything to do with it, could it? Nah....

Besides, Lineage II sucks.

F2P and Price Discrimination

Massively multiplayer online games (mmo's) have always had a different business model then most games. Instead of a one-time purchase, mmo's have subscription fees to help pay for on-going development and server fees.

Those $15 a month subscription fees add up quick. Playing a typical mmo steadily for just a single year totals $180 (not counting the price to buy the game in the first place). While this sounds ridiculously expensive, it might be cheaper then purchasing new games throughout the year. Now you can see why publishers slather their lustful lips over creating a top-shelf mmo: it's a licence to print money.

...As long you're popular. MMO's have a chicken and egg problem: players flock to games with a sizable population of players. Nobody wants to log on and find an empty world with no other players. 

A great example of this was Warhammer Online. Despite being a well-crafted game, they over-estimated the number of players, and set up too many servers. Lower server populations meant that players had a hard time finding others to group with, and many left. WAR will likely flounder around for another year or two before collapsing. Maintaining a player population can mean life or death for a game.

To boost populations, many games are switching to a free-to-play model (f2p). Accounts are free to create and play without a subscription. Instead, players pay to unlock parts of the game: certain races, classes and quest areas. While free-to-play is a deceptive title, it does allow for the player to control how much they wish to play for the game. This acts as a price discrimination for players that might not wish to feel they play $15-worth of game a month. Many games that are having problems keeping their population levels are shifting to this new scheme.

The community often views going f2p as admitting failure, while in reality this is branching out to a different audience. We're watching the market innovate right before our eyes here!