Flagship: Still Afloat... For Now
Scoop courtesy of Rock Paper Shotgun:

Flagship At Half-Mast But Still Afloat

So Bill Roper, and pretty much the same gang that started the company... what, three years ago?... is still there. For now. But the glorious pseudo-MMO Hellgate: London will no longer be functioning as a subscription service.

Okay. Assuming by some miracle they are able to keep the company an ongoing concern, I'd like to relate a story I heard from some guys who have worked on an indie MMOG, Puzzle Pirates. From what I have been told, once upon a time, Puzzle Pirates was also trying to be a subscription MMOG (That's Massively Multiplayer Online Game, for those not in the know). It wasn't doing so well. It seems that with roughly ninety-eight-trillion MMOG's out there, not a lot of people were willing to commit to shelling out a monthly fee. Enough to keep the company going, but not the kind of growth they wanted to achieve.

Well, then, apparently, the creators one day had an amazing epiphany of sorts. Instead of trying to get people to buy a subscription, why not sell them the privileges of a subscription account piecemeal? Primarily in access to cool new content and ... well... stuff. Without commitments.

Sales soared. Revenues increased substantially. This was, apparently, a stroke of genius. Sorta like hooking someone on a drug, right... the first one's free? (Oh, man, I did NOT just go there, did I? Crap.)

Anyway, it shows there's more than one way to skin a cat. Or to get people to pay you money and thank you for it, rather than resenting you for treating them like second-class citizens because they only paid an expensive retail cost for what they expected to be a full game. Oh, wait. Woops. I'm projecting here. We were talking about Puzzle Pirates, weren't we? Yeah, that. My bad.

Okay. Hellgate: London. Flagship Studios. Well, I wish 'em the best. Really, I do.

Labels: Mainstream Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:35 AM (Permalink)