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Changing Features

"What game you currently aren't playing would you play if it went Free2Play? But I have my doubts that the transition will always be easy, because the initial business model will have influenced the initial game design." (Tobold)

Tobold has written another nice article, this time about the in-game implications of changing a MMOs business-model from subscriptions to micro-transactions-, free-to-play-based (like D&D announced recently):

“What game you aren’t currently playing would you play if it went Free2Play with microtransactions? And how would the design of that game have to change, to make that new business model actually work? I’m sure, you’d prefer if all games went Free2Play and only charged money for fluff, but if not enough players buy enough virtual items, a game would simply disappear. So how do we change game design to sell enough items that are useful, and desirable, but don’t make the items that you can get by playing obsolete?“

I dare say that this is true for changing of any important feature of a game; while tweaking Coobico’s game-play to get everything “right”, I frequently find us discussing chains of decisions, like “ok, we want to change feature A, but if you think closely about it, then you need to change feature B too, because it doesn’t make sense any longer—and then think about the consequences of feature C…“. Such things really need to be thoroughly thought through.

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