He notes there’s ”probably less room” for these types of games now as free-to-play rises, and there are ”a lot of alternatives” for people’s time with social games.
”The trend for free-to-play doesn’t supplant great top quality premium games that support a subscription,” said BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk.
”It’s funny, even in Korea that’s the case, where the free-to-play movement started ten years ago. There’s still some games with subscriptions, some are free-to-play, it’s bit of a mixture actually.” Recently EA unveiled Star Wars: The Old Republic’s cost to gamers.
They don’t feel free-to-play will endanger the Star Wars MMO. ”It’s not a threat, it’s just part of the reality. Every business model you make, the game has to merit it, in other words a free-to-play game probably has a different standard and different expectation than a subscription based game for example,” explained Zeschuk.
Fellow studio founder Ray Muzyka says he believes BioWare, Star Wars and MMO fans will accept their subscription charge plans as being good value. ”I think the quality of volume and content that we provide I think fans will say “yeah, this is the kind of game that merits a premium subscription,” said Muzyka.
”And there’s probably less room for games like that now, that’s probably the reality of the play for free evolution and social as well, social games. There’s a lot of alternatives for people’s time and dollars now that didn’t exists a few years ago, but we’re building a premium experience with SW:TOR and we think the fans, at least our feedback from the beta testing research, is that they believe what they’re seeing and playing does merit that.”
BioWare is a believer in the free-to-play model and have announced Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes, a subscription-free PvP arena combat game. ”And that’s an example of a really fun accessible 15 minute, pick up and play fast game. That fits a classic model of the play for free experience,” continued the BioWare boss.
”And The Old Republic is on the other end of the spectrum, equally high quality but in a very different way. We believe in both business models, and we’re doing social games as well, so we have a pretty diverse portfolio for Bioware now as a label, and obviously within EA as a larger company too.” Do you think a premium subscription is merited for SWTOR?
Star Wars: The Old Republic releases on PC December 22nd. Check out the full interview between Greg Zeschuk, Ray Muzyka and GamesIndustry.biz.
