Taylor is ”done with” slapping down $50 when you can get ”hundreds of hours of free gameplay” instead. Free to play is ”absolutely” the future for studios.
It’s mainly because the free to play model comes with a constant stream of updates to the game, unlike the more traditional model which could have years between expansions.
”When I have this experience, where I can get a ‘freemium’ game that’s incredible, huge with arguably hundreds of hours of free gameplay, why would I go to the store and spend $50 in the old model?” said Chris Taylor.
”I’m so done with that. It’s fair to say I’m done dropping that kind of money. I want this in everything. Take any favourite game of mine.”
”To me it’s the future. Absolutely it’s the future. If I had to make any prognostications about the gaming industry, that’s the easiest one I will have made in 10 years. This model is coming. It’s here to stay. It’s good on every level,” he continued.
”It’s happening elsewhere, too. It’s what’s going to make our industry really, truly dominate as a form of entertainment.” It gives us gamers more freedom of choice and there’s probably nothing to stop the spread of ‘freemium’ now.
”We went through 20 odd years of boxed product,” he said.
”You went to the store to buy a game and it would come on some discs or a CD-ROM and you’d install it. In a couple of months, six months later, or maybe a year, an expansion pack would come out. You’d get some updates.”
”But generally the team moves on to do the next big game. The B-team or C-team might make another piece of content for the game. But generally, the experience goes yay! And then it goes like this. And then you wait any number of years for something to happen.”
”So you move on mentally, emotionally to some other experience, some other game. That’s what we did for 20 years,” said the PC RTS veteran. Age of Empires Online is helping to change the stage of what a PC RTS is believes Taylor.
”This is what RTS gaming has become: Age of Empires Online,” he stated. ”It is online, it has community, friends, but that is the beginning. It means when the game goes out, you don’t get a hump and you go down. When the game comes out it goes up infinitely.”
”It means every month or so you see cool new things, rather than six months, a year, or maybe never. It’s a continuous rhythm.” Age of Empires Online is still in its beta stage which is open to the public. It has both a digital and retail release this autumn.
”We have turned a very important corner for the way we think about and develop software and the value proposition we give our customers. It’s way up from where we were before.” Have you experienced Age of Empire Online yet? Is it the future of PC RTS?
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