SOE’s president John Smedley has taken to Reddit once more, this time to discuss the studio’s monetisation plans for their recently announced zombie sandbox MMO, H1Z1.
”I wanted to take this opportunity to solicit ideas from people interested in H1Z1 regarding how we monetize it,” writes Smedley. ”You will be surprised to hear we have intentionally left the decisions about what to monetize until we can hear from you. This isn’t some contrived thing.. I’m being serious. It is a nearly blank slate.”
Although SOE are seeking feedback, they have urged contributors to keep the following points in mind.
1) This will be a F2P game (after early access). During early access it’s going to cost $19.99 to play.
2) We are not interested in selling weapons. Weapons are only aquired by crafting or exploring and finding one. We are not selling power.
3) The game at it’s core is about survival. Our preference is not to sell ANYTHING that can help with that. If this game is too hard for you play another one. We don’t want to give shortcuts for our core mechanic.
4) Wearables - we DO see wearables as an obvious “heck yes” kind of thing. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have most wearables be purchaseable. Of course we will still have plenty to craft, find and wear for free.
5) We made this game because we love making games and entertaining our players is why we exist. That being said, we do need to make money. Your ideas are appreciated greatly but if we can avoid the “hey give us everything for free because you owe it to us since you’re a big company and we should get free games” commentary it would help a lot.
We recently reported on Smedley’s first Reddit post, in which he discussed the basic concepts of the game.
H1Z1 is coming to Steam Early Access in 4-6 weeks.
