Today on Headline
RePLAY: Star Wars: The Old Republic
considers free-to-play, Valve hires an economist and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is 99% done.
Signal the naysayers
and I-told-you-so trolls, both BioWare and EA are orchestrating a discussion on
Star Wars: The Old Republic going
free-to-play; seen by many in the MMO community as a death-knell.
Speaking to GamesTM
magazine, lead designer Emmanuel Lusinchi describes the challenges that BioWare
faces over losing 400,000 subscribers and the competition coming from their
free-to-play competitors.
“I think it’s more
than the free-to-play model—it’s more that there is a lot of competitive
offers,” said Lusinchi. “If it was just free-to-play games and they weren’t
very good it wouldn’t even be a question but there are definitely good games
out there and good games coming out, so of course all of this competition
impacts your plan with what you want to do.”
When asked about SWTOR possibly switching to a F2P model,
Lusinchi didn’t dismiss the idea. “The MMO market is very dynamic and we need
to be dynamic as well,” he said. “Unless people are happy with what they have,
they are constantly demanding updates, new models and situations. So we are
looking at free-to-play but I can’t tell you in much detail. We have to be
flexible and adapt to what is going on.”
EA labels boss Frank
Gibeau agreed that a shift to a F2P is not out of the realm of possibility, but
flexibility and timing is key. “We’re going to be in the business from a long
term standpoint so absolutely we’re going to embrace free access, free trial,
ultimately some day we can move in and embrace that model, Gibeau told
GamesIndustry International. “It’s all a matter of timing and thinking things
through. We have a great business right now and we’re not looking to make any
abrupt changes.
“The advent of
free-to-play is certainly a change in the dynamic of the PC market,” Gibeau
continued. “I don’t think subscriptions ever go away, but when you have an IP
as broad as Star Wars, we’re definitely going to look at opportunities to grow
that business and look at different ways of bringing customers in and serving
them.”
Virtual economies are
economies too, and what better way to solve problems with an in-game economy than an economist? Valve
has recruited Professor Yanis Varoufakis to consult on the issue of “linking
economies in tow virtual environments” and the “balance of payments,” comparing
it to the Eurozone crisis of Germany and Greece.
The comparison wasn’t
made out of a vacuum: Professor Varoufakis was writing about the economic
imbalance between Germany and Greece in a blog, which co-founder Gabe Newell
had been reading, and consequently inspired him to reach out to the economist.
Professor Varoufakis
isn’t a gamer, but the economist was intrigued by Newell’s proposition on
virtual economies and accepted a position at Valve.
|Source: GamesIndustry International
How close is StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm to being
done? So close, I’m shocked that a release date hasn’t been announced yet!
“We’re 99% done,” lead
designer Dustin Browder told Kotaku writer Jason Schreier over the phone, “but
that last 1% is a bitch.”
Browder says that all
the missions are playable, all the units are ready, but the 1% comes down to
whether “we like it or not” and lots of “tuning and polish.”
“Like we could do a
play-through next week and we’re like, ‘Wow this is really great,’” he said. “Or
we could do a play-through and we still have 250 items we wanna fix. You know,
historically speaking we’re doing pretty well. We’re getting there. But I don’t
know for sure yet when we’ll be done.”
|Source: Kotaku
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