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ddo the angry bear alpha the angry bear alpha a blog about videogames politics and culture please don t poke the bear home poke the bear sufficiently advanced magic the angry bear column the politics of schoolhouse rock the tipping point nexon reports 36 growth in 3q 17 10 2009 game informer is reporting that nexon s america had a 36 jump in revenue in the third quarter between this and things like dungeons dragons online switching to free 2 play and the really fun league of legends being offered for free i m starting to think we may be reaching a tipping point where game developers are realizing that the traditional methods of revenue generation from gaming are being supplanted by a whole new method of monetizing products what makes this especially interesting is that this is nexon america not nexon as a whole which was already a successful korean developer nexon america is a separate business entity designed to sell it s products in the western market it s apparently working the key of course is offering products designed with that kind of business model in mind and overcoming the impression of f2p being the catch all for crap games not good enough to be sold at retail in the case of dungeons dragons online the game was always good it was just saddled with the wrong business model the design of ddo was always more suited to small groups of friends pushing their way through the content at a much slower pace than the ticking clock that a 15 a month subscription fee would allow so what you had was people bulling their way through content over and over again in pick up groups because they felt like they had to play to justify the expense what people are finding now is that they can go through the game at their own pace and spend money or not as it suits their game style from what i understand the result is people spending a lot more money than they ever did as subscribers the thing about turbine is that they essentially lucked into an f2p game by virtue of having ddo this isn t something that would work with the lord of the rings online because the game structure is completely different nexon on the other hand has games that explicitly built around this kind of mechanic if you get the majority of your gaming news from hard core gamer sites like ign gamespy or gamespot you may have never seen or heard of maple story or mabinogi if you ve seen some ads for it you may have dismissed it as the cutesy free 2 play mmo that real gamers wouldn t give the time of day when i was pc editor for gamespy i know i d get calls constantly from pr reps throwing games like that at me that blinkered as i was by the real games that were sitting on my desk i d just ignore and dismiss to be fair a lot of them are really bad knock offs that aren t worth your time the beauty of being out on your own though is the opportunity to explore areas of gaming that you ve missed i ve become a hard core mafia wars fanatic i m beginning to realize now the kinds of experiences that i ve missed out on take mabinogi on the advice of a friend i downloaded it and started playing and i immediately couldn t believe how good it was mabinogi is a classic example of a game that doesn t push the envelope as much as origami it around into a new and pleasing experience everything you might expect from an mmo is there questing leveling killing monsters crafting rather than the more linear experience that suddenly levels out into lateral advancement after the level cap is reached though mabinogi is a broad based experience from teh get go it s a game that encourages you subtly through things like the part time job mechanic to really explore and do different sorts of things during the same play session rather than mindlessly grinding through monsters or quests i found myself in mabinogi really running around and dabbling in the many different things to do it s got a fun arcadey combat system and randomly generated dungeons that actually utilize items in your inventory to create them more importantly it s got the kind of wide progression scheme that encourages you to get involved on your schedule rather than the game s without those huge time sucking raids or the kinds of tricks that encourage players to devote big chunks of time to make any sort of measurable progress that s the kinds of things you need to justify a monthly fee if a player doesn t feel like they need to be in the game in order to advance they ll begin wondering just what they re paying all that money for it s also why people feel like they can only play one subscription based mmo at a time for most people that s world of warcraft the king of that sort of vertical based progression scheme in wow you have to devote time to raiding or pvp in order to advance once you reach the level cap and old content is abandoned once the majority of the player base moves through it free to play games don t need that and consequently they can devote less developer time to creating these huge content chunks there s certainly room in this world for both types of games but it seem like there are more people with limited time who would prefer the f2p model than the kind of health club mindset of the traditional subscription model that really only appeals to people with lots of disposable time it ll be interesting to see how nexon does once its yearly numbers come out if it does as well as it has over the last few quarters i think more than a few big western game companies are going to sit up and take notice and yes i did put another picture of a sexy night elf in here comments leave a comment tags blizzard ddo dungeon fighter online dungeons and dragons dungeons and dragons online gaming geek culture league of legends lord of the rings online lotro mabinogi maple story mmo mmos nexon riot games sexy night elf turbine world of warcraft wow categories gaming news mmos dungeons dragons online switching gears 17 09 2009 my first piece for gamasutra dungeons dragons online switching gears just went up as tough as it was to write there s nothing i like better than delving into the guts of the game industry and figuring out what makes this stuff tick ddo is a classic example of a game hurt not so much by what was on the screen i reviewed it over at gamespy and while it was good then it s gotten much better but by the decision about what business model to put on it it s amazing how sometimes the littlest thing can help or hurt a game being in the right place at the right time having a celebrity admit that they re a fan putting the wrong artwork on the box the bottom line as with the movies is that nobody really knows anything before a title launches it s a lot of educated guesses and soothsaying you can be smart and reduce the risk but ultimately it s still a roll of the dice are you listening mr kotick in the mean time i was once again impressed at the passion that goes into the people who work in the gaming industry i m not just talking about designers or producers like fernando paiz but also pr people like adam mersky and atlus online s jaime ortiz who s a business operations guy it struck me while talking to them that these are people who love what they do it may be because this is still a relatively young and small industry where the first generation of pioneers is still around even as the third generation of money men and mba try to corporatize it so enjoy it while it lasts it s not often you get to be present at the settling of a new frontier and this is a time in gaming that will never come again hey i just got an idea for tomorrow s angry bear column read dungeons dragons online switching gears at gamasutra and if you like it leave a comment and hit the button below to share this with others comments 2 comments tags atlus atlus online ddo dungeons and dragons dungeons and dragons online game design gaming geek culture lord of the rings online lotro mmo mmog mmos neo steam pc games turbine videogames categories gaming news share this blog 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