Publishers Versus The Economy
With the prospect of a double dip recession looming, how are publishers bracing for another period of economic uncertainty?
Only time will tell if the industry's apparent faith in the consumer's endless lust for entertainment is well placed, or if another crunch could see more businesses closing. But those aren't the only two possible outcomes.
Another is that the relatively new (to the Western market at least) free-to-play model could become more widespread. Carl Jones, director of global business development at Crytek, suggests that another recession could force the market to evolve.
"What's changed is free. Making things free and letting people pay when they want to for the content that they want," he says. "And so certainly at Crytek we're looking at free-to-play as a major changer in the games industry and the products that we're looking at releasing ourselves, we're looking at those kind of models for them."
This is an important change the market has to go through. If we do it right then the industry will actually grow, regardless of the state of the economy.
Carl Jones, Crytek
And he's not just referring to the company's new freemium title, Warface. Crytek recently made its CryEngine 3 SDK free for non-commercial use. "I think this is an important change the market has to go through. If we all do it right then I think the industry will actually grow, regardless of any recession or any state of the economy, because people want entertainment. And if they can get their entertainment free, then great."
The theory is backed up by the actions of his peers. Just yesterday Sony Online Entertainment announced that its MMO DC Universe Online was to go free-to-play. Blizzard, publisher of the ever popular World Of Warcraft, also adopted a model that allowed players a free trial of the game up to level 20.
Jens Begemann founded Wooga, and is already well ahead of the free-to-play pack. While others are trimming the fat on their development teams, Wooga is hiring two new members of staff a week.
"There's not a huge impact to the free-to-play business model," he says. "I think what's for certain is that games, especially free-to-play games, are something that would work in any economic environment. "
"People may save money when the economy is bad on going out or buying expensive luxury goods, but playing a free game and spending $5 here and $5 there - you always have money for that."