Image from http://www.vintagecomputing.com You’re running an MMO and charging a monthly fee, you’re down 600k subscribers, about 9 million fewer coming in per month. The pressure is on. What do you do? *cough* Blizzard *cough* WoW *cough* A) Charge the same B) Charge more C) Charge less You select A) You have one big problem: and you leave the fee as it is... you lose another million, until the next expansion, which you see a burst of players. Then start losing more players. *Sound of Pacman Dying* You select B) Raise the monthly fee. It pays the bills! Then you start losing a massive amount of players in protest, as they will not be happy to pay more per month. In the end they will leave or shop around for a cheaper rate for entertainment. No go. Ok, how about hiding the extra charges? There is one industry that has been doing that for years: the airline industry. It’s working great for the airlines... right? As you add extras to the game then you charge...
Musings of a Game Designer and a Programmer, Too bad they both are the same person