Ah, the ever-debated subject of MMO subscription models. We've seen a lot of discussion on the subject, some good and some bad. Gamasutra just so happens to be running a pretty good discussion featuring
SOE's John Smedley,
Three Rings' Daniel James and
EA Mythic's Mark Jacobs all chiming in with their opinions on the matter. The selection is also a good one as Smedley represents a company hybridizing
its models, while James is from a company that's more or less full-on microstransactions and Jacobs is firmly for sticking with subscriptions.
Each of the three mens' reasoning for their companies' model choices all make sense when you consider their reasoning. From what we can gather, all three viewpoints have their merit and really no one subscription model is going to win out anytime soon. Subscription models were
a hot topic this year at ION and of course Massively discussed it as well in
one of our podcasts. So if you'd like to dig deeper on the current state of the argument we highly recommend those features to you.
