Games we love, games we don't, and games we're not sure of are all on the menu for this week's Global Chat. Everyone loves to talk over upcoming games and expansions, sharing his thoughts and debating various points. Follow along after the cut to see what our readers had to say about that last week!
With the NDA finally lifted on Star Wars: The Old Republic, our comments sections were buzzing with hundreds of readers eager to give their thoughts, many insisting that this, that, or the other feature was the greatest thing since sliced bread -- or was completely underwhelming. Reader Hereafter made an excellent point:
Why is everyone arguing here? Just jump on for the Thanksgiving beta weekend and try it for yourselves for free. If you think you'll like it, you probably will; if you think you won't, you'll find out for sure. Don't let biased fanboys or haters decide for you on some heated comments section of a website.What about games that you wind up not liking? What can you do about it? Eliot addressed that very question in The Soapbox, and Xilr pointed out a very real possible downfall of quitting one business model:
I had a blast playing this game, maybe you will too.
This is one of the reasons F2P is damaging to the long term video game industry. You can't cancel your F2P game. All you can do is not spend any more money. When the guy in the suit at the top wonders why you're not spending any more money, he isnt going to read a post on what sucks about his otherwise good game; he is going to call up his marketing guy and ask what sort of special he can run to bring in more money.Ready to chime in with your thoughts? Click the comment button and talk to us!
Once a game goes F2P, the management can assume its game is perfect, and your lack of spending money is a marketing issue that can be addressed with better advertising, better promotions or new products. Core gameplay issues can be ignored because it's always easier to find a new customer than satisfy an existing one.
This is why F2P is damaging as a whole. Products dont need to improve to make money; just market them better. I bet there are a lot of F2P titles you havent downloaded and tried out yet. Rather than make a customer happy, companies find it easier to convince someone to try out the game free and hit him up for large sums of money while he's still on the "honeymoon" phase of the game.
Global Chat is the weekly feature that's all about you, our readers. Every Sunday we collect the best, funniest, and most thought-provoking comments from the Massively readers and round them up into Global Chat for discussion. Read over them for yourself, hit the comment button, and add your own thoughts!
