Namco executive: F2P titles 'can't be high quality'

@(Unverified)

Guild Wars isn't free to play. It's a game you buy then you can play whenever you want without ever paying a subscription fee. As in, every other non MMO game in existence.

@Ehra
As this is Massively... I assumed we were talking in the context of MMOs.

And yes, you do pay for GW2, but its not a sub based game. Sure thats not 100% free to play, but in the context of tripple A MMOS its as close as you get.

@(Unverified)

It's not free to play. If you can download and log into a game without spending a cent then it's free to play. Guild Wars is not this.

@(Unverified) If a game doesn't have a sub it doesn't mean it's necessarily f2p.

@(Unverified)
Ehra's right. It sounds like a nitpick but it's not--a buy-to-pay game like GW1 & 2 makes their money primarily off the box price, with extra revenue from the cash shop. An F2P game has to make money primarily in the cash shop. That makes a difference in terms of design and I gather the reason the B2P model isn't more popular with developers (despite making ANet quite a bit of money) is that it requires a bigger initial investment. You really have to make something that's good enough to stand up to the price of a singleplayer game to justify asking people to pay up front.

@slash beast Sorry, but real AAA games are more than just two old rts maps.

@slash beast

Not to mention world of tanks and all its coming associated games.

@Furdinand League of Legends is a triple A free to play game.

@slash beast

League of Legends isn't an MMO, and it's small enough to where it would be stupid to charge a subscription fee (unless it was a one time payment maybe) to it.

Especially since LoL is just based off of a Warcraft 3 map that is... I'd guess 8+ years old.

@Furdinand Exactly. I mean it's not like they have two different game modes, constantly-updated art, massive presence in the eSports world like most great MMOs, and new characters to play every two weeks.

Wait a tick....

For a game that's got the playerbase numbers to rival WoW, calling it "not an MMO" is simply pedantic. They even implemented kill-stealing. What more do you want? To be in an instance with more than five people?

Are you listening to yourself?

@CoffeeMug I'm not saying it isn't an MMO, I'm saying it isn't a AAA game. Farmville posts big numbers too but I wouldn't call it a AAA MMO. AAA isn't about popularity, it is about graphics, scope, and features.

@Furdinand You're entitled to your opinion. Just as I am mine.

@Furdinand Agree!

@Keen and Graev

Again... League of Legends says hi!

@cozmic0

I absolutely love LoL and have played it virtually daily for the last year, but it's not even remotely close to what I would consider a "AAA" title... What makes LoL so amazing though, is the AAA studio behind it, Riot Games (best game company on the planet atm, bar none, and by a longshot).

Don't get me wrong, it's ridiculously addicting and highly competitive, which I love, but there's no doubt that it's a "simple" game in terms of scope and depth (from a production perspective).

In other words, it's the exception to the rule. I consider it to be the poster boy for "cheap games done right." Whereas the vast majority, and what Comte is clearly addressing, is the other 99% of "cheap games done cheap," which I wholeheartedly agree with.

@Keen and Graev

You're looking backwards.

For most of recent history, yes F2P games have been small games. Because it was an untested format so people aren't willing to invest. Because the idea of giving players the option of not paying sounds ludicrous when you first hear it.

But now there is precedence already. F2P (or a hybrid microtransaction model) has already PROVED itself to be vastly more profitable than a strictly monthly subscription model.

And that's the only thing investors care about.

A $100m project has the same chance of getting funding regardless of whether it's microtransaction or purely monthly sub.