So Wow is free up to level 20, the Free to Play section in Steam is now a few pages and growing, and now there's talk about once the Elder Scrolls Online starts it
might eventually go to Free to Play.
So why is it that almost every subscription game is going to some form of a freemium. Well, it's a survival method, because obviously the old way isn't working.
And subscriptions aren't new, whether to news, music, cable, and obviously games. I remember when I was a kid Disney had some Club type thing that was a monthly subscription, and I was annoyed when we stopped getting it. But why now of all times is the subscription payment fading out?
My theories are:
The Economy- As everyone knows, the economy is a hot mess. And when the economy is a hot mess, everyone has to trim fat. And you do that in things like less cable channels, maybe staying with the same car instead of getting a new one, and cancelling your monthly gaming subscription.
And that makes Blizzard a Sad Panda.
Demographic Shift- So a lot of the original WoW players have grown up, gotten jobs, gone to college, etc, etc. And whether they needed to make ends meet with a Ramen and free WiFi budget, or if they just simply don't have the time for gaming. You don't have much time for gaming if you work 8 hours a day and still have to do other adult activities. And for most adults that have those few days on the weekends to play, $15 dollars a month doesn't seem worth it for a few hours, when you can get a brand new game for $60 and play multiplayer endlessly. That brings me to my next point. What we're playing on has changed in a few years.
As a whole, people have been playing less "serious" video games on computer, and more on one of these systems.
And since this picture, the smartphones have also taking a good chunk of would be subscription gamers. This being said, why pay $15 a month for one game when for $25 for 3 months for whatever games you have. Does the cost of games cancel out any money saving argument, yes. But it doesn't change the demographic that I am more likely to find my friends and friends of their friends on console games versus a subscription game like WoW.
Bang for Your Buck- A lot of games, as everyone knows, I get for cheep or free. And I'm okay with games Like League of Legends telling me to use real world money to buy stuff. I'm not paying them and in turn I get a basic package.Where as WoW's free to play is only up to a certain level and then when you pay monthly it's still a pretty basic package. If you want Worgens or Goblins, you have to buy the prerequisites before buying Cataclysm. And to me, that annoys me. If I'm paying them money for the privilege of playing their game, I should get whatever they make, not just what the standard package comes with. Maybe I'm just spoiled but I feel like it's the same argument for on Disc DLC. I payed for the damn game, I should get everything of the game. It's not the same as flat rate or Freemium games. If there is a one time payment or none, I don't have problems with that. But if I'm paying you monthly to be entertained, and I shouldn't have to pay for more races or higher levels at that point, especially if it has to go into to download so I can see what I'm missing out on anyways.
I know that I'm mainly basing my knowledge on WoW and that that's not the only subscription game out there, but they were one of the first and that's what a lot of models of others are like. That and examining every subscription game would make this ridiculously longer.
