Let us propose for a moment that you are like me. You are a gaming enthusiast who enjoys playing a variety of games to keep things light and fun. You don’t have all that much time to play because of work and RL obligations and interests, which is worsened by your uncontrollable urges to keep on top of all the gaming industry news and opinions. You spend far more time soloing because you make frequent AFKs or only have short sessions to play.
A PC game comes out that is similar to a traditional RPG. Skill or level based, with quests, grinds, factions, etc. The only difference between this game and a standard MMO is that it isn’t multiplayer. You are still required to pay a monthly fee of $14.99. You still have the community forums, the fansites, the bloggers. You still receive frequent content updates by means of ‘free’ patches, adventure packs and expansions. You get the sporadic level increases and new zones, quests, dungeons and loot. However you play alone.
Personally, this kind of game wouldn’t be my ‘main squeeze’ but I would definitely have fun with it. I enjoy the typical Oblivion-eque single player RPG’s, but I despise the feeling that I’m getting close to the end. I hate the fact that once I’ve beaten the game, the only way to have fun is to beat it again. What about everyone else? If you wouldn’t be interested in this game, could you see it being successful regardless? Or do you (as I’ve said before) feel that the community and relationships with others are what keeps people paying the monthly fees? Thoughts please.
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
I do not think I would pay for that. A monthly charge for a single player game is out of this world. You would have to be offering me a full game expansion every month. Currently you have the MMO feel without paying the $15 a month through the single player campaign of Diablo 2.
Community is key. I pay monthly installments for community and more people to play with which will dictate the economy and the such.
The game sound like Oblivion with free content and a monthly fee.
Exactly…but would you want to play Oblivion if it cost 15/month?
Actually, it sounds almost exactly like Hellgate: London to me. You don’t have to pay to play, but there’s an option to subscribe for continous expansion content. Hellgate is designed more for replayability anyway than Oblivion.
I’m looking forward to Hellgate, but I won’t subscribe for the extra content. If that sort of system was applied to something more like Oblivion, I think it would be popular. I doubt I’d be one of the subscribers though.
The popularity of that sort of system would be tied closely with timing. If it came out during a dry time for games in general, more people would be willing to subscribe. Right now, I’d imagine there are a lot of gamers like me, saving up for the slew of worthy games coming out in the fall and winter. I’ve never had much money to spend on games, so I only buy games I’m sure will last more than a month.
That would be a pretty tough sell. Any game or gaming company gets/has fan sites, patching mechanisms, forums, and what not to a certain extent, so I am not sure that enters into the picture.
It would have to be multiplayer to some extent to get my attention, and the company would have to host the content and otherwise make it possible for me to link up with my friends to play together.
I think what you are describing is a non-starter. I do not think a company can deliver enough content to make content alone worth $15 month. I accept the who price-per-month model in MMOs because I know it goes towards a lot of other things.
And, even if said game could deliver content that was worth $15 a month by general agreement, would I have enough time to play through it? Probably not.
Nope. It would be kinda l ike Oblivion with Mods that you pay for? I think that is kinda the idea?
I couldn’t pay for that. I tried Oblivion and two days in I was still trying to hit enter and type something in OOC. I just couldnt play it I was so bored. I dont even talk that much in online games but leveling up and doing stuff for hours in single player RPG’s seems so…pointless…when i could be leveling up or tradeskilling an MMO character that counts for something
For me Single- and Multi-player games are two completely different worlds. For a singleplayer game I’d pay as much 14,95 per YEAR in subscription.
I see the money I pay SOE monthly as a business deal where they continue to improve, BUG-FIX (yeah SOE, I expect that) and generally support the game.
I can not put my finger on why I do not expect that from a single player game. Maybe it is just habit. That I can’t pt my finger on my opinions tells me the question is very valid, and probably important. I’ll give it more thought.
I rarely play single player games at all and for certain wouldn’t pay a monthly fee for one. The community makes up about half the reason I play MMO’s.
Even when I’m in a soloing mood, I like seeing people around. Just a quick wave or hello, random buff, etc. is something that I would miss in single player.
And I know I would not feel as compelled to log in as often as I do an MMO, so the monthly fee would be hard to justify for me.
I would not be willing to pay a monthly fee for a single player game, unless I did not have to buy the original box. This could be an interesting model. Almost like you are renting the game. This would be a great way to try out different games. I do not try a bunch of games because the $50 price tag is too high.
Why am I willing to pay a monthly fee (2 in fact) for Everquest II? I believe the reason I am willing to pay is the community. MMORPGs are special because of the human interaction. I like to be able to group with others, chat with people from around the world and trade loot. The lack of a community in single player RPGs ruins the game for me. For example, I bought Oblivion, but could not get into it. Another $50 down the drain.
-Fred
I wouldn’t play it. I like seeing other real players running around the world. It makes it feel lived in.
I could see it being somewhat successful, but not something I would touch with a 10 foot pole. This is why:
I got into mmorpgs as a way of replacing the pen and paper groups I had left behind lo those many many years ago. I had, during High School and College, far more interesting things to do than to sit around for 2 or 3 days, scarfing pizza, and playing through grand adventures. During this time I stumbled across Ultima III, Wizardry and other staples of the RPG genre (the original Bard’s Tale, SSI’s Gold Box series etc). This gave me a way of getting my rpg fix without the extensive time commitment. At least all in one sitting. Every other year or so more of these games came out. Fallout, Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights etc etc. All was good with the world.
Then came the psuedo rpgs… things like Diablo which, to me, took away the most important part of the old crpgs and replaced it with loot. Instead of story it was all about how “uber” someone could become and Battle.net exacerbated the problem.
MMORPG’s have strayed far from the core aspects of rpgs all in a drive to provide the least entertainment for the most money possible. To see a single player rpg go this route (that of monthly fees) would finally give credence to those articles of a decade ago: “Is this the end of the RPG genre?”.
As gamers we have been paying a premium for less and less with every new game that has come out. Oblivion, while it looks pretty, is about 1/3 of the original Arena: The Elder Scrolls. The average mmorpg is even worse. Something like LoTRO with their vaunted 2500+ quests at release was a shorter game than Ultima II once you subtract the hours of senseless grinding. WoW provides far less than that. To make matters worse there is no end to the game. There is nothing but endless grinding for a pittance and the developers spend most of their time on thinking up new carrots for people to chase after rather than coming up with an original story or anything special for the players.
I would only consider this kind of thing if it had a full set of things you can’t get in the current MMOs – your actions would have to have real consequences on the people and places, there would need to be some really neat ongoing storylines (solo versions of the LOTRO storyline perhaps, with instances and so forth) and there couldn’t be any kind of attempt to balance the classes. Even then, wouldn’t it make sense to have no fee and just charge for the ongoing updates?
It’s hard to say. I used to really enjoy the multiplayer aspect of MMOs, but I think it’s the persistence that actually hooks me. As time goes on and games become more and more solo-friendly, I find myself spending most of my MMO time alone, or with the few RL friends I have that enjoy gaming. I only group with strangers when I have to.
So yeah, I could see myself paying a monthly fee for a single-player experience… But it would have to be an impressive game to begin with. And the content additions would have to be frequent and substantial. I don’t mean horse armor, or 5 new quests… But actual meaningful content.
No.
However, integrate forums/chat to facilitate communication between my friends when they are playing and you could inch me closer.
I love being able to play with other players and get that “Yah! That was cool!” moment together. Bring in elements that maintain the single player experience along with possible multi-player instances and you may have got me to download the trial.