It seems to me that my friends and I tend to either play a game and get really into it, or else not play it at all. I spend years wafting back and forth between Magic, Warhammer 40,000, CoX, and other games as my "obsession du jour" and I know my friends all had similar experiences with stuff like that.
A lot of gamers are either "intellectually invested" in a game or not. When they are, they think about the game when not playing it and it generally is their "hobby" while they remain invested. When not invested, they don't play and don't think about playing until, months later, they get jonesing for the old fun again and dust off the old obsession anew.
I installed and deleted Mechwarrior 4 on my old computer like 4 or 5 times because of this. I think I ran through every ending of that game with every possible starting company and at least the two lowest difficulty settings, and I actually want to play it again now despite having finally thrown out the CD long ago.
The conclusions this leads me to are as follows:
1. World of Warcraft had it right when they set the "pay to play" threshold as low as they did (level 20 was it?). Generally, people are either playing with gusto or they're not playing, and if they are, I say make `em pay a sub, and when they want to quit after they get burned out, well, you can't charge for nothing. At least the player base isn't divided into "paying" and "non-paying" players this way, because virtually everyone playing is paying and that's that.
2. Games like this need to have periodic adds or something designed to give new potential players the idea that "now is the best time to start this game" and to give old players the idea "you know you had a lot of fun with this before, and NOW is the optimal time to scratch that old itch again" So instead of just hanging up a sign somewhere that never goes away or changes, you need to have like 2-3 times a year when you do a advertising big push to get players. I think the optimal times for this are the beginning of the summer, the beginning of the traditional school year (early September) , and Christmas/New Years time. I think your player base is mostly highschool and college students and people in their early 20s who still act like college students, so those times sound best to me.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
A demographic study of CoH players would be interesting. I would actually wager that you'd see an older group. I'd venture that the demographic you're talking about tends to drift between a couple of core games but spends a lot of time sampling the "New and Shiny" releases. I agree in general terms with your release schedule for new content. But, there's a point at which you need to decide who your target audience really is.
I think for years the game industry has been leaving behind a valuable segment of players, namely 30-50 year olds, who are more likely to stay with a game they enjoy, rather than chasing down every new game or following all their teenage friends around in whatever game they are playing that week. This segment is also more willing and able to pay a subscription fee, are more likely to be turned off by the micro-transaction model and are likely to play only a few games for a long time, rather than sampling a new game every six weeks.
I agree that you want to attract new players. And the younger segment is easier to attract because they are always looking for NEW. But they are much, MUCH harder to retain. So who will you cater to? Well, the answer should be "Kinda both." You want to attract new players, and retain current players. I don't think game companies ask this question often enough: "How do we attract players that we are likely to retain?"
I agree that the older 30-50 crowd (I cringe as I type that word, knowing that I lie squarely in the middle of it) is probably under estimated, but I also think I/we are about the easiest and best customers to get already. We can afford games, for the most part. Not all fo us have a lot of time to spend grinding for gear, but we're the kind of people that would be apt to play with our own kids, etc, so there's that. I don't even think we're the MOSt voracious consumers of new content in the sense that I think we probably grind through content slower than most "invested" 12-20 year-olds would.
Oh, also, apparently MechWarrior 4 is now considered "abandonware" and can be obtained for free someplace. Whatta country!
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I always thought the CoX spread of ages were fairly consistent across the board. I knew a lot of older people that played it, I knew a lot of younger people who played it. I think these kinds of games speak to all ages. I think it is more "Games" in general that have a derogatory view of "only guys, and only young people play games". I think just recently this viewpoint has been getting better towards " games are for everyone" but it is nowhere near where it should be.
The Carnival of Light in the Phoenix Rising
"We never lose our demons, we only learn to live above them." - The Ancient One
Avatar by lilshironeko
The ironic thing is that one person's idea of "fun" is sometimes another person's idea of "work" or "a waste of time".
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Yep. STO is loaded with "fun" that looks like badly-paid rote work.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I grew up with CoH so I am pretty invested into the successor titles via that alone.....
Formerly known as Bleddyn
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