Mmo Market reaches 20 Billion dollars in 2016

Kalifas

http://www.alistdaily.com/digital/superdata-mmo-moba-game-market-to-reach-20-billion/

And article makes a bunch of statements about the free to play market.

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Some quotes from article incase you don't like clickies.

• The MMO/MOBA gaming market is massive right now, thanks to the immense popularity of games like DOTA 2 and League of Legends, which continuously bring in millions of players daily. According to SuperData, revenues are actually a lot bigger than some people might think.
• SuperData also reports that free-to-play games are heavily popular in this market, with six of the top-ten grossing games utilizing this format. All together, they make up 86 percent of total revenue for MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games.

• “Generally, more than a third of MMO gamers play a title for more than one-and-a-half years before quitting, so maximizing revenue from experienced players is critical,” says Joost van Dreunen, CEO for SuperData. “Keeping the player engaged with new content, daily challenges and the ability to manipulate the in-game environment will decrease their likelihood to abandon the game for another title.”
• While returning players have a big part in the market, so do new players, as 84 percent of those playing within thee first month are likely to make some form of purchase, including boosts and in-game currency. Expansion packs also do fairly well, but mainly with those that check out what the game’s content has to offer first.
• There are those that leave the market, and they tend to do so as groups, with 34 percent noting they leave a title behind mainly because “friends stop playing.” Approximately 81 percent enjoy playing with others they know, and 58 percent follow their friends and family over to a new title they’re introduced to.
• As for MMO games in general, their future appears to rest in the free-to-play sector. “By the end of the year, free-to-play gamers will make up 93 percent of all MMO players,” said van Dreunen. “We have seen many subscription-based MMOs shifting to the free-to-play model, especially those that already had in-game purchasing opportunities.”

I think it is pretty accurate, not sure on the money claims though. Dailies don't keep me invested, I look for deep, innovative, and long lasting systems without going extreme on the grind. And I don't follow anyone around I play until a game is no longer entertaining to me or not meeting my expectation of a certain type of game.

93 % of all mmo players? I knew it was booming but that has to be wrong or that is insane.

Rohamad_Ali

"Rest of world" Needs better Internet .

Kalifas

What is the internet speed in the rest of the world?

Clarkieson

$20 billion for games that barely function

genius scam, the fraudsters most be laughing all the way to the bank

Ffastyl

Kalifas wrote: »

Dailies don't keep me invested, I look for deep, innovative, and long lasting systems without going extreme on the grind.

Dailies may not keep you invested, but enough of ESO's playerbase is to warrant the creation of Undaunted Pledges and Writs. Originally, ESO's only repeatable, daily content were the town jobs in Cyrodiil and Trial rankings.

MaxwellC

Unfortunately we were told that this game wouldn't cater to hardcore players who want to stick with this title for a while but instead it caters to players who will drop this game at a drop of a hat to play another, then come back in a month or two and play again for the same thing to happen like a never ending cycle.

Lysette

Kalifas wrote: »

What is the internet speed in the rest of the world?

4 Mb/s in south africa - but this is intentionally this way - lower speed, but you can get it even in the most remote area of south africa. Quality is high, as it is a fiber optics network inside south africa. To get an idea what 4 Mb/s is like - you can watch a 1080p video stream, but if you run anything else in parallel which is using the net, your movie will stutter.

Lysette

What those statistics show as well is, that the average player is casual - 5 times a week, less than 2 hours each time. I think that about 1.5 years of playing a game is as well pretty near to the truth - in EVE we tend to say, that someone playing for 2 years is a real EVE player, all others are just testing it.

Lysette

MaxwellCrystal wrote: »

Unfortunately we were told that this game wouldn't cater to hardcore players who want to stick with this title for a while but instead it caters to players who will drop this game at a drop of a hat to play another, then come back in a month or two and play again for the same thing to happen like a never ending cycle.

Well, ZOS has the actual numbers - they did not pull this out of thin air, but looked at the behavior of players and that is the result of that investigation. It might actually be that way, it is at least valid for a couple of friends, which I made in ESO - they do not play on a daily basis, but more in chunks - playing for a couple of days intensively, and then they are gone again for a while, simply because their real life is demanding and they need to focus on that first.

Kalifas

I played FFXI 8 years straight then XIV about a year, every other mmo about 1-2 months here and there and I have played ESO coming and going over the course of a year or so.

Now I play this and Tera about 2-3 hours on 1-3 weekdays and sometimes 5-6 hours on weekends and sometimes I don't play any mmo at all. Am I casual now or midcore or hardcore?

Lysette

Kalifas wrote: »

I played FFXI 8 years straight then XIV about a year, every other mmo about 1-2 months here and there and I have played ESO coming and going over the course of a year or so.

Now I play this and Tera about 2-3 hours on 1-3 weekdays and sometimes 5-6 hours on weekends and sometimes I don't play any mmo at all. Am I casual now or midcore or hardcore?

Well, Sony sees all with 10+ hours per week as hardcore, so seen from their perspective you would count as hardcore. And basically with the same behavior as ZOS is claiming - not consistently playing the game, but on and off.

I personally would put you in the casual group - I see no hardcore playing behavior in that. To me a hardcore player is someone who commits quite some amount of his sparetime to gaming, with a focus on one game only - even he might play more in parallel.

In the past I would have seen you as hardcore player - playing a game for 8 years is hardcore - no normal person would do that. This is real commitment. My time in EVE is equally long, playing it for over 8 years about 5 times a week with 2-3 hours each session - well now, I had times in the past, where I scored 200+ hrs/month on EVE - but I was a student back then with a lot of spare time.

mistermutiny89

Interesting to see the comparison between free and pay to play.

Although I've spent around 3k hours on ESO and around 500 hours on Warframe and I without a doubt spent more on Warframe then I ever will with ESO. Mostly because Warframe had better products and boosters, whereas most of the stuff in the crown store they couldn't give to me for free.

Phinix1

Personally, as a person that over my lifetime has spent THOUSANDS on games, writes addons (which that 20 billion dollar industry still hasn't found a way to give the content creators even a TINY cut yet for all they increase the replay value and quality of the IP), and typically invests years in a given title, this seems rather like "Social Marketing 101" clap trap to me.

For one, I LOATHE the FTP "market" and find it little more than a shameless way to manipulate addiction and human psychology in a predatory attempt to extract money from desperate people for little return. It is the epitome of THE PROMISE which can never deliver, because to deliver would mean giving up the psychological cheese that keeps the rat running the pay wheel.

FTP is the reason so much of the gaming industry has gotten lazy, shallow, and mind-numbingly redundant, abandoning story, genre-defining art, and emotional impact. Those things are difficult and require investment. The whole FTP "industry" revolves around minimizing investment while maximizing the psychological impact of addiction peddling. This is the sort of "gaming" they are teaching in corp school. Not passion, profit at all cost.

Quality has suffered across the board but as they say, when tripe is the only thing on the menu, people buy tripe.

Lysette

mistermutiny89 wrote: »

Interesting to see the comparison between free and pay to play.

Although I've spent around 3k hours on ESO and around 500 hours on Warframe and I without a doubt spent more on Warframe then I ever will with ESO. Mostly because Warframe had better products and boosters, whereas most of the stuff in the crown store they couldn't give to me for free.

I find it very interesting how huge the asian MMO market is compared to the western one.

Kalifas

Lysette wrote: »

Kalifas wrote: »

I played FFXI 8 years straight then XIV about a year, every other mmo about 1-2 months here and there and I have played ESO coming and going over the course of a year or so.

Now I play this and Tera about 2-3 hours on 1-3 weekdays and sometimes 5-6 hours on weekends and sometimes I don't play any mmo at all. Am I casual now or midcore or hardcore?

Well, Sony sees all with 10+ hours per week as hardcore, so seen from their perspective you would count as hardcore. And basically with the same behavior as ZOS is claiming - not consistently playing the game, but on and off.

I personally would put you in the casual group - I see no hardcore playing behavior in that. To me a hardcore player is someone who commits quite some amount of his sparetime to gaming, with a focus on one game only - even he might play more in parallel.

In the past I would have seen you as hardcore player - playing a game for 8 years is hardcore - no normal person would do that. This is real commitment.

Ugh I'm a filthy casual.. I used to shun players for that in FFXI. Yeah I would play my cherry popper for hours on end almost every day so wasn't confused on that part. So about 10-20 hours a week is casual. I'd like to invest more time in an mmo but not at the level of FFXI. Do you know of any mmos that you still level up by grinding enemies, deep customization, with less questing but good story? Something like Dark Souls but an mmo version?

I'd still play ESO as my secondary mmo, but I need more classes and something meatier in terms of content.

Phinix1

Lysette wrote: »

mistermutiny89 wrote: »

Interesting to see the comparison between free and pay to play.

Although I've spent around 3k hours on ESO and around 500 hours on Warframe and I without a doubt spent more on Warframe then I ever will with ESO. Mostly because Warframe had better products and boosters, whereas most of the stuff in the crown store they couldn't give to me for free.

I find it very interesting how huge the asian MMO market is compared to the western one.

Roughly proportional to their population compared to the west.

Lysette

Phinix1 wrote: »

Personally, as a person that over my lifetime has spent THOUSANDS on games, writes addons (which that 20 billion dollar industry still hasn't found a way to give the content creators even a TINY cut yet for all they increase the replay value and quality of the IP), and typically invests years in a given title, this seems rather like "Social Marketing 101" clap trap to me.

For one, I LOATHE the FTP "market" and find it little more than a shameless way to manipulate addiction and human psychology in a predatory attempt to extract money from desperate people for little return. It is the epitome of THE PROMISE which can never deliver, because to deliver would mean giving up the psychological cheese that keeps the rat running the pay wheel.

FTP is the reason so much of the gaming industry has gotten lazy, shallow, and mind-numbingly redundant, abandoning story, genre-defining art, and emotional impact. Those things are difficult and require investment. The whole FTP "industry" revolves around minimizing investment while maximizing the psychological impact of addiction peddling. This is the sort of "gaming" they are teaching in corp school. Not passion, profit at all cost.

Quality has suffered across the board but as they say, when tripe is the only thing on the menu, people buy tripe.

Exactly - running an MMO is like being a legal drug dealer - and it is as well the reason why so much investor's money goes into this market. In asia they create the game around whales - those spending a large quantity of their income on gaming, even if this might ruin those person's lives. Some cannot refrain from spending it on games, even if their life suffers by it. This is clearly a predatory behavior. So far addiction to games is not seen as an illness though, it is not part of the catalog, but it is suggested to be added.

As far as preying on whales goes, interestingly enough the browser-game market is the bigger one - I was surprised about that too. Games like those made by Zynga (farmville, poker ect.) bring in by far more money than MMOs do - pretty simple and primitive games, but they earn them a fortune - even they made some management decisions in the last years, which let their stock go side-ways and broke the upwards trend.

Elsonso

Phinix1 wrote: »

Personally, as a person that over my lifetime has spent THOUSANDS on games, writes addons (which that 20 billion dollar industry still hasn't found a way to give the content creators even a TINY cut yet for all they increase the replay value and quality of the IP), and typically invests years in a given title, this seems rather like "Social Marketing 101" clap trap to me.

For one, I LOATHE the FTP "market" and find it little more than a shameless way to manipulate addiction and human psychology in a predatory attempt to extract money from desperate people for little return. It is the epitome of THE PROMISE which can never deliver, because to deliver would mean giving up the psychological cheese that keeps the rat running the pay wheel.

FTP is the reason so much of the gaming industry has gotten lazy, shallow, and mind-numbingly redundant, abandoning story, genre-defining art, and emotional impact. Those things are difficult and require investment. The whole FTP "industry" revolves around minimizing investment while maximizing the psychological impact of addiction peddling. This is the sort of "gaming" they are teaching in corp school. Not passion, profit at all cost.

Quality has suffered across the board but as they say, when tripe is the only thing on the menu, people buy tripe.

Yup. Water is wet, too. You are stating the obvious.

Lysette

Kalifas wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Kalifas wrote: »

I played FFXI 8 years straight then XIV about a year, every other mmo about 1-2 months here and there and I have played ESO coming and going over the course of a year or so.

Now I play this and Tera about 2-3 hours on 1-3 weekdays and sometimes 5-6 hours on weekends and sometimes I don't play any mmo at all. Am I casual now or midcore or hardcore?

Well, Sony sees all with 10+ hours per week as hardcore, so seen from their perspective you would count as hardcore. And basically with the same behavior as ZOS is claiming - not consistently playing the game, but on and off.

I personally would put you in the casual group - I see no hardcore playing behavior in that. To me a hardcore player is someone who commits quite some amount of his sparetime to gaming, with a focus on one game only - even he might play more in parallel.

In the past I would have seen you as hardcore player - playing a game for 8 years is hardcore - no normal person would do that. This is real commitment.

Ugh I'm a filthy casual.. I used to shun players for that in FFXI. Yeah I would play my cherry popper for hours on end almost every day so wasn't confused on that part. So about 10-20 hours a week is casual. I'd like to invest more time in an mmo but not at the level of FFXI. Do you know of any mmos that you still level up by grinding enemies, deep customization, with less questing but good story? Something like Dark Souls but an mmo version?

I'd still play ESO as my secondary mmo, but I need more classes and something meatier in terms of content.

Sorry, no, I played mainly sandbox games and there the content has to come from you - a game like EVE is what you bring to it, the pre-made content is not the main thing in such a game, but emergent gameplay which comes out of player interaction. This can fascinate for years, but it is not that easy to get into it and takes quite some investment in time as well. I ran a wormhole coporation in the past in EVE as CEO - I could not do this nowadays, because I just lack the time to play a game that intensively like in the past. So no, I have no idea what kind of game you could be playing to get what you want. All the asian games are quite grinding intensive - so much, that one has to be asian to enjoy it for a longer time.

Phinix1

lordrichter wrote: »

Yup. Water is wet, too. You are stating the obvious.

Perhaps obvious to you and I, not so obvious to the people falling prey to one addiction scam after another.

Even I have been tempted by certain "new shiny" MMO titles released relatively recently (and which shall remain nameless), until I try them and realize that they are yet another shallow, empty promise, pushing cash shop pay-to-win and endless grind with the reward of ego inflating unfair advantages and god-mode pvp.

What amazes me is that as large as the gaming industry has become, so many of the customers are still so insecure as to allow it to be defined in such a way.

To me the experience is FAR more important than "victory." My ego and sense of self worth just isn't that deflated. To me, it needs to be fun and immersive and have artistic value FIRST.

Otherwise, in the trash it goes.

Lysette

Phinix1 wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Yup. Water is wet, too. You are stating the obvious.

Perhaps obvious to you and I, not so obvious to the people falling prey to one addiction scam after another.

Even I have been tempted by certain "new shiny" MMO titles released relatively recently (and which shall remain nameless), until I try them and realize that they are yet another shallow, empty promise, pushing cash shop pay-to-win and endless grind with the reward of ego inflating unfair advantages and god-mode pvp.

What amazes me is that as large as the gaming industry has become, so many of the customers are still so insecure as to allow it to be defined in such a way.

To me the experience is FAR more important than "victory." My ego and sense of self worth just isn't that deflated. To me, it needs to be fun and immersive and have artistic value FIRST.

Otherwise, in the trash it goes.

I think that people know that it can be addictive, but they might underestimate what this can do to their lives, if they do not get this under control. If gaming becomes their life and they loose contact to the real world, this can mess up their lives with ease and they might never get out of this scheme and stay an addicted gamer for all their lives - having no family, no spouse and no money to live a decent respectable life. This is the true danger of it - letting go on education, dropping out, be unemployed. And it is far more addictive than one would expect - easy success is what makes it so addictive, and leveling systems and ongoing progress schemes in games support this. When at the same time success is missing in their real life, this easy success can suck them in and make them neglect their real life totally. This is basically the same mechanism as with conditioning in psychology - it drags them into it without them recognizing it.

This scheme was tested with rats - an easy game where rats could get an incentive, which was made valuable for them (neuro-transmitter rich incentive, which stands for "success") - and these rats "played" it, and a large part of them played it even to a point, where they neglected food and water - just by making it so addictive and supported by a conditioning scheme. MMOs are much like this as well and one has to manage playing behavior carefully to not fall for it.

Phinix1

Lysette wrote: »

I think that people know that it can be addictive, but they might underestimate what this can do to their lives, if they do not get this under control. If gaming becomes their life and they loose contact to the real world, this can mess up their lives with ease and they might never get out of this scheme and stay an addicted gamer for all their lives - having no family, no spouse and no money to live a decent respectable life. This is the true danger of it - letting go on education, dropping out, be unemployed.

Well, to be fair the last two may happen regardless of one's gaming or personal habits, at least in the US.

Here we practice education for profit. While you can earn up to your Masters in Europe and be PAID to do so sans scholarship so long as you maintain grades, and even get room and board and other benefits while doing it as there they recognize the difficulty of learning WHILE working full time and also the value of a well educated population for all society, here we extort our children for up to a quarter MILLION in lifetime unforgivable student loan debt, setting up a lifetime pattern of servitude many simply don't see as worth the investment.

Couple that with there simply being less jobs. The CIA projects that by 2040 there will be higher than a 40% perpetual unemployment rate, not because kids are lazy and addicted to games, but because corporations are greedy, outsource jobs or in-source cheap labor, and invest in automation to eliminate human jobs without investing in social programs to compensate.

That's what happens when a civilization goes full greed. It dies a slow and painful death fighting among itself to justify the last vestiges of hope it might somehow turn it all around.

But on topic, addiction definitely IS a problem. But I see it most amount highly educated people that DO work every day, at mind numbing jobs they hate and which bring them no fulfillment. For these video games are an escape, a way to feel empowered and rewarded where their real life lets them down.

So they happily throw their real life paychecks away chasing that feeling. These are the "whales" the pay-to-win drug dealers prey upon.

Eshelmen

So basically, people favor microtransactions over pay to play?
Smh

Lysette

Phinix1 wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

I think that people know that it can be addictive, but they might underestimate what this can do to their lives, if they do not get this under control. If gaming becomes their life and they loose contact to the real world, this can mess up their lives with ease and they might never get out of this scheme and stay an addicted gamer for all their lives - having no family, no spouse and no money to live a decent respectable life. This is the true danger of it - letting go on education, dropping out, be unemployed.

Well, to be fair the last two may happen regardless of one's gaming or personal habits, at least in the US.

Here we practice education for profit. While you can earn up to your Masters in Europe and be PAID to do so sans scholarship so long as you maintain grades, and even get room and board and other benefits while doing it as there they recognize the difficulty of learning WHILE working full time and also the value of a well educated population for all society, here we extort our children for up to a quarter MILLION in lifetime unforgivable student loan debt, setting up a lifetime pattern of servitude many simply don't see as worth the investment.

Couple that with there simply being less jobs. The CIA projects that by 2040 there will be higher than a 40% perpetual unemployment rate, not because kids are lazy and addicted to games, but because corporations are greedy, outsource jobs or in-source cheap labor, and invest in automation to eliminate human jobs without investing in social programs to compensate.

That's what happens when a civilization goes full greed. It dies a slow and painful death fighting among itself to justify the last vestiges of hope it might somehow turn it all around.

But on topic, addiction definitely IS a problem. But I see it most amount highly educated people that DO work every day, at mind numbing jobs they hate and which bring them no fulfillment. For these video games are an escape, a way to feel empowered and rewarded where their real life lets them down.

So they happily throw their real life paychecks away chasing that feeling. These are the "whales" the pay-to-win drug dealers prey upon.

Yes, you are right with all of this. I studied in munich, germany, and the only payment I had to do was 500€ per semester plus health insurance, but even that is going away now - at least I heard it would. And there is further support for students, which cannot afford this and as well support to compensate for housing and living costs while they are studying. This part of the deal is a debt though, this is not given freely but has to be repaid. But it sums up to just about 40,000€ - not a quarter million like in the USA. And it can as well be repaid over the course of many years.

Gaming as an escape - well, if they are employed and have a full time job, this makes it into casual gaming behavior. This is not that critical, especially not, if they have a spouse and a family, which takes a lot of their spare time as well. From my own excperience I can say, this takes about 40-50hrs/months - not much more than this is possible without to get spouse aggro.

Lysette

Eshelmen wrote: »

So basically, people favor microtransactions over pay to play?
Smh

no, gaming companies favor this over pay to play - because it makes them more money. Free to play is an illusion, it will cost those playing the game far more than they would have had to pay, if it would be just pay to play. These kind of games are made so, that it is annoying to try to play it for free - all kind of nasty hinderances if you choose not to pay - in the end they start buying from the cash shop to go around these annoyances and have to pay more, than what they would have had to otherwise.

The most annoying what I have ever experienced was in Archeage - labor potions and labor points - you need these points for all and everything basically, you cannot even use loot without them, because they are encased in purses, which you need to open with labor points. This was so terribly made, that even as a patron (subscriber) you never had enough labor to do anything really, you just started doing a couple of things and labor was gone - so what do you do? - you buy additional labor pots from the cash shop, but this is limited as well and you can again not do a whole lot - basically the illusion of being able to play the game was there, but in fact you could not do much at all.

This being said, a casual subscriber had enough labor do play about 1-2 hours per day - so basically this forced casual playstyle. Or to have more than one account, where you need to buy even more to make it enjoyable - a brutal scam scheme basically.

Smileybones

Clarkieson wrote: »

$20 billion for games that barely function

genius scam, the fraudsters most be laughing all the way to the bank

20 billions ? Looks like games aren't as broken as many drama queens want us to believe.

Lysette

The real scam are "early access" games - where you pay for having access to an alpha-state game - which might never see the light of it's release day, because the money is made with the unfinished game. So why complete it, if the money can be made with the next unfinished game as well?

Same goes for "crowd-sourced" - these games might never see an actual release date.

Clarkieson

Smileybones wrote: »

Clarkieson wrote: »

$20 billion for games that barely function

genius scam, the fraudsters most be laughing all the way to the bank

20 billions ? Looks like games aren't as broken as many drama queens want us to believe.

Maybe they are not that broken, but this one is starting to become a laughing stock.

look at it as a piece of software, it is strewn with errors and major glitches yet it continues to generate profit for the company that so badly put it together.

The game itself is a great concept and that is why we all continue to put up with its failings in the hope that someday it will have most of the errors put right.

Unfortunately business models do note account for hope in that way. Hope is a tool used to incentivise customers into spending money and not for the business to invest in fixes that just dont need to happen. If the product generates profits in its current state, there is no need to invest in the product to improve it.

Why spend capital on testing and development when it already rakes in a fortune? It makes no sense financially and that short sighted "quick buck" mentallity is a fundmental reason as to why this game will never see its full potential.

Its is marketed at the casual player, a player who only plays a few hours and will tolerate bugs and glitches because they play other games or do other things besides ESO. They are not the type to rigorously play untill the game breaks and they dont care if it does. This is reflected in the way the game is made. It is not made to be played for more than a few hours.

Im just not sure why then there is a need for the more difficult content, like VMA, VSO and VMoL. These take hours and hours of learning and perfecting. If the company policy is to cater for casual players this kind of content seems to be an anomaly. The average player is then expected to clear this content with ease and with little or no practice and im sure a few can but they are a very small percentage of the player base. Most players have done the harder conent because they have practiced a lot to get it right.

Do this company really know what is going on with its own policies? Or is there some schizophrenia in ZOS that manifests irself in these conflictions?

Kalifas

Lysette wrote: »

Eshelmen wrote: »

So basically, people favor microtransactions over pay to play?
Smh

no, gaming companies favor this over pay to play - because it makes them more money. Free to play is an illusion, it will cost those playing the game far more than they would have had to pay, if it would be just pay to play. These kind of games are made so, that it is annoying to try to play it for free - all kind of nasty hinderances if you choose not to pay - in the end they start buying from the cash shop to go around these annoyances and have to pay more, than what they would have had to otherwise.

The most annoying what I have ever experienced was in Archeage - labor potions and labor points - you need these points for all and everything basically, you cannot even use loot without them, because they are encased in purses, which you need to open with labor points. This was so terribly made, that even as a patron (subscriber) you never had enough labor to do anything really, you just started doing a couple of things and labor was gone - so what do you do? - you buy additional labor pots from the cash shop, but this is limited as well and you can again not do a whole lot - basically the illusion of being able to play the game was there, but in fact you could not do much at all.

This being said, a casual subscriber had enough labor do play about 1-2 hours per day - so basically this forced casual playstyle. Or to have more than one account, where you need to buy even more to make it enjoyable - a brutal scam scheme basically.

People know there is no such thing as completely free to play. This model is enticing because while limited access varies by company. The player gets to try the entire world out with no money barrier to entry. The player does end up paying more if they keep spending trying to get past all the inconveniences laid upon them.

The difference is one model lets you access any content while inhibiting your convenience while buy to play lets you access what content you pay for with conveniences also costing extra money and pay to play means you cannot try anything outside a trial unless you are subscribed, there is no convenience or inconvenience if you cannot play.

Recently the hybrid model has kicked in and pay to play have cash shops now too, buy to play has cash shops and convenience locked behind subscriptions, which lends some credence to free to play taking over. Even the hybrid models and sub only models are doing things free to play games typically only do.

The days of everything being accessible in pay to play games is coming to an end, the days of everything being accessible in buy to play games based off what you buy are coming to an end. The era of (feigned)free to play is upon us. It's all about money and if this data is accurate it is almost complete.

khele23eb17_ESO

I wish theyd separate MMOs from MOBAs and gave us information of the former alone.

Wing

lol, free to play games are some of the highest earning games.

but but, there free?! I'm sure they don't require money to play then? . . .

. . .oh whats that? oh there not actually free to play and micro scam you out of hundreds of dollars?

okay, it all makes sense now.