[SGVLUG] OT - D&D online game now free to play

[Emerson, Tom (*IC)]

> -----Original Message----- Of matti
>
> OT - thought this was interesting in
> terms of business issues...
>
> free ( as in beer ) online game business model.
> ( tho definitely NOT FREE as in FREEDOM,
> dont even think the client works on free OSes :(

I'm currently playing a "free" game as well - very similar model as to what was described in the article (you /can/ play totally for free, as I have, -OR- you can invest anywhere from a few bucks to your life savings to purchase "mall points" which can be used in-game to buy items and services.  A couple of these "services" have no "free" alternative [more on that in a minute] so as a way of appeasing folks, the company runs "promotional" activities that award small amounts of "mall points" [for example, by remaining "logged on" to the game server via the client for 70 hours over a 1-week period, you "earn xx mall points" - usually 50, but often less...])

The game itself is semi-open - while the client is proprietary, it uses "lua" as a scripting language for many aspects of the game and interface, and it is "publicly" noted that you can write your own "plug-ins" for the game in Lua, however there is little documentation on the game and user-interface "API".  As a result, very few plug-ins have been developed.  I've done some tinkering with it and managed to get some interesting results, but the things I /really/ want to do are simply "not possible" [which is understandable - one thing in particular I'm trying to do is emulate one of the "paid" services via a script - if I can do that, well, everyone will use it and the company won't make any money selling this "vital" service...]

I'd pursue this further, but events within the game itself have lost many "active" players, so my motivation for doing this is dropping as well.  (the game is a space exploration and combat game; an "informal" alliance existed between the "factions", but either some or all of the players in one of the factions "broke" the alliance - since then there have been very few players in the game - it seems nobody liked "losing"...)  Aparently, this cycle has repeated itself in the past - the game "fills up" with new players until the first (or rather, an "epic") battle occurs, then several players lose interest, so they "consolidate" the remaining players of various servers down to a single server.  This leaves new servers available, so they run promotions to fill the "new" servers...