The War Dogs Gaming Clan

Spray and Pay

Jun 23 |13:39 PM

Spray and Pay

Written by Thompson

Who hasn't wondered just how those fools (Me included) who play World of Warcraft don't see that Blizzard is making them pay exorbitant amounts of money to play one game? Some bloggers have made some rough calculations and found that they have, over the 5 years that WoW has been around, spent over $1000 to keep the dream alive. Compare this to the $30 you paid for Call of Duty 2 that you still play.

What if your favorite game developer decided to switch to a pay to play model from this day forward? It might not be far away.

Snowed In

I use Blizzard as the go to example but they were not the first and they certainly won't be the last to adopt a pay to play system, examples include EverQuest, Heroes of Newerth, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online. These games require people to maintain an account through a subscription or game cards, but models range from 'Free-to-play' games that make it almost impossible to progress without purchasing upgrades and items to games like Runescape where you pay to remove ads and add extra features and any number of combinations of the above. The models vary between the games but they all rely on receiving ongoing small payments over a long period of time and it appears the sky is the limit on ways to monetize different components of the games.

Cold Confusion

Soon after the July 9th, 2009 Activision / Blizzard merger Sledgehammer Games was founded and was assigned to develop a brand new Call of Duty game. Doubt the possibility that Call of Duty could become a pay-to-play game?

The CEO of Activision, Bobby Kotick, stated to the Wall Street Journal that he “... would have Call of Duty be an online subscription service tomorrow.” if he could have his wish. Kotick is basing this on the fact that “audiences are clamoring for it” which I’m sure we can all agree is totally true. Wait, what? Did the CEO of the largest video game publishing company on Earth just say that we, as a market, are 'clamoring' to pay him every month to play a game that by traditional logic should be a free to play title?