How many subscriptions does a game need to be considered successful, and not have to worry about it being shut down. or even better yet how much money does a company have to make off a single game in order to stay afloat.
Well that depends in my opinion. If your game makes enough to keep a single server populated (high pop in peek hours) and a development team in place, I'd consider it successful. Especially if you can keep the playerbase for a long period of time. They'll tell their friends about the game they're playing and ultimately drag more people into it.
So many people buy or sub to an mmorpg in its first month but never look at it again, it's important to keep the playerbase interested and hooked from the start when you're play 2 pay game. F2P customers will always return if they had a decent first experience.
how many people were playing spellborn when it went down? just give me a rough guess if u dont know specifics. also how much does it cost to run a single server on average?
Subs when it went DOWN would be like around 100 or so.. just what i think
Quote:Subs when it went DOWN would be like around 100 or so.. just what i think
wow really that low i would think a little higher but i guess that would explain why they had to shut down 100 subs just isn't enough for a big company but that's also there fault for not advertising more i would so have totally played if i had knew about it, and now that i cant im really mad, and sad at the same time.
Quote:wow really that low i would think a little higher but i guess that would explain why they had to shut down 100 subs just isn't enough for a big company but that's also there fault for not advertising more i would so have totally played if i had knew about it, and now that i cant im really mad, and sad at the same time.
I think when it went down in the EU it had more than 100 subs left really. There was no promotion at all and in only a free countries the EU version was playable with an IP-block in place. The lack of promo and split launch killed the game from the start.
When the Acclaim servers went down there were probably around 25 players (give or take) in the EU peek hours on the PvP server (I did not playing during American times nor did I play on the PvE server to see what the status there was). Only so few players you say? Yep, the game got bugged in the end and people had a hard time installing it in the first place. Acclaim did nothing to fix this so alot of people couldn't play.
If you'd put up a f2p server based on a donation system nowadays and have roughly 200 active players, then I'd say a donation mark between 5-15 euro on a monthly basis by 10% of the playerbase would do to keep it and the login server online and safe for the future.
Don't shoot me on the numbers, I can be wrong.
The thing is TCoS was in development for 4 years after the 2nd it would have already hit the wolrd for as far as I know atleast open beta that is, so after 2 years the money became a problem and when you add 2 more years the money is a big problem and they were in big financial problems when they released it after the 4 years of development. After 4 years the game still wasnt 'playable' by terms of stuff to do only 2 dungeons and pvp + qeusts.
But they had to release it then cause they needed money. Well the financial problems were already so BIG that even if they had alot of subs it would take a long time to get out of that debt. So yeah doomed from the beginning? Maybe but idk this is what i know and please do correct me if I am wrong.
Quote:The thing is TCoS was in development for 4 years after the 2nd it would have already hit the wolrd for as far as I know atleast open beta that is, so after 2 years the money became a problem and when you add 2 more years the money is a big problem and they were in big financial problems when they released it after the 4 years of development. After 4 years the game still wasnt 'playable' by terms of stuff to do only 2 dungeons and pvp + qeusts.
But they had to release it then cause they needed money. Well the financial problems were already so BIG that even if they had alot of subs it would take a long time to get out of that debt. So yeah doomed from the beginning? Maybe but idk this is what i know and please do correct me if I am wrong.
Well they always said that they had to revamp major gameplay elements over and over again. That cost them a lot of time and set them back financially as well.
Quote:I think when it went down in the EU it had more than 100 subs left really. There was no promotion at all and in only a free countries the EU version was playable with an IP-block in place. The lack of promo and split launch killed the game from the start.
When the Acclaim servers went down there were probably around 25 players (give or take) in the EU peek hours on the PvP server (I did not playing during American times nor did I play on the PvE server to see what the status there was). Only so few players you say? Yep, the game got bugged in the end and people had a hard time installing it in the first place. Acclaim did nothing to fix this so alot of people couldn't play.
If you'd put up a f2p server based on a donation system nowadays and have roughly 200 active players, then I'd say a donation mark between 5-15 euro on a monthly basis by 10% of the playerbase would do to keep it and the login server online and safe for the future.
Don't shoot me on the numbers, I can be wrong.
that's not to bad i mean 10% of 200 is 20ppl that's not to bad it sounds reasonable and if whoever republishes it actually gets some word out about it, makes a facebook page and put some advertisements, and maybe a review or two on well known sites and im sure they could get at least 500+ people and 10% of that is 50 people which is better and if that's enough to support a single server im sure the game with the right publishing could really go somewhere.
Quote:that's not to bad i mean 10% of 200 is 20ppl that's not to bad it sounds reasonable and if whoever republishes it actually gets some word out about it, makes a facebook page and put some advertisements, and maybe a review or two on well known sites and im sure they could get at least 500+ people and 10% of that is 50 people which is better and if that's enough to support a single server im sure the game with the right publishing could really go somewhere.
That money might give you enough to keep the servers running, but doesn't get you enough to keep a development team in place to provide updates to people (so they stay happy and don't complain and leave the game and you with no fundings) nor does it give the publisher the money to pay for the license.