Selling the Soul

My last post was titled The Death of a Game. The example I gave was from a game I still play, called ArenaScape, which is a very casual free-to-play, text-based game and a cult favorite with a very loyal fan base numbering in the hundreds. For those that may want to check it out, ArenaScape can be found at http://arenascape.net/login.php.

A player participating in a battle in ArenaScape.

As I discussed in my last blog post, ArenaScape has a lot of potential to become a very popular game, and in my mind, it's a shame that the game has pretty much died due to neglectfulness. The game's developer created the game more or less for fun, and after working on the game for a number of years for fun and for the fans, he lost interest and just stopped updating it all together. The game has not been updated in many years, and even the copyright hasn't even been changed since 2008. The fan base has been extremely loyal and many of the players have continued to play, post on the forums, and has kept a sense of a community alive years after the last update. However, the time of neglect has taken its toll and the number of players has really diminished.

I believe that the problem that ArenaScape has had was also one of its key "features" that made the game enjoyable for many: it was free-to-play. ArenaScape did not cost money to play, nor did it have any form of membership feature that did, unlike most other games out there, and advertising revenue was at the bare minimal. The developer of ArenaScape had been known to pay for the game out of his own pocket when the ad revenue was not enough, which may have been often because the game had but 2 ads on the home page itself. After actually logging into the game, the players would not see any ads whatsoever, further cutting down on possible ad revenue.

As such, the game's sole developer may have enjoyed creating and updating the game in the early stages when the game was still fresh and a fan base was starting to emerge, but after a number of years of doing it, I'm sure that sense of excitement was going to wear off... and with it, his incentive to continue to update the game. I noticed that most games will die off when they are no longer updated at least semi-regularly, and the games that continue to get updated tend to do so with a cost involved... most of them are not going to be free, or at least have some sort of optional feature that brings in some revenue.

As sad as it may sound, coming from the free open source and Wikipedia age, I don't think online games can really work the same magic... Online games like ArenaScape will sadly need some form of revenue, if just to give the developer enough incentive to keep the game going and the extra pocket cash flowing. These games will be forced to go with a an optional membership option, some sort of in-game bonus for "donating" money, extra ads, or some other alternative. If they do not, I would imagine that they risk a slow and painful death of neglect just like ArenaScape when the game developer does decide that the continuous updates is just not worth his or her time.

Perhaps you disagree? Post your thoughts down below. Until next time, this is Melos signing off...