I'd (Still) Prefer If Stormgate Had Launched With A Traditional Business Model

Business models have consequences

I launched this Substack with a two-part article on why I preferred a traditional business model for Stormgate (part one, part two). I was surprised to find this downvoted to oblivion on Reddit. Bummer, man.

Nonetheless, I still feel the same way, now that the game’s been out for a month. At the risk of once again agitating the hivemind, I want to write a little bit as to why, and also talk about a few areas where my mind has changed since those first articles.

Pay-To-Play

Here’s Stormgate’s concurrent player count graph. The paid release was on August 1, while the free-to-play release was on August 13:

The paid concurrent players peak is around 10% higher than the free-to-play peak. Furthermore:

• The free-to-play concurrent peak includes pay-to-play players; conservatively, at least 20% of it from the August 12th peak.

• It’s unlikely that every single paid player installed and played at the paid launch.

The best available data suggests that a large portion - perhaps even a majority - of Stormgate’s players were happy to pay for it. As I wrote, way back when:

My intuition is that in this kind of niche genre, the sort of person who’s going to install an indie competitive RTS game at launch is probably not going to be dissuaded by being forced to pay money for the privilege of doing so. It’s counter-intuitive, but the advantage of being niche is that your players are more passionate, have fewer competing options, and are generally more willing to put up with friction. Quality RTS games don’t get released everyday and there’s nothing like playing a new competitive RTS at launch.

And I don’t think this is a contrarian “hot take”, as some suggested:

There is already a precedence set that going free to play is the better way.

The market research is that free games get more people into them, and are more likely to go 'viral'.

Nearly every single successful real-time strategy game in recent memory followed a traditional business model at release, both indie (They Are Billions, Northgard, etc) and mainstream (Age of Empires IV, Age of Mythology: Retold). This is just a factual observation.

But what about StarCraft II? Setting aside the points I made in the piece (that SCII’s free-to-play transition attracted lots of attritioned players in addition to genuine new ones), the biggest real-time strategy game ever made going free-to-play after 7 years of development by a giant AAA company is not a useful or replicable example for other games; certainly not for an indie game like Stormgate.

Barriers to Entry

Here’s what I wrote on “free-to-try”:

In his interview with PiG, Tim Morten mentioned barrier-to-entry as a key reason to adopt free-to-play. I find this interesting because it unintentionally contradicts some of Frost Giant’s other marketing material; but I think it’s fair to argue that even though it’s niche, the RTS market is at least well-served, so convincing players to jump into a new game may be difficult.

The problem I see with this angle is that Stormgate is going to be an order-of-magnitude worse at launch than anything else that’s out there. Age of Empires II, Warcraft III, and StarCraft II - to name a few examples - have been in development for decade(s). Frost Giant won’t be able to deliver an equally compelling experience, at least not at first. And it’s not fair to expect them to, so there’s really no reason to force the comparison. Let the folks interested enough to pay money go ahead and purchase Stormgate at launch, and get everyone else with free-to-play later when the game is in a really good state.

I think this held up pretty OK. Stormgate launched in a tough state, with the developers even stating as much. The perspective du jour over on Reddit is that the campaign should not have been released at all; quite a turnaround from the comments I got suggesting that the game wouldn’t focus on competitive multiplayer.

Since that article, though, I’ve played several additional indie RTS campaigns. And something I’ve come to believe is that free-to-play implies a higher prioritization of live service monetizable content (3v3, co-op, competitive multiplayer) over campaign content. Basically, I think the free-to-play business model is at odds with a successful, traditional real-time strategy campaign.

As I noted in my review of Stormgate’s campaign, length matters in an RTS campaign because ideas require time to establish themselves. Building a big, robust, and rich campaign is a big investment, and it’s risky to parcel it out piece-by-piece, because the pay off of learning all the mechanics and units and techs and so forth usually happens near the end of the campaign. You need players to commit to fully appreciate the experience. StarCraft II, for example, spends the first half of each of its campaigns introducing all of its units before the player can use them all together in a single mission.

Unfortunately, most players do not commit:

• 60% of Company of Heroes 2 buyers don’t even get the game’s first achievement.

• Only 28% of Grey Goo players complete the first 5 missions (out of 15).

• Only 40% of Bannermen players complete the first mission.

• 50% Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition’s players don’t win a single game, in any context.

Players start games and don’t finish them. If we go by Steam achievements, this is true across the board, not just in real-time strategy.

In a traditional business model, that’s not a big deal; players buy the content all at once. If they try the campaign and never finish, that’s OK - it’s still there in their library if they want to give it another go. The developers still get paid, so it’s not the end of the world on their side. They’re still going to build a full game because that’s the premise of the business model.

With free-to-play, that doesn’t work as well, particularly the episodic approach Frost Giant is pursuing. Right out the gate, you lose half your would-be-sales. You then force players to continuously ask themselves, do I really want to pay for more missions? That’s a lot of friction that’s not going to translate well financially.

(And look, I empathize with the concern that players may never try a game if they have to pay for it in the first place. I feel that this problem is better solved with a playable demo, with the campaigns sold as massive, full-game chunks of content once all the development is done.)

Even if you ignore the financial problems, there’s gameplay problems, too. How do you remember a campaign’s story months after you finished the last episode of content? How do you catch-up on unit types and interactions? You were saving up for an upgrade in the progression system… which one? Why? Wait, what’s that menu for, anyway?

It’s impractical, from every perspective. Live-service is a better fit for content like co-op and competitive multiplayer. It’s not surprising, then, that Frost Giant didn’t prioritize building a large, high-quality campaign for their Early Access release. It feels to me like a reasonable decision in the context of their business model.

Monetization Woes

I don’t doubt Frost Giant when they say they want to do free-to-play “the right way”. But I worry that the bad structural incentives they’ve setup for themselves will push them to do things they wouldn’t otherwise consider.

I was surprised by the amount of monetization attached to an ostensibly free-to-play game: Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and a pay-to-play pre-release period. (I exclude StartEngine here, as it’s a way to invest in Frost Giant, not a monetization scheme per se.) Yet despite myriad ways to funnel money to the developers, even high-tier Kickstarter backers at the $200+ level needed to pay additional money to unlock a co-op commander at launch. (After the outrage, Frost Giant agreed to give them the next commander for free).

I thought that whole ordeal was unfortunate. I’m not here to say that pay-to-play games can’t make bonkers monetization decisions; legacy diety portraits in Age of Mythology: Retold comes to mind. (One review calling that “worse than horse armor” made me chuckle.) But the incentives are stronger in free-to-play, and even developers with good intentions are subject to market incentives.

It’s definitely subjective, but I don’t feel nickel-and-dimed by Retold; I paid $45 to pre-play before launch and buy all of the game’s content, and I feel like I got my money’s worth. I did the same for Stormgate for largely the same reason - to play early, to get all the content, to not feel like I’m constantly getting upsold. And then… I got upsold on co-op commanders! It feels weird, man.

Lowest Common Denominator

Finally, I wrote about the upsides of barrier to entry:

I think one advantage to asking players to pay money in order to play your game is that it weeds out people that aren’t particularly interested in your game. This ensures that when someone goes out into the world and talks about your game from first-hand experience, they actually had some genuine interest in the first place.

I still think this is a reasonable take. But my thinking has changed in the sense that I never considered how this sort of thing would impact the developers’ behavior.

For example, Frost Giant is really interested in player feedback. In their update on development priorities, the word “feedback” appears seven different times. They really want to hear from you, folks!

And in that vein, I’m struck by how many things Stormgate tries to be. It’s a social RTS, it’s a next-gen RTS, it’s a spiritual successor to Blizzard-like RTS games, it’s got a campaign, it’s got co-op, it’s got competitive multiplayer, it’s soon going to have 3v3 with heroes. Stormgate tries to offer a little something for everyone.

Most other successful indie real-time strategy games are quite different in this regard, choosing instead to initially focus on a single experience. They Are Billions is a punishing macro-slugfest (my review); Northgard is glacially paced (my impressions); and Bannermen is, well, insane (my review).

(I actually wasn’t sure whether Bannermen was a success, so I was pleasantly surprised to learn the developers’ next game is coming out soon in Early Access. This will be an instant purchase for me, as no game has yet to top the epic-ness of defend against the wolf attacks).

Grey Goo (my review) and Tooth and Tail (to-be-reviewed) come a bit closer to the breadth of Stormgate; but the former shipped with a full campaign and felt oriented toward casual players, while the latter was rather niche in its focus on gamepad controls.

I think Stormgate lacks focus, basically. And I don’t think that’s the business model’s fault, per se; but I think free-to-play encourages that mode of thinking. Rather than targeting a specific audience with a focused product, perhaps the developers feel like they need to scattershot features across the entire pool of players in order to attract microtransactions from everyone. Maybe the lack of barrier to entry creates too much potential for a wave of bad reviews from outside the target audience; maybe the solution is to try to please everyone.

I know, I know, my take here is full of maybes. This is one of those times where I’m forming an opinion as I write. But I feel like free-to-play-at-launch is almost like a magnetic force, pulling the developers away from focus and commitment to a single experience.

And don’t get me wrong - I think it’s possible for a real-time strategy game to be successfully monetized across various pillars of content (campaign, co-op, competitive, etc). I just feel like that’s achieved by starting with a clear focus on one experience, then building out the other pillars, and only finally going free-to-play to attract the widest possible audience once the game is in a solid spot. The traditional business model lends itself to that style of development, while the free-to-play business model does not.

Business Models Have Consequences

Let me close by noting that Stormgate’s relatively tough launch (a ~500 concurrent player peak a month in) does not mean it won’t be successful later. I wish the team well on their 3v3 launch in October, and I hope it’s well-received.

The key point that I want to drive home is not that that I think taking the existing release and bundling it into a traditional pay-to-play model is a good idea; it’s not. Rather, it’s that the way Stormgate has unfolded is partly a consequence of its business model. I think a traditional business model would have produced an entirely different game - more focused, and probably more campaign-heavy and casual-friendly. I think I would have liked that game a lot more, too.

Hopefully, I’ll still get the opportunity to play it - some day.

Until next time!
brownbear

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