Multiplayer fees in online gaming?

Under no circumstances would I pay a monthly fee for any kind of multiplayer.  The only MMO game I'll play is Guild Wars, because a. it isn't crappy like some all of the free-to-play MMO games and b. no monthly fees.

On the subject on MMOs; I don't like MMOs, but I can understand charging a monthly fee for a game that gets regular content and balance patches.  I actually think the 'free to play' games that use microtransactions are far bigger scum; these games tend to seem playable initially, but you quickly realize that to get anywhere after the beginner areas you're basically required to pay.  With microtransactions they are very often more expensive to play in the end than a monthy fee game, and companies are well aware of this now as I hear WoW adding more and more paid (as in extra $) content.  Today it's purely cosmetic shiny ponies, tomorrow it could very well be Swords of Game Winning +1.  Then there's Cryptic, masters of evil in MMO land who combine monthly fees AND critical microtransactions.  This is where all new MMOs are headed I think.

As for non-MMOs, fees are crap.   There aren't nearly enough updates for these games to warrant a monthly fee.  Extras like new maps, small content add-ons, etc. were free once upon a time.  It was called cusomter service, under the wise assumption that treating your customers well would improve customer loyalty.  The Blizzard of old built-up a lot of goodwill like this, and now Activision is burning it to cash in with Starcraft 2.  DLC is a blight on the industry.  In many cases, these DLC add-ons are fairly blatantly chunks of the original game that were removed so they can screw customers for another $15 (See: Day 1 DLC).  The worst I heard of was Fable 2 basically not having an ending unless you paid up.  Bioware is another one, removing the ability to mod their games (Mass Effect) and make original levels and content so they can sell you their own.  Civilization 5 sadly seems headed this route as well.  Any pretense at DLC being optional extras is quickly fading and becoming 'buy this if you want a complete game'.  And for those who say it's the same thing as expansion packs, it's not at all.  Expansion packs tended to offer 1/3 to 1/2 as much content as the original game.  They had enough meat to them that the $30 or so they went for were totally justified.  These DLC packs usually just offer a new character, maps, or a short new level or two.

And none of this going away.  How many people bought the MW2 map packs?  There are making tons of money with no real effort.  How long until companies start disguising critical bugfix patches start becoming something you have to pay for?  Oh, the online matchmaking doesn't work well?  Buy the multiplayer add-on pack for only $9.99!  The only ones to blame here are the current generation of gamers who bend over on command.  I can't really fault the publishers for screwing their customers when they act so willing.

Not me! I have lots of old games that work offline, so to heck with multiplayer if that is the future.

Note that ArenaNet does not charge a monthly fee for Guild Wars, and they have stated that there will be no monthly fee for Guild Wars 2. They will of course charge for major content updates and offer optional items in their company store as they have in the past. And new chapters are pricey.

It is possible for an active company to make plenty of money without turning players into nothing more than a bunch of cows to be milked on a monthly basis.

WoW set a precedent for Blizzard, those monthly fees have made them very wealthy. Activision wants the same monthly rain of dollars for StarCraft II online; and it is likely that Diablo III will have a pay for play online as well.

The problem is the people that shell out to get map pack #476 for CoD like blind sheep.  Until people keep devouring anything they get thrown at, the industry will keep making it.

WoW is almost a sole exception in being able to successfully charge monthly fees. Given the massive volume of failed MMOs that have tried to emulate WoW's success I've little doubt that any publisher that tried bringing in subscription fees to play standard games online would suffer a huge drop in sales (unless the single player is exceptionally good, and given the trend in recent years to cut down on single player and let the multiplayer try and make up for it, I highly doubt that will happen).

Precisely. Consumers need to be a little more discerning if services are to improve. I don't really see that happening, though. I'll be happy playing Linley's Dungeon Crawl if this Big Brother type of multiplayer experience is ever dominant.

Not paying monthly fees here.  If a publisher slaps that on their game, I'm not buying it.  Period.

While Wow is certainly above the rest in numbers, there are plenty of MMOs that have successfully charged monthly fees for their games and continue to live to tell about it. Having said that, I will pay for MMO content. I will not pay for multiplayer. I don't know about the rest of you, but the internet is not free for me. I have to pay out a fair amount each month just to get online. Then I pay for my games.

All this says to me is that some analyst wants gamers to pay for games, but how dare they actually try and play them. Obviously companies like Activision should just get their money and offer nothing in return. I don't know when multiplayer became a DRM/means to save money issue but for me, multiplayer is a selling point. There are certain types of games I will not buy without multiplayer options in them. That's their reward for having multiplayer, my business. Without it, they won't get less from me, they will get zero.

Its going to be like the aracdes of old. they're going to keep raiseing the prices and then somthing will happen to break it all down. Its a cycle, while unpleasant. it'll pass.

While it's kind of cliche, Microsoft bears a large porition of the blame for this new way of doing business in the gaming industry.  As Nesrie said, my ISP charges me money so why should I have to pay extra to access basic multiplayer features?  Yet the XBox does exactly that and people went for it.  Once the industry realized how spend-happy this new generation of gamers was, that was it.  Soon you were seeing $10 horse armour add-ons, and people were buying it.  Again, I can't really get angry at the industry when the consumers are offering them their wallet like that.  Fortunately, MS failed to pull this off on the PC and they axed any notion of trying to charge extra for GFWL.

Its going to be like the aracdes of old. they're going to keep raiseing the prices and then somthing will happen to break it all down. Its a cycle, while unpleasant. it'll pass.

Arcades didn't die off solely because they become too expensive, they died off largely because the power of home systems caught up to them.  The SNES may have been able to run Street Fighter 2, but it just wasn't the same as it felt in the arcade.  Now however, there's no difference between Street Fighter 4 in the arcade or on a console.  In fact, it's actually better on the console as you can play with people across the world, not just locally.  Nobody's going to throw quarters into the arcade machines if they can get the same experience at home.

While I don't much like it, I do think there should be monthly fees as long as the game is receiving good post launch support AND they are hosting using their servers (not primarily p2p based).  It really should be ala carte imo.  If all I do is play, for instance, call of duty: modern warfare 2 in SP mode, I should be able to buy that game at a much cheaper price.  If I decide to venture online, then charge me for that.  But what these companies will do (if they do it) is charge you $60 for the game and then X dollars if you want to play online - instead of a more fair alternative like I suggest. 

But if the game is simply being published, gets 1 or 2 patches, then its a complete rip off to charge for MP if no additional support if provided.  All of that said, I'm really just arguing for charging X dollars if all you do is SP and charging X dollars + 20 if you do SP + MP (and really avoiding the X per month for MP discussion).  Its quite reasonable if you factor in that companies are often paying for their servers to host your game if you do MP.  While in SP, as long as they didn't release a buggy ass game, no patches or support will be needed. 

Also, think about it in a small transaction sense.  Let's say I make my MP game and publish it.  I decide to charge players $1 per month to play on my servers.  That's still a pretty big gain.  Its easy marketing too.  Buy COD 27 for $60 along with a 12 month subscription for only $12.  If you preorder, the 1 year subscription is only $6.  And besides - the next COD will be out before the year is over.  People will surely complain at first, but if you view it as a dollar per month, its really not that bad.  But the nitwits will like push something completely obnoxious and only hurt themselves.  Oh well - if there is an online fee, it should guarantee that patches are delivered at standard intervals to improve the game. 

I don't need their damn servers. Give me directip. Oh wait, that's right. We're supposed to use their servers because its some underhanded DRM scheme and now that people are on their servers, the industry wants to whine about the costs. Get real. I won't pay for the privledge of playing a multiplayer game online most of which get 1 or 2 patches at most and little to no support beyond that with piles of DLC they're trying to pimp. My favorite is how AVP released DLC and then dumped, yes dumped all support for consoles. They did a piss poor job with that game, tried to push out DLC before it was even a clean release and now they throw out more DLC and then abandon it. This is not the kind of behavior that deserves more dollars.

If they release MP games with monthly charges, I simply won't buy the game. We'll see how many more dollars they'll get with that.

I'd be less against it this move if the companies capable of implementing it were offering good support.  As it stands, the three companies capable of implementing this type of structure (Activision, EA and Ubisoft) are literally the three worst offenders for bad post-release support.  Charging for what has always been free will drive piracy numbers up, and increase the private server community.

I think that is the real problem with it.

If they offer service and value for the subscription, no one would complain.

As it stands they just want more money for the same things we already are used to.

Agreed.

Exactly - if there is no value add to the game, I'm opposed to this.  If we are getting consistent support and a stream of updates with fixes and enhancements, I'm on board.  If you tell me that a game I'm buying today will receive monthly updates and then want to charge me for that, I can live with it.  If its just 1 or 2 post release patches, I oppose. 

Pacov, this is Bobby Kotick we are talking about.  If he gets his way games will be subscription based, but if players want that critical bug-fix patch they better download that new DLC.

On one hand, charging for MP would effect me very little. On the other hand, it is just wrong. If they would actually reduce the price for SP only I might even go for it on a title or two, but we know that will never happen.

It really depends on what they actually do. The article isn't specific. If they push out the game, give it a patch or two, and leave it while charging a monthly fee to play MP, that's kinda bad. But if they charge the fee and in exchange provide constant new maps, weapons, new class skills (with CoD in mind), etc then it would mostly just be up to the individual players to decide if it's worth it or not, but the fee is excused by the costs of ongoing development (which is basically like MMOs).

This model is more of an MMO model, and guess what most of the MMOs are not doing these days, providing updates and more content alongside the sub. Now the new claim is 15 dollars a month barely covers the servers so almost every new game throws up a cashshop alongside stripped down expansion packs. Besides, we're also talking about companies that can take over a year to fix patches on their successful games, companies that just abandon the unsuccessful ones, and companies who put devs on DLC to pump those out while their game remains buggy and unstable. It won't be say 5 dollars a month for map packs and multiplayer; it will be 5 dollars a month for multiplayer AND 15 dollar map packs and still slow patches and heavy handed DRM. I say heavy handed DRM because it won't be long before single-players will be required to connect to these servers paid for by MP players just like Ubisoft requires only now we're supposed to be happy and content to pay for shit like Ubisoft's scheme.

In the case of Activision, this is probably fairly likely, yes. But if it is the case, it's also likely to backfire. COD isn't a lone game on the market, something like Bad Company 2 is a direct competitor (and in my personal opinion better in basically every way). Couple that with the fact that a lot of people won't be happy to pay (or won't be able to) for basic MP with no free content updates.. They'll have options.