As long as a significant number of the players actually take the bait, it's a reasonable proposition. The problem that the article discussed was people not using the paid content, or having the wrong items for free/paid content.
But Glitch follows a long precedent of free-to-play MMOs that have been highly successful in their genre, and has split the free and premium content in a traditional way that pretty much guarantees that a fairly high percentage of free players will occasionally indulge in an item that will justify the bandwidth of allowing non-subscribers to play.
I am skeptical that pretend clothing and furniture can float a company the size of Tiny Speck over a long period of time, much less return dividends. I just hope Stew has this under control.
Subscriptions are not the only line of income for TS. I believe there are investors and some angel funding involved? It was mentioned in some article, status update or blog post somewhere, have to dig it up. I also think someone who founded Flickr and did well with it knows their business :)
Well look at League of Legends, they're free to play and all they offer is early access to champs and custom skins. They're doing very well financially.
People will pay well for customization if the game gets a good userbase. :]
technically, glitch isn't free, we are using our time and resources to test their game on a much larger scale than i'm sure they'd be willing to pay for.
they just don't structure our testing and tell us what to do :)
I think many of the current subscribers (me included) pay not only for the clothes and furniture but because we like TS and the game enough that they deserve a bit of cash even if the game can be played for free. I wonder if the ratio of subscribers vs free players will change after launch.
@natsumi you are right about the funding for now, but I guess the goal for any start-up is to eventually make the product profitable
(-or be acquired instead but I'm guessing stoot would rather finish the job this time)
Natsumi, investors are not a source of
income, they are a source of demands to increase revenue. They want something back for their investment, so they are going to expect TS to deliver results in the form of paying customers. If anything, the outside investors just add more pressure on the company. That said, I think this is a lot different than Zynga's business model and I hope and think it will work out.