Warning: Wall of text ahead.
As I read through the forums (and I read a lot), I can’t help but notice the constant complaints, harsh words and exasperated comments of many in the community for one reason or another. In this post, I simply intend to share my opinion on some of these complaints. Don’t get me wrong: a lot of these complaints are legitimate and I even agree with a lot of these.
The first complaint, and this one, I find almost offensive, is the “why should I have to pay for an expansion the same price I pay for the full game?” I’ve even seen claims that “expansions should be free!”
Before I lay out my opinion on this, a little bit of a background on myself. I own my own business. It’s a small company with about 10 employees, but nonetheless, I have many, many expenses to consider. Employee salaries, licensing (you need licenses to, you know, run a company), fees and taxes payable to the government, cost of maintaining the building the company resides in (mortgage or rent), and a plethora of other costs that must be covered by the business operations or, the business simply would have to close.
All companies are the same. A game programmer in the UK makes, on average $40,000 Euros (give or take). Let’s assume that in all, Frontier has 10 employees that make, more or less, this amount per year (might have more employees). That would bring the yearly expense to about $400,000 euros. This money won’t grow on trees or come out of thin air. It has to be made somewhere.
Now let’s take into account that Frontier has chosen to fund Elite Dangerous solely through expansions and certain in-game items. It is worth noting that these items you can buy in game are not game breaking, you can’t just spend money to overcome other players (as we have seen in many so-called free to play games). So there is no unfair advantage to any player here no matter how much they spend in the store.
Frontier does not charge a monthly subscription fee. You buy the game, you get to play it indefinitely. You buy an expansion, you get to play it indefinitely.
In comparison, let’s look at other games that, while unrelated, serve for the purpose of this post. It is no secret that companies such as Blizzard, Electronic Arts, SquareEnix and other are multimillion companies that have the resources to assign huge teams to each one of their games. Teams whose sole purpose is to maintain a specific game they are assigned to.
These companies charge for the game initially. Charge a monthly subscription fee (Blizzard literally has millions of collars coming into their account every single month. And on top of that, when they release an expansion they also charge for it. Can these companies afford to have these games subscription free, and just charge for expansions? You bet your rear they can. Can they afford to charge a subscription fee, but offer expansions for free? You bet your rear they can. Do they do so? NO. The only driving force here is money, and nothing else. They will milk everything and everyone they can for as long as they can.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Frontier isn't anywhere close to these huge companies money-wise. The fact that they had to fund Elite through a kick starter should be enough proof of this, they simply do not have the resources to develop Elite out of their own pockets. And the same goes for creating and releasing future content for such a game: they have to make the money somewhere, or Elite Dangerous would then have to shut down eventually.
They also do not have the resources to have a huge team working only on Elite. I don’t know what their team size is, but I am sure that it’s nowhere near the 300-500 team members that big companies can assign to their games. As such, it will take Frontier longer than other companies to develop, fix and correct game issues.
My point being: To those that complain about these things (referring specifically to the subject of this post) be a little considerate and take into account all the things that you do have and should appreciate. If you really don’t want to pay for the hard work of others, then, you should play some free to play game, of which there are plenty.
Beware of those games’ pay-to-win mentality, though.
This concludes Part 1 of my post. Opinions?
(You can read part 2 here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=211369 )
As I read through the forums (and I read a lot), I can’t help but notice the constant complaints, harsh words and exasperated comments of many in the community for one reason or another. In this post, I simply intend to share my opinion on some of these complaints. Don’t get me wrong: a lot of these complaints are legitimate and I even agree with a lot of these.
The first complaint, and this one, I find almost offensive, is the “why should I have to pay for an expansion the same price I pay for the full game?” I’ve even seen claims that “expansions should be free!”
Before I lay out my opinion on this, a little bit of a background on myself. I own my own business. It’s a small company with about 10 employees, but nonetheless, I have many, many expenses to consider. Employee salaries, licensing (you need licenses to, you know, run a company), fees and taxes payable to the government, cost of maintaining the building the company resides in (mortgage or rent), and a plethora of other costs that must be covered by the business operations or, the business simply would have to close.
All companies are the same. A game programmer in the UK makes, on average $40,000 Euros (give or take). Let’s assume that in all, Frontier has 10 employees that make, more or less, this amount per year (might have more employees). That would bring the yearly expense to about $400,000 euros. This money won’t grow on trees or come out of thin air. It has to be made somewhere.
Now let’s take into account that Frontier has chosen to fund Elite Dangerous solely through expansions and certain in-game items. It is worth noting that these items you can buy in game are not game breaking, you can’t just spend money to overcome other players (as we have seen in many so-called free to play games). So there is no unfair advantage to any player here no matter how much they spend in the store.
Frontier does not charge a monthly subscription fee. You buy the game, you get to play it indefinitely. You buy an expansion, you get to play it indefinitely.
In comparison, let’s look at other games that, while unrelated, serve for the purpose of this post. It is no secret that companies such as Blizzard, Electronic Arts, SquareEnix and other are multimillion companies that have the resources to assign huge teams to each one of their games. Teams whose sole purpose is to maintain a specific game they are assigned to.
These companies charge for the game initially. Charge a monthly subscription fee (Blizzard literally has millions of collars coming into their account every single month. And on top of that, when they release an expansion they also charge for it. Can these companies afford to have these games subscription free, and just charge for expansions? You bet your rear they can. Can they afford to charge a subscription fee, but offer expansions for free? You bet your rear they can. Do they do so? NO. The only driving force here is money, and nothing else. They will milk everything and everyone they can for as long as they can.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Frontier isn't anywhere close to these huge companies money-wise. The fact that they had to fund Elite through a kick starter should be enough proof of this, they simply do not have the resources to develop Elite out of their own pockets. And the same goes for creating and releasing future content for such a game: they have to make the money somewhere, or Elite Dangerous would then have to shut down eventually.
They also do not have the resources to have a huge team working only on Elite. I don’t know what their team size is, but I am sure that it’s nowhere near the 300-500 team members that big companies can assign to their games. As such, it will take Frontier longer than other companies to develop, fix and correct game issues.
My point being: To those that complain about these things (referring specifically to the subject of this post) be a little considerate and take into account all the things that you do have and should appreciate. If you really don’t want to pay for the hard work of others, then, you should play some free to play game, of which there are plenty.
Beware of those games’ pay-to-win mentality, though.
This concludes Part 1 of my post. Opinions?
(You can read part 2 here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=211369 )
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