Everquest Next Director: Everyone Should Want Free-to-Play

Talking to IGN, Everquest Next’s director of development Dave Georgeson argued that gamers should want all MMOs to be free-to-play, as that model ultimately works in their favor and forces the developers to work harder to entertain them. In his words:

“There’s nothing wrong with the subscription model. I have personal opinions, which I’ll go ahead and share because I’m just that cocksure of myself,” Georgeson revealed. “I think that free-to-play is the way that gamers should want their MMOs to be, and the reason I think that is that if we don’t do a really good job and we don’t entertain the player, we don’t make a dime.

“We’re effectively street performers: we go out there and sing and dance and if we do a good job, people throw coins into the hat. And I think that’s the way games should be, because paying $60 up front to take a gamble on whether the game is good or not? You don’t get that money back.

“So if you buy a turkey, you’ve just wasted your money. With free-to-play you get to go in, take a look at it and find out. It’s entirely our responsibility to make sure you’re entertained. That’s the way things should be in my opinion with free-to-play.”