More free games will help the MMORPG market expand, found a Parks Associates study. Apparently, only "hardcore" gamers, who represent only a small portion of the audience surveyed, are willing to pay subscription fees, and so for everyone else, the study recommends offering more free titles. Out of some 2000 online gamers surveyed, Parks said, 14 percent would be interested in playing more MMORPGs if they were free. According to Worlds in Motion, Parks Associates' Michael Cai said that the excess of 10 million players WoW's scored is a major exception that most publishers shouldn't expect to emulate using a subscription business model."Social, dormant, and leisure gamers all show significant interest in a free-to-play, microtransaction-based model," said the study. Most "hardcore" MMO players are actually opposed to the microtransaction-driven model because of concerns about game balance, and some developers have said it can be an extra challenge to balance a complex MMORPG when some users will pay for items and others won't. But games aimed at more casual players may not be possessed of the same level of complexity, or may feature different types of game mechanics, thus lessening the concern. Parks: More Free Games Needed To Grow MMORPG Market [Worlds in Motion]
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