That way, developers are like street performers, if they do a good job, they get paid

Apr 3, 2014 23:46 GMT  ·  By

The development director of the EverQuest franchise made a controversial statement earlier today, when he said that gamers should want all massively multiplayer online games to be free to play.

David Georgeson, EverQuest's head of development, shared his view that the free-to-play model encourages developers to work their hardest in order to make sure that the final product is as entertaining as possible.

"There's nothing wrong with the subscription model. I have personal opinions, which I'll go ahead and share because I’m just that sure of myself. 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," he revealed.

He drew a parallel to street performers, saying that game developers go out and sing and dance, and if they do a good job, people will throw coins into the hat.

"And I think that's the way games should be, because paying $60 / €45 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," Georgeson explained.

He expressed interest in utilizing Sony's recently announced Project Morpheus VR headset and said he was looking into the opportunities afforded by VR integration in the upcoming game, which was still a long way away.

Additionally, Georgeson revealed that the company had no plans to pull the plug on either EverQuest or EverQuest 2 when EverQuest Next should launch, stating that they had "really good success with keeping games running for long periods of time," which frankly is right on the money, as EverQuest is already 15 years old.

The massively multiplayer online role-playing game EverQuest Next is expected to launch on the PC and PlayStation 4 home entertainment system from Sony sometime in the future. The precursor to the MMO, EverQuest Landmark, which presents a Minecraft-like experience that takes full advantage of the game's assets and allows players to create content to their hearts' content, so to say, just entered beta last week.