Both developers and fans of the genre will be affected

Apr 15, 2013 14:46 GMT  ·  By

Mark Jacobs, the current leader of City State Entertainment, believes that the free-to-play MMO model is heading to an inevitable apocalypse that will take place in the next three to five years and will be a catastrophe for both gamers and developers.

He tells VG247 that, “The whole free-to-play thing isn’t going away tomorrow but let’s just see what happens in three to five years – and I’m betting closer to three – where free-to-play will become just another model.”

For a long time, the MMO genre was dominated by subscriptions and few developers were willing to accept that they would soon face extinction.

He adds, “You know, free-to-play is just another model, and just like every other model in the industry, it will hold its special little place for a while but then there will be consequences. Those consequences in a few years will be a bit of an apocalypse.”

Most MMOs that are launched at the moment use the free-to-play model and the various teams that are currently working on similar titles are considering it.

Even Star Wars: The Old Republic, the title from BioWare and Electronic Arts, which started out using a subscription mode, switched less than one year later in order to gain a wider audience.

The only big video game that has not dropped the model is World of Warcraft, the Blizzard-made experience that still has more than 10 million subscribers all over the world.

Mark Jacobs believes that developers need to create more targeted experience in order to convince players that paying a monthly fee for a game is a good idea.

The veteran developer, who has created the Warhammer fantasy MMO and the original Dark Age of Camelot, is working on Camelot Unchained.

The new MMO is focused on Player versus Player and on Realm versus Realm gameplay and is currently seeking funds via Kickstarter.