Will fans jump ship when Age of Conan and Warhammer arrive?
HEXUS: There’s been a bit of debate over at the official LOTRO forums about what’s going to happen when Age of Conan and Warhammer arrive later this year and whether a chunk of the community will jump ship to play these big titles. What steps are you putting in place to ensure this doesn’t happen?
Jeff: To continue to distinguish ourselves we’ll continue to evolve the game and bring new things to the arena. We’ll continue to uphold the level of quality and stability in the game. Besides WOW and LOTRO I don’t know if there is a game that has been able to do that, certainly not a new one and I think that makes us very competitive.
We know that gamers will want to look at what other games have to offer, but they’ll come back, they’ll even play two games at once, lots of people do that. We’re not worried about the competition.
HEXUS: What’s your view on the free2play model? Many companies who employ this model are saying that subscription models won’t last.
Jeff: It’s going to evolve, there’s no question about it. The value exchange with customers right now is static. It’s a model that has worked well for MMOs and people don’t want to step away from it, it’s making these games very profitable.
We were the first game to launch life-time membership and lots of other people are now doing that. The fact that we’re launching in Asia is going to push us to support other business models. We need to look at how different business models can live simultaneously. You might be a hardcore player who wants to chew through every piece of content, playing 40 hours a week – to you $15 a month won’t matter. On the other hand there might be a guy who has a family and just wants to play the game casually for a couple of hours a week, so $15 might seem too much. He’s still a good customer and I don’t want to lose him. We all need to look at different business models, it’s happening, it’s just a matter of when.
Click for larger imageHEXUS: What are your thoughts on bringing MMOs to consoles?
Jeff: It’s inevitable. It’s going to happen more quickly than we can imagine, a game is not going to be specific to a particular platform for much longer. It has to be that way.
HEXUS: We’re sure you’ve heard the likes of Epic Games, banging on about how PC gaming is in demise, right? What’s your opinion?
Jeff: Firstly, I’ve been doing this for 15 years now and PC gaming has been apparently dying every year. I think part of it is that the PC isn’t growing as quickly as console gaming. Console gaming is now opening itself up to a much broader audience.
Comparatively, a lot more new players are playing console games, because the console is in the living room and its much more accessible. It’s more fun to sit in the living room in some cases rather than on the PC.
The people who like to play PC games, will always play PC games, but the type of games that lend themselves well to PC is comparatively getting smaller. Once we get to a place where the platform it’s distributed on is independent of the product that’s what will really matter. It’s really important that we push that.
HEXUS: Finally, what’s next for Turbine?
Jeff: We have three franchises running strong and we have the second chapter of Lord of the Rings Online coming out this year. Ascheron’s Call continues to be a viable, profitable game and will be 9 years old this year; it still has a solid community. DDO has just celebrated its second anniversary and LOTRO is coming up with first anniversary. We’ve got plenty on our plate.
