NCSoft‘s MMORPG Guild Wars 2 is one of the company’s most important, and highest-earning, titles. The game saw a massive drop in sales in 2013, according to NCSoft’s latest earnings report, but the company does have an ace up its sleeve: the game has yet to be released in China. The game already has a China publisher (Kongzhong) and launch in China is “not far off” according to the official Guild Wars 2 Twitter account.
But can China really revive Guild Wars 2‘s flagging sales? That remains to be seen, but Guild Wars does face one huge obstacle in its quest to repeat its global success in China: the monetization scheme. Elsewhere in the world, Guild Wars is a pay-up-front game. That’s why sales dropped this past year; once you own the game you can play it for free forever. But that approach to game monetization has historically not been effective in China, and it is practically unheard of for an MMORPG.
NCSoft hasn’t yet announced whether or not the monetization scheme for the game will be different in China, but the company faces a stiff challenge one way or the other.
If it keeps the global monetization scheme and charge up front for the game, it risks alienating players who don’t want to pay for a game they’ve never played when there are dozens of good, free competitors out there. China’s MMORPG players are often willing to part with loads of dough in the long run, but they don’t like doing it upfront and to overcome that, Guild Wars 2 is going to need a truly, record-breakingly effective marketing campaign. It’s definitely not going to be easy.
But on the other hand, if Guild Wars 2 gets turned into a free-to-play game, then NCSoft faces a host of new problems. Aspects of the game’s code might need to be reworked to support in-game purchases as the primary sales driver, and of course any time users can pay for items, game balance becomes an important (and often controversial) issue. Similarly, if the game is switched to a subscription model, Chinese gamers may rightly ask why they have to pay in perpetuity for a game that everyone else in the world pays a lump sum for.
How NCSoft chooses to approach this problem is likely the key to whether or not Guild Wars 2 can win in China. But honestly I think regardless of the course it ultimately chooses, this is likely to be an uphill battle.
(via QQ Games)
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