As promised in their earlier announcement, Barunson E&A provided more details at PAX South about the business model which they will be pursuing for the western release of Astellia.
The producer (Wes Conner) was questioned by the former Director of Community Management at Trion Worlds, Linda “Brasse” Carlson. If you watch the entire session, the majority of it (except the audience Q&A) is obviously scripted. Conner confirmed the western release will be Buy to Play and the “Pay 2 Win” aspects of the cash shop in the Korean version, will be removed.
Potential players will naturally be skeptical of these claims since Neowiz made the exact same claims with Bless Online, but released a buggy version of the rebuild project in early access (with a high price “collectors edition” which after initial negative feedback, was reduced) which had a lot of content removed along with a bunch of game play and localization issues. The pricing of that collectors edition is what made their entire effort come across as a blatant cash grab to me.
A much less stellar “copy cat” happened with PLAYWITH Interactive and their B2P western release of Warlords Awakening (also known as Kuntara Online in Korea which was a rebranding of ELOA with some nonsensical changes made to its combat).
Carlson thus phrased the first question as one coming from a skeptical MMO player who has seen the market of games making similar claims, having a ton of issues, and then “crashing and burning”. The question: what will Astellia do differently? (in terms of how Barunson E&A will attempt to deal with this marketing challenge including this more recent trend of Korean design and publishing studios, going the route of the “B2P” business model with the objective of removing the blatant “P2W” aspects while in many cases, not doing a very good job at performing an entire tuning pass over the entire game to make sure the cash shop mechanics that were removed, are indeed compensated for in the actual game systems).
Conner starts off by noting that from the very beginning, Astellia has been a long term project for Barunson E&A (it has been in development for over 6 years and also noted this being why the game is based on Unreal Engine 3) and taking into account some of the important tenets for why many of the intended targets, got into the MMO genre in the first place. He mentioned that content will not be denied to “either side” meaning that it will have both PvE and PvP and that this is a game they want players to enjoy for years (so part of their community strategy is going to involve the player community).
For myself and many others, this is also something we’ve heard time and time again not from just the MMO genre, but the game industry as a whole. Plus I’ve personally reached the point of being mostly jaded when a Korean design studio attempts to take a game designed primarily for the domestic market, and adapts it for other regions without really having any clue on how to do that (except now, they are honing in on the “P2W” parts without actually realizing their entire game design philosophies are so deeply embedded in the game systems to begin with).
Carlson then notes that Connor might have some theories as to why there has been this wave of MMO’s that have rightfully perceived to be as simple cash grabs. Connor quickly opines about this by mentioning to look at the games that have been released in the last 3 years, that they’ve been treated as “smash and grabs”; their very short termed where initially they are hyped and then “6 months” later, there’s not another drop of content for players. Connor mentions this is NOT what Barunson E&A wants to do (where players who enjoy a game invests time into it, only to find that the publisher and developers had no long term goals since they were simply cash grabs).
Connor also noted the industry plague of “P2W” that has dealt damage to the industry, and designers and developers, and the players. It is something that he says “needs to change” and Astellia is meant to be a part of that change. Again, he is saying the right things as the producer in charge of the western version BUT the game is still being designed and developed by Korean’s where there is a very different design ethos/philosophies at play where no studio to date, has managed to come up with the secret sauce where the entire end game design, doesn’t end up coming across as just one gear score gated grind fest with the most blatant “pay 2 convenience, win, progress faster, etc” aspects having been removed.
Carlson then phrases the next question by noting the aesthetics of the game are clearly Korean, and that Korean MMO’s have become synonymous with the “P2W” label; how exactly is this going to be addressed with Astellia. Connor mentions that in some markets, that aspect is considered acceptable but that in the western market, “it just doesn’t work”. Connor then pledges and appeals to the audience (ones present, ones watching, and ones who come in later) that they’ll be depending community feedback, to work on dealing with things that are considered to have that mechanic (where it is pushed off into a cash shop mechanic), to have those things put back in-game. One of the phrases he mentions they’ve been touting in their offices and sharing with everyone is that “power is not sold, and loyalty is earned” stating that it is a core tenet of the studio (at least the subsidiary handling the western release) and the game.
Again, I’m skeptical that this is how it will pan out as time goes on because ultimately, the team handling the western release of Astellia will still have to answer to their Korean overlords. That is unless the western management including the western production team, have the ability to make decisions on the same level as their Korean counterparts. I have yet to hear of this arrangement since most cases, corporate in Korea have had a difficult time changing the hierarchies to include actual foreigners from being able to “hold the keys to the kingdom”. Not even Brendan Greene has full say at PUBG Corp since he still has to answer to Korean management.
Carlson then segued into the actual communication challenges that often times happen between the Korean development studio and the western publisher. Connor responds that the way they (Barunson E&A) has worked to resolve this is mentioning “there is no split”. Barunson E&A is the global publisher while Studio 8 (the design studio which is a subsidiary of Barunson E&A) works “hand in hand” with them (with a shared office) while the branch in North America works as a single global publishing team. So any feedback that goes to the community management is shared with everyone where there is nothing “lost in translation”. For this part, I will take the wait and see approach since actions will speak louder than words.
Connor next responds to the differing business models that will differentiate the Korean and North American versions of the world by stating the latter will be “Buy to Play” with a micro transaction store (and quickly mentions how he can already see the skepticism in the audience). He then covers the things that were cash shop mechanics in the Korean version would be acquired in-game as rewards (using systems not much different than global MapleStory 2). The devil is in the details though (like balancing the amount of grind or time gating where it doesn’t come across as blatantly artificial or as what usually happens, feels like you need to treat the game as a second job).
Connor confirms that he has a “direct channel to the dev team” (as per the note that Carlson mentioned she had). Uhm yeah….. I personally don’t care if members of the Korean development team were part of the PAX South audience because this is a song and dance performed by other studios with other titles before. My core tenet is that “actions will speak louder than words” and it will all begin once the initial betas happen and how everything is managed from that point. This is why PLAYWITH quickly failed my tests early on because all you had was one PR guy making these big claims about how they were listening (getting a bunch of early content creators and ambassador types to think that this listening was an actual team effort, and not just the english speaking PR person).
The next question was regarding how those items (which would normally have been sold in the cash shop), would be implemented in-game. Connor mentioned they haven’t really delved into this deeply but also offered up possible ways they plan to attack it. None of them aren’t different from how it has been handled in other games; achievements, daily logins, utilizing the dungeon score ranking where better ranks results in better results, etc.
Connor then tackles the whole gender locking of character models in Asian titles and says that on the Korean side for Astellia, that there is this same gender lock aspect so they are aware of that fact and have taken in the feedback to where the dev team will be working to “un-gender lock the classes” but is also something that he cannot commit to having completed by their launch schedule (Summer 2019) but that hopefully they have some completed so that players have tangible proof that these sort of changes are actually happening.
Carlson again (scripted as I mentioned) segues into if the class she were playing happened to be gender locked at launch, can she change once it has been un-gender locked and if it would cost anything. Connor responds “why would it cost you anything?” Basically, this will be a core feature of the western version and that Barunson E&A won’t use as a monetization avenue (so +1 to them for this decision).
Initially, Barunson E&A will base their monetization on the initial upfront buy in and recurring revenues from micro transactions which they feel confident will be enough (so initially, no monthly subscription/premium type of service). However, if that doesn’t work, Connor mentions they can look at other options (such as subs) as long as those options are true to the western ideology of the game. Expansion content is something they do want to look at in the future as a potential revenue generating avenue but their main focus now is the core base game that has been adapted to the western market.
I would recommend watching the rest of the panel in order to get a better idea of the actual game, how they intend to tackle closed beta (they will not treat it as a marketing avenue and will also have no early access period) since that is what they cover in addition to the audience Q&A. It should also be noted that the Korean open beta test went live around the same time that Lost Ark launched its Korean OBT (Lost Ark has effectively eaten Astellia’s lunch in that area BUT the end game issues in Lost Ark reveals limitations in the design they went with where players are slowly dropping off until some changes are made in that area; thus Astellia Korea may see some influx which could help in the feedback area).
