Darth Malgus Dominates Sideshow

Darth Malgus may not be the ultimate villain of Star Wars: The Old Republic. He may not even be that recognizable to certain players depending on the choices they made and the characters they encountered during the course of the game. But given Malgus' resemblance to fan-favorite Darths like Vader and Malak, he is seen as the most marketable character in The Old Republic's cast.

So it's no surprise that we've already seen a number of action figures and statues depicting this ancient Dark Lord of the Sith, including a mini-statue from Gentle Giant that was included with the Collector's Edition version of the game. These collectibles range wildly in size, from the diminutive Lego figurine to Sideshow's impressively large (and impressively costly) life-size statue. But assuming your Star Wars obsession doesn't justify paying the price of a decent used car, Sideshow has another option in the works. This week they debuted new pictures and details about the Darth Malgus Premium Format Figure.

Premium Format Figures are large statues designed at 1:4 scale. The mixed media approach combines polystone bodies with real fabric clothing.

Malgus measures about 20-inches tall. He's priced at $374.99 on Sideshow's website for an expected March 2013 release. The statue will be released in both a standard version and a Sideshow-exclusive version with the alternate, unmasked head seen in some of these images.

Jesse is a writer for IGN Comics and IGN Movies. He can't wait until he's old enough to feel ways about stuff. Follow Jesse on Twitter, or find him on IGN.

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Star Wars: The Old Republic’s Free Future

BioWare and EA recently made the announcement that Star Wars: The Old Republic would shift from a subscription-only model to free-to-play. The adjusted model, which will take affect this November or December, will let anyone start up TOR and play to level 50 with a character class without having to sign up for a monthly fee.

“The market is clearly becoming a free-to-play market in the MMO space,” said Matthew Bromberg, general manager of BioWare Austin. “It appears that’s the direction the whole industry is going. Our own research told us that a significant percentage of the folks who have left the game, left because of the commitment to the subscription model. It’s not that surprising if you think about it because the dynamic in an MMO is essentially one in which you subscribe and then you’re waiting for new content, and people don’t feel good about waiting.”

The Old Republic started out very strong when it launched late last year, accumulating as many as 1.7 million subscribers. But then players started to leave in big numbers, so the number of active subscribers dropped below one million, though according to EA, is still “well over” 500,000. That’s still a lot of players, far more than most MMOs ever attract, but also a lot of players lost in under one year, and a trend that could have potentially continued without a change to the payment model.

EA is promising more frequent content updates from this point on, which will be free to those who decide to stay subscribed, but must be purchased by players leveling for free. Bromberg says the updates will introduce content that’s more social in nature. “Group content, Operations, Warzones, Flashpoints, events as opposed to focusing primarily cinematic story-driven single-player content.” Bromberg also teased a different style of space mission, saying, “we think there’s an opportunity beyond space on rails to do something really cool.” It sounds like that new style of space mission wouldn’t be ready until sometime next year.

The more solo-play-focused content is still on the way, with a level cap raise and new quests on the planet of Makeb scheduled to be released at some point in 2012, but this type of content isn’t exactly easy to produce. “The power and strength of the game, a lot of it was in this epic story. In fact it was so engaging that people played through it much more quickly than we’d imagined. The biggest strength of the game can also be a challenge as people get to the end. They got to the end much more quickly and we weren’t prepared for that. And so there was this lag time. That created some issues for us, clearly.”

One of the issues was development cost. “It’s hugely expensive. It’s cinematic, it’s lush, there’s voice over, it’s unbelievable. The amount of content available at launch was extraordinary. You have folks who’ve played through the levels, and what an online service has to provide is grouping. All of our research shows that people who have friends in game and play with people in social content, love the game and stay. If you remain a single player, you won’t stay. Our focus, in addition to extending the story which we will continue doing, is giving those players who want to play in groups with other people something fresh and new to do all the time.”

Bromberg said the behavior of a typical TOR player was to pick a class and stick with it through the story before branching out and setting up new characters. “That’s what drove the focused consumption of all that content. I think we’re still continuing to see that. Which is why I think it will be interesting in the free to play model, there are so many more people that we can open up to the story.”

Because The Old Republic wasn’t initially designed as a free-to-play game, it’s been an especially complicated process for EA and BioWare to figure what to charge for and what to keep free. “You try to find a balance whereby the limitations don’t impact the fun of the game. When you hit a certain level of engagement you’re going to naturally make that calculus in your head that it makes more sense to subscribe.”

Subscribers get unlimited access, while players without subscriptions won’t have unlimited access to PvP Warzones, will have fewer inventory and bank slots, as well as other limitations. “Ultimately you’ll be able to buy everything individually. But in the first phase, not everything will be purchaseable. But we’ll get there over time.” A microtransaction-driven Cartel Market will also be implemented, which will offer up cosmetic items, boosts and convenience items and tiered treasure chests that could contain rare vanity items.

As developers and publishers continue to experiment with pricing models, it’s not rare to hear some say pricing model design these days is game design. Bromberg pointed out the potential flaws in equating the two. “You don’t define a game by how people pay for it. I don’t think people who design games think about it that way. All the principles of game design, it has to be fun, it has to be engaging, it has to be social, all those things are true. And when you’re designing with free-to-play in mind, it does impact how you’re designing the game. I do think there’s been a little bit of an overemphasis on it, especially with the business model. Game designers don’t design games because of the business model is, they design because they love doing it. [The Old Republic] being free doesn’t really mean anything, you have to want to play. Especially in a crowded world. Especially with all these options. People don’t play something just because it’s free.”

Moving forward, Bromberg said a key factor in The Old Republic’s future will be an ongoing willingness to be flexible with the payment structure. “You never know how precisely it’s going to work until you begin interacting with consumers. You have to tweak as you go, and you have to tweak every day. That’s a very different discipline than a subscription model where you’re watching over time and it’s a bit slower. We’ve got to get in and look at the data every day and make sure we’ve got that balance right. I wouldn’t be shocked at all to see it change a lot. How much is too much, how much is too little? You can only figure that out by looking at data. You design by looking at data to begin with, but especially for us, this will be new. I’d expect there to be a lot of changes.”

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BioWare Explains Day One Downloadable Content

While Electronic Arts and BioWare were a little slow in taking up the free-to-play model in Star Wars: The Old Republic, BioWare has been experimenting with distribution models for its single-player role-playing games for a while. BioWare has used online passes, day one DLC and significant story additions to build revenue outside of the traditional one-time purchase price. According to Fernando Melo, director of online development at BioWare, having a post-ship plan is “absolutely fundamental to what your team needs to be doing.”

He directly answers questions about why BioWare offers day one DLC at a talk at GDC Europe, showing how despite the displeasure for such an offering, the sales numbers justify the business practice.

Though he couldn’t provide exact sales figures of downloadable content packs for games like Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, he did show that following the launch of a game, sales numbers drop off sharply for the original retail product. Yet upon every release of downloadable content, player activity shot back up again, and more importantly for Melo and BioWare, the sales of other existing pieces of DLC also spiked. This he attributed to users returning to the game and discovering new content had been released that they weren’t previously aware of.

He also noted that DLC purchase activity remains low but consistent for many months following launch, and that while the base retail game may drop dramatically in price, the DLC always retains roughly the same one. He characterized paid DLC as “really safe, from a risk perspective.”  That’s assuming the game is successful, and with the caveat that some paid DLC, such as story missions, will sell better than weapon packs or other minor additions.

But why, if some of that downloadable content is ready for launch, is it not included in the base game? “Contrary to what you might hear on the internet,” said Melo, “fans do want more content. They tend to say, ‘I want it now.’ The problem with day one content and the challenge around it is that the right answer for now is different for every player. There is no single right time, there is no single now. It’s subjective, and it’s unique to every player.”

BioWare checked its collected statistics to try and figure out the proper timeframe. “In our case, when we look at completion rates for our games, consistently less than half of our players actually finish even once.” Dragon Age: Origins was low at 36%, which also happened to be the biggest game included in the comparison chart. Mass Effect 2 was the highest at around 56%, though this spiked up around the time before Mass Effect 3 launched as people went back and completed the story. BioWare took that data, where some blazed through the game as quickly as possible, and some completed the game at their own pace, and figured the only way to cater to both crowds was the have DLC available on day one. “In that case, you’re making it available on their time. They choose when to pick that up. It’s not based on us. It’s not based on some first-party release schedule. It’s there, if they want it they can pick it up day one. If they don’t, they can wait until they’ve finished their game.”

Yet that still didn’t address the question of why the DLC wasn’t just part of the base game. As the production timeline Melo presented during the talk showed, multiple packs of downloadable content must go into production before the base game is complete. Melo couldn’t provide specific sales figures, but showed a high percentage of players, particularly with Dragon Age: Origins, purchased the content made available day one. Even significant percentages of those who purchased titles used from game stores went on to activate online passes and purchased additional DLC.

For BioWare, it’s a sound business strategy, yet for some players, it’s still a nuisance. “If you have a consistent culture of how you’re communicating to your fans, that will increase the number of people that are more likely to believe in your explanation. You’re not lying to them, but they will take whatever you’re saying as like, ‘you’re lying to us.’ That will always be there. The only way that that’s going to go away is you fast forward a few more years, where this is just normal. Every game is digital from day one. Every game is an ongoing service, almost like an MMO, where on any given day new content shows up. Maybe that’s part of the base package, in which case it shows up for your, and maybe it’s a premium feature.”

On the topic of premium content, Melo said that once microtransaction models begin to crowd out fixed-price DLC, there’ll be no more need for online passes. “As soon as you start having microtransactions in your game, you’re now operating within a free-to-play or social space. In which case, introducing any kind of a gate, like an online pass, that limits how many people can get into that microtransaction space, may actually work against you.”

That’s not to say BioWare is moving entirely in the free-to-play direction with its single-player role-playing games. Melo specifically said at the talk that everything he discussed did not indicate something BioWare was going to do next. But still, you can tell the studio is thinking hard about it, and has already made steps into microtransactions with Mass Effect 3. “A key tenet of microstransactions is it allows players to spend what they want, when they want to. This is a really powerful force and concept. They’re not capped, unlike one time DLC purchases. If you have five DLCs, even for the most ardent fan, they will only ever be able to give you 50 dollars, let’s say. With microtransations and consumables and things of that nature, potentially you may get less, but you may have more players able to do that. There’s also a lower barrier to spend, compared to most fixed-priced items.”

As time moves forward, BioWare will not only continue to closely monitor the data Melo presented, but also in-game behavior. BioWare looks at what types of content players find most engaging, such as romance stories or which followers are most often brought into a fight, and uses that data to drive DLC decisions. BioWare still makes decisions about what will and will not make it into the game, but Melo concluded that ultimately, when determining how to expand a game beyond the base experience, “nothing will beat listening to your fans.”

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