Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper in San Francisco

In Part II of our four-part interview with Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper, we got to talking about the company's somewhat criticized two-tiered model for its debut game, Hellgate: London. Roper informed us that the paid subscribers would no longer be referred to as Elites, and went on to explain that in his opinion, the free experience, which includes online play, was still a terrific value that should not be looked at as downgraded compared to the paid subscription service. Today, in Part III, Roper tells us why Flagship chose a hybrid business model for Hellgate: London; how the company is structured to deliver regular content updates; and why people should think of the game as an MMO.

In some ways, there isn't really a model like what you're doing on Hellgate: London. You have MMOs where people pay a subscription fee for the service. There are item-driven, micro-transaction driven MMOs, primarily in Asia. The closest thing that I think of to this--but it would even be different from what you guys have done--is Phantasy Star online, where you could play the single-player experience for no additional charge, but then to play with up to three other friends online, you paid a monthly fee. What's interesting is that audiences accepted that, whereas there's been some criticism of your approach with both free online and a paid subscription model. When you guys were formulating how you wanted to approach Hellgate's business model, what was the process you went through? What were the models that you looked at? How did you decide, "Here's what we think has worked; here's what we think doesn't; here what we think is going to work for our audience?" What was the guiding philosophy?

Well, the guiding philosophy was what's gonna be the best for the game and for our players. We knew that players wanted the ability to go online and play for free. That was very, very evident. That was an expectation. And so even as a startup with our first game, we had to figure out a way to make that happen. We knew that that was gonna be, a big selling point in terms of reaching out to all the Diablo players around the world. That was their, you know, expectations. They wanted to be able to have that same experience. But then we also knew that there was a big outcry and a need for continuing content and so, for us it really is "How do we accomplish these goals? How do we make sure there's free multiplayer? And then, how do we also support ongoing, continuing content and the things that are encompassed in that?" We talked about all kinds of things. We looked at all the models that are there: everything from real money transactions and item purchases to auction-based systems. All kinds of stuff. And really we tried to come up with what we thought would be the cleanest division, "Here's where you can get this experience and it's free. And then when you want to go to ongoing content, that's where we do a subscription."

We worked very hard to also try to come up with a price point that was reflective of us trying to reach as many people as which is why we came out with--we decided on the $9.99 price [for monthly subscriptions]. It wasn't that we felt we were offering any less than games that cost $14.95 a month. It's just like with the game where we've done things like, for example, low-poly assets: low-poly versions of every graphic in the game so you can reach lower end video cards and older systems, 'cause we want to get it out to as many people as we can. Same thing with the pricing model. We want people to be excited about the potential of ongoing content from what's gonna be there; all the events we're gonna be having; these big content pushes every three months or so; and being on board with that and kind of sharing in that experience, and doing it in a way where we weren't busting the bank.

That was a lot of work not only from a development standpoint, but also with the online model: how we can do things so we can be more economical so we can actually offer it at that price?

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