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Frogster's Dirk Weyel

The MMO specialist's COO talks about a difficult year, and hopes for a bright future.

GamesIndustry.bizTERA is your only subscription model game. Is that because you see a distinction along the lines of quality there? Does it offer something that the free-to-play games don't that makes you more comfortable charging a monthly fee for it?
Dirk Weyel

Yeah. We generally believe that free-to-play system will be the model for most of the MMOs in the future, but we also believe that the subscription model does still work. There will be subscription models in the future, and also hybrid models. We believe that TERA is the most premium title of all the games we have at the moment. In terms of production budget and quality in-game it's certainly the premium product for this year.

That's why we're convinced that the subscription model can work for a title like TERA. I think free-to-play will be a model which will dominate the West, but I think there will also be a few subscription titles which can be successful.

GamesIndustry.bizObviously the big thing looming on the horizon for the subscription model is Star Wars: The Old Republic - that feels very much like it's going to be something of an acid test for the future of subs. Would a successful SWTOR be a good thing for Frogster and the industry in general, or would it just be another competitor taking your business?
Dirk Weyel

I would say that the good thing about it would be that it's a non-fantasy title. If it can prove that a non-fantasy title can regain a big consumer base and user base. I think if you ask industry people about their opinions about the chances of success though, they'll be very diverse.

I would say it would be a good sign. I think it would show that there are a lot of users out there willing to pay a certain amount of money each month for a good game - although I can't really judge yet whether it will be a good game! [laughs]

Basically, it's going to be interesting. There's Eve Online, but apart from that, the subscription-based model is dominated by fantasy role-playing games.

GamesIndustry.bizI wondered how much you can tell us, if anything, about the ongoing case with the hacker who was attempting to blackmail Frogster. It's obviously an ongoing legal case, so I don't expect the gory details, but have any lessons on how to interact with the community been learned from the experience?
Dirk Weyel

It's very frustrating for the team, in the first place. To see that a guy can hack accounts, claim things, influence public opinion and harm the users. Our team has to focus and work on making the system more secure, on managing the whole incident. It means that they can't work on their regular goals and targets, like making events for the game, or improving it in other ways.

Of course, we looked at what it means. Why is someone so angry? Why do they want to harm Frogster and the user base? Obviously, in any community you have people who complain. Some of them are reasonable, and some complain in a way that is unacceptable. What this guy did is definitely criminal, but is also unacceptable in terms of the way that the he communicated.

He was anonymous, hiding behind his CaptZero mask. [the hacker's username on the Runes of Magic forum] We've always had people who have been upset with community managers because they've deleted a thread in the forum or whatever, but that is something you probably have on every single MMO forum. We always try, if any criticism comes up openly, we try to work with that, we try to communicate. But if someone comes up with ten threats and demands, anonymously, saying that he's hacked our account system then we can only try to make our systems even more secure.

On the other hand we can also try to make sure we're communicating as openly as possible with the community - which is an ongoing process. I'm not saying that our community management is perfect, or that they always do the right thing, but we know that our community is our most important asset, so we always try to be as open and transparent as possible.

So we can try and keep continuously improving in that area, but we can't accept people hacking and threatening us.