PlanetSide 2 dev: “Free players are just as important as the ones who are paying”

Sony Online Entertainment boss John Smedley says that all players playing the recently released MMO shooter are equal in the eyes of the developer, be it paid or free, since the players are “content for one another.”

Smedley told PC Gamer that only 10% of the player playing PlanetSide 2 have opted to pay for extra content. “The way we see it is that the 90% of players who don’t pay are making the game fun for the 10% that do,” he said. “So we look at the world in terms of how many people are playing the game, and not in terms of how many are paying. The players are content for one another, so the free players are just as important as the ones who are paying.”

When asked if SOE made the right decision in going with F2P, Smedley said, “We definitely made the right call, and we like what we’re doing. I think free-to-play is pure for one simple reason: people can vote right away. If they don’t like your game they can just walk away because they didn’t pay anything for it – it’s the most democratic way to make games.

“And if they don’t want to pay for it now, our hope is that they pay for it later, but they don’t have to. So it makes me feel good that the games we make are being judged on their merit, not just how well we can market them or force them to play and pay like Zynga tried. It’s pure and I love that.”

[VG247]