Miles on paying for FML

I've been impressed by the way SI have presented themselves on the forum over the last, difficult, week in the FML universe. There have been numerous problems, outside of SIs remit, which have made life somewhat challenging for all involved, and of course there was inevitably some, fairly limited, negative reaction to the pricing announcement.

One post that did catch my eye that I thought I would sure was by Miles Jacobson, SI Studio Director, and I thought I'd share it here...

FML is not a standard boxed computer game, it's a service. There's a very big difference.

The vast majority of subscription based MMO's at launch have no demo, and no free trial, unless you class paying £30 for a box with a weeks "free" play as a trial.

FML is not designed to have trials or demo's, as it would upset the balance of the gameworlds.

What everyone has to remember is that services change over time. The FML service will change over time too. Service plans will also change over time. The pricing is the launch pricing. There's no demo at launch. There's no 1 month price plan at launch. Things will change. Prices might go up, they might go down. The options for payments will increase over time. etc etc

We're not looking at this as a short term project, but a long term one. There's no point of thinking of this like a boxed game that you buy, play, and put back on a shelf, or comparing it to that, because it's nothing like that at all.

A lot of people are comparing FML to FM - a mistake in game terms, as I've shown before, but also a mistake in commercial terms. I thought that post summed it up well...

Also, I'm not going to comment on any problems facing FML in recent days, as I don't know enough about them. For those concerned, there are plenty of detailed, recent posts in the beta forums.