Local game publishers need to earn somehow from locally published games. The amount of money that goes into development, management, support and marketing these games is really no joke. We currently have two game models: One is Free to Play, where you actually can play the game for free but premium items are bought in an item mall, and Two is via Pay to Play where you actually pay for gametime similar to World of Warcraft’s (and others) subscription based model. Of course you have Guild Wars where you pay for the boxed game but don’t pay anything for gametime and doesn’t have an item mall. While GW’s approach is unique, it’s not the only alternative payment method its publisher NCSoft has devised.

NCSoft has at least 2 games in the pipeline which uses a variation of the Free to Play Model, but instead of buying items in an item mall players actually get a premium version of the game. Take Dungeon Runners for example, its one of the best Diablo clones out there, DR allows players to play the game for free but you only get to equip the strongest rarities only if you pay a small fee of 5usd a month. NCSoft calls these “micropayments”. Other perks are login priority, bigger inventory, and other cool stuff. The good thing about this is that the amount is small enough and even if you dont pay the monthly premium you still can play the game.

Sounds good to me, I wonder if and when this will be implemented locally…