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Tales of Pirates Interviews: IGG.com Three Year Anniversary Interview
On June 6th, free to play MMO publisher IGG turned three years old. In this interview, the company's COO Kevin Xu discusses the company and its views on the free 2 play market in North America.
By Jon Wood on June 10, 2009
| MMORPG.com: | IGG is celebrating its third anniversary, can you tell us a little bit about how the company started? |
| Kevin Xu: | IGG was started in 2006, by the so called, the Three Musketeers of IGG. Duke Cai (CEO), Kevin Xu (COO) and Edmond Chi (CTO). Duke used to be the former CEO of 17173.com The largest game information site in China. Kevin was a Nano-technology scientist, and Edmond was former VP at NetDragon. When we first started, we only had one game and a few employees. Yet we still structured the company to be an International MMORPG Publisher/Operator/Developer. It took us almost a year to finalize our data center infrastructure and payment processors. Afterwards, we launched two games in 2007 and 5 in 2008. On the game development side, we spend the first year and half developing our 3D game engine. Using this engine, we later build Godswar Online. |
| MMORPG.com: | What sets IGG apart from other F2P companies currently in the market? |
| Kevin Xu: | Well, the greatest difference would be SERVICE, starting from day one, we understand that running MMORPGs is not simply just publishing the games, but also, operating them; providing the players with first class service, that is a labor intensive task. At IGG, for every 500 Peak Concurrent Online users, we staff one customer service personnel. For beginners, we provide them with 24x7 live support. For old players, we have VIP services customized to meet all their requirements. We currently have 550 employees, a majority of them are Game Masters, Customer Support and Community Managers. |
| MMORPG.com: | IGG has a diverse portfolio of F2P MMOs currently released in North America. Which of these has proven the most popular, and why? |
| Kevin Xu: | IGG do have a diversified portfolio, luckily North American players have a great appetite for different types of games. Tales of Pirates is currently the best performing game, mostly due to its cartoon style and pirate adventure storyline. Also, the two recent launch, Freesky Online and 2029 Online, is gaining a lot of traction, likely to catch up with Tales of Pirates in performance. |
| MMORPG.com: | Can you tell us a little bit about the localization process that IGG games go through before being brought to the North American market? |
| Kevin Xu: | Operating games globally, the key to success is to minimize culture difference. IGG has a 30 people localization team, whose key task is to neutralize some of the culture intensive designs within the game, and convert them into something that can be easily blended into different cultures. |
| MMORPG.com: | How has IGG grown and changed as a company over the last three years? |
| Kevin Xu: | In the past three years, our portfolio increased to 12 MMORPGs, with additional 6 more games in our launching pipeline, and 7 more games in our development pipeline. Our staff grew from 5 people to now 550 people. IGG have acquired three development studios in the past two years, and the first few self-developed games, such as Godswar Online, Galaxy Online and Dreamland Online have already hit the market. |
| MMORPG.com: | What can we expect from IGG over the next three years? |
| Kevin Xu: | Over the next three years, we will continue on bring you more and more top of the line games from developers all over the world. Also, you will see more and more IGG self-developed games and co-developed games launching on IGG portal. These games will be solely designed for the North American players. We are planning to launch at least 12 games every year. |
| MMORPG.com: | What do you believe is the future of the Free to Play market in North America? |
| Kevin Xu: | We strongly believe that Free to Play MMORPGs will gradually take over the game market. Places like China and Korea, Free to Play MMORPGs are already dominating the market. With the advance in Graphics Chip design and 3D game design, the game visual and game play quality of these MMOs will soon catch up with other PC or Console games. |
| MMORPG.com: | Why, in your opinion, is the microtransaction-based MMO business model referred to as Free 2 play when the games do, in fact, cost money? |
| Kevin Xu: | When we say the game is FREE, sure you can download it for free and play it for free. The games are designed in a balanced way so that given you have sufficient time; you may not need to spend any money on the game. However, if you do have to work and time is of great importance to you, then spending some money to match other players pace may become necessary. |
three years gpone by and you'll find very few players in TOP celebrating.. simply mourning the days when the machine didnt sell in game items for hundreds of dollars a time and find it acceptable... sigh and to think I used top play games made by these fools ho hum
justified styatement just take a look at the forums here nad at igg
QUOTE:
Why, in your opinion, is the microtransaction-based MMO business model referred to as Free 2 play when the games do, in fact, cost money?
Kevin Xu:
When we say the game is FREE, sure you can download it for free and play it for free. The games are designed in a balanced way so that given you have sufficient time; you may not need to spend any money on the game. However, if you do have to work and time is of great importance to you, then spending some money to match other players pace may become necessary.
Right now I am currently playing 2029 to be honest it is a GOOD game for a F2P but I have true concerns with this game it is no LIE that you are basically nagged with announcements running in a MARQUE scroll about three quarters of the way up encouraging us to visit the ITEM mall.
I have NOT spend any money at this item mall only because I fell that a F2P game should be just that FREE but who am I kidding? I do realize that these type of PVP games are more like W Vs W (Wallet vs wallet.) for let me tell you ones who want to lvl VERY fast will spend money to do so.
Whats interesting is the wording. He uses the word balanced referring to the fact that you can spend money to catch up if you dont have many hours to play. This is of course is BS. What about those people who do have the time to play AND spend money? This is FAR from balanced as those players would be way ahead of anyone in the game. F2P games that center on competition amongst players are broken and pointless to ever play. On the other hand, F2P games that are based on adventuring and exploring are more worthwhile, although most of these have lame repetitive content with no thought, depriving the player from the wonderment of discovery.
Agreed. Any sort of item shop in a PvP game, besides strictly cosmetic, is blatantly unfair, and should be loudly denounced. I feel this sort of cheating is slipping under the radar, because some people like to cheat, and will pay to do so. And the companies will certainly take their money, and try to gloss it over as "balancing" the game. A total con is what it is.
Rant off
The most successful free to play games are those that have PvP in them and that isn't just because of the PvP in itself but that in the item shop you can buy items which increases your chance of successfully upgrading your weapons and in some games your armor as well.
So you pay real money to upgrade your weapon or armor and it's not even a 100% success rate.
So it's like a lottery where you throw your money at a chance of getting a slightly better weapon.
And then you have this game called Perfect World International in which you can pay $200 to get an extremely overpowered bird of fire which aids you in both PvP and in the regular PvE.
This is one of the reasons why I quit that game.
That and the very tedious grind at level 60+.
Let me just say I played this company's game called Voyage Century Online. I was part of an initial test that wasn't even publicised. When most people think of the beta for this game, they don't realize there was actualy another testing phase before it. I played for 3 years as a gulid leader there.
In that time, my members and I had countless interactions with IGG service. They removed the GM channel because none of the game GMs could speak english. They chose Chinese speakers over those that actually worked on bugs (this is a quote from one of my members who worked towards joining the GM team but was excluded despite hundreds of bug reports).
the game went over 1 year without a SINGLE PATCH except one that put in a static street sign into ONE CITY. Guess what? They spelled it wrong too. And it's still in game today, still spelled wrong. The city is Genoa. The street sign is above the main entrance next to the wharehouse.
Now, they also had so much broken english and no tutorials for anything, that GAMERS had to hire translators to help make quest guides and post them on the IGG forums for players. I went 2 years without ever doing a single quest because I couldn't read the damn things. 2 YEARS.
And GM's??? you're joking. They WERE GUILD LEADERS IN GAME. Every GM had his own guild. They all had the highest items in the game before they were even released. IGG also gave out special privledges to a large alliance of gamers. They allowed them to KICK PLAYERS OUT OF CITIES INTO THE OCEAN and kill them on the seas. As many times as they wanted, no matter what level.
PVP was a joke. I was in the game for 3 years and even at the end of my stay with them, no one knew when it was possible to PVP. Because whenever you fought one of IGG's "VIP" members, you lost. Automatically. Your screen would drop to the desktop and they could take all your inventory on you and your ship.
IGG also got "hacked" back in early testing. Although I personally think they just gave out the credit card info themselves and sold it. So buying from item mall was not only wasteful, but dangerous. not to metion all the people that were getting hurt in real life over the game.
IGG's moderators and "friends" would work together to find people in real life if they didn't like them. I heard all too many stories of people fighting on their front porches because some gulid members were neighbors. I watched WHOLE FAMILIES BE TORN APART ON THE GAME.
After 3 years, IGG did nothing to stop any of this. Their GM's ran rampant all over the game. One moderator was even "scared" of the big alliances. And one member had to change his name because he was so afraid of what they would do to him when he told people what happened. That was in early beta and I never heard from him again.
If you go to OnRPG.com you'll see comments about this game and IGG. Search Voyage Century and read the comments. If they haven't been deleted. Good luck IGG, you're the worst gaming company I've ever encountered in 15 years of gaming.
I Belive what you say to be true, A little Funny only because I can not imagine ppl going MENTAL over a game?? Then again I was not there. To say the least very intreasting. To tell you the truth I do like 2029 but it is no WoW for that matter it just a silly little game to play when I have nothing better to do. As mention I will not spend money at the ITEM mall for I can not justify the unfairness in gameplay.
My ONLY question to you SimperFi is why 3 years?? I mean if it was that bad then why put up with it for that long of time??
Lol just wondering?
I've been looking at this game (Tales of Pirates) with interest. I am aware of the terrible customer service and a somewhat unfair item mall, but that is pretty much standard of most F2P games out there nowadays.
I am thinking about trying the game, but I wish to ask a few questions about it.
1. Is the game almost completely overrun by bots? I don't have problems with there being bots on games (because most F2P games usually have troubles with the bots to begin with), but it is a problem if a majority of the "players" are bots on the game.
2. How does the pvp system go on that game? Do you basically attack anyone that's not in town as you see fit? If so, are there level restrictions between fighters?
I thank anyone who can answer my questions.
WOW... wat a tale u got there for IGG.... gosh i wil never play with them lol
I played Galaxy Online... in essence the game is good... that's about as far as it goes...
No real updates in ages, in fact still in "Beta" stage although every oportunity for "events" which all cost $$$$ is quickly taken by IGG. Several cases of people buying mall points and not getting them, including one case of IGG's servers sending a double-request to Paypal which resulted in a doublecharge, and IGG's response was shutting down that (VIP) account as a "security risk".
Also cases of major battles being suddenly turned around by stuff like destroyed fleets magically reappearing on same slain commander, and of course IGG threatening to "take action" against all players demanding action against the cheaters. Also other cases of game rules and mechanics "magically" changing overnight mid-battle without so much as a patch note or anything similar.
Alts aren't allowed to interact, but if you spend enough on MPs you get widely ignored in that sense.
All replies by tech support are pre-scripted and run through googletranslator.
Service center attitude: You paid? So what, we decide what's against the rules and what is not. Desist or severe actions will be taken against you.
Server mergers with every sort of excuse despite the players shrieking about damage to gameplay, which by the way has been done. Alts rule the house.
Wallet vs. Wallet: definitely!
forum.go.igg.com the horror stories abound there, that is the threads that weren't deleted by mods when things got too obvious regarding players getting epically screwed. Oh, battle logs with cheat evidence suddenly went missing from servers too here and there to spice things up.
*Edit* Forgot to add: cases of hacked accounts by the million, including this one where it was confirmed who did it, it was confirmed that he got the passwords from downloading the forums' password database, and yet that player not only did not get banned but also came out with these very "suspicious" advantages all the time. Classic IGG from stories i've heard happening in other games of theirs.
It goes on and on i tell ya lol