To play devils advocate, the ‘perfect’ football game would never exist because there are just too many different things that we each want from it. From the way it plays, to modes, visual preferences and the many, many other variables. I personally cannot envisage a scenario where I’d be willing to pay such insane sums just because we’re all so desperate for the game we have in our minds.
Rather than striving for a ‘perfect’ title I’d just love to see Konami change their business model to a free-to-play one, and for a number of reasons which I think would be hugely beneficial to all parties - Konami, the developers, and the players:
* Fans typically have a MUCH larger say in the development of many f2p titles due to their being no initial revenue from the sale of the game. If they don’t include what fans want, they’ll have no players, and thus won’t make money from in game sales. Adhering to players wishes is vital for success.
* Konami’s revenue would be dictated by paid content, but players will only pay for this content if the game itself is good, and the value is fair. This creates a healthy cycle of both regular content updates, and hot fixes to the gameplay. Currently they have no need to fix any ML issues because we’ve already bought the game. In this scenario, they wouldn’t be able to ignore us.
* They would never technically ‘lose’ players. Once it is installed. It’s installed forever. Fans may leave temporarily because, for example, patch 1.12 is a pile of shit, but that won’t necessarily send them to Fifa forever. Instead they can always return when a later patch fixes the issues, without needing to spend a penny. This is single handedly the best way to compete with EA in terms of pure player numbers.
* MyClub could remain for those who are interested in it, but the grind to get those top players would have to be extended by an insane amount in order to keep players playing. Offering a simple pack system works in the current format, but without being able to reset the database every year with a new game, a new, longer, and fairer monetisation method would be needed. This could in tern make it much more interesting for those who are traditionally ML players.
* Things are always added, and never taken away. Have a look at just how big some f2p games are in terms of their file size. This is because they don’t have to deal with the nonsense we do where lines of commentary, player call names etc are taken away when licences change hands. Yes, they’d be removed from the game, but PC players could simply copy the files as and when they come in and keep them forever. Imagine the sheer number of kits, faces And rosters we’d have after 10 years of updates to the same game? We could go back and play a ML season with 2019 squads in 2029.
For anyone who’s interested just YouTube any documentary on Path of Exile, Dota, Warframe, or any other long standing f2p game. Noclip do a fantastic 3 part one on Warframe, which whether it’s your type of game or not doesn’t matter, as it shows just how successful this type of business model can be, and how close the fans and the developers ties are. It works off quality, integrity, and trust. All of which Konami are severely lacking.
Why would I pay a subscription for a service by a company that I don’t trust? No. Instead, I don’t want the ‘perfect’ game, I want Konami to listen to us, earn our respect, and stop mugging us off year after year. Then the perfect game would be built naturally over time.