From Hellgatewiki.com

Director of Business Development and General Counsel

Flagship Studios, Inc.

Official Biography

Steve Goldstein is the Director of Business Development and General Counsel for Flagship Studios, Inc. In his role at Flagship, Steve has negotiated all of its co-marketing and ancillary properties agreements, including deals with Microsoft, Nvidia, Weta Workshop, TOKYOPOP!, Dark Horse Comics and Simon & Schuster, among others. Additionally in his capacity with Flagship, Mr. Goldstein co-founded, and serves as President, Americas & Europe for, Ping0, LLC, a digital publishing joint venture between Flagship and Hanbitsoft, Inc. which will provide the network infrastructure, hosting and support for Flagship’s games, including the highly-anticipated Hellgate: London.

Prior to joining Flagship in July, 2005, Mr. Goldstein was an associate at the law firm of Stubbs, Alderton & Markiles, LLP, where he represented independent videogame publishers and developers, film studios and technology companies, including Flagship, NovaLogic, Inc., 1C Company, High Moon Studios, Revolution Studios, Interplay Entertainment, and Skype Technologies, S.A.

Interviews

Steve spoke with RPG Vault in advance of his appearance at the 2007 Mastering the Craft of Online Gaming conference.

How do you determine your pricing model? Micro-transactions? Subscriptions? Retail box? What factors go into making this decision?

Because we haven't announced any type of pricing model for the online components of our games - or if we will even have a pricing model - I can't comment about what Flagship is doing on this front. That said, there are a slew of issues that a developer or publisher faces, not only when determining what economic model to use (whether it's subscription or micro-transactions) but how to price that product so that it fits within the current market. For example, Arena.net has received accolades for making Guild Wars free to play online; however, if you buy each of their expansions when they come out, about one every six months, that's about the same as paying a $10 a month subscription. Turbine has chosen to maintain the traditional subscription for Lord of the Rings Online, but they are offering a $10 per month plan for pre-orders.

I think in the case of Arena.net, strong community response and good PR were big deciding factors for providing the free play model. In the Turbine case, I think that offering aggressive pricing to lure away World of Warcraft players was a deciding factor. Each game presents its own unique challenge when determining pricing, with issues ranging from the developer's past games, marketing, PR, how much the game costs, what's currently available in the market, what it's going to take to host it, even the underlying infrastructure of the game's network.

The full interview talks about micro-transactions, losing money by offering free gaming services, long-term online game support, and more.