Gameforge CEO: "Games Must Simply Be Fun"

By Jason Winter, News Editor Posted: June 23, 2015

Gameforge isn't winning many friends these days, especially among TERA fans in Europe. Regardless of the company's controversial decisions, CEO Carsten van Husen is still bullish on the free-to-play model, as revealed in a speech he gave to developers in Beirut as partially transcribed by GamesIndustry.biz.

Van Husen was steadfastly opposed to free-to-play when his company looked into publishing Ymir Entertainment's Metin 2 back in 2006. Since then, he's learned a lot about the F2P market and is a strong advocate of the model. His comment that "quality is the only answer" and that "games must simply be fun" is perhaps a little naive -- good games often sell poorly while bad games bring in scads of dough -- but he does have some other useful insights regarding the F2P business model:

"If a series of bad shooters came out nobody would say that the whole FPS genre is worthless, so if a series of stupidly monetised free-to-play games comes out you can't say that this way of presenting games is worthless."

Regarding mobile games that are designed around getting money from fewer than 1% of their player bases: "I don't know how you can make a rational approach on that. It's a lottery, I think."

Referring to Gameforge's Sigils: Battle for Raios, which is a core title headed for mobile platforms: "It's high risk, potentially high reward. But especially on tablets, there is demand for core gameplay that has not been satisfied."

If you're a fan of TERA... or Aion... or Runes of Magic... or RaiderZ... in the EU, it probably pains you to see Gameforge doing well. The company seems to be financially successful and has a plan that makes sense on some levels, even if it doesn't always align with gamers' needs and expectations.

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In this article: Runes of Magic, Aion, TERA, Gameforge, LOTRO.

About the Author

Jason Winter, News Editor

Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.

More Stories by Jason Winter

oldschool 8 years ago

They ruined Runes Of magic... great game but quitted it long time ago. Gameforge retardssss!!!

Bone 8 years ago

I will never be playing a game that "Gameforge" is running, I dealt with them once and after that I will never trust that company again.

Xiosade 8 years ago

-_- gameforge's support is enough to not play any of theyr games already..........
choose the lagg not gameforge! you will have a happyer life

Aaron 8 years ago

Never played Tera EU but played Tera NA since 2012 / 2013. If they really actually cared about quality they wouldnt have shat on their opportunity to publish that game in the area lol.

ᴹʸᵇᵘᵗᵗʰᵘʳᵗˢ 8 years ago

People will put money into anything.
|
Hey guys, I just started a kickstarter called Poop in a box. Only 20mil to go. Go fund it NOW!

Taybi 8 years ago

I downloaded AION and has been locked my account because I was suspicious .
Why was I suspicious ? Because I wanted to play your game, and it was suspicious to you ? Already the hell not playing your game, and has also suspicious if someone wants to play one of your game ?

NGoHT 8 years ago

Played all their games on US servers, rather 180-200ms than their greedy bullsht p2w "profile". Rot in hell gameforge.

taha 8 years ago

HAHAHAHAHAHA, that's funny Gameforge!!!
When the En Masse entertainment making the best quality in TERA. Gameforge simply made it pay to win!! so where is the fun? TERA is the best mmorpg i think. And En Masse makes it always better day by day when the gameforge makes it worse second by second!

Brainy 8 years ago

I put up with them just because there was nothing else to play like TERA, but now I quit for good because they went too far. I won't play anything from Gameforge ever again and I believe nobody in their right mind would do it either after having to deal with them once.

Hopefully, as time passes, more people will be aware of their greed and stop playing their games. That company is not made for entertainment, it's just focused on pure profit and average gamers are being constantly shat on...

-GG-TheSecondJoker 8 years ago

Gameforge's quality games:
Ikariam,
Battle Knight,
Bitefight.

Todoran 8 years ago

Damn Gameforge damn it to hell!!!!!

Merkadis 8 years ago

“GAMES MUST SIMPLY BE FUN”
How hilarious coming from gmeforge.. after i stopped laughing i didn’t know what to think about this… felt so weird.

“quality is the only answer”
Now this one takes the cake… what do those guys know about quality? they won’t know it even if it rubs itself right into their faces.

And lastly… they only doing relatively well because many Euro players are pretty much forced to play on their shitty servers because they don’t want to deal with high ping by playing on American servers or deal with language barrier by playing on Russian tera servers (or elsewhere) which leaves them with only 1 choice in the matter….
I expect gameforge won’t be doing so well after Blade and soul, and Black desert, accompanied by Skyforge pop up, unless they secure publishing rights for at least one of those in Eu which they probably and hopefully won’t.
So yeah, let them enjoy their glory days with Tera while they last, it won’t be long now.

Logic 8 years ago

They aren't doing well because they found a working model for F2P or are even a good company. Its like other big name companies that have horrible practices and bad support in that they just simply bought into some decent and good games and haven't screwed up the games as badly as you'd hoped they would so as a company they would have to remodel or go away.