Category: Business Models (Page 2 of 10)

Elder Scrolls Ditches the Subscription Model

January 22, 2015 / Damion Schubert

Well, they didn’t TECHNICALLY go Free-to-Play, so I can’t say I told you so. It looks more like they are going with the Guild Wars model. I can’t say I’m a fan yet – from what I’ve heard the game would sincerely benefit from the massive influx of population that would happen if they ditched all barriers to entry — but I guess I can see the merit in getting what you can from what is hopefully a reasonably large console launch. Console gamers still need to be taught how free-to-play works, so this is arguably a necessary hedge.

I still bet the entry price falls to below $10 by the end of the year.

‘Built From the Ground Up for DLC’ is Not a Selling Point

January 21, 2015 / Damion Schubert

Jimquisition has something to say about Evolve’s seemingly all-consuming monetization focus. Go ahead and watch, I’ll wait here.

Here’s one example of Turtle Rock saying that Evolve was built to support DLC “more than any game ever before.” Now, I want to be clear: it’s great to hear of a team that had that foresight and that luxury. Building good monetization infrastructure isn’t technically trivial, and adding all of that stuff late in development or even post-ship can often mean you’re jamming something balance-breaking into a game that wasn’t built for it or, in the minds of players even worse, ripping off a piece of the core gameplay and putting it up for sale. So a company thinking ahead about this stuff well before launch, and addressing these issues ahead of time, is good.

And having a game built around the billing model is not crazy. I mean, Magic: the Gathering is built around a billing model of selling packs. Candy Crush was built from the ground up to be free and microtransact. These are both billing-model centric designs, and they work BECAUSE of it. So why is Evolve being forced now to defend themselves for their DLC plans?

Being Too Greedy Too Early

April 23, 2014 / Damion Schubert

One of the things I’m very proud of when we monetized SWTOR, is how generous we were to the new users. Players don’t get asked for any money before level 10 in SWTOR (roughly 4-5 hours of gameplay) – a design stance I had to defend hotly a few times. My rationale: we had done focus testing out the wazoo on our newbie experience, and gotten the test scores as high as the various meters would go. Why mess with a good thing? As such, I tried to make it that the only change a free player saw below levels 1-10 was the button that opened the store. Hopefully, by the end of newbie planet, you’ve decided you want to live there – then it’s appropriate to suggest some upgrades. Continue reading

The Evils of Up-front Payment

January 13, 2014 / Damion Schubert

This is a good article on Gamasutra that challenges the notion that the $60 box price necessarily creates better industry practices.

Sticker Shock

January 13, 2014 / Damion Schubert

Lost in the noise of the holidays was news that Mechwarriors now sells solid gold mechs – for $500 bucks. Despite the fact that these appear to be mostly cosmetic only (one coworker said “you’re paying $500 bucks to paint a bullseye on you on the battlefield”), the community was, predictably, completely up in arms about this. It was, predictably, very similar to the Eve Monocle situation.

Only worse. People right now are still used to the idea of buying a game fully for $60 bucks. Whether its right or wrong, the mental math a gamer does when he looks at the Mechwarrior page is that, to buy everything in the game, you would need to spend $4000 bucks at least – to get these eight mechs. Continue reading

Collectibles Design

December 3, 2013 / Damion Schubert

Extra Credits did a couple of great pieces talking about collectables design, discussing for example how Magic: the Gathering is brilliant and Rage of Bahamut is effectively ‘game design strip mining’ that threatens the public’s faith in F2P at the very core. Worth a view.

More Candy Crush Data

December 3, 2013 / Damion Schubert

Tommy Palm gave more interesting data about Candy Crush:

The game has been downloaded and installed half a billion times.
69% of UK fans play while commuting.
78% of US fans play while watching TV.
Level 65 is the biggest cockblock level that forces players to spend.
However, 60% of the players who reach level 455 have done so without spending.

Goodbye, Diablo 3 Auction House

September 17, 2013 / Damion Schubert

The trick with playing with real money is when you start letting that real money drive game design decisions – or even give the appearance of doing so. When Diablo III launched last summer, most people (myself included) felt like the game just wasn’t as sticky as it was in the old days. Since the one thing that was significantly changed in the design was the introduction of the Auction House (for either real money or in-game gold), this was pointed to as a culprit- clearly, said the players, loot rates were driven down to make people used the auction house (this link is a very good read, btw). Continue reading

Free 2 Play is Not a Cancer (Unless It Is)

September 5, 2013 / Damion Schubert

Sometime ago, someone sent me this article, in which a Free-to-Play designer described how he is not a ‘cancer’ on the games industry. I read it, but I didn’t fully agree with it, but it took me a little while to figure out what’s wrong with it.

This is it:

You see, game development is a business and businesses in a capitalist society are ruled by market forces….But games like those published by Electronic Arts are paid for by the people who own stock in the company. At the end of the day, these investors do not care about artistic integrity, Metacritic score or DRM solutions, they only care about stock price and return on investment

More F2P Fisking

August 28, 2013 / Damion Schubert

There sure is a whole lot of wrong going on over in this debate.

We both know that someone, somewhere has to pay for the game’s development, and for that idea to work out, you either need to hook some ‘whales’ who pay out a fortune and subsidise everyone else, or you have to constantly nag all of the players to pay for in-game items.

If I can give the gift of great gameplay to three times the number of customers because a handful of heavy users love my game so much they beg me for more opportunities to spend – is that really a bad thing? And how is this really different from Golf shops that are subsidized by high rollers buying $10000 clubs, magic players buying Black Lotuses, or knitting stores who sell balls of yarn from rare endangered alpacas for $1000 per ball? Why is this the one industry where people actually feel pity for the hardcore fan who wants to spend? Continue reading