Paid Content in Design Philosophy

ID:151316
 
Aug 14 2011, 8:19 pm
I am wondering what people's thoughts are on BYOND games and money.

On the one hand, I like the idea of programming with no expectation of reward except for the joy of it. On the other hand, it is reasonable to ask for monetary compensation for a project that requires a significant amount of effort.

So, is it best to ...

A) Forget about money entirely?
B) Solicit donations but have them be entirely voluntary?
C) Make the game fully playable for free, but have some bonus content for paid players?
D) Have a free demo and require payment to complete the game?

Obviously, it will depend on the nature of the project. It would be ridiculous to ask someone to pay for a Tetris clone that I threw together in an hour, but at the very least I would ask for donations to compensate for developing a Final Fantasy scale game.

Think about what seems reasonable and proper from the perspective of a developer as well as a gamer. As a gamer, I am happy to support good indie projects, but I've seen plenty of rip-offs as well. The one thing I expect as a gamer is to know upfront what the developer's expectations are and what I will get for my payment.
#1 Aug 14 2011, 9:32 pm
As far as Free games go, I find that the model, "Free but pay for additional content" seems to attract the most people. Examples?

1. Runescape
2. League of Legends (Which apparently is hot stuff now)
3. Maplestory
4. LotRO

The list goes on. What these games offer is pretty much, "You can play the game as much as you like, we left in all of the key elements. But if you want a little something special, or a deeper exploration of the game, pay some cash."

The average computer gamer today doesn't want to pay for the games they play. This is my interpretation of the fact that there are so many lists of Free Games on the web. There is also the fact that people use key generators and stuff to get free content.
#2 Aug 14 2011, 9:49 pm
In response to Lugia319 (#1)
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/ 3689-Microtransactions

A great look into the micro-transaction system used in the games you described.

Personally, I love this method of marketing, it allows everyone to play your game, and tell their friends about it. Those friends check it out, and even if the original player didn't buy anything, they might.

One of the important topics covered in that video is allowing players to earn whatever currency you sell, but at a very slow pace. This allows everyone to get anything without paying, but most people will decide that their time is worth more than the dollar it costs them to get that new sword. It also keeps people from feeling like you have to pay to be able to win(especially in games with PvP).
#3 Aug 15 2011, 2:46 pm
In response to Robertbanks2 (#2)
That's a good idea. Kingdom of Loathing does it; one could either donate $10 and receive a Mr. Accessory, or purchase one in the mall. The cost of purchasing one is an enormous amount of grinding. Incidentally, for an economically oriented person as myself, this gives the opportunity to estimate how much an MMO gamer values his or her grinding time. I had thought that giving a rare item, otherwise purchasable with a lot of in-game currency or a low-probability drop, is a good gift for someone who donates $5 (I prefer to think of it that way than that the item costs $5).
#4 Aug 15 2011, 2:55 pm
In response to Lugia319 (#1)
From a simple economic perspective, it is hard to begrudge someone who seeks free games, since afterall there are so many good free games out there. Piracy and key generators are a despicable act of theft from developer, and I think anyone developer with paid content has to spend some time fighting that.
#5 Aug 15 2011, 6:31 pm
In response to Pepper2000 (#3)
There's a trade off to being able to purchase any item with real currency. If you let people buy high value items and weapons, you'll end up having a game run by the people with the most money, not the most skill. If you have an auction house or open market on your game however, being able to purchase the items with real currency would be amazing for everyone. People who don't want to grind can just pay out of pocket for that shiny new item, and you get profit. People without much money can still grind and farm for the same items, free of charge. This works because there's still a limited supply of that item on the market. You need to make sure however that the best items in the game can't end up in the market and be sold to only the players with money. Top tier items and weapons should only be for those who earn it, either by dungeons or quest.

When a player creates an auction, they set the price or in game currency. You can translate the gold or what have you into real life currency. So the player can pay $4 instead of 20,000 gold. If the player buys the item with real money, you get the money, and the player who set the auction gets his 20,000.

This type of design only works with MORPG's of course.
#6 Aug 15 2011, 9:05 pm
In response to Danbriggs (#5)
Danbriggs wrote:
There's a trade off to being able to purchase any item with real currency. If you let people buy high value items and weapons, you'll end up having a game run by the people with the most money, not the most skill. If you have an auction house or open market on your game however, being able to purchase the items with real currency would be amazing for everyone. People who don't want to grind can just pay out of pocket for that shiny new item, and you get profit. People without much money can still grind and farm for the same items, free of charge. This works because there's still a limited supply of that item on the market. You need to make sure however that the best items in the game can't end up in the market and be sold to only the players with money. Top tier items and weapons should only be for those who earn it, either by dungeons or quest.

When a player creates an auction, they set the price or in game currency. You can translate the gold or what have you into real life currency. So the player can pay $4 instead of 20,000 gold. If the player buys the item with real money, you get the money, and the player who set the auction gets his 20,000.

This type of design only works with MORPG's of course.

I agree 100% a system like this makes the phrase "Time is money" true. This will allow "poor" players with a lot of free time on their hands the ability to play through the game and spend their time and invest in a nice item they can sell to players for IGF(in-game-funds) This items will be difficult to get and the auction house can have a minimum number for rare items to prevent these players from under selling their products. A player who just wants to run through and level (they need to level since some items would have some sorta level restriction preventing real money players from paying for power) they could spend their RLF(Real life funds) on IGF so they could buy the rare items that the "poor" players spent their time earning. This way time can be used as an investment, "Rich" players can simply buy that investment real funds transfer from players to the game's owners while IGF of many players rise in the markets.
#7 Aug 16 2011, 1:18 pm
In response to Legato_frio (#6)
Instead of $4 for 20k gold, why not have Gold(Game Currency) and then lets say Jewels which you have to pay for, then have a shop system set up where you click a button on your screen and then you pick an item, and then you can buy it for X amount of Gold or X amount of Jewels. It's easier for the player to sort their priorities that way but not only that, allow only specific items to be bought with jewels so that way even jewels couldn't buy everything, a game called Conquer has this system and I thought it was pretty great; of course if you want gold you could have a system to trade jewels for gold too.. Though vice versa could work I suppose. I don't know maybe I'm overthinking this, but I had a similar idea in mind for my game.
#8 Aug 16 2011, 1:26 pm
In response to Pepper2000 (#4)
Pepper2000 wrote:
From a simple economic perspective, it is hard to begrudge someone who seeks free games, since after all there are so many good free games out there. Piracy and key generators are a despicable act of theft from developer, and I think anyone developer with paid content has to spend some time fighting that.

Fighting pirates is pointless, good hackers can crack almost any DRM in a few days. At most, one should try to prevent pirated copies from downloading updates from their server, accessing online content, etc. since that truly is stealing in the sense that they have to pay for that bandwidth.

Also, infringement isn't theft, that's just a horrible and overused metaphor.

Regardless, free with paid content is probably the way to go; you get someone to like your game, then they decide maybe they want access to those extra classes or items or whatever and pay for it. Free with donations also works to some extent, though paid content is probably a better option (as long as its not game breaking). Also, free with advertisements is another route you can take, though its not really good for making tons of money (I have a game that's been downloaded almost 50,000 times and I make about 1$ a day off of it).
#9 Aug 16 2011, 8:24 pm
In response to Danbriggs (#5)
That's a really neat idea, and I've had a lot of fun trying to run a business in games before (by, for example, trying to corner the market on a particular item). But it may be too complex for the project I am working on.
#10 Aug 16 2011, 8:27 pm
In response to Pepper2000 (#9)
Economics are economics, they are balanced out almost by themselves. Players know when to buy and sell.