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This post is about 800 words so if you don't like reading you can stop here.
I am making this post in response to many of the “Blizzard only cares about making money off of us” threads that exist on this forum. I am currently a Junior in Interactive Media and Game Development so I am intimately aware of how business models work in the gaming industry. This thread is not to discuss the shortcomings of battle.net 2.0 but rather the concerns of the consumer for things like micro-transactions.
Historically speaking, a consumer would buy a game from a company, all of its features would be free and it would be a one-time purchase and when you were finished with the game you could move on and buy another. In these days, developing a video game was cheap (relative to the costs of developing one today) and had a relatively limited user base. Things like Internet Connections were “rare” (i.e. it was unsafe to assume your consumer had one) and so games could not have features added to them through patches reliably. Thus the Expansion Pack was born. These would cost the consumer a relatively small additional fee but would add new gameplay and could revive an older game – thereby renewing a source of income for the company, generally giving them the revenue to produce a new title.
Nowadays, there are many business models available to a company; Internet Connections are as widespread as Oxygen and there are a host of new options to provide additional content to your patrons. I will offer you a few examples:
Guild Wars offers players a free-to-play game but releases frequent expansion packs to add additional content (effectively a subscription fee as each expansion costs as much as a new game). Free-to-play games which offer downloadable content (DLC) for a fee fall under this category as well.
World of Warcraft (and other MMOs) exchanges a monthly fee for free new content and features while major updates to the game are released through expansion packs.
League of Legends, produced by Riot Games, is 100% free to play and players can unlock 95% of the games features (only things which require money are additional character skins and experience boosts for your character) if they have enough patience. However, more impatient players can choose to purchase “riot points” if they wish to unlock content more quickly. This has proven to be extremely successful for Riot Games and has even provided them with the income to constantly release new content and even recently revamped their UI and added a ladder and ranked matchmaking system. Personally, this is my favorite model both from a business and consumer perspective, though it does have inherent risks.
All Points Bulletin, a recent MMOTPS by Real Time Worlds, uses an interesting model which tries to appeal to all types of players. You can elect to pay per hour of play, or purchase a monthly subscription which has unlimited playtime. Additionally, similar to Riot Games, you can purchase “real time worlds points” to purchase upgrades for your character faster. However, their model also includes in-game advertising (which players can pay an additional fee to turn off) so they can double-dip off of their consumers.
Other models include free-to-play gameplay but the consumer is subjected to in-game advertising which covers the maintenance costs of the server. Other games (such as RuneScape, or WoW 0.5 as some call it) offer limited free-to-play gameplay but require a subscription fee to play the “full” version of the game.
Why do these charges occur? Well for one we as the consumer demand most of these features in our games now-a-days. Many people won’t buy a game that only offers a few hours of single player with nothing else (i.e. no multi-player/DLC). Likewise, we expect games to release new content and offer multi-player modes as well as capability to play over the internet. The problem is, a one-time fee won’t cover these upkeeps which we demand from game companies.
Many of these costs go towards covering the cost of upkeep for the games (new content/server maintenance/etc.) but as a game grows in popularity, so too does the profit margin from these models. This encourages those rare companies who are interested in making money to produce quality games as those will generate a greater profit steam then several mediocre games released in succession.
Love it or hate it, but this is the trend of the future.
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The problem is, a one-time fee won’t cover these upkeeps which we demand from game companies.
I sure wonder how Valve does it, then.
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On July 21 2010 00:16 Zaru wrote:Show nested quote +The problem is, a one-time fee won’t cover these upkeeps which we demand from game companies. I sure wonder how Valve does it, then.
Valve owns its own storefront, where much like Apple does with iTunes or the App Store, reap a bit of profit on each sale from other companies. They don't need to charge for DLC, because they make so much money off other developers' game sales.
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Valve is great with its marketing, but there still doing it to make money.
Take alien swarm for example. The amount of people downloading it is insane because its free. Do you think valve released it to make its fan happy? no. They now have there sales platform being spread on more computers then ever. There now getting more income from advertising then ever. Even if someone doesnt buy any games off steam and just plays alien swarm valve is making money.
There all in it to make money, but go about it in diffrent ways.
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I understand your ultimate point completely, and do not necessarily disagree with you.
My only counter-point would be that, with the very notable exception of the of the MMO type subscription method, none of these pricing models has been proven to be a true alternative to the "traditional" model. There are two reasons for the rise in all these different pricing schemes that I see.
1) Small time developers are still having a hard time figuring out how to make money off of their work. For various reason I won't get into here, consumers have basically spoken with their wallets in that they are going to pay for the best games available, even if those games cost significantly more. Merely pricing an independent title at a lower price has not proven to be a successful means of making money, even if you sell a game that is, lets say, about half as long and half the quality of a AAA title but for a quarter or even a fifth of the price, consumers will still prefer to buy the AAA title even if the apparent value is higher on the indie title. Thus, small developers have been searching for a good way to sell their product as evidenced by the myriad different pricing schemes out there for such titles.
2) Large companies that feel like they need to fix a problem that doesn't exist. I feel like there is a disconnect in some places between theory and reality. Take this hypothetical. The giant game maker Donut Games (which I just made up), releases Munchkins, and it is unequivocally the most profitable game of all time. It sells a gazillion copies and they have more money than they know what to do with. But then someone at Donut Games gets to thinking... "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we could make even MORE money without having to do all that much extra work?" And so the powers that be start trying to come up with ways to make the game production process more money efficient. They brain-storm ways to increase revenue without increasing cost or maintaining revenue while decreasing cost.
Now, I'm not saying that this process is inherently bad, it is just how business works, but what I do think is a problem is that it tends to result in the company pushing the consumer to see how far they can push before getting a pushback.
So, just look at stardock. They are the perfect example of how the traditional model still works just fine. They make games without any sort of DRM. They charge one-time for all their games, and use frequent, free patches as a method to get people that like the game to actually pay for it. Their games have been applauded critically and have done exceedingly well financially. (With the exception of Demigod, which was a train-wreck if ever their was one, and Stardock's CEO has said as much).
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Any successful company will try to make money.
/thread.
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Completely screwing your customers will always be wrong in my eyes but I feel some people are too naive about these companies. I love Blizzard and Valve but saying they are not in it for the money is just silly.
They are companies, money is the only thing that keeps them up. Some companies just treat their customers better.
With that said I think blizzard is doing a decent job listening to their future customers and I hope they get their money, they deserve it.
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On July 21 2010 00:24 beefstew wrote:
Valve is great with its marketing, but there still doing it to make money.
Take alien swarm for example. The amount of people downloading it is insane because its free. Do you think valve released it to make its fan happy? no. They now have there sales platform being spread on more computers then ever. There now getting more income from advertising then ever. Even if someone doesnt buy any games off steam and just plays alien swarm valve is making money.
There all in it to make money, but go about it in diffrent ways.
Also if people think the game is good enough, whenever they do release DLC people will pay for it mainly cause they spent $0 on the game so far and if its good, why not play new content? They make a lot of money just based on "everyone" having it because it was free and willing to pay for DLC to keep up the enjoyment of the game.
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i know im a bit off topic, but Alien Swarm is probably the best new game ive played.
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I was incredibly entertained by certain discussions on the Dragon Age: Origins forum. Lots of people got about 40 hours of gameplay out of a SINGLE playthrough and were complaining, ceaselessly, that they probably got about twice as much out of a single playthrough of Baldur's Gate 2.
It seems there's this type of gamer who is ONLY concerned with the entertainment hours per dollar ratio who demand that shorter single-player games should naturally be cheaper. Forget a full-blown game editor, replayability value, the gameplay, the story, the graphics or whatever features that draw gamers to a game and the things which keep increasing these game's budgets (compare the graphics of BG2 to DA:O for a quick second)...these people only care about how much it cost them for a single playthrough.
Mind boggling.
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60$ price tag is fine if b.net would continue to be free (unlike in WOW) and there was LAN.
Blizzard needs to make money are there will be no SC 3 in 20 years (wait, I'm talking about blizzard so it should be 30 years)
All I really want is LAN. URGGG
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On July 21 2010 02:24 aztrorisk wrote:
60$ price tag is fine if b.net would continue to be free (unlike in WOW) and there was LAN.
...
All I really want is LAN. URGGG
From the OP:
This thread is not to discuss the shortcomings of battle.net 2.0
Please stay on topic
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On July 21 2010 02:16 Bibdy wrote:
I was incredibly entertained by certain discussions on the Dragon Age: Origins forum. Lots of people got about 40 hours of gameplay out of a SINGLE playthrough and were complaining, ceaselessly, that they probably got about twice as much out of a single playthrough of Baldur's Gate 2.
It seems there's this type of gamer who is ONLY concerned with the entertainment hours per dollar ratio who demand that shorter single-player games should naturally be cheaper. Forget a full-blown game editor, replayability value, the gameplay, the story, the graphics or whatever features that draw gamers to a game and the things which keep increasing these game's budgets (compare the graphics of BG2 to DA:O for a quick second)...these people only care about how much it cost them for a single playthrough.
Mind boggling.
I have to agree with this, but they are essentially statistical outliers when it comes to the general gaming populace
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On July 21 2010 02:16 Bibdy wrote:
I was incredibly entertained by certain discussions on the Dragon Age: Origins forum. Lots of people got about 40 hours of gameplay out of a SINGLE playthrough and were complaining, ceaselessly, that they probably got about twice as much out of a single playthrough of Baldur's Gate 2.
It seems there's this type of gamer who is ONLY concerned with the entertainment hours per dollar ratio who demand that shorter single-player games should naturally be cheaper. Forget a full-blown game editor, replayability value, the gameplay, the story, the graphics or whatever features that draw gamers to a game and the things which keep increasing these game's budgets (compare the graphics of BG2 to DA:O for a quick second)...these people only care about how much it cost them for a single playthrough.
Mind boggling.
I'm more or less one of those people. If I can play 1 game for 3 months that costs the same as a game that will only keep me entertained for 1 month... well I'm going with the 3 month game. I waited until MW2 went on sale before buying it because I didn't feel the price justified the amount of content.
Forgive me for being responsible with my money.
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800 word is not that much to read
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On July 21 2010 02:16 Bibdy wrote:
I was incredibly entertained by certain discussions on the Dragon Age: Origins forum. Lots of people got about 40 hours of gameplay out of a SINGLE playthrough and were complaining, ceaselessly, that they probably got about twice as much out of a single playthrough of Baldur's Gate 2.
It seems there's this type of gamer who is ONLY concerned with the entertainment hours per dollar ratio who demand that shorter single-player games should naturally be cheaper. Forget a full-blown game editor, replayability value, the gameplay, the story, the graphics or whatever features that draw gamers to a game and the things which keep increasing these game's budgets (compare the graphics of BG2 to DA:O for a quick second)...these people only care about how much it cost them for a single playthrough.
Mind boggling.
Even getting 40 hours of gameplay makes it average out to around $1 per hour, which is *significantly* cheaper than most other forms of entertainment. E.g., seeing a movie in theaters will probably cost you about $5 per hour (tickets cost $11 where I live). Taking a date out to dinner will probably cost you like $40 per hour at a decent restaurant. Going out to a bar? Still significantly over the $1 per hour for DA:O.
In an age where video games where mostly targeted at little kids and teenagers (you probably didn't see too many people in their 20s or 30s playing Super Mario, for example), paying something like $1 per hour might have been more of a concern, since that target audience doesn't have any money. But when a good portion of the gaming audience is made up of late teens or adults, it seems not only reasonable but in fact rather cheap in terms of cost/hour for entertainment.
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imo small developers are getting more and more left out, some of the maths, coding, tricks in logic etc (just finished a module.. wow) is ridiculous. gone are the days that a sole guy working his guts out 24hrs a day can match production quality of a development team.
Also its key to note that blizzard is floated on the stock exchange which means its a PLC, and which means that shareholders (he evil business money making people) have significant control of the company. They can and will apply huge pressure to management to maximise revenues from customers from every way imaginable. We havent seen this yet from blizzard (although wow was a good start).
Dont think people should be crying about blizzard doing this yet, we'll see in the coming months/years if its happened or crazy people just crying wolf.
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I'm still surprised that people EXPECT DLC from games these days. I'm perfectly happy with a solid single player experience if a game is meant to play that way.
Ex. Batman Arkham Asylum reminded me what made some single player games so great. Sure it had DLC eventually, but I thought it was fair to charge consumers for the extra content in that context.
I think downloadable content is sometimes controversial for people in this community who eat and breathe gaming, since for PC gamers extra content can be free if you know where to look, especially if its community made.
The success of Valve is almost insane. I'm tempted to call it fluke, since they seem to make the right moves at all the right times.
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On July 21 2010 02:16 Bibdy wrote:
I was incredibly entertained by certain discussions on the Dragon Age: Origins forum. Lots of people got about 40 hours of gameplay out of a SINGLE playthrough and were complaining, ceaselessly, that they probably got about twice as much out of a single playthrough of Baldur's Gate 2.
It seems there's this type of gamer who is ONLY concerned with the entertainment hours per dollar ratio who demand that shorter single-player games should naturally be cheaper. Forget a full-blown game editor, replayability value, the gameplay, the story, the graphics or whatever features that draw gamers to a game and the things which keep increasing these game's budgets (compare the graphics of BG2 to DA:O for a quick second)...these people only care about how much it cost them for a single playthrough.
Mind boggling.
well the problem with dragon age was that it was hyped as the new baldurs gate. while my problem witht he game wasnt exactly the length i too was very dissapointed when i noticed its a rather short,very console-ish,had mostly tiny irrelevant sidequests etc.
so imo its mostly related to the hype which it just couldnt stand up to.
cause really you normally never see people complain about the length of a single fast playthrough. ppeople by mediocre shooters with 6 hours all the time. no one complained about mass effect beeing to short even tho you could finish it very quick.
ontopic :
ofc evry company needs to make money. but there is still a huge difference between good and "bad" companys. sadly the whole dlc stuff kinda drew evryone into the "lets make em pay for stuff that used to be free!" crap. sure for "miniexpansions" like in borderlands or mass effect why not pay a few $ (most are totally overprized but the concept is ok) but when they start charging for maps or even core features like cross region play in sc2(which seems very likely) they jump across the ripoff line with their money fueled smiles.
but in the end you always have to care about your customers. sure milking your franchises and ripping your customers off will work short term. long term people will just pirate even more,boycott,go to other games or whatever.
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On July 21 2010 00:18 PanzerDragoon wrote:Show nested quote +On July 21 2010 00:16 Zaru wrote:The problem is, a one-time fee won’t cover these upkeeps which we demand from game companies. I sure wonder how Valve does it, then. Valve owns its own storefront, where much like Apple does with iTunes or the App Store, reap a bit of profit on each sale from other companies. They don't need to charge for DLC, because they make so much money off other developers' game sales.
So, by that logic Blizzard doesn't need to charge us for content in SC2 because they make an absurd amount of money from WoW? If you think even half of the money made from WoW is being invested back into new content and servers, you'd be mistaken.
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EPT
