This is a pretty good take on what being a small indie dev is like. I've been through that exact cycle, of building a portfolio of games, having some big hits fund growing the company, then taking on bigger projects before the inevitable collapse. In our case that collapse actually came from our primary platform disappearing (thank MS for buying Danger) and our failure to pivot well enough into the new hyper competitive iOS market.
So I totally hear his rationale from a game developer's point of view, I really do. But though I'm a developer, I'm also a customer, and I just can't swallow the coin model for games.
I've played Triple Town and thought it was pretty cute, and yes, I'd probably pay 99c for it, maybe even up to $2.99. But I'm not signing up to a lifetime of paying coins to continue playing it long term.
One fundamental issue is that by design, coin based games are going to be 'gamed' to encourage the use of coins, and fundamentally I don't want to participate in a game dynamic where I'm paying for game experimentation with real dollars. It is like me playing a game of chess and having the constant option to drop $20 to buy another queen. Sure it isn't absolutely necessary to win, but it sure helps. Having that dynamic in games just turns me off.
Now I understand the problem of running a sustainable business all too well, having had my own game company go under, but I don't believe this is the solution. I'm not sure what the right one is, and on that front I applaud them for experimenting, but as a customer I personally reject it.
It isn't just that you'd be paying for extra queens, they'd also start you with less pawns, or make the board twice as big (or something) so the game takes longer, to encourage you to buy queens.
That's the real pitfall, when that dynamic actively makes the core game design worse.
Initially I found the model you describe as repulsive. Could there be a future in games that were actually somewhat enjoyable to play? Or would that all be well optimized at manipulating you through a combination of impatience, greed, and misery to hand over real cash to keep going?
After thinking about it more, this model is just in its own little boom cycle, and it will go bust too. I've played some of the top grossing in-app purchase games on iOS and they are down right aweful. The audience that is shelling out this money are "newbies" to one degree or the other.
Just like people who sit in casinos pushing a button all day, the audience for these games will never disappear. However, the market for normal games will not vanish. Players will get burned out on these things a lot faster, because a) its on their phone not in a distant casino and b) they don't win money playing them.
I think Valve has the right model, sell in-game items that are not mandatory in order to play the game successfully.
At the end of the day, your player has to want to play your game. If I developed games, I would be asking what keeps a player around for years rather than how do I monetize the player over the long term.
There are exceptions in these games, some that allow you to speed things up with money but you never really need to until you get tired of the whole game anyways. But those games seem to operate as advertising for other games made by the same company (you occasionally get a popup when you launch the game linking to their other new game of the month). So they're only tolerable because they're not trying to extract money from you as much from that particular game. Sort of the exception that proves the rule.
An alternative way to get a continuous stream of revenue is to develop a fan base so devoted that they are happy to donate money or preorder years in advance just to keep you afloat.
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Or the monthly subscription model, although that becomes a hits based game also, just that people will commit to far fewer monthly recurring games than one time purchases.
You don't have to buy coins to play Triple town in the long term. Playing the way, I naturally do, I accumulate coins over time. At this point, I have basically an unlimited amount. I've never spent real money on them.
I have to agree that there isn't a sure thing. Dan Cook is a very smart guy, but even smart guys can get the wrong perspective and end up running into a wall.
Personally I look at the game business as a sort of "innovator's hustle," where most of the effort is going towards the novelty aspects - even in the design. Traditional/historical games have lasted by remaining captivating for lifetimes, rather than 40 hours, so raising the bar for long-term retention is not an impossibility, provided that a way to market the design over an equally long time exists. But it's far more straightforward to push for marketing-immediate elements(graphics, storytelling, ad campaigns, etc.) and that's led to an industry characterized by budget escalation.
From this angle, F2P's profit engine is primarily running on the basis that more novel and more appealing games can be made via a change in the business model. If the innovation stagnates, so will the market for F2P. But the business model isn't directly at fault for that. Tactics like blind conversion of every existing type of video game into a F2P straitjacket are what make it a fad, one likely to recede to a more reasonable level over time, but not one that goes away entirely.
I have not played Triple Town but free to play model that generates revenue by asking users to pay for unlocking things is here to stay.
One clear example is, League of Legends. Where you start with set of free champions and you either play or pay to unlock more of them. One can argue that, Valve's TF2 and Dota2 are in similar vein. You of course, don't have to pay to unlock heroes - but you pay to buy cosmetic items (so as you can look cool in-game). So, while you may dislike this model, it looks like it is here to stay.
I also haven't played Triple Town, but I want to note there are multiple ways to go about free to play. I love the model Valve does with TF2. A player will be able to unlock a large amount of weapons through achievements and drops without spending any money. People may argue about balance, but there are no weapons which 100% outshine each other. Being a paying user doesn't really affect how well you'll do in game. Dota2 takes this further and you only pay for cosmetic items, with your character's ability having absolutely no correlation with how much you've spent on the game.
LoL takes a different approach: You can spend money to unlock characters. However you steadily earn money from matches. I'd call this a middle ground.
Most social and free to play games on phones and facebook take in my opinion the worst path: Paying directly and dramatically influences your ability in the game. I dislike this approach for a variety of reasons. The biggest is the ways it influences other design choices. I'd love to have a little game revolving around growing a good farm or city on my phone, but all the games I know about take the social approach. This means I have to go and wait around for something to build unless I pay, instead of having fun playing a little game. Imagine if tamagachi used the pay to win approach? That rich kid in the playground would've had an awesome pet, and everyone else would be left with a starving pet.
I agree, I have tried a few games with the wait or pay to advance dynamic. I much prefer to be able to progress as much as I want when playing, limited by the time I have to play rather than when the game wants to halt my progress.
The other issue is that it seems like often paying wouldn't be much fun either as it makes the game to easy.
The reason people argue about balance is because they think weapons completely outshine each other. It's subjective, but you do have tournament results and other metrics to look at.
I don't think the argument above has to do with the model of "unlocking things". The difference in League of Legends (and DotA2/TF2) versus most other contemporary (especially mobile) F2P models is that most of what you buy (your example being Champions) are permanent unlocks. I haven't heard a lot of arguments against that model. You're paying for a digital version of something that you now own, you keep, you collect, and you can essentially use forever. To me that's very different than buying something consumable (e.g. coins) or energy based that is literally spent and then gone, at which point you're expected to pay more.
More importantly I agree that this model heavily encourages the developer to design around that methodology (well described as "gamed" above).
To be fair, in this specific example - if I recall in Triple Town, the main thing you bought was unlimited play-time ("turns") for $3.99 (which follows the more positive unlock model). After that you could buy the standard coins (the shitty model), but given the design of the game I never understood why you would.
Even buying champions in LoL (you can buy skins too) doesn't affect the game really because every week the champions you get to play for free rotate, giving everyone a chance to play whichever they like and secondly, they are balanced so that it doesn't really matter which champions you play if you're skilled. You are really paying for a different experience.
So, the three models of free to play that I see are:
1. pay for perks - this is the traditional "you pay and you get something you can use", be it guns or coins or whatever. The danger with this model is that it is a very fine balance to prevent this from becoming pay to win.
2. pay for cosmetics - DotA 2 or skins in LoL or hats in TF2 or whatever you have. Buy things to change the look of your stuff in game, but buying things has no effect on your success or the gameplay. IMHO almost all free to play games should support this in some way.
3. pay for experience. The things you buy in game don't give you an advantage in the game but instead alter the play style or how you experience the gameplay. League of Legends gives you weekly tasters of the different gameplay experiences the different champions have to offer and you can pay to keep the ones you like best. I believe that this is the model (coupled with #2) that ultimately makes the very successful free to play games stand out from the merely moderately successful ones.
I that It's awesome for developers to make a living. I really want the gaming industry to flourish, and I want people to be able to live off the work they do. In that context, I can totally empathize with developers doing things differently so that they can survive.
However, as a consumer, I don't want to be part of that model. I don't want to encourage that kind of behavior, and I don't buy those games. As someone who does play many games, I love the boxed software model from a consumer standpoint.
At some point, I think video games need to start costing more. I think indie devs are really selling themselves short with their prices. I don't have any data to back this up, but I see plenty of games that take years to make by dedicated independent developers sell at launch for less than half the price that games normally sell for.
I feel that indie games are being artificially devalued, and that's hurting indie devs. I am willing to put my money where my mouth is and pay double what I pay now for most of my games. I just wish others would as well.
Paying a dollar to play it a little longer to see if it's sufficiently addictive, and then 7 dollars if you want to keep playing it long term, doesn't seem so bad to me - I like the idea of being offered the choice.
I'm not so sure. As a player, I was initially excited about free-to-play games. I viewed them as a rebirth of shareware, a try-before-you-buy sort of thing. But having played a few, and having had a few games I bought go that direction, I'm not nearly so enthusiastic now. They almost always suck, or turn out to suck after they add in-game purchases. Even the games I would have held up as shining examples of "doing it right" sucked six months later.
These days I'm wary of games that advertise free to play. As if that were something I, as a player, wanted. I see it less as a try-it-we're-sure-you'll-like-it and more of a we-won't-tell-you-what-it-costs and we-can-get-you-hooked-and-you-won't-care-it's-not-fun and maybe a little we'll-keep-changing-it-so-you-keep-needing-to-pay.
There's such strong pressure to have purchases affect gameplay, too. I've seen any number of nice games start out promising that would never happen, and then . . . it happened. I mean, remember when they introduced hats in TF2? Said they'd never, never, never affect gameplay? We know how that went.
So I don't know. For me as a player, that sort of game has an uphill battle to earn my trust. Even if it's awesome now, the pressures are just such that it probably won't be in six months. Not the sort of thing I want to build my cherished family entertainment memories around.
There's also the rather-disturbing phenomenon of a small percentage of people spending an outlandish amount of money on these games. Sure, some of them might be enthusiastic fans, but that seems unlikely to me. Free-to-play games are just . . . not that kind of game. It seems more likely that they're folks with poor judgement, or who are even mentally ill. I don't know, but it doesn't sit well with me.
I'm not a successful indie game publisher or anything, so I don't have a proposed alternative. But I do think I'm not the only one who feels this way, and I'd expect the view to become more prevalent as players gain experience with the model. Free-to-play might be dominant now, but I wouldn't bet on it staying that way.
> I mean, remember when they introduced hats in TF2? Said they'd never, never, never affect gameplay? We know how that went.
Actually I don't know how that went. I play bit of Dota2 which has similar model and Valve has always contested that, in-game cosmetics will never affect game play and so far it hasn't. So I am very curious with TF2 hats affecting game play. Care to elaborate?
So I am very curious with TF2 hats affecting game play.
I am under the impression that some hats have particle effects. If you are playing a spy who is impersonating a character with that kind of hat, the particle effects aren't duplicated.
I would appreciate it if someone who plays TF2 more than me can say how much it affects the gameplay.
Well, when TF2 came out, it was laser focused. Every class had a role, and was strong and weak against certain other classes. So now, you throw a bunch of new items, and it loses that. The sniper is weak to spies, that's how it's supposed to be. So then the sniper gets given a shield that makes spies unable to stab him, and a jar that he can throw on the ground and reveal them. Engineers were weak to snipers, but now they can take control of their sentries and manually shoot things outside of the normal range. So the end result is that everything ends up becoming pretty okay against everything. I haven't played the game for a long time so I don't remember everything.
The other issue, which is one of the reasons I stopped playing (aside from me pretty much stopping playing video games in general) is aesthetic overload. I don't like the notion of things being called "purely cosmetic" because appearances have meanings. The 9 classes were designed to be recognizable from their silhouettes alone, which is pretty brilliant. But now you can pile an absurd number of things onto your character, completely changing that. Not only do you not know what your opponent is equipped with anymore, you also have an additional psychological blocker to identifying them. And it's just tacky. TF2 was originally a 60s spy movie parody, and I really felt that. Now it's just... everything. It's just a lot less compelling to me.
Well, when TF2 came out, it was laser focused. [...] The 9 classes were designed to be recognizable from their silhouettes alone, which is pretty brilliant.
That's interesting and quite disappointing to hear. In Valve's in-game commentary, they specifically point out that they were trying hard to achieve exactly this (distinctive outlines). It sounds like there's been a complete change for the vision of the game, likely due to personnel changes.
As someone who has played 1000+ hours of TF2, I do agree that this is dissapointing. Some items have changed silhouettes, and that can hurt gameplay.
However, TF2 was very much on the right track to have the perfect combination of revenue generating side-items with unchanging gameplay. Just because they've strayed a bit does not mean that it can't be effectively used for other games.
> There's also the rather-disturbing phenomenon of a small percentage of people spending an outlandish amount of money on these games. Sure, some of them might be enthusiastic fans, but that seems unlikely to me. Free-to-play games are just . . . not that kind of game. It seems more likely that they're folks with poor judgement, or who are even mentally ill. I don't know, but it doesn't sit well with me.
I have heard this about the gambling industry, from colleagues when I used to work at an online gaming company. I think it is true that a large amount of the profits from these type of things come from a small percentage, and often those people cannot really afford to loose such great amounts of money either.
Of Zynga's games, apparently "less than 1 percent [of players] are responsible for between a quarter and a half of the company’s revenue".[0]
Yeah, I don't have any data to back it up -- it's just intuition -- but I've got to think that spending $5000 on Farmville just can't be right. I mean, that'll buy you pretty much unlimited movies, music, and TV for a year, with maybe a vacation thrown in there. And the games they spend it on are terrible. I'd understand if it was Starcraft or something, but it's nothing like.
When I was a teenager playing video games all the time, I had a great desire to develop them. Who doesn't? I think that was at least partly responsible for my learning to program. But as an adult, I'm a lot more ambivalent about the industry. Sure, it's art, and some games are awesome, but some also scare me. I can't shake the feeling that some games have a genuine psychological addiction element, and some people might not be well-prepared to cope with that rationally, and the whole thing looks kind of . . . exploitative.
I'm not as sure as I was, when I was 13, that I want to be a part of that.
Personally, I don't see how such a model can work. By using this model you're spending millions to make a big game like LotR and then hoping that enough of your customer base will pay for new content. But making new content itself is costing money and you haven't payed off the initial investment yet. I don't see how you wouldn't always be chasing your tail with such a model unless your later additions are going to be really cheap to make and expensive to buy, but why would anyone buy that? Just because the initial offering was free doesn't mean people are going to be willing to pay a lot more minor enhancements later. If anything, you're probably escalating what it takes to spend money.
I play TF2 much more than I should, and I can say that they have the balance between the weapons pretty well perfect. Of course I have my load-outs which I prefer, but there aren't isn't really anything that outshines any other weapons, whether it be the base weapons or drops. I can guarantee you that I can kill you with any of the base weapons, and that I can be killed by anyone who has practised enough with any of the weapons.
I have a game and when I say it's free to play and in the future I plan on adding some paid options, people automatically assume they will suffer if they don't pay. However, I plan on adding paid options that are purely cosmetic. We'll have to be very clear upfront that the game is 100% free unless you want to make your city standout which is really up to you.
Even the games I would have held up as shining examples of "doing it right" sucked six months later.
All but the greatest $60-up-front retail games suck six months later too. Most games just don't have that long of a shelf life - they just aren't designed for such replayability.
The $60-up-front retail games that we uphold as shining examples of "doing it right" are still awesome six months later. Every game in this category I thought was awesome right out of the box, I was still playing and still enjoying years later.
But I can name several free-to-play games I thought were awesome a few months ago that I've completely given up on. It's not because they lacked replayability, or because they were less awesome than I initially thought. It's because the games changed, not in ways that improved gameplay, but in ways that increased the pressure to acquire various consumables.
In the free-to-play games I initially enjoyed, I'd have happily spent money on expansion packs -- permanent add-ons that let me experience more of the same sort of fun as the original game. But instead, the games keep changing to be more of a joyless slog, and then they offer to let me skip the slog and get back to the fun for a few bucks. When the game mechanic becomes so dull that it makes sense to charge players to avoid playing, it's no longer a good game.
For every one shining example of "doing it right" there are hundreds of terrible games though. Its still early days for free to play. You may be right, but I don't know yet. I currently play three free to play games (and have been playing them for a few months now): League of Legends, World of Tanks and Path of Exile. I guess we'll see in a few more months if I agree with you or not, but so far so good.
(Been playing LoL for 4 months and WoT and PoE for about 5 months now)
I don't think that free to play is necessarily the answer. And I say this as a developer of a free to play game.
The key, I think, is in two things.
The first is having more control over your ability to distribute the product in the long term, and cheaply. The retail model meant that old games didn't have any opportunity to continue to get sales. Digital distribution means that old games continue to be available, and they can continue to make quite a lot of money.
The ability to distribute titles yourself means that you don't need to do a big hit all-on-day-one launch to make a sustainable living.
The second thing is the ability for some players to pay more money than others. The free to play model is great at this, but it isn't the only way I think that this can happen.
We have the ability for someone to pay $1000 to become a "Diamond" supporter which gives someone the ability to design a unique item (with guidance from us for balance reasons). They do not get given a copy, it's an item that is now available for the entire player base and enriches the game by providing more content for the players.
This kind of piecemeal support for specific purposes is an interesting area that I think could grow in the future.
The overall message I guess is getting away from the need for a big launch then slump, and moving to something that grows and is sustainable for the long term.
Big spenders or "whales" are much ignored when considering how to make money with a game. There really are people out there that are willing to spend thousands a month on a social game. You could even think that all the other players merely exist in the game to entertain that small slice that really brings in the money.
In my own apps with virtual currency I could see this only in a small way as the incentive was low to spend a lot, so this is more based on the experiences I have heard from fellow devs.
I believe it has been widely recognized that Zynga, GREE, etc earn most of their revenues from "whales". And I think it's an ok practice. But in order to get the money from the whales, it often seems that the rest of the players (the 99%, if you wish), have their experience hampered by constant dangling of offers in front of you. As a player, I'd rather pay a small sum once to avoid the virtual currency - and find other ways to create whales (e.g., as suggested, more like content creation, sponsoring and some vanity items).
>> As a player, I'd rather pay a small sum once to avoid the virtual currency - and find other ways to create whales (e.g., as suggested, more like content creation, sponsoring and some vanity items).
Except that I bet you wouldn't. Most players when asked say they would prefer a "fair price, pay once" model. Yet in aggregate they act very differently. If that weren't true we wouldn't now have a market where:
1) Seemingly most people complain about F2P
2) F2P is increasingly the most successful model
I think the people annoyed by monetization efforts are a relatively tech savvy, vocal minority.
>> it often seems that the rest of the players (the 99%, if you wish), have their experience hampered by constant dangling of offers in front of you.
I don't think that's really the case. Again, vocal minority.
But let's say it is. Speaking as a game developer now, we don't have to present the same experience to every player. A "cheap" player may be nearly a lost cause for direct monetization but valuable for word of mouth. If they're not buying we can actually scale back on the amount of ads presented and instead gently persuade them to, say, post their high scores on Twitter. If you're the type of player that likes to brag, then a prompt with a pre-filled Twitter post won't annoy you at all. It's not hard to figure out which player is which and it's not hard to adapt in-game marketing efforts to suit that player.
I can happily say that I've given up on free to play games. The vast majority of free to play games out there are fundamentally flawed. At their core they weren't designed to be fun to play, they were designed to milk the player of money, or pester them until they give in and pay or give up and quit.
Sure, there might be a few free to play games out there that break this mold, but I'm at a point in my life where money is expendable but time isn't. I'd much rather spend money up front to play a game that has a good chance at being designed for fun than waste time trying to find a diamond in the free to play rough.
I believe there will always be a place for paid games, but if the market shift towards free to play continues I'll have no problem giving up video games entirely. Will the 'AAA' free to play games like Hawken, Mech Warrior Online, or Planetside 2 be fun to play? Perhaps, but I'll never find out.
Well you're pretty obviously on the extreme end of the spectrum.
Personally I don't play many F2P games and am much more 'core than the center of the market as well. Probably 95% of my gaming time goes to console games and I prefer the biggest budget, most polished titles available (just finished my second character in Borderlands 2). And yes I pay for them up front (and have them delivered by messenger to my home the day they launch, which absolutely makes my day every couple of months).
But as someone trying to build a profitable games company it seems suicidal at this point to not at least attempt to make some form of F2P work with my other design goals. Does that mean I'm going to make shitty games? I don't plan on it. I can say that designing a compelling in-game economy (that can be monetized) is without a doubt the most challenging part of design for me.
You can do what Zynga has done and build games from their monetization outward, but I don't think that's the only way to do it. I hope to do a lot better and I'm sure other companies have or will as well. Don't forget that the F2P model that is now so reviled (by people like you) is relatively new (freemium is not of course) so I think it's a little premature to say that all F2P titles will suck, forever and ever.
I don't. I suspect the 'whales' aren't the 1% that Occupy Everything talk about (the richest 1%), but rather a mix of people who may be able to afford the addiction, but many that are not.
It's probably akin to dealing addictive drugs or promoting irresponsible gambling. It might be legal, but I think it's slightly predatory and on the grey side of ethics/morals/karma or whatever you like to think of as 'do good things, not bad' to others.
Do you similarly oppose all luxury brands? There's no quality difference between a $5000 LV handbag and a good $100 one exception fashion, trends and branding. Once you get past about €100/bottle, quality of wine making process rarely increases, it's all just hype.
If someone can sell a $1000 handbag, why can't I spend $100 on my super-duper legendary Diablo 3 item? It's all artificial scarcity. People who spend money any kind of luxury consumer goods rarely get quality. My mechanical watch is worse at telling time than a quartz watch 1/1000th the price. I don't go to Zürich with a tent because of that.
> There's no quality difference between a $5000 LV handbag and a good $100 one exception fashion, trends and branding
While I understand and perhaps agree with your larger point, I have to disagree with this claim. LV stuff is expensive, yes, but the product is very good quality, and comes with what is essentially a lifetime warranty.
Yes, LV is several times the price it "should" be. Problem is that everything else is also several times the price it "should" be. In the larger context, I don't really think LV is particularly bad value, or that the sale price/actual cost multiplier is that much different.
And there is simply no such thing as a good handbag for $100, for pretty much any definition of "good" (substitute briefcase if you are male). To sell at $100, the manufacturing cost of a handbag would have to be maybe $10 or $20 max - whatever you think about LV you cannot possibly claim they cost only $10 to make.
I don't want to sound like an asshole but the brands you mention are all "deep budget" brands and have no design credibility whatsoever. The idea of a professional woman bringing a Jansport bag to the office is totally unthinkable. They are not even remotely comparable to an LV handbag.
The link you quote is to a tote, which is suitable for perhaps taking stuff to the beach. You will not find any professional women coming to the office with this bag, unless it's filled with gym gear or something.
So you pay 10x more for design credibility, rather than something that actually affects the quality or utility of the item?
The idea of a professional woman bringing a Jansport bag to the office is totally unthinkable.
Again, you are comparing the items on intangible benefits which are clearly little more than an emotional feeling telling you that brand A is inherently better than brand B (regardless of the actual item in question).
Promoting an item that is 10x more expensive than another based solely on intangible properties like it has design credibility or it's from an in-fasion brand and that using anything else is simply unthinkable is no better than having me pay 10x more on a game than the average player does.
I, for one, find telling me that I have to buy a certain brand or design that's currently in fashion because not doing so would be unthinkable or I would lack some kind of credibility or the items just don't compare (even though the items actual tangible properties are not even discussed) as exploitative when these items cost so much more than the tangibly-comparable items.
It's not about the disparity between the price and the functional value. The value is subjective, anyway. Expensive jewelry communicates commitment, expensive handbags signal status, and a wine you paid more for tastes better to you. I may think it's foolish anyway, but I think throwing your money away foolishly is a God-given right.
As long as you're in your right mind.
It's when I start to think you're not in your right mind, or when the seller knows things about game theoretic implications of the arrangement that you don't understand (Penny Bids), that I take a dimmer view of things. And when there's compulsion or addiction, especially if it's introduced or reinforced by the seller, and the buyer doesn't really understand it . . .
Then it may not be illegal, but it's a dishonorable way to make your fortune.
You make a very good point, and I guess the distinction I can see is that freemium apps are marketed as free, with the hidden cost to someone susceptible occuring after the initial 'taste'. It's easily arguable that luxury brands tap into the same 'desire center' but at least they're upfront about the costs and people can vicariously enjoy the thought of attaining them without the freemium sleight of hand.
I think there's a significant difference between the F2P games by Zynga and what not, where you play very poorly compared to people who spend.
Vs typical arcade games, where it's just more fun and a bit easier. But you can still have tons of fun without buying IAP. You can typically spend a couple bucks and use those items forever.
In the first example - you have to keep spending as long as you keep playing.
This article has to be one of the most honest, rational, and clear eyed review of what it takes to be successful, long term (10+ years), as an independent game developer. While 4-6% of the talented game developers might be able to be successful playing the hit-game increasingly backloaded with more expensive collateral, the other 95%+ would be well advised to read Daniel Cook's article. And then read it again.
I only wish entrepreneurs doing any social/mobile/web app would read it. (I think the lesson, evaluating different sources of income, applies to more than games.)
The ones that think about how closed source software is evil should read it as well.
All forms of software development are fine, as long as the developers manage to have some form of sustained earnings from it, which is not so easy as many think.
pjmlp stated "All forms of software development are fine, as long as the developers manage to have some form of sustained earnings from it, which is not so easy as many think." .. in which, in context, he likely meant that those who are inclined to look askance at closed-source companies should realize that there is much sustained value to be derived from such activities. Our community tends to frown on people who advocate the Jim Gray[1] closed-source perspective, so pjmlp was naturally inclined to be defensive.
icebraining was simply taking issue with the portion that reads "All forms of software development are fine, as long as the developers manage to have some form of sustained earnings from it" which, if taken literally, suggests that extreme cases like software that kills kittens is morally good as long as someone makes a buck from it. I am pretty sure that pjmlp did not mean it in exactly this way.
My point is that open source software usually only works with types of solutions where you can build consulting services with, or force the clients to use some kind of software as service.
In many markets that require packaged software like the desktop, usually only closed source software offers a sustainable business.
In the end, if you are able to earn money with closed or open source software depends on the target market of your solution.
What I think you don't understand is that such considerations are irrelevant to someone who considers the distribution of closed source software to be wrong.
Let's change your argument:
Safe driving advocates should understand that safe driving only works with types of commuting paths are relatively short.
In many places where the commuting is rather long, usually only reckless driving offers a way to get to work.
In the end, if you are able to maintain a job by driving safely or recklessly depends on your commuting path.
Does this offer a valid argument for driving recklessly and putting other people in danger?
Of course, I know you find this ridiculous because you don't consider distributing closed source software to be wrong, therefore it's stupid to compare reckless driving to it. But if you're trying to appeal to the people who do find it wrong, that argument simply doesn't make sense.
Would you support slavery if I showed you that it's much more efficient than paying people?
It's not about being illogical. It's about attributing different values to different things. You may call it dogma if you want, but it's not different than any moral principle.
Maybe your morality is purely based on logic, and if so I'd be genuinely interested in knowing more about it. Or maybe you're amoral, I don't know. But most people have some core guidelines in which we base our decisions (and build logical moral codes upon) which can't be explained logically.
>Would you support slavery if I showed you that it's much more efficient than paying people?
No.
>It's not about being illogical. It's about attributing different values to different things.
No, it's about extremism. Dogma. Closed source is the ultimate evil and will destroy the world! It's not practical. Really, why would absolutely everything need to be open source? The percent of people who actually read the source or actually change something based on it being open source is line noise. Practically speaking, there's little difference in the freedom because it's not exercised in most cases. And in the cases it would be, access to the source code can be (and is, very often) bought.
Agree. its even more general than that. some revenue streams are finite, not perpetual. consfusing the two can be dangerous. musicians and sportsmen are two more examples.
The business model should fit the design of the game, not the other way around. If you try to force a freemium model into a traditional game, you cheapen the whole thing. The quality of your game design should be your selling point, not cheap in-game nags and enticements. It's like if Apple subsidized MacBooks with on-screen advertising. Sure, it could make a buck, but if your core vision is a quality product experience, this goes totally against that, and it defines your brand into something you may not have hoped for.
On the other hand, if your priority is to create a profitable entertainment product, and you'd like to capitalize on the enticement of a well-designed in-game purchasing system, then you should go all the way. If it's to succeed financially, the purchasing aspect of the game has to be the core in which all major design decisions are measured against. If you want to switch to a traditional single-sale system, you have to alter the game design in extreme ways.
Business models are not interchangeable within games, because a freemium system is inextricably tied to the game design.
As someone who hopes to see more games that are made first as a game, and second as a product, I'd like to say that a quality-first focus can carry your game to success, if you have the ability to execute. As long as you don't overextend yourself, like the blog post stated, you should be able to continue making hits if you can maintain quality in design and execution.
I checked out Triple Town, curious what sort of game someone looking for both strong ties with players and recurring revenue would produce. What I found was a game with a single $4 purchase that unlocked everything. That definitely suits me as a player, but I don't see how it constitutes recurring revenue. It looks and feels like an option to just buy the game. If it turns out not to be, I'll feel betrayed.
Am I misunderstanding the model here? Is the 'recurring' aspect supposed to be from players as a group--a certain percent converting on a monthly basis, without publicity events? Is what clearly looks like a 'purchase game' to me not intended as such? Will I sit down to play some evening only to find a warped experience that's grindy and lame without an infusion of coins? Or is all this talk of free to play really about fully functional trials--asking me for $4 after I'm sure I like the game rather than $1 on a hope? (Something which seems sensible, but I don't see how it would help with a boom/bust cycle.)
Yep, it's for unlimited/unrestricted play ... so in this case it's a trial. But a community has in fact grown around this game, and in the future they could enhance it for additional IAP funds, sort of like the dagobah IAP in angry birds starwars. I don't know if they're actually planning to do this particular thing, but he even says that he wants his games to be ongoing services that evolve and improve over time.
Tiny nitpick; I think his characterisation of Minecraft is missing the cult aspect:
> (And before you say 'Minecraft', let's give it another decade. :-).
And immediately after:
> Imagine free-to-play games as practiced by a private company that makes games with long term retention for passionate players in a tightly knit community.
Now simply snip the very first part of the first sentence:
> > Imagine <snip> a private company that makes games with long term retention for passionate players in a tightly knit community.
Not really. Mojang could and should do a lot more to leverage Minecraft. I get the impression that Notch unexpectedly wound up with a huge infusion of cash and didn't know what to do with it besides hire a few friends and make an MMO based on programming microchips, complete with its own assembly language.
The amount of torture they put the Minecraft Coder Pack guys through is atrocious. There is no reason why MC should not be "source available" with some creative licensing and host a Steam Workshop-esque mod management center, play Valve and take a cut of each purchase.
All the community has to go on is the Twitter accounts of Mojang's employees and /r/minecraft. Minecraft is awesome, but it's painful to think of the potential that's wasted there.
As a involved member of the Minecraft community. I can tell you that there is work being done on a Minecraft API, but I have no clue on a ETA. Also, I don't think they really have any plans on how to monetize things.
I believe he's talking about individual games having long term retention for passionate players.
Mojang has that with the "old model" of creating multiple titles for its community. He's predicting that Minecraft won't be played in a few years, and there's a good chance that their next games won't be as big of hits, therefore it their playing the 'game' of trying to create hits.
A decade is really tough. Something like WoW has massive resources dedicated to it to continue rolling out content and is probably the best example of longevity in a popular title. It will hit the decade mark in about 2 years time and while they certainly would have had some players who have been with them the whole time the churn over time would be massive.
Wonder what the best example of longevity in a game that doesn't have an element of near constant play required to have the full experience would be?
AFAIK Starcraft and Quake 3 are over decade old and still played. I assume that this days their player base is far smaller than in early days, but they still have tournaments. However they probably did not bring a lot of money for producer in later years because everyone who wanted them already bought them. Quake live if pivot to free to play model but I have no info about its profits.
Let's have a look at the immoral gameplay checklist:
Timed energy: Check
Triple Town is free to play forever. Eventually, you will run out of moves, but they replenish for free if you wait a while, and you can also buy more moves with free coins that you earn in-game.
Incentivized ads in-game: Check (wrong for both the player and the advertiser)
Update: we've added a 2-minute mode that you can play free, forever, as much as you want, by watching advertisements in between play sessions.
This is the real price of the game:
If you want to eliminate the move counter altogether, there is a one-time fee for lifetime unlimited moves.
Sorry to be blunt, but make a game with real value - not a casual puzzle game with a limited move energy - and the players will buy it.
For some nice mobile packaged games see Avernum and Avadon, Silversword, Mission Europa or The World Ends With You and Ghost Trick.
"Sorry to be blunt, but make a game with real value - not a casual puzzle game with a limited move energy..."
Have you played Triple Town? You can argue about the ethics of how the developer is making money, but the gameplay is ridiculously solid. Casual or not, it's a genuinely good, original game with a reasonable amount of depth to it.
> For some nice mobile packaged games see Avernum and Avadon, Silversword, Mission Europa or The World Ends With You and Ghost Trick.
I can't believe Avernum is still around. I remember my friend playing it on his Mac when we were kids. And I heartily second your recommendation of The World Ends With You. Great game.
The last two games you mentioned are from powerhouse studios, Square and Capcom, and were not likely to be profitable or popular in of themselves as Premium priced iOS games.
His points are well taken, but as I player I refuse to participate in this business model. On the other, I would buy this game for more than one dollar, because it looks like it's worth more than that. Too bad.
My objection to this model is that the way it's usually implemented means that I can circumvent any challenge in the game by spending more money. This completely upends the effort/reward equation for the game and makes me feel like I'm just a monkey playing a slot machine.
It really hinges on whether the game is a discrete artwork, kind of like a book or a movie, noone wants to have to pay to see the ending(pay $10 to defeat the boss), or whether it is a developing story and the Pay to play choices are analogous to something which makes sense, i.e. pay your taxes or else you become an enemy of Captain Hector.
I agree, and remove these sorts of games from my son's devices. We try and steer clear of them in the first place, but its not always obvious.
Hayday was the last one, and I carefully explained the extortionate business model before doing it. I enjoyed and appreciate Hayday but t'aint no way I'm going to get either of us into that open-ended financial sink.
I don't work in the mobile-games space myself, but it feels to me like the real problem here is the massive collapse in accepted prices that market has seen.
If people were willing to spend $10 on mobile games -- which is still 80% less than what AAA titles on console and PC cost! -- the "hit-driven" model he describes would be much more tenable. But when everything has to cost 99 cents there's just no way for anything other than a truly massive, once-in-a-lifetime hit to be worth it financially.
Blame Rovio, Tiny Wings and Whoever makes Wheres My Water etc.
They had hit games, made sequels and therefore had the power to push the market value back up again (even by some small increments) but instead they chose to sell for the smallest amount Apple allows again.
No publisher singlehandedly has the power to push prices up.
If they raise the prices, they'll sell fewer copies. Given that the number of downloads is the primary way to get exposure on the app store, free games have an edge over paid games, and cheap games have an edge over expensive games.
It's my belief that you'll sell more than 4x the copies at $1 than $4. This higher revenue coupled with the increased chance of exposure in the app store makes it a no-brainer.
I find this discussion very interesting. I have been working on a series of educational apps (game-ish) for children, mostly for iOS now. I can't bring myself to place ads on these apps or otherwise monetize other than simply selling them for a fixed price. One approach I have taken is to have some of the apps available for free while the others are not. The theory being that the free apps might drive customers towards the paid apps. Too early to tell if this is a good strategy.
In reading this my concern is almost exactly that of the author. I am interested in creating reasonable long-term revenue sources. They don't have to be hits, all they need to do is trickle in a reasonable level of income per month at a reasonably consistent rate. I'd be interested in hearing from others who have done this and their opinions on the best approaches to making this happen.
This dev is 100% right. Games as a service are probably a more sustainable way to go than a $1 sale and you're done. Most great businesses survive on repeat business - Apple customers tend to buy multiple iphones, ipods, ipads, and macs. Microsoft customers tend to buy multiple PCs or copies of Windows and Office. Google customers tend to keep buying ads and users tend to keep clicking them.
A single sale, whether its $1 or $50 means you have to keep making new things to make more sales, vs. a service where you get paid in microtransactions or subscriptions or both allows you to keep selling to existing customers. The LTV is probably higher per customer and it's cheaper because you don't have to keep advertising or advertise as much to get the next sale from an existing customer.
Too bad he only mentions Minecraft in passing, because in some ways I think it tries to learn from the same problems: It tries to stay fresh to be able to attract new buyers, and it's so open-ended that it has a lot of replay value. So it still sells quite handily (the speed seems to have slowed down somewhat, but a few days ago, it was announced that they had sold 8 million copies for PC - and that doesn't count the millions of XBox 360 copies at all).
Yet it is quite different: It costs money once, and you get updates for free - and there's no in-game market of any sort, whereas the OP wants no money upfront and tries to get people to buy in-game stuff.
But he DOES mention Minecraft, by saying to see what it's like in a decade. Now, if there were 10 examples like Minecraft, then I don't think he could dismiss it so freely. But with a single exception... it is reasonable to consider it an outlier.
So... what's the business model? Do his games have ads in them? Upsells? Something else? "Free-to-play" doesn't sound like a compelling long-term standalone strategy, given my (non-gamer) assumptions about that term.
On Android, at least, it's free to download and play, with limited turns. You can buy unlimited turns in-app for a one-time payment of $3.99, which also unlocks more maps. Additionally, there are various enhancements and powerups you can buy for coins, which you can either purchase directly in-app or complete various offers to get for "free". I believe the game also rewards you coins for doing well.
Personally, I am turned off by games where your experience and success is influenced by how much real-world money you are willing to spend. Naturally, there are people for whom this is not an issue, and I'm sure it's extremely lucrative to target them. But I want to believe that there is room in the indy gaming market for both approaches.
There are really two types of F2P models (possibly more). One where by paying you can actually unlock things that affects game play. For example, League of Legends. You can pay to unlock champions and that obviously affects your gameplay. Or, Eagles in Angry bird. You can use an Eagle to get over a difficult level.
There there is - TF2 and Dota2, F2P model. Where you pay to buy cosmetic items, but it does not affect game play one bit.
I would say a 3rd type are games like Dead Trigger and most of the "-Ville" type clones.
In those games, you can play without spending real money, but it's going to suck and not be as fun. These are the types of games that have the most backlash because they just seem so "greedy".
In games like League of Legends and Angry Birds, you don't need to spend money to get the real game experience. You can still play just fine as a free player and spending money seems more like a bonus instead of a necessity.
I would add another one with builder types of games. You can go about the game very slowly without IAP, or have fun and build things quite rapidly with IAP. Triple Town falls in this category. IAP becomes a continuous purchase.
In contrast to arcade games like Mega Jump, Jetpack Joyride and others. Where you can do pretty well with a couple IAPs that will last throughout majority of your time playing.
Interesting question. According to this site: http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Sales between 1993-1999 Doom and Doom II sold a combined 4 million units (gross over $120 million worldwide). Not sure what they made from licensing.
At some level you have an average revenue per user.
If you charge up front some reasonable multiplier of the net present value of that average revenue per user, what is the difference if it's spread out over 10 years or immediate?
I guess my point with that is that as a user, I see free to play in general as being somewhat duplicitous. If it has a price tag on it, I can buy it or not. Even DLC, bad as it may be, has that sort of thing going on. But 'free to play' really means 'I won't tell you how much this will cost you up front'.
The bottom line is that your game has to be really good to make money, because there are so many games out there and many people want to make games, going so far as to spend large amounts of their free time doing it.
Competing with 'free labor' is hard to do. There's no silver bullet, and no business model magic will change that.
It's the same as being a rock star musician, or a professional athlete.
There is a lecture about Triple Town's monetization model that is available online, where they discuss what they did wrong with Triple Town and what they learned from it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH0-9url3KY
Everything he says is spot-on, but what's unfortunate is I'm not sure how applicable it is to Triple Town.
I adore Triple Town. It's the perfect combination of casual "pick up and play"-ness with meaningful and deep gameplay, layered with a fantastic visual aesthetic on top. It's one of the only F2P games I've happily spent real money on.
That being said, it doesn't strike me as an evergreen, "I want people to be active players for ten years" game. Its match-3 mechanic is fantastic, but once you get tired of it you stop playing. When it first came out a lot of my friends were spending hours a day on it for a solid week or two, but I don't know a single person who didn't essentially lose interest and completely give it up within a month.
Spry Fox is clearly trying to combat this fatigue by adding in new gameplay modes, but anecdotally that hasn't done anything to overcome the fundamental problem of people getting tired of the core mechanic. It's still a great game, and I still recommend it zealously to friends asking for iOS game recommendations, but I find it hard to believe that it'll be able to accumulate and sustain a highly-engaged userbase in the long term.
I was interested he didn’t point out that having a hit free game != having a hit paid game and the conversion rate form free players to paid is like catastrophically small. additionally free games spread via word of mouth way more virulently because they are free, everyone can try. to spread a paid game you need EACH damn person to pay for it, the word of mouth won't even spread as far.
I think anyone who even thinks a 1% conversion rate of fans is insane based on no data.
Based on data I'd bet its much much less than 1%.
Which is why most paid games have to drop a metric fuck ton of $ on advertising.
Building sized 10 storey starcraft 2 poster ads aren't free nor are super bowl tv slots for WoW ads.
Same for books and media which is how we then end up in the publisher model system. Publishers front a ludicrous amount of money and pump ass loads into advertising to get the word out. That replaces all the free word of mouth and at least the idea of the game reaches a more optimal maximal audience. Still small conversion but yeah.
How is "free to play" design anything other than a lottery ticket of another kind? Sure, if you get a free-to-play hit, it's likely easier to quit your day job while resisting the siren call of "grow the company". (because the revenue doesn't all show up at once)
But what are the odds of having a free-to-play hit? What are the odds of keeping it going? Are they even as high as the odds of having a traditional game hit so big that its revenues could support a developer for several years?
(if one judiciously sat on the up-front revenue and refused to grow the company)
And by using the broad term "free to play" he's casually conflating the worst of in-app practices ("pay to win", "pay for moves") with the defensible corners that just graft on-going revenue onto largely packaged games ("pay for digital hats", ad-supported gaming).
I've never played Triple Town. I don't know where it falls on the spectrum of "digital hats aren't hurting anyone" to "nice skinner box you've got there". But it seems to me these are very different things and the sins of the latter can't be excused by allusions to the harmlessness of the former.
And beyond all that:
The hit-driven nature of game development is no different than in any other medium where people try to create for a living. "One Hit Wonders" are the vast majority of writers, musicians, artists, moviemakers -- even toymakers. Are all those industries "anti-creator" too?
And while free-to-play may not be anti-creator, it incentivizes the worst aspects of creation: stagnation, repetition, pandering, conditioning, etc. And while maybe that makes it easier to run a business, it looks anti-art to me.
Which is to say: in saying it enables developers to provide a lifestyle hobby for their players, it looks more to me like it's going to kill the hobby for everyone.
You can make a good living off of fixed price games - micro-transactions have only become popular in the past 5 years or so (at least in the US). The game industry was very profitable long before micro-transactions. Does not matter if you are doing mobile, PC, etc. You probably will not make as much money, but you at least can feel guilt-free about your work (if micro-transactions do make you feel guilty). Many fixed-price games have made millions of dollars on mobile (for games that cost a few hundred thousand to produce, at most).
All that said, I am not against micro-transactions. I am against them when there is no other reasonable way to play the game though, or they are psychologically manipulative. I have probably spent a few hundred dollars on micro-transactions, and the experience left me feeling empty (not unlike a washed up drug addict)...which is why I refuse to buy any more games that use this method in an exploitive manner.
On a wholly irrelevant side note, Daniel Cook looks like my identical twin. I didn't make the connection with Triple Town and got a nasty fright when I clicked on the link.
I'm surprised Guild Wars (especially 2) hasn't been brought up. I don't know about a game like Triple Town, but ArenaNet's sort of hybrid model seems promising: up front fee for a great, complete game, and more opportunities with the "coin model" (gems). They also have e-sports going for them, which is one of many things that encourages the long term relationship that Daniel mentions.
Most of the games I make are free to play and have a resource that can be earned as well as paid for. This allows the player to buy time. Time that would have been spent earning the resource. So, if you are a patient player you can play free with ads, if not, buy some of the resource, and I'll remove the ads. This model has worked very well.
Well, I wanted to try Triple Town, but on facebook I see this: "This app may post on my behalf, including your high scores and more." Sorry, that's not something I'm willing to "pay".
And people said developers would not make money on OUYA since it only allows the free-to-play model, when in fact these type of games have been topping the charts in grossing income for a while.
So I totally hear his rationale from a game developer's point of view, I really do. But though I'm a developer, I'm also a customer, and I just can't swallow the coin model for games.
I've played Triple Town and thought it was pretty cute, and yes, I'd probably pay 99c for it, maybe even up to $2.99. But I'm not signing up to a lifetime of paying coins to continue playing it long term.
One fundamental issue is that by design, coin based games are going to be 'gamed' to encourage the use of coins, and fundamentally I don't want to participate in a game dynamic where I'm paying for game experimentation with real dollars. It is like me playing a game of chess and having the constant option to drop $20 to buy another queen. Sure it isn't absolutely necessary to win, but it sure helps. Having that dynamic in games just turns me off.
Now I understand the problem of running a sustainable business all too well, having had my own game company go under, but I don't believe this is the solution. I'm not sure what the right one is, and on that front I applaud them for experimenting, but as a customer I personally reject it.