Jimquisition: Monetizing Whales For The Retention Of Virality

senordesol

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Strazdas said:
When there was a "featured article" about GDC panelists i just wanted to leave a comment of "i learned this year that peopel speaking at GDC are morons", but i thought that was being unfair as i only saw it from perspective of escapist articles. However now looking closer it seems that its more like escapist picked only the good ones and really was far worse. I knew GDC is basically a circlejerk for developers but this is a new low.

senordesol said:
TheHeinousAnus said:
Since when did making a fun game stop being the best marketing tactic?
Since Candy Crush started make $1.5M dollars a day.
The problem is Candy Crush is actually fun (that is, when it does not crash on perfect score BEFORE it remmebers it so you have to try again). I actually played it before the whole king fiasco that made me delete it sicne i dont support shitty companies.

And any microtransactinos in that game is actually optional. i done completely fine without paying a cent actually.
It's fun, sure. But you look me in the eye and tell me it's #1 on the Top Grossing charts for more than a year fun.
 

Strazdas

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senordesol said:
It's fun, sure. But you look me in the eye and tell me it's #1 on the Top Grossing charts for more than a year fun.
Is it? From what charts i saw its around 3-4 in position. Thought, its absolutely not something i would even put into top ten of from mobile games, so yeah its not that good. apperently pleny of people disagree with us, but then again there were people that played flappy bird....
 

VladG

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xEightBitPlayerx said:
Anything free to play I don't even bother with anymore. It just freaks me out that this micro transaction garbage has made its way into the paid market.
Not all free2play is bad. At least in the PC space. In fact there are some excellent examples out there, like Path of Exile, that offers ALL content for free and sells a bunch of purely cosmetic stuff. It's a good game too.

Dota2, League of Legends, Epic Quest for Mighty Loot (which I appreciate all the more since it experimented with a really shitty f2p model a while back but reverted to a pretty good model) just to name a few of the more popular titles.
 

IndieGinge

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Hey Jim? While I'd like to hope that nobody who's not trying to justify their own bad behavior would disagree with your video, I'd also like to hope you aren't bigoted against us skinny-jeans wearing latte-chuggers. There certainly are a few horrible douchenozzles that down delicious lattes and wear tight-fitting pants, but a lot of us are NOT a bunch of greedy fucksticks who've earned a slap to the face with a dragon dildo through their greed inspired dickery. Rather entertaining video all the same, thanks for all the contributions!
 

themilo504

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senordesol said:
Demonchaser27 said:
senordesol said:
FoolKiller said:
themilo504 said:
Your panel on how to reduce backlash was way too long, this is my panel: Don?t be a greedy twat and make good games.
Even your panel is redundant. "Make good games" should cover it. The money will come. Maybe not as much as soon, but it will have a long-term positive effect.
'Not as much as soon' sounds a lot like a 'day late and a dollar short' to a lot of people (particularly bill collectors). It'd be super nice if we lived in a just world where titles with artistic integrity were the chart toppers, unfortunately for those of us who've got rent to pay; that's not always the case.
See that's the problem with this industry and most for that matter though. "Chart Toppers" isn't necessary to "pay the bills" as you say. Everybody wants to be number 1. Jesus. **** number 1. When did people stop caring about doing things for the art and love of it. Musicians don't make millions always and they get by happy and fine mostly. Artists certainly aren't "chart toppers" as most of their work doesn't sell for millions until their dead.

Videogames devs want to be artist but don't treat it as such. What did they expect?
Well, when you face the dilemma of 'artistic integrity' and 'unemployment line'; some tough calls gotta be made.

Yes, not everyone is going to be or *can* be a chart topper; but when you look at the chart toppers they tell you one very important thing: What your customers are buying. Now, you *can* take that information, take a risk and do something no one was expecting. Maybe it works out for you, or maybe mommy has to be the bread winner for a while. So you can do that, *or* you can learn from and emulate the best and put out a product that brings food to your table.

The whole 'starving artist' chic really loses its lustre when you are, indeed, starving. The artistically uncompromising (i.e.: 'expensive') games just don't tend to bubble to the top in certain markets. So that tells us that isn't what people are looking for, so how can you expect the industry to do anything other than provide what their audience has proven they want to pay for?
Games copying other games fail just as often if not more than risky new projects, consumers have no reason to buy a game that?s similar to a chart toping game because guess what most of them already own that game.
 

Spankable

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I've been a gamer for more than 25 years, I'm enjoying the return to independent games, based on a good idea & a small passionate person or small group. The fact many are free to play to bring in a wide audience is no bad thing IMHO. But I do understand they often need to raise money & to make them purely free would cut numbers, quality & is just unfair.


I wouldn't blame a 3 person team who wished to turn there hobby into full time gig, be able to go to conferences, pay to fill in there skill gaps, ect & maybe use it to make a mortgage payment or 2.

Management speak is like Morris dancing, a sign of a evil heart. but spreading ways to allow start ups & independents to get there games to the most players while still covering there nut is no bad thing.

Getting people to fork out there cask is generally & naturally a negative experinace, the fact they are trying to "reduce back lash" means they are trying to make make it better.

Lets face it the big boys know how to do this if only in a bad way, the fact the smaller guys are talking about it & recognizing the problems isn't inherently bad.

f2p & independents need monetization, talk & learning from mistakes seems like a good solution for gamers long term

P.S. Travian would consider me a bit of a whale
 

Antsh

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Weaver said:
The co-optional podcast last week was great! So much fun has come out of it :D
It's a shame you and TB didn't let Jesse talk that much though lol.
Happens a lot when they're discussing topics that others aren't that well versed or opinionated on.

Like when Japan comes up, Jesse is all over that. Or Dodger and Love Sims lol

And USB drives are great for those times when your bowels are feeling unretentive.
 

gamegod25

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Makes me want to create my own panel at GDC and schedule it to run right after one of those that was mentioned. It would be called "How best to crash an industry as quickly and catastrophically as possible" and I would simply walk onto stage, motion over to the asshats who just walked off and say "What they just said." and then leave.

If this really is how cynical, greedy, and blatantly uncaring for their customers the industry has become, then fuck, a crash is not only possible it's simply a matter of time. When there is a panel specifically focused on how to lessen backlash for bullshit decisions, and the solution is not "...then don't fucking do it" like Jim said, then this is the beginning of the end.
 

Pebkio

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Nov 9, 2009
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The problem is that as soon as the term "whale" was described to me I could think of one person I know personally who is just like that... and was immediately disappointed in my friend. Listen, committees are soulless money-fueled monsters. It's like trying to blame the Borg for being the Borg.

My indignation is with the people who actually fuel the stereotypes of which they base their systems.

But ALSO, at the same time, without those people I wouldn't be able to enjoy F2P games whilst not spending a dime.
 

Dreiko_v1legacy

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I kinda wish Jim would go and like, just rant at people. Maybe form a posse and raid these panels with SR4 dildo bats and throw tomato sauce jars at people.
 

mindfaQ

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That ending was gold.
Make players happy and the game more valuable/great/enjoyable for them should be the prime target for game development. That doesn't mean you have to make everyone happy though, since you can't, but you should make the people happy that are interested in the theme/genre/whatever of your game, wether it is silly fun, horror stuff or intellectually challenging.

I don't think F2P is bad per se and surely not every panel about that was bad. It's not bad when people share their thoughts about the "do"s or "don't"s in that area. Sad enough though a lot of people don't really seem to know what's good and what's for F2P games. They just see short term profit and try to milk off some gamers as long as it works, just to leave them drained.
There are people that do it right, but they are the minority and that's what makes me a bit sad, personally. But only a little, as I have the choice to avoid crappy F2P models and are happy with the good F2P examples (namely Dota 2).
 

WarpZone

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Jimothy Sterling said:
Monetizing Whales For The Retention Of Virality

AKA how to sound like a complete and total dickhead.

Watch Video
God I want to believe it's possible for non-dickheads to make money. The real problem is all the "top grossing" games are the bullshitiest ones, and they remain at the top of the charts forever. Is this just an artifact of the way "top grossing" gets calculated? Is there a silent "of all time" tacked onto the end there? Would a "top grossing of this month only" chart reveal that the entire player base churned out of Candy Crush Saga months ago? Or are idiots, whales and accidental purchases really the driving force behind the entire mobile market like these cynical fucks say they are?

Why the hell are people still paying? Or why AREN'T non-whales paying!?

I've had a theory for a while now that this whole "whales" thing is a side-effect of the recession-- regular folks won't buy a video game for 5 bucks, so the people who are willing to drop 500 on micro-transactions are suddenly the only game in town. That theory doesn't fit with the loose data we have, though. The numbers I've seen say something like 10%-20% of revenue comes from whales, the rest comes from casual gamers who only ever buy a handful of items.

Seriously, what the fuck is going on? None of this makes any sense to me. Is the whole industry literally just built from the ground up on tricking people into making purchases they're not satisfied with?

PLEASE give us some examples of companies that are doing it right (without going broke.)
 

Powerman88

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First off thanks Jim incredibly entertaining episode as always!

Although the practices are terrible and I mostly agree with everything you said, the f2p cubicle androids don't really scare or bother me because they don't affect me all that much. Don't get me wrong after Sim City I will never buy an EA product ever again (and I had been buying EA products since the early 90's I still have Genesis carts with the yellow tab on them), and it bother me that they made that shit DK mobile game instead of a proper PC title. With all that f2p mobile stuff though I just play and buy what I want and ignore what I don't.

Titles like Dota 2 and Hearthstone have given me an awful lot of high quality and polished fun for very little investment. I have felt compelled to spend a little money on both just because of the amount of time I have spent with both, but they are 2 examples of what I would think f2p done right is. Titles like Dungeon Keeper just sail by me and don't affect my enjoyment of the fun games that are out there.

I would argue that the reason cash grab mobile f2p's exist is because of the "whales". The people who are spending that kind of money on those kinds of products are what keep the "soulless androids" using terms like monetizing synergies in virality paradigms whales.

In any industry there will always be companies that get it and grow to the top and companies that will be stagnant for years. There will always be the Valve's who just grow and dominate and there will always be the EA's who remain stagnant.
 

Joos

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Ah, the level of unbridled fury is surely fun to watch. But having it released like this is GLORIOUS!

Also, deftotes agree with everything said.
 

Colt47

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geier said:
Completly disagree with you there Jim.
Using terms/jargon in a business talk has nothing to do with dehumanisation, nothing. You are overreacting and i think you now this. Getting pissed off because of someone using a term like whale is like getting pissed off because someone used the therm FPS for Fallout 3, because FO3 is not a FPS but a roleplaying game with a new way of combining gunplay and turn based combat in wich you are able to choose between first and third person view.

There are not enough hours in the day to hold a business talk without certain terms and or jargon. What would you recomend for a substitute for whale? Bigspenders? Idiots with to much money in their wallets?

And if you haven't realised yet, the game industry is just that: An industry. And in every industry you need some white collar/business types who are responsible for the money/marketing.

And by the way: Complaining about the industry making money is more then a little hypocritically from you. Where do you get your money from? Not directly from the publisher/developer i know, but from the industry. You are, if you like it or not, a part from this industry. Just like the sleezy suit and the hungry underpaid indy studio.

Also: What is so bad with a panel to tell developers how to reduce backlash? Do you remember Mass effect 3 and the reaction of the gamers to the ending? Not all reactions from the customers are justified. You yourself brought up the question of customer/gamer entitlement.

No doubt, there are many companys who's business practices are shady at best, but dismissing the whole idea of bringing some professionalism into game development is just wrong and a bit juvenile.

I'm sorry for my bad english, as you maybe guessed it is not my primary language. So i could not argue and express myself as good and refined as i wanted.

And yes my dear jim + forum users, i myself have a background in businessmanagement.
So this somehow made it a good idea to use a title to a presentation that was almost guaranteed to give bad press from the get go? My statement still stands that whoever came up with the title of the presentation was either negligent at best, or at worst losing sight of what a business exists for. They are using a term that casinos use to describe a patron who gambles rashly for high stakes and framing it in such a way as to make it sound like the presentation is about exploiting these people for profit. Taken in the context of the F2P market, that includes compulsive spenders forced to part with their money due to behavior issues. Hope that clears things up for you.
 

senordesol

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grimner said:
senordesol said:
Thank you for the clarification. In short, and what I take from it is that there was theoretically a viable and profitable game in Idle Worship, but you failed to strike a perfect balance within its monetization mechanics, as well as too much time spent in production. That is unfortunate, especially in the context that you did try to come up with a good product, only to have it fail for many of the reasons that actually made it good value for money. Which, again theoretically, doesn't mean a good balance can't be found.

Ultimately, though, the whole topic of the GDC pannels strikes me as a lot of busines practices that developers and content creators can justify within the context of that industry, but sound (not without good reason) abhorrent to the consumer. A good deal of the problem also seems to be that those few companies that do milk the living hell out of its clientele and push the most obnixious business practices are also the ones with money to spend, and have such a stranglehold in the market that smaller companies end up having little choice but to play by those rules. Again, while I can sympathise and empathise and definitely understand where you're coming from and why you argue passionately about it, and not wanting to paint F2P with too wide a brush here, that situation doesn't make those prectices right.

My main objections are two-fold. First, I personally already vote with my wallet, and have little to no interest in f2p games, and even if I did, the exploitative techniques in practice by so many of them are enough to turn me off to the whole model. And I agree, adults should be conscious of the way they spend their money. However, a good deal of these practices are indeed being aimed at kids and teens who lack the same kind of judgement and who can and will find a way to circumvent supervision despite a parent's best efforts. Especially when companies devote so much time not in making the experience better, but keeping people hooked. And this goes to adults as well, the moment companies focus more in how to keep you "engaged" than they do in keeping you entertained. And that, apart from not being particularly sustainable in medium to long terms, does actually raise some ethical qualms about the pertinence of the existence of f2p games in its currently dominating form. And those qualms can't quite be brushed off by saying "everyone does it and I need to do it to survive".

Secondly, the issue *does* begin to affect me directly as a consumer of games when those practices begin to invade those games I would normally consume. It's one thing to have a game being sold free and then encourage you to pay for your enjoyment, and I'm not questioning the legitimacy of that, just the way most of it is done. But when already bought and paid for games like Ryse, Forza, Dead Space, off the top of my head, all come up with ways to make you pay for a game and then keep paying for the game you played (and subtly or unsubtly altering game design to nudge you in the direction of said microtransactions), then you have the beginnings of a problem. How long since, say, someone at Namco/Bandai decides "you know what? Farming is such an integral part of the Dark souls experience, lets start selling Titanite packs at 1.99"? How long until prepaid games begin to include the same kind of practices, fueled by the same kinds of seminars on how to implement them for maximum monetary game at the consumers enjoyment, and on how to deal with the possible backlash of decisions that negatively affect game design? I will still vote with my wallet should those days come in earnest, but at the same time I can also lament the industry falling prey to such tactics.

Again, and in a TL;DR, and keeping in mind that Jim is indeed given to Hyperbole (and I'm not gonna try and speak for him, he's enough of a loudmoth without anyone's help, and bless him for that), We're ultimately arguing from very different starting points. I readily concede that not all f2p is the devil and his workers minions of hell, and that ultimately, it is hard for smaller studios to compete while staying clear of the more objectionable business models implemented by the market leaders, even if you don't really advocate them. Similarly, I understand the need to survive in the business, and that ultimately, it is the livelihood of many which is at stake. The flipside is that we as consumers have a right to frown upon business practices who seemingly view us as "marks" or cash cows, and speak out against those practices, not only for the utter disrespect they show for the consumer, but for the adoption of practices that are, IMO, detrimental to all involved in the long run.

Edit: After reading Wraithfighter's post and response, I'm open to the possibility of those conferences titles being more demonic in paper than what they really were. Which still does imply a bit of a communication problem where public perception is concerned, and does not take away from the fact that those practices do exist.
You said nothing that was untrue. However, I am saddened that you're willing to turn your back on an entire entertainment vector because of the actions of a few high-profile jerks. Saddened, but not surprised and -ultimately- not unsympathetic.

The unfortunate thing about M/F2P is that it's such an untested field that it's a bit like the Wild West right now. I wouldn't argue that it's unsustainable, but it certainly needs to be 'civilized' before it is. Thankfully, the big assholes don't tend to do that well anyway. That Dungeon Keeper game Jim hates? Didn't hit above TG74 on its BEST day (TG210 today).

The fact is that some of the tried-and-tested rules of Game Design go out the window in M/F2P. The stuff I learned in college and as a modder flew out the window on my first day so -despite some teachable moments in the similar standalone industry- this is an infant field and, as you'll recall, videogames had some rough time in infancy as well.

Just remember that context is everything and dismissing an entire industry just because of some business practices you don't like or aren't used to really isn't fair to the many talented people who are trying to create compelling products but are trying to earn money at the same time. The fact is: we HAVE to understand how to retain and monetize people. If we make a quality game that can be finished in a day: we're screwed. If we make a quality game that doesn't pay for itself: we're screwed. It's simply not enough to 'make it good' and let the rest take care of itself.

However, I hate to leave this on a down note; so I'd like to recommend some M/F2Ps that I like (none of them are from the company I work for, so there's no agenda here).

Asphalt 8, Boom Beach (Canadian App Store only), Hellfire, Brave Frontier, Pocket Mine, OMG: TD, Big Win Basketball (or any Big Win sports game), Deer Hunter 2014, Dead Ahead, Temple Run 2, Zombie Gunship, and Sheep Happens.