Jimquisition: Monetizing Whales For The Retention Of Virality

GonzoGamer

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Best panel ever.
And very forward thinking of you to offer to put it on a flash drive for anal retention.
 

C14N

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"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's razor

Okay, I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt here and assume that some of these guys need a talk on "how to reduce backlash" because they literally don't know what makes people angry and in fairness, sometimes it's hard to predict what will cause outrage. When I finished Mass Effect 3 I had no idea that people were going to lose their shit over the ending. That said, there are some things like always-online single player and micro-transactions that inevitably cause backlash and they should have figured this out by now.
 

senordesol

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WarpZone said:
senordesol said:
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.
Let's say I want to believe you. The biggest assholes in the room are *not* making much money right now, even though they were copying the *second biggest* assholes in the room and turning their cruelty-based progression gameplay models up to 11.

What does that imply? What practices can a company like yours employ that allow it to make money without being a scum-sucking parasite grinding up and spitting out hapless consumers for the sake of temporary short-term gains?

What are we talking about? Make a game that's actually fun? Only charge money for things that people will actually appreciate having purchased? I'm not asking for trade secrets, just give me a vague overview. How little evil are we "allowed" to put into our games and still have them be profitable on Mobile?

That's where the discussion needs to be right now. Everyone needs to be talking about that. Coming up with ideas, vetting them, postmorteming them, refining them. If you seriously value your industry and want it to become in any way respectable, start adding to that conversation.

How do we fucking do BETTER? Give us a goddamned counterexample.

And I mean from the mobile sector. Dark Souls and the like aren't what the conversation is about, here.
I'll humor you, but before we continue on; let's disabuse you of some notions and assumptions.

With regard to your 'second biggest assholes' crack: I'm not sure you actually know who the industry leaders are. King did indeed get sue-happy in recent days, but the industry leaders right now (not counting casino games) are King, SuperCell, MachineZone, Gree, Mobage, and -occasionally- Kabam. While some of their titles are derivative; their models don't tend to be abusive. In fact, SuperCell (With TG1 and TG4 titles at the moment) tends to be very good about shelling generous amounts of P$ just for playing.

So 'how does one monetize in a customer friendly fashion' is what I think is what you're trying to get at. Well, I actually have a few answers.

1. Avoid the Chinese model in Western markets like the plague. The Chinese are all about digging 'pits' where they expect players to pay to become #1. That's a big taboo in Western Cultures (and kinda shitty in general).

2. Never make a player's play time feel useless or delegated to maintenance of the status quo. When you look at Zynga's various 'Ville' games; you'd often have to log on just so your damn strawberries didn't rot. That's an abusive retention tactic and one that ultimately backfires when a heavily time-invested player grows weary of the constant chores and stops playing. I give King a lot of shit, but I do like their progression gating model; if you hit a progression gate and choose not to socialize or monetize, you can still go back and try to get the high score on levels you have already unlocked (thus lending some value to playtime). Asphalt 8 is a little different wherein you have to straight-up grind your progression if you don't want to monetize.

3. More player options = more monetization avenues. Kabam tends to be lazy here, wherein their strategy is typically to 'annoy' a player into submission with inconvenient time gating. Now usually they're reasonable; but we see how such a system can backfire in Dungeon Keeper. So what do I mean about giving a player more options? Well a good example would be Mobage's Hellfire. In Hellfire, you can build a pretty sweet 'generalist' 9-unit team without spending. This means that in *most* circumstances, the Player won't face a challenge he can't handle. But if you want to build a few 'specialist' teams -you could still *technically* do it without paying, but it'd take forever, and you'd just be better off forking over the 5-10 bucks. Brave Frontier (TG15) is also a great example of this, but to an even greater extent (potions, armor, buffs, etc.)

4. NO pay-to-win! It's the dumbest, most short-sighted strategy you could attempt.

5. YES pay-to-not-lose! Analytics prove pretty much beyond all doubt hen your players can see the light at the end of the tunnel but will fall short anyway, they're willing to pay for a chance (read: a chance, not a guarantee) to keep going. Thus this is a fantastic monetization avenue, HOWEVER; a bad practice would be to make losing particularly crippling. Having them lose energy or a little bit of resources is fine, but don't make it so that they have to stay logged on for an hour just to get back to where they were.

6. Tier your multiplayer. No one likes being outmatched, particularly by people who paid their way. Balance levels, W/L ratios, and over-all rank so that evenly matched players engage each other more often. Punish people who pick on weaker players (or make it impossible to do so altogether).

7. Use NDS-type monetization avenues. Authorize outside vendors to (unobtrusively) offer P$ for your game as a bonus for purchasing one of their products (e.g.: 400 gems for a Netflix subscription). Host tournaments and championships with P$ prizes.

These are some practices I would suggest to get started without getting specific.
 

senordesol

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Demonchaser27 said:
Its a little sad I must admit. Its sad because the "Wild West", as it were, of the mid to late 90s didn't seem to have anywhere near these kind of problems. Is it the ease with which to "arcade-ize" everything like the 80s with F2P or what? I'm genuinely curious.
In all honesty: the worst offenders are the console devs trying to muscle-in on mobile. The EAs, The Activisions. They are truly the turds in the punch bowl. They (and -most importantly- their screw-ups) get the most attention and draw the most heat.

That said, it's an inability to find balance and -frankly- some cultural differences as well. A lot of F2P games come from China -using the monetarily exploitative Chinese system (Your Evonys and Wartunes). I think more than a few devs look at the success of these games -don't understand why they were successful- try to port the games over here, and then are baffled by the backlash.

When any portion of you games is up for grabs in terms of monetization, it takes some time to figure out what portion is 'okay' to monetize. Is it ethical to charge for levels? Equipment? Guns? Bullets? If you don't charge for levels, is it okay to charge for guns? If you don't charge for anything else, is it okay to charge for extra bullets? Finding that line is trickier than it sounds when you're the one looking at the design doc.
 

NSGrendel

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I used to be an analyst working on a browser based free to play "mmo". I'll have to read this thread and make some kind of comment. Haven't watched the Jimquisition yet, but I doubt I'll disagree with much of it.

But there's probably some rank stupidity lurking (or lerking if you play NS) in this thread that I can at least attempt to dispel.

Please feel free to keep asking questions regarding the philosophy of studios, I'll answer what I can.

*Rubs hands*
 

Hero in a half shell

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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
I'm a bit late to the party (well, 3 days, but that's a dynasty in internet time)

But while I thought this was another excellent vid, there was one thing I think you'd be interested to know (if you aren't aware of it already)

Everywhere I've heard people talking about F2P 'whales' they always define it as a 'game developer phrase' or a 'game industry phrase', and I noticed you defined it as a 'term used to describe a certain type of gamer'.

It's not a gaming term. It's not a developer or marketer or even an economist term. It's a Las Vegas casino term:

http://www.boxingscene.com/casino-gambling/4935.php

It's a small difference, and one you probably already knew this even though you phrased it otherwise, but I personally just think that accepting it as a gaming term is doing a dis-service to showing just how abhorrent these F2P models and strategies can actually be.
By acknowledging it's a term the casino owners use to describe the clients they want to screw money out of extra specially hard, I think the definition itself does a lot of the work of proving just how terrible the fact that game developers have embraced and glorified this term and the business models that arise from it actually is.
 

Roxor

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Eric the Orange said:
What I HATE most about the "minnows and whales" analogy is that it dehumanizes your customers. You may as well call them shit bags and cash bags. The analogy still works and it's much more clear on what you really think of them.
Hear, hear! I hate the term "consumer" for exactly the same reason. They're not mindless consuming machines, they're people, and they should be treated like people.
 

WarpZone

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senordesol said:
I'll humor you, but before we continue on; let's disabuse you of some notions and assumptions.
Please list the notions or assumptions you think I am making erroneously. Right now the only notions or assumptions I am aware of are as follows:

1: I pay for my video games.
2: In return for paying, I get the whole game.
3: I then play the video game, as many times as I want to, as often as I want to, for as long as I want to, forever.
4: The video game I bought is always as fun as it can possibly be.
5: If 1-4 all occur, it is a good game and worthy of my money, attention, time, and praise online.
6: If any one of 1-4 does not occur, the game is a bad game. If *more than one* of 1-4 don't occur, it's a VERY bad game. A very bad game is not worth my money, time, or attention, and deserves my scorn online.
7: When customers buy bad games, they got ripped off.
8: If a company deliberately rips off customers, they are a bad company.

Please explain which, if any of these notions and assumptions you feel are incorrect or misguided.

senordesol said:
1. Avoid the Chinese model in Western markets like the plague. The Chinese are all about digging 'pits' where they expect players to pay to become #1. That's a big taboo in Western Cultures (and kinda shitty in general).
Agreed. I didn't think any of those were gaining traction in the west, so I'm a little surprised anyone's trying to copy them, but okay whatever.

senordesol said:
2. Never make a player's play time feel useless or delegated to maintenance of the status quo. When you look at Zynga's various 'Ville' games; you'd often have to log on just so your damn strawberries didn't rot. That's an abusive retention tactic and one that ultimately backfires when a heavily time-invested player grows weary of the constant chores and stops playing. I give King a lot of shit, but I do like their progression gating model; if you hit a progression gate and choose not to socialize or monetize, you can still go back and try to get the high score on levels you have already unlocked (thus lending some value to playtime). Asphalt 8 is a little different wherein you have to straight-up grind your progression if you don't want to monetize.
Agreed. If a carrot/stickmechanic makes me feel like my time is being wasted, it is a bad mechanic.

senordesol said:
3. More player options = more monetization avenues. Kabam tends to be lazy here, wherein their strategy is typically to 'annoy' a player into submission with inconvenient time gating. Now usually they're reasonable; but we see how such a system can backfire in Dungeon Keeper. So what do I mean about giving a player more options? Well a good example would be Mobage's Hellfire. In Hellfire, you can build a pretty sweet 'generalist' 9-unit team without spending. This means that in *most* circumstances, the Player won't face a challenge he can't handle. But if you want to build a few 'specialist' teams -you could still *technically* do it without paying, but it'd take forever, and you'd just be better off forking over the 5-10 bucks. Brave Frontier (TG15) is also a great example of this, but to an even greater extent (potions, armor, buffs, etc.)
It's redundant to mention Time Gates; they already fail your criteria 2 above.

If Kabam's strategy is to waste my time, then by your definition, they are *never* reasonable. They always fail your criteria #2 above when they pull that shit.

Hellfire putting content behind an "it'd take forever" paywall fails your criteria 2 above.

Brave Frontier (TG15) also fails the criteria #2 above, if potions and buffs are required to progress and grinding them takes an uncomfortably long time.

senordesol said:
4. NO pay-to-win! It's the dumbest, most short-sighted strategy you could attempt.
I agree, but not for the reasons I suspect you are advocating. You're saying that pay-to-win is short-sighted because once a whale has paid, they can win all the time and don't need to pay again. I say that pay-to-win is defined as "the player needs to pay in order to win." It doesn't matter what they're paying for, if it's neccessary to advance, it's pay-to-win. Potions, shells, cards, whatever. If you can't earn it in the game, it's pay-to-win, even if the game is single-player.

senordesol said:
5. YES pay-to-not-lose! Analytics prove pretty much beyond all doubt hen your players can see the light at the end of the tunnel but will fall short anyway, they're willing to pay for a chance (read: a chance, not a guarantee) to keep going. Thus this is a fantastic monetization avenue, HOWEVER; a bad practice would be to make losing particularly crippling. Having them lose energy or a little bit of resources is fine, but don't make it so that they have to stay logged on for an hour just to get back to where they were.
This may come as a surprise, but if you check an English-language thesaurus, you'll see that win and lose are antonyms. Claiming that "pay to win" and "pay to not-lose" are two separate things is not only disingenuous, it is completely insane. No ordinary person reading those two paragraphs one after another could possibly conclude that you believe what you are saying. This is where the conversation with marketeers always goes off the rails. You're so full of shit your eyes are turning brown, but you're acting as if you think the thing you just said was reasonable. Why would you expect me to believe that? How can you even imagine any hypothetical person believing that? I literally do not understand how to parse your pitch in such a way that I could imagine a stranger buying it. This isn't just "how can you sleep at night," this is "why did you think that would work on me?" I am genuinely baffled.

senordesol said:
6. Tier your multiplayer. No one likes being outmatched, particularly by people who paid their way. Balance levels, W/L ratios, and over-all rank so that evenly matched players engage each other more often. Punish people who pick on weaker players (or make it impossible to do so altogether).
Wait. That sounded like a gameplay tip. And it made sense. How did that get on the list? Go on...

senordesol said:
7. Use NDS-type monetization avenues. Authorize outside vendors to (unobtrusively) offer P$ for your game as a bonus for purchasing one of their products (e.g.: 400 gems for a Netflix subscription). Host tournaments and championships with P$ prizes.
And, you know, give out a small allotment of P$ at the start of the game. Maybe push updates or host events that do the same thing. This won't actually help, though, because when people see that a game has more than one currency, they quit the game. And I know you know they're quitting the game at that point, because GDC had panels describing how to hide the paid shop deep behind a menu so people don't notice it's there. As if you think people don't, you know, TELL each other about the games they're playing! As if you think people can't just google this shit and see through it instantly! For crying out loud, every device that can play your games also has a working web browser built right into it! How could any player remain ignorant under those conditions!? If they were six months ago, they're not now! They've already been burned!

senordesol said:
These are some practices I would suggest to get started without getting specific.
I can see now that I was mistaken. You don't actually know how to make a profitable game on mobile that isn't evil. You just know how to make an arbitrary list of some evil things and tell people that the less evil things on that list are okay. They're not. They are not okay. And what you call "backlash" is the natural automatic response of any human being when they realize they have been conned.

I am not a core gamer, an internet troll, or a bleeding heart.

I am an ordinary player.

And that "backlash" sound you hear is me and 3 million other people just like me telling you that you're *wrong.*

Edit: By the way, the sky is falling: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/133280-King-Faces-Worst-First-Day-in-US-Trading-History-Stock-Drops-15
 

GamerFromJump

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Jim's "panel" reminds me of that scene in Liar Liar, where Jim Carrey's character (an attorney) upon hearing that his client is an jail again and wanting advice, picks up the phone and screams "STOP BREAKING THE LAW, ASSHOLE!!" Thoroughly obvious advice that you know the recipient won't take.
 

senordesol

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WarpZone said:
Agreed. I didn't think any of those were gaining traction in the west, so I'm a little surprised anyone's trying to copy them, but okay whatever.
Alright so we're in agreement.

Agreed. If a carrot/stickmechanic makes me feel like my time is being wasted, it is a bad mechanic.
Sweet we're in agreement again.

It's redundant to mention Time Gates; they already fail your criteria 2 above.

If Kabam's strategy is to waste my time, then by your definition, they are *never* reasonable. They always fail your criteria #2 above when they pull that shit.

Hellfire putting content behind an "it'd take forever" paywall fails your criteria 2 above.

Brave Frontier (TG15) also fails the criteria #2 above, if potions and buffs are required to progress and grinding them takes an uncomfortably long time.
Actually, no they don't. The mechanics I was referencing in item #2 are progression reducers (I.E.: you LOSE progress if you don't play). The stuff in #3 are about slowing progress if you don't pay. Remember: you're playing this game FOR FREE and an M/F2P has to last weeks or even months before a player maxes content (and, thus, leaves).

I agree, but not for the reasons I suspect you are advocating. You're saying that pay-to-win is short-sighted because once a whale has paid, they can win all the time and don't need to pay again. I say that pay-to-win is defined as "the player needs to pay in order to win." It doesn't matter what they're paying for, if it's neccessary to advance, it's pay-to-win. Potions, shells, cards, whatever. If you can't earn it in the game, it's pay-to-win, even if the game is single-player.
The term is 'hard stop'. And, yeah, that's bad and stupid too. Alright, we're 3/4 so far.

This may come as a surprise, but if you check an English-language thesaurus, you'll see that win and lose are antonyms. Claiming that "pay to win" and "pay to not-lose" are two separate things is not only disingenuous, it is completely insane. No ordinary person reading those two paragraphs one after another could possibly conclude that you believe what you are saying. This is where the conversation with marketeers always goes off the rails. You're so full of shit your eyes are turning brown, but you're acting as if you think the thing you just said was reasonable. Why would you expect me to believe that? How can you even imagine any hypothetical person believing that? I literally do not understand how to parse your pitch in such a way that I could imagine a stranger buying it. This isn't just "how can you sleep at night," this is "why did you think that would work on me?" I am genuinely baffled.
Ever been to arcade? You 'Pay to not lose' all the time. Perhaps 'pay to continue' is more accurate? The most popular purchase item in Candy Crush (which was TG1 for practically ALL of 2013, making $1.5M dollars a day) was '5 more moves'. A user would purchase this when he would otherwise be about to lose. Now, there's nothing really stopping you from actually losing that particular round and trying again without paying anything; but if you're close to winning it's an attractive option.

Imagine you're in a boss battle: you're just a few hits away from beating him BUT he gets a lucky shot and kills you. Now in a contemporary game: that's it. Start over. In an M/F2P; you'll have the option to restore -say- 20% of your health and keep going. There's no guarantee you'll win even with the boost -but the option's there. You can still do it in the contemporary 'purist' fashion too if you like; it's up to you.

Wait. That sounded like a gameplay tip. And it made sense. How did that get on the list? Go on...
We're 4/6

And, you know, give out a small allotment of P$ at the start of the game. Maybe push updates or host events that do the same thing. This won't actually help, though, because when people see that a game has more than one currency, they quit the game. And I know you know they're quitting the game at that point, because GDC had panels describing how to hide the paid shop deep behind a menu so people don't notice it's there. As if you think people don't, you know, TELL each other about the games they're playing! As if you think people can't just google this shit and see through it instantly! For crying out loud, every device that can play your games also has a working web browser built right into it! How could any player remain ignorant under those conditions!? If they were six months ago, they're not now! They've already been burned!
You could not be more wrong. 90% of the top grossing games on the iOS (not counting casino) have dual currency systems. People are obviously willing to pay. Now it's true that it behooves a game developer to make his currency shop unobtrusive, no one wants to be pestered for payment, but the notion that a dual currency system is not profitable is simply false.

I can see now that I was mistaken. You don't actually know how to make a profitable game on mobile that isn't evil. You just know how to make an arbitrary list of some evil things and tell people that the less evil things on that list are okay. They're not. They are not okay. And what you call "backlash" is the natural automatic response of any human being when they realize they have been conned.

I am not a core gamer, an internet troll, or a bleeding heart.

I am an ordinary player.

And that "backlash" sound you hear is me and 3 million other people just like me telling you that you're *wrong.*

Edit: By the way, the sky is falling: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/133280-King-Faces-Worst-First-Day-in-US-Trading-History-Stock-Drops-15
Hm. We agreed more than we disagreed, and many of the points you disagreed were fueled by misconception; not hard facts. So I'd say that continued resistance comes more from discomfort from a new model not actually anything 'evil'.

In your above statement (which I cut a bit for brevity), you state that you want to pay for the *whole* game. That is not our model. Plain and simple. If that is your basis of expectation, then there will be no pleasing you with the M/F2P model.

Our model is just that our games are FREE TO PLAY, but some content is gated and to pass the gate you've either got to retain, socialize, or monetize (either keep playing, make us more visible, or give us money). If that strikes you as unreasonable, well, there's nothing to be done; we're *not* pay-to-play but we're not charities either.

BTW: If you think I'm anything but happy to see 'the King' knocked off this throne a bit... well all I can say is that I am.
 

WarpZone

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senordesol said:
Actually, no they don't. The mechanics I was referencing in item #2 are progression reducers (I.E.: you LOSE progress if you don't play). The stuff in #3 are about slowing progress if you don't pay. Remember: you're playing this game FOR FREE and an M/F2P has to last weeks or even months before a player maxes content (and, thus, leaves).
Okay, let's say I appreciate the distinction you were trying to make. I don't think most players would agree with you, which is where the backlash is coming from. Why would anyone play a mobile game designed to waste their when they know perfectly well they can go to any other platform and play a fun video game that doesn't waste their time? Just because it worked when they were all new to video games doesn't mean it'll work forever. Human beings aren't sheep. Human beings can learn and form plans and read what other human beings are saying.

If your entire business model is built around fooling people, that business model has a shelf-life. When your entire industry is doing it, that entire industry has a shelf-life.

Ever been to arcade? You 'Pay to not lose' all the time. Perhaps 'pay to continue' is more accurate? The most popular purchase item in Candy Crush (which was TG1 for practically ALL of 2013, making $1.5M dollars a day) was '5 more moves'. A user would purchase this when he would otherwise be about to lose. Now, there's nothing really stopping you from actually losing that particular round and trying again without paying anything; but if you're close to winning it's an attractive option.
Oh yeah, I remember Arcades. They were those things you put a few quarters into so you'd know what console games to ask for for Christmas. Also, most of them went out of business back in the 90's.

Imagine you're in a boss battle: you're just a few hits away from beating him BUT he gets a lucky shot and kills you. Now in a contemporary game: that's it. Start over. In an M/F2P; you'll have the option to restore -say- 20% of your health and keep going. There's no guarantee you'll win even with the boost -but the option's there. You can still do it in the contemporary 'purist' fashion too if you like; it's up to you.
You mean like how Candy Crush Saga's random number generator is rigged to make these crazy combos happen that the player couldn't possibly have planned, then stop JUST SHORT of beating the level? I read that article, too. It is safe to say that EVERYONE on the internet read that article. Because it's an article on the internet. Streisand effect. If it exists on the internet, your customers know about it. This is also why backlash against a popular game "goes viral" faster than the game did.

We're 4/6
And stop that. You can't just tally up a number and say it means you won the argument. If the things you're saying aren't making sense, you've communicated exactly nothing, regardless of how many times you managed to say out loud that we agreed about one thing. You could have 100% factual premises and still reach an insane, irrational, or illogical conclusion.

You could not be more wrong. 90% of the top grossing games on the iOS (not counting casino) have dual currency systems. People are obviously willing to pay. Now it's true that it behooves a game developer to make his currency shop unobtrusive, no one wants to be pestered for payment, but the notion that a dual currency system is not profitable is simply false.
Metrics are based on past performance. They do not predict the future. At best, they are case studies of how an audience fell for the old "Yeah this is TOTALLY a free game" bait & switch one time back when they were all noobs. But that audience cannot be relied upon to stay dumb forever. Eventually they realize, as individuals, they have been duped, and churn out of the system. I know that you know this is a legitimate problem. Players are churning out of these free-to-play games faster than developers can create new games for them to switch to.

You're treating that like it's some kind of anomaly, a fluke that can be fixed with further psychological manipulation. You don't seem to realize that aversion to psychological manipulation is the driving force behind the backlash. I am sitting here explaining it to you in plain English, and you're willfully ignoring it, pretending it didn't happen while you hit all your talking points.

Hm. We agreed more than we disagreed, and many of the points you disagreed were fueled by misconception; not hard facts.
"Players spent more money on Game X than Game Y" is a fact. "Therefore any game designed to exploit players in the way Game X exploited them will also be as successful as Game X" is a fallacy.

In your above statement (which I cut a bit for brevity), you state that you want to pay for the *whole* game. That is not our model. Plain and simple. If that is your basis of expectation, then there will be no pleasing you with the M/F2P model.
Which is why I opened by asking you for new ideas that make a game close enough to free to be discoverable, yet close enough to fair for people to feel like it's something they actually wanted to pay for, not something that they were arm-twisted into paying for and immediately regret afterwards. You then revealed that you have no new ideas, you're just advocating the same old shit that I (and all your "satisfied" customers) have been reading about on gamasutra for months now.

Our model is just that our games are FREE TO PLAY, but some content is gated and to pass the gate you've either got to retain, socialize, or monetize (either keep playing, make us more visible, or give us money). If that strikes you as unreasonable, well, there's nothing to be done; we're *not* pay-to-play but we're not charities either.
The problem is you're telling your customers one thing (FREE in giant letters on the appstore) and doing something entirely the opposite (Literally more expensive than the newest AAA games, for a game with infinitely less substance.) When you say one thing and do another, people hate you for it. When all of your customers hate you for it, you don't have a customer base anymore, I don't care what last year's numbers said.

BTW: If you think I'm anything but happy to see 'the King' knocked off this throne a bit... well all I can say is that I am.
Am happy or am 'anything but happy?'

You realize that you've been advocating copying all of King's tricks, right? How's that going to work when even King can't manage to make this shit sustainable?
 

senordesol

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WarpZone said:
Okay, let's say I appreciate the distinction you were trying to make. I don't think most players would agree with you, which is where the backlash is coming from. Why would anyone play a mobile game designed to waste their when they know perfectly well they can go to any other platform and play a fun video game that doesn't waste their time? Just because it worked when they were all new to video games doesn't mean it'll work forever. Human beings aren't sheep. Human beings can learn and form plans and read what other human beings are saying.

If your entire business model is built around fooling people, that business model has a shelf-life. When your entire industry is doing it, that entire industry has a shelf-life.
Why do you think anyone's being fooled? There's no deception; it's quite plain: progression is throttled in M/F2P. I don't know why you think that's some sort of dirty secret. Again, M/F2P games benefit when Players continue to play (because our entire monetization model is based around players continuing to play).

You ask why Players would do this. The answer is quite simple: because you play an M/F2P when you're trying to kill time. It's not the epic journey of a Triple A console release; it's something you play while you're waiting for the bus, stuck in line, or on a break.

Oh yeah, I remember Arcades. They were those things you put a few quarters into so you'd know what console games to ask for for Christmas. Also, most of them went out of business back in the 90's.
Yes. Those. The advent of the home console was certainly their demise because it was easier and cheaper to just *buy* the game than make a run downtown with a pocket full of quarters. Know what else is easy and cheap? Putting a game for free on your phone.

You mean like how Candy Crush Saga's random number generator is rigged to make these crazy combos happen that the player couldn't possibly have planned, then stop JUST SHORT of beating the level? I read that article, too. It is safe to say that EVERYONE on the internet read that article. Because it's an article on the internet. Streisand effect. If it exists on the internet, your customers know about it. This is also why backlash against a popular game "goes viral" faster than the game did.
Not sure what your point is. If it wasn't hard, then they'd earn no money.

And stop that. You can't just tally up a number and say it means you won the argument. If the things you're saying aren't making sense, you've communicated exactly nothing, regardless of how many times you managed to say out loud that we agreed about one thing. You could have 100% factual premises and still reach an insane, irrational, or illogical conclusion.
Sure. God forbid I point out there might be some common ground from which we can work on to reach a mutually amicable understanding. What was I thinking?

Metrics are based on past performance. They do not predict the future. At best, they are case studies of how an audience fell for the old "Yeah this is TOTALLY a free game" bait & switch one time back when they were all noobs. But that audience cannot be relied upon to stay dumb forever. Eventually they realize, as individuals, they have been duped, and churn out of the system. I know that you know this is a legitimate problem. Players are churning out of these free-to-play games faster than developers can create new games for them to switch to.

You're treating that like it's some kind of anomaly, a fluke that can be fixed with further psychological manipulation. You don't seem to realize that aversion to psychological manipulation is the driving force behind the backlash. I am sitting here explaining it to you in plain English, and you're willfully ignoring it, pretending it didn't happen while you hit all your talking points.
Metrics aren't a crystal ball, that's true. But you're being willfully reductive if you believe they can't be analyzed to predict player behavior. Again, you're working from the notion that just because the game is throttled or gated that it's somehow 'evil' or short-sighted.

And I don't know where you're getting the information that players are leaving games faster than devs can make them. From where I sit (you know, actually looking at the numbers), the opposite is true: more games are being churned out than players are able to latch onto.

"Players spent more money on Game X than Game Y" is a fact. "Therefore any game designed to exploit players in the way Game X exploited them will also be as successful as Game X" is a fallacy.
That is a fallacy. And also not what I said.

Which is why I opened by asking you for new ideas that make a game close enough to free to be discoverable, yet close enough to fair for people to feel like it's something they actually wanted to pay for, not something that they were arm-twisted into paying for and immediately regret afterwards. You then revealed that you have no new ideas, you're just advocating the same old shit that I (and all your "satisfied" customers) have been reading about on gamasutra for months now.

The problem is you're telling your customers one thing (FREE in giant letters on the appstore) and doing something entirely the opposite (Literally more expensive than the newest AAA games, for a game with infinitely less substance.) When you say one thing and do another, people hate you for it. When all of your customers hate you for it, you don't have a customer base anymore, I don't care what last year's numbers said.
Mm. I've added a spoiler tag, because I feel that this is the heart of our division rather than anything mentioned above. So let me see if I got this right: You want to know if there's a way to get a studio together with paid engineers, artists, QA, marketers, producers, HR, BizDev, etc; make a game that can be completed in short order, only append an *option* to pay, and expect to stay in business?

Now who's evil? I'm sorry, was that really what you were going for? A 'kindness of your heart' model? For serious?

No. I don't see any set of circumstances where that's a long-term viable business solution.

Look, if you're going to insist that the M/F2P model can *only* deviate from the P2P model in the sense of the user chooses to 'donate' rather than pay an initial fee and that anything else is somehow 'manipulative' and 'evil', well...that's your right to believe I guess -but such thinking really isn't practical.

As for this weird 'psychological manipulation' stigma you're trying to apply to the model. Do you realize psychological manipulation is the basis for selling *any* product? If you saw a car commercial where it was about a guy being stuck in traffic; would that appeal to you? If you saw a videogame commercial that consisted of a pre-teen boy screaming into a headset while playing online; would you want to play that? Hell, even *within* a game (at least in a good one) you're being psychologically manipulated to keep playing.

Now I know you can only speak for you and your perceptions as a consumer. And as a consumer, you've gotta look out for you; I get that. But just because something isn't right *for* you, doesn't mean it isn't for someone else. The mobile market is growing, not shrinking. Not everyone wants a meaty epic they can plow through in 8-12 hours. Some people just want to crush some candy for 15 minutes and if they get stuck; they don't mind kicking in a buck or two to get unstuck.

Like many before you, you're attributing malice to that which is different. While I want to reiterate that malicious practices can and certainly DO exist (as listed before), to dismiss an entire multi-billion dollar industry just because our particular pricing model is not exactly in line with what you -personally- demand... you're being just as unreasonable as you're accusing us as being.
 

WarpZone

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Mar 9, 2008
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senordesol said:
WarpZone said:
Which is why I opened by asking you for new ideas that make a game close enough to free to be discoverable, yet close enough to fair for people to feel like it's something they actually wanted to pay for, not something that they were arm-twisted into paying for and immediately regret afterwards. You then revealed that you have no new ideas, you're just advocating the same old shit that I (and all your "satisfied" customers) have been reading about on gamasutra for months now.

The problem is you're telling your customers one thing (FREE in giant letters on the appstore) and doing something entirely the opposite (Literally more expensive than the newest AAA games, for a game with infinitely less substance.) When you say one thing and do another, people hate you for it. When all of your customers hate you for it, you don't have a customer base anymore, I don't care what last year's numbers said.
Mm. I've added a spoiler tag, because I feel that this is the heart of our division rather than anything mentioned above. So let me see if I got this right: You want to know if there's a way to get a studio together with paid engineers, artists, QA, marketers, producers, HR, BizDev, etc; make a game that can be completed in short order, only append an *option* to pay, and expect to stay in business?

Now who's evil? I'm sorry, was that really what you were going for? A 'kindness of your heart' model? For serious?
No. I'm saying where's the fucking middle ground? You are the ones who took a thing like video games and forcibly applied the concept that it had to be free. That is a contrivance. It is artificial. It makes no sense. That idea poisoned the well on mobile, and now it's starting to infect Steam. Meanwhile players are abandoning even the market leaders, the market is fracturing, stock prices are tanking, backlash is at an all time high and the horror stories of how you think of your customers as animals is BECOMING the news.

senordesol said:
Look, if you're going to insist that the M/F2P model can *only* deviate from the P2P model in the sense of the user chooses to 'donate' rather than pay an initial fee and that anything else is somehow 'manipulative' and 'evil', well...that's your right to believe I guess -but such thinking really isn't practical.
Movies aren't shit on mobile, and they aren't free either. Books aren't shit on mobile, and they aren't free either. So why the hell do all the games on mobile have to be both free and shit? There IS no reason. It's just one company got away with it, so now you're convinced that's where all the money is! It won't last because even people waiting in line would rather have fun than get screwed.

And they KNOW they're being screwed because they're not as GULLIBLE as they were the first time they played. That's the POINT. That's WHY there is BACKLASH!

senordesol said:
As for this weird 'psychological manipulation' stigma you're trying to apply to the model. Do you realize psychological manipulation is the basis for selling *any* product? If you saw a car commercial where it was about a guy being stuck in traffic; would that appeal to you? If you saw a videogame commercial that consisted of a pre-teen boy screaming into a headset while playing online; would you want to play that? Hell, even *within* a game (at least in a good one) you're being psychologically manipulated to keep playing.
There is a difference between using psychology to make your product (game, movie, play, egg timer, whatever) more fulfilling, and using psychology to convince people to spend more on a bad product. What you're doing isn't mere advertising. It's designing a product with broken kneecaps, and then trying to sell crutches. This only works until one of two things happens: The public figures out that they're being fleeced, or somebody releases an actually fun and fullfilling time-waster that's free or ad-supported or whatever. The moment that happens, you're done. Because people aren't as dumb as you think they are. They may start off dumb, but that doesn't last forever.

senordesol said:
Now I know you can only speak for you and your perceptions as a consumer. And as a consumer, you've gotta look out for you; I get that. But just because something isn't right *for* you, doesn't mean it isn't for someone else. The mobile market is growing, not shrinking. Not everyone wants a meaty epic they can plow through in 8-12 hours. Some people just want to crush some candy for 15 minutes and if they get stuck; they don't mind kicking in a buck or two to get unstuck.
My point with Candy Crush is that it's not "they got stuck," it's "the deck was stacked against them, and the deck re-stacks itself every time the player makes a move." The algorithm was explained in general terms in the gamasutra article. It's like playing on a rigged slot machine. AND YOUR PLAYERS REALIZE THIS. Because as soon as that article was written, the secret was out. And now that it's out, nobody can trust your games to play fair or accurately judge the player's skill. THIS WAS ALREADY HAPPENING EVEN BEFORE THE ARTICLE, it was just confirmation for what everybody already suspected: that the game is deliberately lopsided to cause extra spending.

senordesol said:
Like many before you, you're attributing malice to that which is different. While I want to reiterate that malicious practices can and certainly DO exist (as listed before), to dismiss an entire multi-billion dollar industry just because our particular pricing model is not exactly in line with what you -personally- demand... you're being just as unreasonable as you're accusing us as being.
It's that "many before you" part that you should be paying attention to. I'm not dismissing the industry, I'm demanding better. And everyone else on this forum is doing the same thing. And your customers, the whales and the minnows and whatever other animal you want to compare them to, they're starting to demand better. The market is fracturing. They realize they have options. Websites are springing up devoted to separating the wheat from the chaff in the ways the appstores refuse to.

THAT is the future of mobile.

And you are grossly ill-equipped for that reality if your reaction to the decline of King is to pop champagne corks while telling the next wave of indie developers to copy King.

For fuck's sake, there were panels at GDC about stealing Whales away from other games. How does that even make sense? I thought whales were only a small percentage of total revenue, like less than 10%?

You have said nothing new here. All you're doing is repackaging and repeating the same anti-consumer practices that brought you to this impasse in the first place. Your industry is eating itself. And I think you know it.

You just don't know any other way to respond to uncertainty than by crunching old numbers and repeating buzzwords and slogans. You don't have any intuition or common sense. You treat your fans as disposable, interchangable... it's as if it simply hasn't occurred to you that one day all of the players could stop playing, all at the same time. Or say, 90% of them. What if "delete all your free games" becomes an idea that goes viral? What then?

You literally had panels about how your players are revolting and giving you backlash. Defending the status quo like you have in this post is the worst possible thing you could do for yourself. You need fresh ideas, and you need them six months ago. Not more of the same old shit repackaged.

I'm very disappointed. I thought maybe you had something to contribute as a solution to the backlash/retention problem. But no, you're just throwing King & co under the bus so you can look better by proxy. Maybe loot the corpse quickly before the bottom falls out altogether. It's pathetic. I mean, we're so far beyond "it's not good business to piss your customers off," you're flagrantly hosting public events about what to do when the fleecing stops working. How is this supposed to reduce backlash? The fact that your business plan is to monetize children LITERALLY IS THE NEWS.

How is defending the status quo supposed to be helping you!?
 

senordesol

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Oct 12, 2009
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WarpZone said:
senordesol said:
WarpZone said:
Which is why I opened by asking you for new ideas that make a game close enough to free to be discoverable, yet close enough to fair for people to feel like it's something they actually wanted to pay for, not something that they were arm-twisted into paying for and immediately regret afterwards. You then revealed that you have no new ideas, you're just advocating the same old shit that I (and all your "satisfied" customers) have been reading about on gamasutra for months now.

The problem is you're telling your customers one thing (FREE in giant letters on the appstore) and doing something entirely the opposite (Literally more expensive than the newest AAA games, for a game with infinitely less substance.) When you say one thing and do another, people hate you for it. When all of your customers hate you for it, you don't have a customer base anymore, I don't care what last year's numbers said.
Mm. I've added a spoiler tag, because I feel that this is the heart of our division rather than anything mentioned above. So let me see if I got this right: You want to know if there's a way to get a studio together with paid engineers, artists, QA, marketers, producers, HR, BizDev, etc; make a game that can be completed in short order, only append an *option* to pay, and expect to stay in business?

Now who's evil? I'm sorry, was that really what you were going for? A 'kindness of your heart' model? For serious?
No. I'm saying where's the fucking middle ground? You are the ones who took a thing like video games and forcibly applied the concept that it had to be free. That is a contrivance. It is artificial. It makes no sense. That idea poisoned the well on mobile, and now it's starting to infect Steam. Meanwhile players are abandoning even the market leaders, the market is fracturing, stock prices are tanking, backlash is at an all time high and the horror stories of how you think of your customers as animals is BECOMING the news.

senordesol said:
Look, if you're going to insist that the M/F2P model can *only* deviate from the P2P model in the sense of the user chooses to 'donate' rather than pay an initial fee and that anything else is somehow 'manipulative' and 'evil', well...that's your right to believe I guess -but such thinking really isn't practical.
Movies aren't shit on mobile, and they aren't free either. Books aren't shit on mobile, and they aren't free either. So why the hell do all the games on mobile have to be both free and shit? There IS no reason. It's just one company got away with it, so now you're convinced that's where all the money is! It won't last because even people waiting in line would rather have fun than get screwed.

And they KNOW they're being screwed because they're not as GULLIBLE as they were the first time they played. That's the POINT. That's WHY there is BACKLASH!

senordesol said:
As for this weird 'psychological manipulation' stigma you're trying to apply to the model. Do you realize psychological manipulation is the basis for selling *any* product? If you saw a car commercial where it was about a guy being stuck in traffic; would that appeal to you? If you saw a videogame commercial that consisted of a pre-teen boy screaming into a headset while playing online; would you want to play that? Hell, even *within* a game (at least in a good one) you're being psychologically manipulated to keep playing.
There is a difference between using psychology to make your product (game, movie, play, egg timer, whatever) more fulfilling, and using psychology to convince people to spend more on a bad product. What you're doing isn't mere advertising. It's designing a product with broken kneecaps, and then trying to sell crutches. This only works until one of two things happens: The public figures out that they're being fleeced, or somebody releases an actually fun and fullfilling time-waster that's free or ad-supported or whatever. The moment that happens, you're done. Because people aren't as dumb as you think they are. They may start off dumb, but that doesn't last forever.

senordesol said:
Now I know you can only speak for you and your perceptions as a consumer. And as a consumer, you've gotta look out for you; I get that. But just because something isn't right *for* you, doesn't mean it isn't for someone else. The mobile market is growing, not shrinking. Not everyone wants a meaty epic they can plow through in 8-12 hours. Some people just want to crush some candy for 15 minutes and if they get stuck; they don't mind kicking in a buck or two to get unstuck.
My point with Candy Crush is that it's not "they got stuck," it's "the deck was stacked against them, and the deck re-stacks itself every time the player makes a move." The algorithm was explained in general terms in the gamasutra article. It's like playing on a rigged slot machine. AND YOUR PLAYERS REALIZE THIS. Because as soon as that article was written, the secret was out. And now that it's out, nobody can trust your games to play fair or accurately judge the player's skill. THIS WAS ALREADY HAPPENING EVEN BEFORE THE ARTICLE, it was just confirmation for what everybody already suspected: that the game is deliberately lopsided to cause extra spending.

senordesol said:
Like many before you, you're attributing malice to that which is different. While I want to reiterate that malicious practices can and certainly DO exist (as listed before), to dismiss an entire multi-billion dollar industry just because our particular pricing model is not exactly in line with what you -personally- demand... you're being just as unreasonable as you're accusing us as being.
It's that "many before you" part that you should be paying attention to. I'm not dismissing the industry, I'm demanding better. And everyone else on this forum is doing the same thing. And your customers, the whales and the minnows and whatever other animal you want to compare them to, they're starting to demand better. The market is fracturing. They realize they have options. Websites are springing up devoted to separating the wheat from the chaff in the ways the appstores refuse to.

THAT is the future of mobile.

And you are grossly ill-equipped for that reality if your reaction to the decline of King is to pop champagne corks while telling the next wave of indie developers to copy King.

For fuck's sake, there were panels at GDC about stealing Whales away from other games. How does that even make sense? I thought whales were only a small percentage of total revenue, like less than 10%?

You have said nothing new here. All you're doing is repackaging and repeating the same anti-consumer practices that brought you to this impasse in the first place. Your industry is eating itself. And I think you know it.

You just don't know any other way to respond to uncertainty than by crunching old numbers and repeating buzzwords and slogans. You don't have any intuition or common sense. You treat your fans as disposable, interchangable... it's as if it simply hasn't occurred to you that one day all of the players could stop playing, all at the same time. Or say, 90% of them. What if "delete all your free games" becomes an idea that goes viral? What then?

You literally had panels about how your players are revolting and giving you backlash. Defending the status quo like you have in this post is the worst possible thing you could do for yourself. You need fresh ideas, and you need them six months ago. Not more of the same old shit repackaged.

I'm very disappointed. I thought maybe you had something to contribute as a solution to the backlash/retention problem. But no, you're just throwing King & co under the bus so you can look better by proxy. Maybe loot the corpse quickly before the bottom falls out altogether. It's pathetic. I mean, we're so far beyond "it's not good business to piss your customers off," you're flagrantly hosting public events about what to do when the fleecing stops working. How is this supposed to reduce backlash? The fact that your business plan is to monetize children LITERALLY IS THE NEWS.

How is defending the status quo supposed to be helping you!?

That's quite a mouthful. However, again, you're bringing opinion to the table and very little fact.

F2P is not *imposed* anywhere. There's still plenty of P2P games on mobile...they just happen to make far less money (except for Minecraft).

You ask why do mobile games have to be sub-par? I'll have to ask you for specifics. I'd consider Ace Attorney an excellent game. But people weren't willing to pay for it on mobile. I'd consider FF6 an excellent game. Same story.

Repulique, KotoR, GoF2; all poked their heads up here or there, but dropped right back down again.

You say the market's changing? You say the player base is evolving? We would WELCOME that. We would WELCOME the ability to focus more on core design and less on retention and pricing. Do you know what a hassle that is? You don't think we're absolutely SICK of the SMApps, the one-touch 'strategy' games, and the match-3 clones? But, thus far, it's been proven time and again: That's what the audience is willing to pay for. The other stuff -the meatier stuff- languishes. They want Flappy Bird, not The Last of Us.

You can throw all the gamasutra articles at me you'd like; it doesn't change the fact that King absolutely dominated the TGs last year, and is still running a respectable 2ND place even now. So why do I hail the fall of the King rather than view it as a portend of doom? Because it means that finally, finally the dynamic might be changing -- and what's nice about software (as opposed to physical products or brick-and-mortar establishments); changing strategies is as simple as writing code. However, until we see hard, HARD numbers that the wind is blowing the other way, we've got to continue doing what makes sense for us to do.

There's your middle ground.
 

barbzilla

He who speaks words from mouth!
Dec 6, 2010
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WarpZone said:
senordesol said:
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.
Let's say I want to believe you. The biggest assholes in the room are *not* making much money right now, even though they were copying the *second biggest* assholes in the room and turning their cruelty-based progression gameplay models up to 11.

What does that imply? What practices can a company like yours employ that allow it to make money without being a scum-sucking parasite grinding up and spitting out hapless consumers for the sake of temporary short-term gains?

What are we talking about? Make a game that's actually fun? Only charge money for things that people will actually appreciate having purchased? I'm not asking for trade secrets, just give me a vague overview. How little evil are we "allowed" to put into our games and still have them be profitable on Mobile?

That's where the discussion needs to be right now. Everyone needs to be talking about that. Coming up with ideas, vetting them, postmorteming them, refining them. If you seriously value your industry and want it to become in any way respectable, start adding to that conversation.

How do we fucking do BETTER? Give us a goddamned counterexample.

And I mean from the mobile sector. Dark Souls and the like aren't what the conversation is about, here.
I can make it incredibly simple (and there are games out there with models that follow this succeeding):

Does your game exploit the player by making them wait, grind, or otherwise waste time vs paying real money? Y/N
Does your game use tactics, items, or stats that can be manipulated by real currency? Y/N
Does your game utilize any form of exclusivity for items or materials useful in game (I.E. not just eye candy) that can only be obtained via real money purchases? Y/N
Does your game offer the real money currency through a vague or otherwise slow to gather in game system to justify its previous transgressions? Y/N


If any of these are Y then you are exploiting your customers. It is really that simple ( although I'm sure I missed some avenues, but those will surely be pointed out shortly).
 

Fdzzaigl

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Mar 31, 2010
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Yup, those "Whalers" are what kills most F2P games.

Because companies can do one of two things:
1) They can opt for a reasonable micro-transaction model where a large amount of people are motivated enough to spend some money on the game.

2) They can lock everything behind huge massive paywalls knowing full well that a couple of players will hand the cash over regardless, therefore milking those "whales" to the max.

And ho and behold, many games actually flock to the second model, because the advantage there is that you don't actually need to even make a real good game in order to motivate the common man that it's worth to spend money on it.
 

Nickolai77

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Apr 3, 2009
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I have a master's degree in management and one of my pet peeves about my studies was the incessant usage of terms like "monetizing" "blue-sky thinking" "360 degree feedback" "networking" "incentivising" etc. As soon as games started generating billions in profit it was only a matter of time before the industry became more corporate. There's not a lot you can do about that, but what we can do as gamers is boycott and protest against companies which make unjustifiable usage of day one DLC's, excessive paywalls and the like.
 

WarpZone

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Mar 9, 2008
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Thanks, guys. I was starting to think I was the only actual player in the room.

So we have an outline for what's exploitative. The question now becomes:
- Why do so many people play and spend money on games that they know to be exploitative?
- How can non-exploitative games compete with exploitative games?


That is where I expected the conversation to automatically go once they realized that backlash was a problem. Instead, Senordesol made a list of all the worst offenses, called some of them bad and the rest of them good, apparently based on who got away with it.

Why? Don't you realize the entire industry is getting called out on it, all the time? Dungeon Keeper was the poster-child, the Example, the head-on-a-pike. Not the only offender!

Just to clear things up, confirm something for me. This whole "blacklash" thing is coming from existing players and customers of F2P mobile games, right? I.E. King's bread and butter playerbase deciding they don't like King anymore, not noise from other channels? That's what the title of the panel made it sound like, what King's day-one stock crash makes it seem like, but maybe there was some irony intended there that you'd only get if you'd attended the panel.

Senordesol, I like what you said in your last post. But it runs 180 degrees to what you said in all your previous posts. So as you can imagine, this makes it hard for me to believe you. Were you lying before to save face with fellow mobile developers? Or are you lying now to save face with gamers? Because I've got news for you: I'm both. I am your audience and your competition, and I'm still not anyone special. I am one. Random. Dude. GDC was full of people like me, and you won't have a "good" answer until you have an answer you can parade in front of both crowds.

There is no secret or privileged information, because internet. If you're screwing over your customers, they know it. That's the problem. And now that it's started happening, it can only accelerate.

My theory is that King only became the king because mobile users didn't know any better. They were, at one time, a year or two ago, naive and innocent, and F2P marketeers took them for all they are worth. They're waking up now. They are getting a clue. This makes F2P as it is currently practiced entirely unsustainable in the long term.

senordesol said:
We would WELCOME the ability to focus more on core design and less on retention and pricing. Do you know what a hassle that is? You don't think we're absolutely SICK of the SMApps, the one-touch 'strategy' games, and the match-3 clones? But, thus far, it's been proven time and again: That's what the audience is willing to pay for. The other stuff -the meatier stuff- languishes. They want Flappy Bird, not The Last of Us.
That is simply not true, even if we go entirely by the numbers. If you published a lukewarm matching game last year that made money hand-over-fist thanks to an exploitative F2P model? That means right now, you have the resources to make any game you want. You can afford to release a game that makes a modest profit instead of an obscene profit. I could see risk maybe being a huge consideration for your company's first game. But once you're established? No. The argument that you just can't afford good design becomes a complete lie at that point, if it was ever true in the first place.

And by the way, those titles you listed? Are all pretty much all well-designed games, even some of the earlier Match-3s. They work well with the mobile interface and they use good dynamics to create compelling gameplay. You can even say the same thing about those tower defense games that were flooding the market a while ago. I can point to instances such as Gemcraft or the original Plants Vs Zombies that offered impeccable gameplay and well-balanced, satisfying progression. There's a reason for all the play-alikes. Some designs just plain work well, and justify starting a genre.

But when you start taking those designs and crippling the gameplay to extort extra money out of your customers, when you start tossing around terms like "fun-pain" as if causing pain to your customers could ever be a good thing, when developers get so lazy they don't even bother to copy the gameplay, just the name of a breakway hit, that's when you've crossed the line so far even your die-hard fans don't want to support you.

I thought everything I just said was common sense. I assumed that you knew your entire industry was built on making your customers feel bad. How could you not? You must. But having realized that, and having realized that backlash exists and is a problem, and even claiming that gosh darn it, you just wish things could be different, could be better, why do you still come back at me with old arguments from three years ago back when people were swallowing these games? I was expecting something new. Or at least slightly contrite.

Didn't you just attend a bunch of panels on how to fix backlash? We've long since established that the backlash is caused by your customers realizing that they're being exploited, and have been exploited all along, and want no more of it.

Where are the new ideas? Where's the fix?
 

WarpZone

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Fdzzaigl said:
Yup, those "Whalers" are what kills most F2P games.

Because companies can do one of two things:
1) They can opt for a reasonable micro-transaction model where a large amount of people are motivated enough to spend some money on the game.

2) They can lock everything behind huge massive paywalls knowing full well that a couple of players will hand the cash over regardless, therefore milking those "whales" to the max.

And ho and behold, many games actually flock to the second model, because the advantage there is that you don't actually need to even make a real good game in order to motivate the common man that it's worth to spend money on it.
Except that we know from those companies that have released numbers that whales are a surprising exception to the trend. They may drop 500 bucks a head on a single game, but collectively they only make up around 10% of revenue. Chasing Whales makes zero business sense in that case. "Maximizing revenue from Whales" at the cost of driving away your base is just plain suicide.

Which is why it's so surprising to me that the people with direct access to the metrics and the numbers are the ones pushing for ever-more-blatant exploitation.
 

WarpZone

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Nickolai77 said:
I have a master's degree in management and one of my pet peeves about my studies was the incessant usage of terms like "monetizing" "blue-sky thinking" "360 degree feedback" "networking" "incentivising" etc. As soon as games started generating billions in profit it was only a matter of time before the industry became more corporate. There's not a lot you can do about that, but what we can do as gamers is boycott and protest against companies which make unjustifiable usage of day one DLC's, excessive paywalls and the like.
In this case, it's not the buzzwords we're angry about. It's the blatantly abusive concepts embodied by the buzzwords. It's the fact that successful mobile developers aren't even shy about telling people "We think of our customers as livestock. We want to cause our customers pain. We put walls between our customers and their fun." (Fun being the actual purpose of video games.) That's what ordinary people hear when someone says "Whales," "fun-pain," or "paywall."

That may not be what they intend to say, but it's what they are saying. And when they say it to each other, they're saying it to their customers.

They're not even ashamed of it.