Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Surprise: Pay-to-Win works

Thanks to Psychochild for supplying this link.

http://www.slideshare.net/bcousins/paying-to-win

It is a presentation by Ben Cousins, General Manager of EA's f2p games division EASY.

The entire 42 minutes he doesn't waste one single word on the actual gaming experience. All he is concerned about is how to extract money from the players. I can't believe he really was ever that naive to think that pay-to-win wouldn't make money. Every trading cards game from Star Trek to Magic: The Gathering has shown that players love to pay for in-game advantages.

But does the game actually become better? He doesn't talk about it. He is too surprised that selling crack is profitable.

7 comments:

  1. I think the best pay-to-win games work by making it very much in the loser's interests to play.

    In Eve someone can sell plex to gain an advantage but the ability to buy plex gives me the opportunity to play a sub based game without paying. This was actually one of the main draws and shapes my long term plans.

    World of Tanks is fun because for a lot of us serial losers we measure ourselves only against ourselves. A game where I kill someone is a great game, a game where I survive and capture the base having killed someone is absolutely wonderful. I neither know nor care if someone else is better, my only measurement is against how I did in the last few games. And the game is completely free after a one-time investment of £5 for a gold light tank.

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  2. I think it was very interesting presentation. This was not about game per se, but about monetization methods. Which are very important because games are a business.

    Selling power works but its hard to strike balance between alienating users (because of perceived power imbalances) and makes cash shop items still attractive enough

    And I think the guy is great - he turned the game around and made it profitable and self sustaining

    I am personally now firmly in f2p camp. It is superior model and will replace everything else in the nearest future.

    There are many ways to go about it and presentation like that are golden because they show which works and what does not

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  3. The main thing that worries me about pay-to-win is that it could quickly get out of hand. A game that sells a win button is pretty pointless to me, and knowing that it could still be successful is a bit distressing, but like he said at the end, the idea isn't foreign as real life tends to be pay to win. They are capitalizing where people let them.

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  4. I am personally now firmly in f2p camp. It is superior model and will replace everything else in the nearest future.

    With that I agree. It is a lost battle. The forces that push companies are too powerful. Soon there won't be a single game, from mario over chess to soccer where you can't win by paying.

    Imagine! As a fan you can invest to buy the players on the playing ground some advantage. I am not sarcastic. This is the superior business model.

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  5. the most important thing to take away from this presentation - and it's a point i've kept meaning to make in F2P vs P2P discussions - is that *vocal users lie*.

    Cousins points to his research on forum participants, who, for all their rage, are spending significantly more than non-forum users. significantly more, so much so that Devs can, in the words of CCP, look at what players are doing rather than what they are saying.

    it's really important for all F2P opponents, such as yourself Nils, to get their heads around this: no matter how articulate you might be about your anti-F2P stance, the simple fact is that average anti-F2P proponent spends *vastly* more than the average user.

    what is the reasonable conclusion from this? the only reasonable conclusion from this is that it's position-taking, rather than an honestly held belief.

    the F2P argument is won, but it's not won by the silent majority buying in spite of loud minority opposition; it was won because the loud vocal minority are the main consumers of a F2P model.

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  6. As Max points out, that was a GDC presentation. Usually the scope of the talk is limited as they have roughly an hour (plus time for Q&A) to present. If you want to know how to make a better FPS, there are plenty of other talks you could go to. This was likely a business talk, so discussions about design were likely outside the scope of the talk; people attending the talk would want to know more about the business results of the change, not the design implications.

    The point of that talk is that as much as people in a game might complain about changes, they'll probably accept them if they enjoy the game enough. Also, games are still a business, not charities, and if they are going to stay open they have to make money. We should all know from history that EA is particularly brutal about killing underperforming games; just ask fans of Earth & Beyond.

    Obviously people were willing to pay for items in Battlefield Heroes despite the protests. The alternative was to shut down the game. And, I'd bet that switching to a subscription model would have prompted just as much outcry and would have resulted in people actually leaving the game, unlike the change that kept people playing the game, just more of them actually paying for it.

    Ultimately the two main choices are sticking with subscriptions and seeing an endless series of WoW clones, or worse, MMOs stagnate and die as niche titles languish in obscurity. Or, we have free to play games and see a wider variety of games come out, with the caveat that someone has to argue for responsible design of the business model. I'd much prefer the latter, as I'm tired of WoW clones by how.

    And, no, subscription games won't be going away. It's just that we'll see different games out there now. This is a good thing. Just stick to your subscription games and you'll be fine, Nils. :)

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  7. @Seanas
    what is the reasonable conclusion from this? the only reasonable conclusion from this is that it's position-taking, rather than an honestly held belief.

    No, the only reasonable conclusion is that people who post on forums care a lot for a game. So much, in fact, that even a switch to pay-for-win doesn't keep them from playing. Is that really a surprise?

    I wrote in the past about how ridiculous the player protests are. Read my latest Eve posts. Players lie. So do developers. Everybody lies.

    The question that Mr. Cousins should ask his users is this: Now that the game is pay-for-win, do you like it more?

    You'd be surprised: The guys who disliked pay-for-win still dislike it. The game got worse, it's just still good enough for them to play.

    ---
    @Psychochild, you write:
    The point of that talk is that as much as people in a game might complain about changes, they'll probably accept them if they enjoy the game enough.

    I think that is a worrysome direction we are going here. Is it really about players 'accepting' it? I thought it is about making better games.

    I fear for my subscription games. There are no pure sub-based MMORPGs left. I won't be fine, Psychochild, Titan will have micro-transactions. I am not fine. But yeah, I'll probably play nontheless.

    Enjoy the victory of the developers over the players.

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