[casual_games] Version jumping

Sun Oct 8 19:40:15 EDT 2006

Not all DRM has the vulnerability to version jumping. I agree that
plugging this hole will not result in massively increased sales, but it
nevertheless is a really dumb loophole and it should be closed.

It is eminently possible to do, so by the way: in our network, users
downloading games across the various sites (Wildgames/Dell/HP/Gateway,
etc) cannot get around the DRM session limitations by uninstalling and
getting a new demo from another site. 

Closing this hole will not create a mad rush to exclusivity; version
jumping is a minority behavior by a non-purchasing audience segment.    

Now the point made about the price point and advertising are really good
ones. Try and Buy with a $20.00 purchase is just terribly inefficient in
so many ways. There is a portion of your audience who will *never* give
you a credit card, and another who aren't going to pay you $20 for a
game. 

But if you provide other ways for them to pay for game play (such as
voluntarily selecting advertising) or lower the price of entry without
giving away the whole game you can massively increase the portion of the
audience you are getting money from. This is exactly what we are doing
in WGN btw. 

--Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org
[mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Cole, Vladimir
Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2006 6:53 PM
To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
Subject: RE: [casual_games] Version jumping

Is the assumption about this "version jumping" prevention idea that
customers who currently version jump will choose to purchase the game
instead of version jump? Is that a valid assumption? Would these
customers just leave the market entirely if they were prevented from
version jumping? At the very least, these folks are generating
monetizable page views right now. If "version jumping" is a significant
issue, perhaps it points to strong consumer demand for ad-supported play
(or even pay-per-level) instead of downloaded games at $20 a pop. 

Maybe instead of trying to lock casual gamers out of games via a
coordinated anti-version-jumping effort, the focus should instead be on
how to better monetize customers who are willing to play, but unwilling
to pay $20.

Questionable assumption aside, if there were an easy way to prevent
version jumping and if everyone implemented it, what would happen?

Portals would race to be "first" with new titles, as the portal that
convinces customers to install a game first will have prevented rivals
from offering a fully-featured demo. That could get ugly. One result
might be that portals will fight harder (i.e., pay more) to acquire a
game exclusively for some window of time. Maybe portals would be more
aggressive about marketing the game during that exclusivity window. 

But the rivals who lose a bidding war for exclusive access to a game
might be less willing to market or merchandise a game if they know that
it's been exclusive at RivalX's portal for some period of time. Why
market or prominently merchandise a product that your customers won't be
able to enjoy? 

The end result of a truly effective "version jumping" prevention program
might be single-portal exclusivity for new games, with lower aggregate
sales for each developer (but with perhaps greater payments to
developers as portals bid for exclusivity).

Still, a world in which portals regularly score exclusive content might
allow sites to differentiate themselves according to content choices.
That could be interesting.

- v

-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org
[mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Ron
Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2006 12:01 PM
To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [casual_games] Version jumping

> - Has anyone experimented with this? What do the
> portals feel?

I have spoken to one portal about a way for the game to know if it's in
the try-to-buy period, and they were very against it, mainly because
they didn't feel that the devs would use it effectively (i.e. turn off
the wrong features, show an incomplete game, etc).  They felt that the
user should have a true experience in the try-to-buy period.  I don't
agree.  I think building "demos" that people can play (maybe forever) is
a much better idea that just letting them play the whole game for an
hour.  As I've stated before, I think the try-to-buy model is very
broken and costing us a lot of sales.

I think the issue you bring up could turn into a huge problem.  I have
used this technique many times when I need to explore a competition's
title for longer then an hour, but I always figured the "casual user"
wasn't going to go to the trouble, but that might be changing.

Hopefully this is something the portals will get on top of quickly.

Ron

Allan Simonsen wrote:
> We're seeing a lot of our users bypassing the 60
> minute demo-timeout by changing providers (getting 3
> or 4 different 60 minute sessions downloading the same
> game from Reflexive, BigFish, etc).
> 
> I'd argue that this endangers part of the casual games
> business model; if we wanted the user to have a 5 hour
> trial period, we'd probably offer him or her that in
> the first place. 
> 
> We're seeing a lot of players focusing on the
> single-player campaign (the story mode, or similar).
> Once they've finished the campaign, their motivation
> for actually purchasing the product drops
> dramatically, even if there's still additional puzzle
> or community modules that they haven't explored. That
> some of the portals don't interrupt the play-time at
> 60 minutes (effectively allowing the user to play as
> long as he/she wants, provided they don't close the
> program) doesn't help.
> 
> So.. solutions. The simplest path is probably to
> implement a maximum playtime in demo-mode, using a
> registry key or similar to ensure that irregardless of
> distributor, the demo-version can only be played for
> max 60 minutes. You'd need to check against the DRM
> wrapper(s) to ensure that purchased versions don't
> have this problem. 
> 
> - Has anyone experimented with this? What do the
> portals feel?
> 
> - What are the DRM APIs that you'd need to support on
> this? Has anyone looked at doing an abstraction layer
> to simplify supporting all of the common APIs?
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Allan Simonsen
> 
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