[casual_games] North Korea and a "Casual" Game
Fawad Akram
fawad at devlabs.com
Mon Oct 9 02:07:46 EDT 2006
For anyone interested in seeing what a "Casual" game based on North Korea
and their Nuclear Test would look like, check out this:
http://www.2dplay.com/black-ops-korean-conflict/black-ops-korean-conflict-pl
ay.htm
On a different note we're looking for a partner to create a downloadable
game based on an original action puzzle we've created. The online/Flash
version will be released on 2DPlay.com within a couple of weeks.
Fawad Akram
BigWig Media Ltd
-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of casual_games-request at igda.org
Sent: 09 October 2006 03:51
To: casual_games at igda.org
Subject: Casual_Games Digest, Vol 17, Issue 1
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Today's Topics:
1. Version jumping (Allan Simonsen)
2. Re: Version jumping (Ron)
3. Re: Version jumping (Adam Martin)
4. RE: Version jumping (Cole, Vladimir)
5. Different Payment Models (Christopher Natsuume)
6. Re: Different Payment Models (Chris Dillman)
7. RE: Different Payment Models (Christopher Natsuume)
8. RE: Different Payment Models (J?nas Antonsson)
9. RE: Different Payment Models (Chris Dillman)
10. RE: Different Payment Models (Cole, Vladimir)
11. RE: Different Payment Models (Chris Dillman)
12. RE: Different Payment Models (Jeff Murray)
13. RE: Different Payment Models (J?nas Antonsson)
14. RE: Different Payment Models (John Foster)
15. RE: Version jumping (Dave Selle)
16. RE: Different Payment Models (Adam Johnston)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 08:39:58 -0700 (PDT)
From: Allan Simonsen <Simonsen at rocketmail.com>
Subject: [casual_games] Version jumping
To: casual_games at igda.org
Message-ID: <20061008153958.96631.qmail at web32406.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
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
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Sun, 08 Oct 2006 09:00:37 -0700
From: Ron <lists at rzweb.com>
Subject: Re: [casual_games] Version jumping
To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List <casual_games at igda.org>
Message-ID: <452920A5.8080702 at rzweb.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> - 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
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Casual_Games mailing list
> Casual_Games at igda.org
> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/casual_games
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 17:36:58 +0100
From: "Adam Martin" <adam.m.s.martin at googlemail.com>
Subject: [casual_games] Re: Version jumping
To: "IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List" <casual_games at igda.org>
Message-ID:
<ca93830d0610080936s4ae87800jc40b689e9d20c8c4 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
If this is affecting "a lot" of your users, isn't that a sign of a
deeper problem with your market and product targetting?
i.e. wrong market (in which case ignore them and try to focus on
people who don't do this), or wrong pricing (so wrong that your
customers would rather muck about and jump through hoops than pay you
), or wrong product (after a couple of hours they find they don't like
it enough to buy it - or there's not enough left to justify it)?
Adam
On 08/10/06, Ron <lists at rzweb.com> wrote:
> > - 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
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > Casual_Games mailing list
> > Casual_Games at igda.org
> > http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/casual_games
> _______________________________________________
> Casual_Games mailing list
> Casual_Games at igda.org
> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/casual_games
>
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 13:52:53 -0400
From: "Cole, Vladimir" <yocole at wharton.upenn.edu>
Subject: RE: [casual_games] Version jumping
To: "IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List" <casual_games at igda.org>
Message-ID:
<FB7CA1741EACA04D8561C8ED2B9D21BC028FA659 at FRANKLIN.wharton.upenn.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
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
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Casual_Games mailing list
> Casual_Games at igda.org
> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/casual_games
_______________________________________________
Casual_Games mailing list
Casual_Games at igda.org
http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/casual_games
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 11:58:03 -0700
From: "Christopher Natsuume" <natsuume at boomzap.com>
Subject: [casual_games] Different Payment Models
To: "'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'" <casual_games at igda.org>
Message-ID: <20061008185810.76F74AF69 at mailwash7.pair.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
One thing that Vladimir brings up is the concept of "how do we extract money
from a customer who is unwilling to pay $20 for a casual game" - and I think
this is likely the most critical question in our industry right now.
The current 1-hour demo then big ass payment model is the #1 reason why we
have an industry where 20-30 games out of hundreds are making 80+% of all of
the profits. Our users are playing the other games and getting an hour (or
more with portal-switching) value out of them, but they are only paying for
the very best games. This is the death-knell for a lot of smaller studios
who are doing more innovative products that may lack some of the final
polish the AAA Top-10 games may have. Sure, some people are breaking this
mold, but I play great games from small indie developers every day that I
know will never make back their dev costs, and that makes me sad.
And the truth of the matter is - for many people, they only WANT to play a
game for 30 minutes or so, and then move on to the next game. That is a
valid entertainment, and there are valid products that fill that niche now.
In fact, our industry was built on games like this - the classic stand-up
arcade games of the 70's and 80's. Imagine how those arcades would have
failed if they had said "you can pay $20 for any ONE game here, and then
play it as much as you want." Nobody would have paid that $20. Or if someone
had said "Play any of these games here for an hour, but then you have to
stop playing that game and play a different one unless you want to pay $20."
Again - people never would have paid for a game. They would have just milled
around the arcade going from game to game. And with 1% turnover, that's
exactly what our casual users are doing right now - the vast majority of
them are just window shopping games and never paying for any of them - even
the good ones.
So instead of banging our heads against the wall of "how do we make a Zaxxon
clone have enough features to make it worth 20 bucks" maybe we should just
admit to ourselves that a Zaxxon clone is worth 25-50 cents a play, tops,
and figure out how to monetize that?
The most innovative and realistic solution I have heard to this was from
Alex St. John from Wild Tangent at the Austin Game Conference, when he was
walking through the reasons for the new "Wild Coins" payment system.
Essentially, it's $0.25 "per play" - which sounds low, but when you consider
the horrible turnover even GOOD games have (in most cases 1% or less), it
may be a really good model for a lot of us.
For instance, I know that our last game had many, many, many thousands of
downloads in a single weekend on Big Fish. At one point our highscore server
was registering over 100 unique users a MINUTE. However, our conversion was
terrible, and we didn't really see a lot of monetization from that weekend.
Which is very sad for us as a developer.
Now, if I look at the "quarter a play" model for the same game and
extrapolate that even 1/10 of the people who have played our game since
release had paid us a quarter, that game would have been deeply profitable -
even after splitting that quarter with our distributors. If I could do that
on every game, it would free us up to do some really new innovative
things... And that's good for fresh young innovative developers, no?
And looked at from the point of the consumer, I think this is a good way to
get a lot of those people who are currently leeching off the 1-hour model
into paying something. Sure - we'll lose a lot of people who are only
playing the game for the demo periods and have no intention of EVER paying
for a game, but that's no great loss. But I think there are a lot of people
who would be willing to put that same 20 bucks they are now spending on the
1 game a month they actually buy in an account that they would draw from at
a quarter a pop every time they play a game. And I think THAT audience is
going to be a lot easier to expand than the current audience of people who
are willing, at some point, to pay $20 for a single casual game.
When I talk to my parents, business school friends, etc. about it they all
agree heartily that they would NEVER pay $20 a game, but they would happily
pay a quarter a game. This is our audience speaking to us - telling us what
they want. They don't want a bigger, better game that is somehow "worth"
$20. They want a lot of small games and a lot of variety, and they want to
pay a small amount of money for each of them.
You can see some of this now in the Big Fish "game club" where they are
getting MUCH higher sales by selling the games at ~$7, but forcing the
player to buy a bunch of them. But even then, the consumer is "getting the
milk for free" with the 1 hour demo - but knowing that they HAVE to buy a
few every now and then, and that they get it at a much lower price point is
proof that the basic idea has legs. You can see a similar model in XBLA,
with people having a 1-click payment method for lower price point games,
with a much, much higher conversion. Orders of magnitude on some titles.
My understanding from Wild Tangent's lecture in Austin was that they were
doing very well with the beta of the Wild Coins model, and that they saw a
huge future in it. One of the most interesting things was that it opened up
a world of advertising opportunity that DID NOT INVOLVE SCREWING WITH OUR
GAMES. Instead of making some lame "coca-cola polar bear game" full of
branding that does not build meaningful IP for the developers, they could
give away coins for the same games we're making right now under coke lids,
etc. You get a generic-branded "Wild Coin" evry time you fill up your gas at
Citgo, and then you can download whatever you want from the site. Citgo gets
a cheap giveaway, the deveklpper gets to build interesting original IP, and
the distributor gets paid. We all win.
By having a small monetizeable unit to buy games with, we can start doing a
lot of new and interesting things that allow us to maintain our IP while
still working with big advertising companies. And again, for fresh young
developers, that's good too, no?
To be honest, I was really excited about this model when I heard them walk
through it - and was hoping:
1) To hear other opinions on the model or other possible models for
extracting money at lower price points.
2) If there is a Wild Tangent person on the mailing list, maybe they could
chime in? I'm not really the best spokesperson for it, having only gone to
the lecture... :)
Cheers,
Cn
-----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 10:53 AM
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
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Casual_Games mailing list
> Casual_Games at igda.org
> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/casual_games
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Message: 6
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 14:30:31 -0500
From: Chris Dillman <chrisd at plaidworld.com>
Subject: Re: [casual_games] Different Payment Models
To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List <casual_games at igda.org>
Message-ID: <p06200711c14f000978b8@[192.168.0.100]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
>
>By having a small monetizeable unit to buy games with, we can start doing a
>lot of new and interesting things that allow us to maintain our IP while
>still working with big advertising companies. And again, for fresh young
>developers, that's good too, no?
>
>To be honest, I was really excited about this model when I heard them walk
>through it - and was hoping:
>1) To hear other opinions on the model or other possible models for
>extracting money at lower price points.
You would probably call this model micropayments.
You might want to read the
Tho a true micropayment is supposed to be like pennies or less any how.
There was a lot of MMO style games moving to or playing with this
idea out at E3.
http://www.puzzlepirates.com/
for instance runs subscription servers and micropayment servers
where you can play for free if you want or pay for additional features.
They report making a long more revenue off of micropayment servers
then off of a normal full subscription server.
Personally I love the idea for both MMOs and casual games...
I also like teh idea of ads in games.
There are MMOs I would play... like D&D online... but not for 15$ a month.
5$ maybe... or free plus ads would be great.
So downside.
I think micropayments might work well for WT and other large portals.
But they will not work well for a small game developer with a few games.
Some problems.
1. There is no standard way on the web to easily pay a micro payment.
2. Its work to even get people to sign up for any service.
Which means its even more work if a new player need to sign up for a
micro payment service. Or 10 services if they are using 10 different
game companies.
What might work well is having it offered in addition to normal $20 fee etc.
3. Wild Tangent offers a in game Ad SDk now also.
You might want to take a look at that.
--
---------------------------------------------
Email: chrisd at plaidworld.com
iChat / AIM: crackbunny at mac.com
Plaid World Studios http://www.plaidworld.com
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 13:07:16 -0700
From: "Christopher Natsuume" <natsuume at boomzap.com>
Subject: RE: [casual_games] Different Payment Models
To: "'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'" <casual_games at igda.org>
Message-ID: <20061008200718.24416AE7A at mailwash7.pair.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Yeah - the problem with Micropayments (and it was the buzz word at Austin as
well) is that it is trying to follow the Korean model of "pay 10 cents for a
virtual rabbit" etc. I'm just not sure that the US market is going to go for
that. And even if it is, I'm not sure I want to make those games. The idea
that we're going to have to cover every game with a thousand buy-on-able
crap items does a few things:
1) It forces our design to match that - precluding the idea of simple, clean
games that have very simple mechanics that don't NEED add ons.
2) It drives players into the idea that they will only buy virtual crap for
one game of the other. Why buy 10 virtual pets for game X when there are
400+ games released a year?
3) It forces game designs that have a lot of longevity - so that you play
long enough to care about the game enough to buy characters, jumpsuits, and
pets, etc.
Honestly, there is a lot of good fun to be had in games that are only really
fun for an hour or two. But there is no shame in that. There are rides at
Disneyland that are only fun for 5 minutes - that's no reason to disparage
them. How to monetize THAT experience, is the root of the question...
The point is, instead of micropayments under the Korean model of "spend a
few pennies to buy a world of worthless virtual crap" model, I would suggest
that the games themselves should have enough value that playing them a few
times should be worth a buck or so, without crippling them (and then letting
the player buy them into playability through micropaid features) or coating
them with bells and whistles that they don't need.
The micropayment model, like PuzzlePirates (truly great game, BTW!) creates
a model where users "stick" to a particular game - which is a real killer to
small independent startups that have to fight that. Yes, I know they were
also small indie developers too at one point, but the point is that the
world simply can't support a large volume of puzzlepirates style games - any
more than it can support more than a few WoWs. This model inherently
stimulates consolidation into a few key developers. This is great if you are
a well funded or successful developer. Not so great if you're a couple of
kids fresh out of college making your first game.
The high consumer value of aggregated content is inherently going to drive
user "stickiness" to the portals and distributors - and there's not a lot
anyone can do to fight that. So it seems to me that our challenge as
developers should be figuring out a a good revenue model that supports
innovation and experimentation for games sold through the portals - one that
could free independent developers to make smaller games that are good fun
for an hour or two, but perhaps no more, which remain profitable for the
developer and portal (and publisher, in many cases).
For instance, go look at the cool little flash and java games that are on
Jay is Games every day (http://jayisgames.com/). There's some truly great
stuff there - inventive, interesting, and original. But the vast majority of
it is going to have a very rough time monetizing in the current casual game
distribution model without advertising. The question is - how do you get
there?
Cn
-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Chris Dillman
Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2006 12:31 PM
To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [casual_games] Different Payment Models
>
>By having a small monetizeable unit to buy games with, we can start doing a
>lot of new and interesting things that allow us to maintain our IP while
>still working with big advertising companies. And again, for fresh young
>developers, that's good too, no?
>
>To be honest, I was really excited about this model when I heard them walk
>through it - and was hoping:
>1) To hear other opinions on the model or other possible models for
>extracting money at lower price points.
You would probably call this model micropayments.
You might want to read the
Tho a true micropayment is supposed to be like pennies or less any how.
There was a lot of MMO style games moving to or playing with this
idea out at E3.
http://www.puzzlepirates.com/
for instance runs subscription servers and micropayment servers
where you can play for free if you want or pay for additional features.
They report making a long more revenue off of micropayment servers
then off of a normal full subscription server.
Personally I love the idea for both MMOs and casual games...
I also like teh idea of ads in games.
There are MMOs I would play... like D&D online... but not for 15$ a month.
5$ maybe... or free plus ads would be great.
So downside.
I think micropayments might work well for WT and other large portals.
But they will not work well for a small game developer with a few games.
Some problems.
1. There is no standard way on the web to easily pay a micro payment.
2. Its work to even get people to sign up for any service.
Which means its even more work if a new player need to sign up for a
micro payment service. Or 10 services if they are using 10 different
game companies.
What might work well is having it offered in addition to normal $20 fee etc.
3. Wild Tangent offers a in game Ad SDk now also.
You might want to take a look at that.
--
---------------------------------------------
Email: chrisd at plaidworld.com
iChat / AIM: crackbunny at mac.com
Plaid World Studios http://www.plaidworld.com
_______________________________________________
Casual_Games mailing list
Casual_Games at igda.org
http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/casual_games
------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 20:16:55 -0000
From: J?nas Antonsson <jonas at gogogic.com>
Subject: RE: [casual_games] Different Payment Models
To: "'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'" <casual_games at igda.org>
Message-ID: <003401c6eb16$b37d0280$1a770780$@com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
How about a mutual effort? A Casual Games "Paypal" system? A standard?
I'm talking about a unified micropayment platform with a single registration
interface (webservices?) that could be incorporated into portals, straight
into games, etc. A player can register on a master site, through a specific
game or through a portal. He has one global account which is accessed by all
the games that implement some kind of a payment interface (again -
webservices?).
Single centralized point and a common interface that can be used to register
playtime for a specific game. The games could reside on different portals,
on different platforms, etc.
The only thing to consider would be setting this system up and agreeing on
technology / standard, etc. Also ownership and responsibility issues. One
way to go would be as an investment by a group of companies. This could also
be financed separately. Or this could be an Open Source project - sponsored
by the Casual Games industry - open for everyone and usable by all. Making
the cake bigger?
I've formulated a few more thoughts on this issue and I'm trying to create a
better foundation for the idea. I just wanted to throw this in here because
of today's dialogue, which directly related to these thoughts.
I, for one, would be very interested to see this happen and participate in
making it happen.
Regards,
J#
-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Chris Dillman
Sent: 8. oktsber 2006 19:31
To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [casual_games] Different Payment Models
>
>By having a small monetizeable unit to buy games with, we can start
>doing a lot of new and interesting things that allow us to maintain our
>IP while still working with big advertising companies. And again, for
>fresh young developers, that's good too, no?
>
>To be honest, I was really excited about this model when I heard them
>walk through it - and was hoping:
>1) To hear other opinions on the model or other possible models for
>extracting money at lower price points.
You would probably call this model micropayments.
You might want to read the
Tho a true micropayment is supposed to be like pennies or less any how.
There was a lot of MMO style games moving to or playing with this idea out
at E3.
http://www.puzzlepirates.com/
for instance runs subscription servers and micropayment servers where you
can play for free if you want or pay for additional features.
They report making a long more revenue off of micropayment servers then off
of a normal full subscription server.
Personally I love the idea for both MMOs and casual games...
I also like teh idea of ads in games.
There are MMOs I would play... like D&D online... but not for 15$ a month.
5$ maybe... or free plus ads would be great.
So downside.
I think micropayments might work well for WT and other large portals.
But they will not work well for a small game developer with a few games.
Some problems.
1. There is no standard way on the web to easily pay a micro payment.
2. Its work to even get people to sign up for any service.
Which means its even more work if a new player need to sign up for a micro
payment service. Or 10 services if they are using 10 different game
companies.
What might work well is having it offered in addition to normal $20 fee etc.
3. Wild Tangent offers a in game Ad SDk now also.
You might want to take a look at that.
--
---------------------------------------------
Email: chrisd at plaidworld.com
iChat / AIM: crackbunny at mac.com
Plaid World Studios http://www.plaidworld.com
_______________________________________________
Casual_Games mailing list
Casual_Games at igda.org
http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/casual_games
------------------------------
Message: 9
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 15:30:44 -0500
From: Chris Dillman <chrisd at plaidworld.com>
Subject: RE: [casual_games] Different Payment Models
To: jonas at gogogic.com, IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
<casual_games at igda.org>
Message-ID: <p06200712c14f10033732@[192.168.0.100]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
>How about a mutual effort? A Casual Games "Paypal" system? A standard?
Well the ideas great.
>I, for one, would be very interested to see this happen and participate in
>making it happen.
Getting any movement on it.. I think would be the big issue.
--
---------------------------------------------
Email: chrisd at plaidworld.com
iChat / AIM: crackbunny at mac.com
Plaid World Studios http://www.plaidworld.com
------------------------------
Message: 10
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 16:32:31 -0400
From: "Cole, Vladimir" <yocole at wharton.upenn.edu>
Subject: RE: [casual_games] Different Payment Models
To: "IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List" <casual_games at igda.org>
Message-ID:
<FB7CA1741EACA04D8561C8ED2B9D21BC02980683 at FRANKLIN.wharton.upenn.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Chris wrote: "Essentially, it's $0.25 "per play" - which sounds low, but
when you consider the horrible turnover even GOOD games have (in most
cases 1% or less), it may be a really good model for a lot of us."
...
Is a quarter per play really all that low?
If a game is pulling in $20 per 100 downloads (1% conversion), that's
just $.2 per download. Since a download includes several plays (at
least), $.25 per play represents a much higher monetization rate,
doesn't it?
The problem is that there's no microtransaction solution that's as good
as the US Government-backed quarter. Everyone uses quarters. They don't
require a credit card. They've got no minimum age. They're useful for
things other than video games, the infrastructure's there to support
them, they don't freak out privacy advocates... and so on.
------------------------------
Message: 11
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 15:33:30 -0500
From: Chris Dillman <chrisd at plaidworld.com>
Subject: RE: [casual_games] Different Payment Models
To: jonas at gogogic.com, IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
<casual_games at igda.org>
Message-ID: <p06200713c14f107551dd@[192.168.0.100]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
So how about ads in games?
We would like to provide web banner style ads in our games.
Im looking around for web advertising services that will allow
us to hook up an application such as a game or tool.
Any ideas?
Its seems reasonable seeing that flash games use it on web sites.
I have seen casual games like snood played for like the last 7 years
at my old job.... no one ever registered it but Im sure there was at
least 20 people playing it.
Ads would have been great there.
--
---------------------------------------------
Email: chrisd at plaidworld.com
iChat / AIM: crackbunny at mac.com
Plaid World Studios http://www.plaidworld.com
------------------------------
Message: 12
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 16:37:28 -0400
From: "Jeff Murray" <jmurray at fuelindustries.com>
Subject: RE: [casual_games] Different Payment Models
To: "IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List" <casual_games at igda.org>
Message-ID:
<60E05DB357F28743BD926E38ECD19D03019A2CFF at exchange.fuel.int>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Chris, that is sooo right it's untrue. The kind of models that support
micropayments are also the models that mean a significantly higher
development cost. Couple that with the 'hit and miss' nature and it's just
as much as a gamble as putting money on the horses.
Casual games are so throwaway in nature that micropayments just don't make
much sense. Take it further, into independent development of games and
you're looking at a huge 'build it and hope' factor unless you have an
already established idea which you're building on. The problem with starting
small and building up is that users quickly get bored of the lack of crap
you can give them. It has to be an almost constant flow of crap to keep them
interested, or at least a significant enough amount of crap from the getgo
to get them to go part with cash!
Jonas, the whole 'casual games paypal' idea seems interesting ... if you can
provide developers with some APIs to get started with and reduce the dev
time significantly (by clever item purchase / unlock design) you may well be
on to something there... the biggest problem every customer of that service
would face would be security, though. How can we be sure that payment has
actually gone through correctly when we're dealing with 500+ different games
with code of varying integrity? The authors would have to retain
responsibility for their own security and my spider senses detect a legal
minefield!!
Anyhoo ... after Chris' email I felt inspired to throw my two cents out
there!! :)
Jeff Murray.
Jeff Murray | Game Programmer
FUEL INDUSTRIES
tel: 613.224.6738 x246
www.fuelindustries.com <http://www.fuelindustries.com/>
www.fuelgames.com <http://www.fuelgames.com/>
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Message: 13
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 21:20:46 -0000
From: J?nas Antonsson <jonas at gogogic.com>
Subject: RE: [casual_games] Different Payment Models
To: "'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'" <casual_games at igda.org>
Message-ID: <003801c6eb1f$9ef13800$dcd3a800$@com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Hi Jeff. Great question regarding security.
First. Letb
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