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A new way to monetize your MMO and everybody wins. No cash shop. No monthly subscription fee.
Foomerang
Member UncommonPosts: 5,628
Ok so this may get a little lengthy but if you take the time to read it, I think you may agree this could be a valid new direction for keeping MMOs afloat without building it around a cash shop or even a monthly sub.
First, make it a true buy to play title. 60 bucks. Done. No cash shop or monthly fee. SO how do you sustain it?
Crowdfund your content. Setup a crowdfunding page which displays all of your proposed content broken down into individual projects. You could have dungeons, raids, professions, battlegrounds, new classes, crafting professions, non combat activities, etc all listed in a proposed format.
For example, the dev team could spend a day brainstorming a very rough idea for a new dungeon. All the need to do is write it down, no need for actual development cost or time yet. For this example, the dungeon could be listed as a new tropical themed dungeon with 4 bosses, 2 puzzles, 1 questline, some unique new mobs, some flashy new loot with a specific theme, takes 6 players of certain roles and should take about 90 minutes to complete.
With the general idea hashed out, the developers can make an estimate on how long it would take to create and how much it would cost. Then they can place that info on the site and people who own the game can pledge to try and make the content a reality. You can reward backers who pledge certain amounts with cosmetic items related to the specific content they are backing. Perhaps you can name a mob in the dungeon or you can ghost write some flavor text.
If the project gets funded, congrats you have content that you know you will be able to enjoy in the specified time. If it does not get funded, you can opt to have part of your funding go towards a second or third choice of content. Also, if it does not get funded, the devs do not lose any time or money working on content that their customers are not interested in.
Of course this is a very rough sketch as to how this would work but you get the idea. If implemented well, it could generate just as much if not more money than a cash shop and it would be much less intrusive since it would be occurring outside of the game. And since the box is B2P, you can have a sense of ownership without feeling like you are merely renting a game for 15 bucks a month.
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WoW is back to 10 million subs, FFXIV is going gangbusters, SWTOR is raking in well over $100 million a yeah, gw2 is finally putting out an expansion, ESO is about to make a killing in the console market off of low information consumers, the Asian market highly competitive and only set to get bigger...
Awe... but it's dieing... because.... you're bitter about "freeloaders" getting something for nothing?
Back on topic: This a brilliant concept but runs up against two primary issues.
1) Will the whales still spend if they don't get a huge in game advantage over other players?
But more importantly
2) As is frequently noted around here: Good games will generally be successful regardless of the monetization method, so the hard part is getting a good base game with which to try this monetization method.
Yet there are more people playing MMORPGs now, than ever. The MMORPG genre is making more money now, than ever....
People like you are cute lol.
That's the typical hyperbole you see around this forum. MMOs are dying and full loot non-consent pvp is the only way a new mmo will survive.
I think the whole genre is hanging by a tread, when wow finally goes I really don't think most those people will go on to these other mmos.
I like the concepts for a new model, but I think if one of these games just lowers it to ten bucks a month they will do a lot better.
Do a AAA title with the old school values and charge ten bucks a month and you will have the next big hit.
If you charge $60 for the box and you get people to buy your game, you do not need any other monetization to survive as long as you go with an expansion model. Sub fees are death right now and to be honest cash shops are expected no matter what model you use so they are just the norm at this point, like it or not.
Typical crowd-funding works because you can ask a very wide audience.
This idea's main obstacle is that you're asking a very narrow audience for money. Only existing players would be interested, so it's a much smaller group to crowd-fund off of.
On the plus side, any existing MMORPG developer could simply give this idea a try and it costs them almost nothing. They can literally create a solid proposal for a new batch of content, and they'll have a good idea what that content actually costs them, and they can launch the kickstarter campaign to judge whether this is a workable idea. If it fails, life goes on because their MMORPG is still running on a typical business model. If it succeeds then they produce the extra content. (Possibly hiring new employees if it's successful enough to give them the confidence to continue the model.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It puts a lot of pressure on a dev's shoulders to come up with attractive ideas that people will want to put a lot of money into. It takes less effort to create items that look attractive and just put a price tag on it.
However, making content that people have pledged for may generate loyalty to a game that was not had previously. It also weeds out people who are looking for free games to play and dont spend a dime (read: dead weight)
You could have pledge incentives that could theoretically attract whales but probably not to the extent as pure p2w cash shops do.
But the hook is with p2p players who are used to spending a couple hundred bucks a year on all content. But if my play style is representative of others, I dont actually partake in every bit of new content. I would say that when a large patch drops, I typically am excited for one or two features and the rest I will get to when I am bored.
If I were not paying a sub and I saw a possible feature that I really liked, I would have no problem dropping a year's worth of sub money on it.
But the groundwork would have to be solid. Devs would have to really step up and organize their content in an attractive and presentable way.
You don't see how this funnels down to a very narrow path eventually?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
No, just no.
The main reason this wont work as a model is that content takes too long to create and because most content creation employs a lot of smoke and mirrors to make it quicker and cheaper to make with this model you would remove all of that.
Secondly gamer impatience, content usually takes years to turn around from concept to reality, so how would you do it, would you get it to the final stage then show it, well what if it fails, then all your previous time investment is lost. Show case it at concept stage and it could be a year or two from funding to deployment.
Finally there is the simple mechanic that something is fun until you start looking under the hood as to how it works, once an mmo goes from an adventure to a mechanic, a lot of the "fun" element is lost.
This is a model that would make sure which ever mmo tried it, died on its feet.
The MMO genre is not dying, the lines of what defines it are becoming blurred, and we are seeing mmo features creep into non mmo games in much the same way RPG features seeped into non rpg games. We might see a smaller number of mmos coming out for a while before some one makes a big leap forward with the genre but we will see more mmo lites coming out as developers realise a connected experience in a single player game can catch the mmo market and single player market at the same time (Destiny tried it so did Assassins Creed Unity, but eventually some one will get it right).
this sounds to me like nickle and diming disguised as crowdfunding.
A lot of steam games do this already without the crowdfunding part and its pretty bad. Adding that to an mmo would make it even worse In my personal opinion. It would take too much time to develop valuable, meaningful, lengthy, and interesting content plus going to the CF process if or if not get funded etc etc. They will end up taking the easier route by selling items instead of actual content and will flop. Its like a crowd funded cash shop.
Imagine taking the massive amount of tiny DLCs from Hitman Absolution, Borderland 2, Sleeping dogs, Saints Row and crowdfund them for an mmo and you get the OP's idea in a nutshell.
My opinion, i could be totally wrong, but i think this would be disastrous for mmos.
This is a fine idea for larger content releases (i.e. expansion type content). However, it is not very practical for smaller, more regular content. Crowdsourcing is very time/energy intensive and is not something you could do all the time.
There is also the problem of the amount of money involved. If you have to do a crowdsourcing every 6m/year to pay for development (which may not be available for another year or more) you are constantly asking for money. This will quickly grow tiresome to your existing customers, and would not hold any interest/value for new customers.
Overall it is something that could be added to the mix (of payment solutions) but it is not something that can replace other methods.
The way I see it is, crowdfunding can be a good avenue to get a start from, however, I don't see it as being a realistic form of ongoing income. It's far too up in the air; a company needs more assurance of profit than that type of system. What happens when they go months without additional income? How do they pay their employees? How do they pay expenses? Are those funding it going to understand that huge calculation that is needed to A: pay what's owed, B: fund new productions? That would be a pretty hefty sum.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Just like everything else I suppose. This model has the potential to create fierce loyalty though. Moreso than others I think.
Imo it's not a very good long term plan because, after the box sales, you have no idea what your revenue will be on a weekly or even monthly basis. Also consider the fact that you basically have to just sit around waiting to see if you have raised enough to know if you can dedicate the resources towards development. And If you don't raise enough money to pay everyone then people have to get fired. Then you have to reduce the scope of your future content offerings and it's a quick downward spiral. With p2p you know will you earn a certain amount in one month, and with the cash shop people are buying things everyday so you can see the trends and have a good estimate. This will make it easier to manage your company and plan your development path.
wouldn't work for an mmo....development cycle is too long. by the time content pitch ----> funding secured ---> implementation happens a year or more will have gone by assuming everything went perfectly. then you run into the problems at each step.
1) what happens when get partial funding?....do you give the money back and try something else?...how long will you wait unitl your pitch has officially failed?
2) how do you predict the exact amount of funding you'll need for a specific content and what percentage of that is profit margin? what happens when it goes over budget?what happens when something else unexpected happens and you need funds else where....do you leech the donated funds?
3)what happens when content has to be delayed for long periods due to programmers not meeting time goals or problematic bugs? how much time are you planing on alotting to hotfixing and rebalancing...and how will that get paid for?
crowd funding works for development of a game because after they secure funding they basically have unlimited to in order to make the game. when your talking about updating content for a live game though..... you have time constraints and have to have good quality if you expect to get more donations.
basically your idea still has all the problems of every other monetization method with the added bonus of many uncertainties from the developers standpoint.
as people have said....if the game is fun people will pay...what type of funding the game uses doesn't actually make that much of a difference.
Perhaps it's possible but it is hard to see a AAA studio using this model when the yearly operating costs are in the millions or tens of millions. But I guess star citizen did raise like a billion dollars, so there's that. But personally speaking even if I like the game or idea I would never do crowd funding.
Crowdfunding works because there is no product and that is a reason why your idea would fail.
Where are all those surviving full loot non-consent pvp MMOs? Oh right, they are all dying in the first 6 months.