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My short and bittersweet P2W game-developing career
holdenhamlet
Member EpicPosts: 3,772
As a kid, me and the neighborhood kids had lots of sleepovers. We liked to play games, especially board games. One day, one of them got a board game that was like dungeons and dragons. We enjoyed it, but got a bit bored with it pretty quickly.
My older brother played D&D, but I didn't own it and none of my friends did. I spent a lot of time drawing and making comics and stuff, so I tried making my own game for me and my friends to play. I called it, rather unoriginally, "Dungeon".
The game consisted of a pack of lined paper stapled together that had mobs, mini-games, monsters and abilities inspired by final fantasy 1 on nintendo, and I developed a ruleset with dice for combat, also incorporating some closed-eye randomness from the Lone Wolf series I enjoyed. It was a huge hit with my friends as I dungeon-mastered them through quests. We had lots of fun for months in our sleepovers, and I enjoyed making new levels in between.
One day, one of my friends died fighting the notorious "Ant King". The Ant King was the recurring super villain. He was sick of dying to him, so he said he would pay a quarter if I brought him back to life.
A quarter? Nice, easy enough to do. I told him he was alive and we continued to have fun.
We kept playing during sleepovers, but my friends became more and more interested in paying to avoid dying or difficult challenges. They started paying whole dollars.
As a kid, this was a lot of money for me. Naturally, when I was making new levels, I made them increasingly challenging, sometimes to the point of being basically impossible unless I was paid.
After a couple months, the game had totally warped into an unplayable mess. My friends didn't like playing it anymore and I didn't even really like making it.
One of them asked for his money back. He had paid me about $50. I didn't have the money anymore (I spent it binging on Spider-Man comics), and I told him that the money was not a loan. He was pissed but agreed eventually. We stopped being friends soon after, though.
My older brother played D&D, but I didn't own it and none of my friends did. I spent a lot of time drawing and making comics and stuff, so I tried making my own game for me and my friends to play. I called it, rather unoriginally, "Dungeon".
The game consisted of a pack of lined paper stapled together that had mobs, mini-games, monsters and abilities inspired by final fantasy 1 on nintendo, and I developed a ruleset with dice for combat, also incorporating some closed-eye randomness from the Lone Wolf series I enjoyed. It was a huge hit with my friends as I dungeon-mastered them through quests. We had lots of fun for months in our sleepovers, and I enjoyed making new levels in between.
One day, one of my friends died fighting the notorious "Ant King". The Ant King was the recurring super villain. He was sick of dying to him, so he said he would pay a quarter if I brought him back to life.
A quarter? Nice, easy enough to do. I told him he was alive and we continued to have fun.
We kept playing during sleepovers, but my friends became more and more interested in paying to avoid dying or difficult challenges. They started paying whole dollars.
As a kid, this was a lot of money for me. Naturally, when I was making new levels, I made them increasingly challenging, sometimes to the point of being basically impossible unless I was paid.
After a couple months, the game had totally warped into an unplayable mess. My friends didn't like playing it anymore and I didn't even really like making it.
One of them asked for his money back. He had paid me about $50. I didn't have the money anymore (I spent it binging on Spider-Man comics), and I told him that the money was not a loan. He was pissed but agreed eventually. We stopped being friends soon after, though.
Comments
If he was clever, on top of ress fee, he would have charged them for their first session, then he would have charged them monthly fee despite they are participating only 2-3 sessions per year and if they wanted to join new adventures, he would have charged them one time fee, let's call it expansion.
All that while others provide equal service where payment is purely optional.
It is called lack of business sense.
Ass?
Yeah, certainly.
Man you are so funny.
Not.
Dude, this wasn't even close to my most diabolical scheme as a kid. That one wasn't RPG related though, but it was much more hilarious. Can't share because everything you say can and will be used against you on mmorpg.com.
The only time I ever kept someone dead is if they did something reallllly stupid.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
In my pencil and paper group there was one guy who would get very whiney if things didn't go his way. There were times when I was DM that I was tempted to pay him to stop being such a baby.
The problem for me, back in the pre-internet days, was that I had only a small group of people to do those nerdy things with so I kind of had to keep everyone happy if I wanted to keep doing it.
Pretty harsh, bro. At least I was just a kid. What excuse do MMORPG devs have?
This have been a good conversation
I just think monetizing your game based on a failed scheme a 10 year old can come up with is not the best nor most forward-thinking business strat.