idk.. why would you market to the 98% of gamers who never pay for a game :
I'm not a huge business genius but it dont make sense to me...
charge people at least for the box at the front ^^
Actually, it makes total sense to market to the other 98%.
Focusing on the FREE part of F2P + cash shop or Freemium models gives the causal player incentive to come and try your product. They don't have to invest anything upfront except time. If they like it and feel like spending the extra cash is justified, then they will. If not, it doesn't hurt the game developer, because making an ROI isn't based on the total of people playing the game, but on a small percentage of players taking the extra step and spending money. They also make money on advertising.
If that 98% that comes to your free game and doesn't spend any money likes your product, they might be inclined to buy a paid game of yours down the line. Ergo, you've increased your overall customer base wihotut much effort, and by giving people a product they enjoy and without much investment on their part.
Yeah I suppose so. But I really don't see these people as "competitive." People that push themselves hard to excel at a sport like Baseball, Chess, or even Starcraft are competitive. But if a Baseball player starts taking steroids to gain an unfair advantage...then he's cheating.
I see P2W as basically "legalized" steroids. It's still cheating, it's just legal cheating.
Which is why, even according to EA's numbers, a vast majority of gamers don't invest that extra cash. They don't see the point. It's a game, after all, and games should be about fun, not being a hyper-competitive douche who drops a lot of cash to prove how uber you are.
Still, for some people, that's how they have fun. They need to be that guy who gets to the newest max level in a WoW expansion first, or they need to have all the top gear and weapons in the game to show off to others in order to feel validated as a gamer. For most gamers, however, it's not an issue at all. They just play what they like and when they don't like it anymore, they move on to the next game.
This is why I love turbine's model. it is free to play SOME areas. If you want to play additional high level content you have to pay, and most of the stuff they sell is not game breaking. I spend money on both DDO and LOTRO, recently i was playing Uncharted waters and cash shop items are just overpowered and game breaking, so I stopped playing that game and I suggest you to stay away from any Gpotato/Netmarble game.
It kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it? I mean, take SWG for example. Thousands of negative posts, tons of bad press, and everyone seems to think the game just completely bombed -- but none of us have the exact metrics on this.
SOE mentioned they were losing subscriptions faster than they could count before the NGE hit, and yet, once the NGE hit they took notice of a substantial drop but never deviated from their intended focus. Perhaps the game was still profitable to a point, or they evened out shortly after the NGE. Who knows? Same with AoC and WAR, everyone thinks they are massive failures for whatever reason, but for all we know the numbers behind those games may still be very profitable.
I really liked the presentation actually. Even though I hate F2P, and I DID play BF heroes for a bit, but never spent any money, (though I will admit the game was fun for a bit) I found it really interesting to see some numbers on what forum posters think and how people perceive these models and what is really going on behind the scenes. It just goes to show you that we here are just a very small part of the community.
Disgusting? The only thing disgusting is that some of you whiners come here day in and day out to just complain, complain, complain, and then you end up spending the money and pretend the developers forced themselves upon you. Free will is evident ONLINE just as it is offline. You can stop yourself from eating a cookie, or drinking poison (regardless of how tasty it looks), or surfing websites about porcupine male pattern baldness, but you can't stop yourself from playing a pay 2 win game and paying for it? Ridiculous.
Disgusting? The only thing disgusting is that some of you whiners come here day in and day out to just complain, complain, complain, and then you end up spending the money and pretend the developers forced themselves upon you. Free will is evident ONLINE just as it is offline. You can stop yourself from eating a cookie, or drinking poison (regardless of how tasty it looks), or surfing websites about porcupine male pattern baldness, but you can't stop yourself from playing a pay 2 win game and paying for it? Ridiculous.
This.
The bottom line of the presentation is: If you go P2W, players will cry wolf, then give you all their money anyway. Obviously, devs will start to think P2W just isn't such a big deal. So If you don't like the direction that a game is taking - quit. That's the only action that will send a clear message to the devs.
the guy gave a perfect presentation, I think the correlation to Golf is perfect. I go out and buy all the latest clubs, just to hopefully improve my game. So why should it be any different in gaming. I was a total anti-f2p/p2w guy before this presentations, but now put me in the pro side.
They had to take a chance and a risk to save the game and peoples jobs. To be honest I can not blame them for doing what they did. More people who play the game would have raged if it had closed down lots of people would have had to find new jobs. Free to play games need to make money end of, if people can not see that then sorry but there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Like he said 2% was vocal about it and most continued to play and spend money in the cash shop. The game was saved and people did not have to go job hunting.
I take it OP that your studio does not like to make money or cover the costs ? You will not last long if you have no business sense. Also look at the weapons in game a 1.5% advantage compared to skill ? Come on not like it was a 50% or 100% advantage.... And yes I have played BF:H quite a bit in the past I used normal weapons my KD was pretty good before and after the weapons was added.
the guy gave a perfect presentation, I think the correlation to Golf is perfect. I go out and buy all the latest clubs, just to hopefully improve my game. So why should it be any different in gaming. I was a total anti-f2p/p2w guy before this presentations, but now put me in the pro side.
You said in another post:
I cant blame them for trying to do what they can to maximize their profits, hell I do it every day in my work, why should a gaming company be any different.
it is understandable then that you are on the pro side. Well I am not trying to maximize my profit at the expenses of others. Maybe I will never be rich with this mentality but I do well nonetheless.
Your analogy with golf is maybe accurate but is still wrong to buy victory with money even if everyone is doing it. It is an elephant in a room and when I see it I shout loud: ELEPHANT
... and I have the luxury that I can say when something smells greedy or not ...and this presentation really stinks
They had to take a chance and a risk to save the game and peoples jobs. To be honest I can not blame them for doing what they did. More people who play the game would have raged if it had closed down lots of people would have had to find new jobs. Free to play games need to make money end of, if people can not see that then sorry but there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Like he said 2% was vocal about it and most continued to play and spend money in the cash shop. The game was saved and people did not have to go job hunting.
I take it OP that your studio does not like to make money or cover the costs ? You will not last long if you have no business sense. Also look at the weapons in game a 1.5% advantage compared to skill ? Come on not like it was a 50% or 100% advantage.... And yes I have played BF:H quite a bit in the past I used normal weapons my KD was pretty good before and after the weapons was added.
Lol business sense. For every filthy dealings, for every illegal scheme or practice you can use this word - it is just business. No responsibility, no explanations. Like you can do everything just because you are in process of .... maximizing profit.
... but there are ways to do it mate, not for all you need to mislead customers.
Disgusting? The only thing disgusting is that some of you whiners come here day in and day out to just complain, complain, complain, and then you end up spending the money and pretend the developers forced themselves upon you. Free will is evident ONLINE just as it is offline. You can stop yourself from eating a cookie, or drinking poison (regardless of how tasty it looks), or surfing websites about porcupine male pattern baldness, but you can't stop yourself from playing a pay 2 win game and paying for it? Ridiculous.
No you cant. You cant stop eating a cookie if you dont know you are eating it. You cant stop drinking a poison if you are thinking that you are drinking orange juice.
This presentation is marketing in its pure sense: an illusion. They dont sell you what you really need, but what you think you need, what they must do so that you will think that you need it.
We here in America are so used to democracy in an open media... we autothink that the loudest voices are what people base their decisions on. In this context, we think that if we complain enough, developers will ignore their data and do what those loud voices say.
And for some strange reason, we believe that they'll listen to what those people say, while not being slightly curious regarding what they DO. Even in a world of the developers creation, where they can find that info very easily.
Since, here in America, we have both a democratic republic and a hybrid social-capitalist economic model, we always think the former, when intense enough emotionally, will influence the latter. In this case, there is no real reason to believe this. Particularly under threat to those employees that they may not be able to feed their families in the future.
The developers haven't been called upon to steal food from children. They haven't been called upon to imprison the innocent, or torture someone. THERE IS NOTHING MORE CONSENTUAL OR UNNECESSARY TO SURVIVAL THAN A F2P VIDEO GAME. THERE IS NO COMMITMENT, NOT EVEN TO GET YOUR MONEY'S WORTH OF ENTERTAINMENT FOR THE BOX. Your life will be IN NO WAY worse off after walking away from one.
So put yourself in their shoes. Would you starve your kids for the sake of denying players what data tells you they willing to pay for? See "Fistful of dollars", or better yet, our foreign policy for the past 40 years.
It IS sad for the world of online gaming, don't get me wrong. But to say that developers are at fault is dead wrong. They're doing what most gamers want, and quite often, those making the biggest stink over it do'eth protest too much.
Given the recent news... if Eve is going the P2W way that "leakages" suggest, I do hope they get punished in subs for it. But in light of this link(thank you, OP!), I wonder if that'll actually happen. Earlier today, I posted this:
"CCP, after years of cultivating slow, but steady growth, appears to have forgotten that while some people like to PLAY in the world of "greed is good", few like to LIVE in it. Even fewer like to be made the victim of it.
Unless they pull a complete 180 regarding what they say and how they say it in the next week, they're on their way to the SWG:NGE promised land."
I may end up eating those words... and yep, IMO, it's a sad day.
Disgusting? The only thing disgusting is that some of you whiners come here day in and day out to just complain, complain, complain, and then you end up spending the money and pretend the developers forced themselves upon you. Free will is evident ONLINE just as it is offline. You can stop yourself from eating a cookie, or drinking poison (regardless of how tasty it looks), or surfing websites about porcupine male pattern baldness, but you can't stop yourself from playing a pay 2 win game and paying for it? Ridiculous.
No you cant. You cant stop eating a cookie if you dont know you are eating it. You cant stop drinking a poison if you are thinking that you are drinking orange juice.
This presentation is marketing in its pure sense: an illusion. They dont sell you what you really need, but what you think you need, what they must do so that you will think that you need it.
You know, there's things we know and things we don't know, and the knowns we know we know are known as Known knowns. Things we know we don't know which are known as no no's among the knowns and the no no's we know go with the don't knows.
Sorry, what you said just didn't make any sense to me. Nobody put a gun to anyone's head (no pun intended) and forced them to purchase permanent weapons or advantage items. I'm very VERY anti-P2W but you can't blame people with bad spending habits on video game companies that offer additional items. That's like people who are overweight trying to sue Wal-Mart for having low food prices.
Disgusting? The only thing disgusting is that some of you whiners come here day in and day out to just complain, complain, complain, and then you end up spending the money and pretend the developers forced themselves upon you. Free will is evident ONLINE just as it is offline. You can stop yourself from eating a cookie, or drinking poison (regardless of how tasty it looks), or surfing websites about porcupine male pattern baldness, but you can't stop yourself from playing a pay 2 win game and paying for it? Ridiculous.
No you cant. You cant stop eating a cookie if you dont know you are eating it. You cant stop drinking a poison if you are thinking that you are drinking orange juice.
This presentation is marketing in its pure sense: an illusion. They dont sell you what you really need, but what you think you need, what they must do so that you will think that you need it.
You know, there's things we know and things we don't know, and the knowns we know we know are known as Known knowns. Things we know we don't know which are known as no no's among the knowns and the no no's we know go with the don't knows.
Sorry, what you said just didn't make any sense to me. Nobody put a gun to anyone's head (no pun intended) and forced them to purchase permanent weapons or advantage items. I'm very VERY anti-P2W but you can't blame people with bad spending habits on video game companies that offer additional items. That's like saying people who are overweight trying to sue Wal-Mart for having low food prices.
Of coure you dont but I will not explain it to you. You need to do some reading, educate yourself For example:
p.s. this is just one article that I pulled out of google in like 3 sec. You should do more research on the topic but is really a philosophic depate that you need to put some effort into
They had to take a chance and a risk to save the game and peoples jobs. To be honest I can not blame them for doing what they did. More people who play the game would have raged if it had closed down lots of people would have had to find new jobs. Free to play games need to make money end of, if people can not see that then sorry but there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Like he said 2% was vocal about it and most continued to play and spend money in the cash shop. The game was saved and people did not have to go job hunting.
I take it OP that your studio does not like to make money or cover the costs ? You will not last long if you have no business sense. Also look at the weapons in game a 1.5% advantage compared to skill ? Come on not like it was a 50% or 100% advantage.... And yes I have played BF:H quite a bit in the past I used normal weapons my KD was pretty good before and after the weapons was added.
Lol business sense. For every filthy dealings, for every illegal scheme or practice you can use this word - it is just business. No responsibility, no explanations. Like you can do everything just because you are in process of .... maximizing profit.
... but there are ways to do it mate, not for all you need to mislead customers.
There may be ways to do it and maybe that 2-5% extra damage gun killed the game in an FPS... Sorry but it was something they needed to do to help save the game. I am fine with small advantage items it is the 50% more damage item games I stay clear of. In an FPS 5% is nothing.
Sorry to say this but FPS players will pay for a small advantage over others it is just what sells. And I am sure if you hd millions of your own money on the line and staff you would risk the same.
BTW if what they did is so illegal then take them to court
Like I said I was playing the game before and after when the cash shop was booming and I never had issues with killing people with a small advantage.
They had to take a chance and a risk to save the game and peoples jobs. To be honest I can not blame them for doing what they did. More people who play the game would have raged if it had closed down lots of people would have had to find new jobs. Free to play games need to make money end of, if people can not see that then sorry but there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Like he said 2% was vocal about it and most continued to play and spend money in the cash shop. The game was saved and people did not have to go job hunting.
I take it OP that your studio does not like to make money or cover the costs ? You will not last long if you have no business sense. Also look at the weapons in game a 1.5% advantage compared to skill ? Come on not like it was a 50% or 100% advantage.... And yes I have played BF:H quite a bit in the past I used normal weapons my KD was pretty good before and after the weapons was added.
Lol business sense. For every filthy dealings, for every illegal scheme or practice you can use this word - it is just business. No responsibility, no explanations. Like you can do everything just because you are in process of .... maximizing profit.
... but there are ways to do it mate, not for all you need to mislead customers.
Sorry to say this but FPS players will pay for a small advantage over others it is just what sells. And I am sure if you hd millions of your own money on the line and staff you would risk the same.
Sorry, what was that? I believe we FPS players like using methods that are honorable and wholly skill-based. Casuals pay for convenience (and it doesn't help them, B-T-DUBz), real players do not.
Because I love games, and it seems that no one except for Arena Net and Bethesda are making games that I love.
We're in at the age where game developers are catering to the more braindead console gamer and Pc ports are more of an after thought or shows the console limitations within it. The Pc has the powerful dx11 API and yet developers around the world don't make full use of it as they have to make the bloody game cross plat giving us more of the same old mechanics, dx11 opens up way more mechanics to entrain with. Pc exclusives in the hands of indie now I'm afraid. Gaming has gone big time mainstream and with that corp mentally of do more of the same that's sold before to make money, gaming is loosing it heart with only gems every few years. Even Battlefield 3 promised to us by Dice to be a Pc exclusive so it can go all out, yet here we have it for console too thus design choices gone in to it to cater old crossplat where we'll have limitations that didn't need to be there if it was a Pc exclusive.
lol, love the pc fanboys who immediatley blame a,ll of lifes problems on consoles, maybe if pc gamers actually spent money on these games they go on and on about instead of sinking all there money into there rigs and pirating games they wouldnt be in this situation.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling" Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
A business does not need to lower themselves to EA's level in order to make money.
Hell, look at ArenaNet. Their micro-transactions are completely reasonable. It hardly affects gameplay, especially in a competitive sense. The only thing that really gives any gameplay "advantage" are the extra bag slots. And those are for PvE.
No gaming business has to do this.
The difference is GW also has a box price x 4 or 5 (I dont play it so no idea how many xpacs its at)
A free to play title does not have that £100 + revenue from box sales to factor to its ARPU so its all about making enough from the players who do pay I thought the presentation was good and matches my own experiences of F2P a core forum using base with high revenue paying for the millions of F2P leeches who have never and will never put a penny to the game yet are the first to whine when things change giving the paying player a small leg up.
And that's why all businesses that feature F2P games should take a hint and sell a great game with a box price, as I'm sure most people believe a great game deserves profit with a loyal playerbase. — I would have purchased Battlefield: Heroes, knowing it would be well maintained and balanced like all Battlefield games. Which brings me to my next point. EA has sold plenty Battlefield games. There is absolutely no excuse for them to completely destroy a great F2P game with a disgusting F2P model. They could have easily went with ArenaNet's model while maintaining it as F2P and still make a good profit.
then it woulodnt have been F2P, it would have just been anohter battlefield game, or do you not get the FREE in free to play?
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling" Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
A business does not need to lower themselves to EA's level in order to make money.
Hell, look at ArenaNet. Their micro-transactions are completely reasonable. It hardly affects gameplay, especially in a competitive sense. The only thing that really gives any gameplay "advantage" are the extra bag slots. And those are for PvE.
No gaming business has to do this.
The difference is GW also has a box price x 4 or 5 (I dont play it so no idea how many xpacs its at)
A free to play title does not have that £100 + revenue from box sales to factor to its ARPU so its all about making enough from the players who do pay I thought the presentation was good and matches my own experiences of F2P a core forum using base with high revenue paying for the millions of F2P leeches who have never and will never put a penny to the game yet are the first to whine when things change giving the paying player a small leg up.
And that's why all businesses that feature F2P games should take a hint and sell a great game with a box price, as I'm sure most people believe a great game deserves profit with a loyal playerbase. — I would have purchased Battlefield: Heroes, knowing it would be well maintained and balanced like all Battlefield games. Which brings me to my next point. EA has sold plenty Battlefield games. There is absolutely no excuse for them to completely destroy a great F2P game with a disgusting F2P model. They could have easily went with ArenaNet's model while maintaining it as F2P and still make a good profit.
then it woulodnt have been F2P, it would have just been anohter battlefield game, or do you not get the FREE in free to play?
So you're saying games with microtransactions (which imbalance the game and are basically forcing you to buy their items to do well) are F2P? I see no difference other than the fact that buying a boxed version is significantly less money than a microtransaction store.
They had to take a chance and a risk to save the game and peoples jobs. To be honest I can not blame them for doing what they did. More people who play the game would have raged if it had closed down lots of people would have had to find new jobs. Free to play games need to make money end of, if people can not see that then sorry but there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Like he said 2% was vocal about it and most continued to play and spend money in the cash shop. The game was saved and people did not have to go job hunting.
I take it OP that your studio does not like to make money or cover the costs ? You will not last long if you have no business sense. Also look at the weapons in game a 1.5% advantage compared to skill ? Come on not like it was a 50% or 100% advantage.... And yes I have played BF:H quite a bit in the past I used normal weapons my KD was pretty good before and after the weapons was added.
Lol business sense. For every filthy dealings, for every illegal scheme or practice you can use this word - it is just business. No responsibility, no explanations. Like you can do everything just because you are in process of .... maximizing profit.
... but there are ways to do it mate, not for all you need to mislead customers.
Sorry to say this but FPS players will pay for a small advantage over others it is just what sells. And I am sure if you hd millions of your own money on the line and staff you would risk the same.
Sorry, what was that? I believe we FPS players like using methods that are honorable and wholly skill-based. Casuals pay for convenience (and it doesn't help them, B-T-DUBz), real players do not.
Oh ok so people playing on a 19 inch screen at a lower res with bad FPS and sterio sounds are honrable? And enyone playing in high res with high FPS and a large monitor and 7.1 surround sound are less honrable because yes hardware gives you an advantage.
I will agree I never went cash shop route in the game but I had no issues killing people with premium weapons because the few extra in a clip or the 2.5% extra damage just was not an issue. In fact my K/D went up without premium weapons over time.
I dont know if any of you took the time to listen to the presentation by an employee at EA that was linked to in the OP? It was extremely interesting, and I ended up listening through it at around 3 am this morning (I was dead tired, but the presentation woke me up). I am still wondering if that presentation is a hoax or not - I think it is genuine. And it's quite disturbing.
What disturbs me most is the feeling of being trapped. Not trapped by the companies that are willing to put P2W into their games, but by YOU - my fellow players. According to EA, we here in the forums make up a mere 2 percent of the player population.Around 80% of the gamers actually never ever go into the forums of the game they play. 18% only read the forums, but never post. So those 98% of the players (most of which are not here reading this post, unfortunately) answer surveys asking their opinion on p2w. And you know what? Around 50% say they actually WANT p2w into their games. Only a handfull are negative to it.
EA demonstrated in one of their games that even though the forums were in uproar after they implemented p2w weaponry into their cash shop (4000 posts in to weeks, fiendish letters to the devs etc), their player base kept stable, and their "conversion rate" (the amount of the total player base actually spending money in their cash shop) SKY ROCKETED! If anybody left it was hardly noticable.
So then that leaves me trapped. By my peers who would like to open their wallets and pay to win. EA even said in the presentation that we humans are used to social inequalities all over the place. In sports (buying better wheels, engines, clubs etc than our competitors), and it works great in games too!
These days we read about "the Mass Exodus of EVE"; the gamers speak like they are the choosen people walking out of Egypt. It all began with an internal momo saying that CCP shouldnt listen to the players, but rather look at what players actually do. According to EA - CCP is damn right. What probably will happen is that the great majority of people (95+ %) will spread their legs and welcome this wonderful opertunity! The OP calls this "disgusting". I agree, but I dont know if Im more disgusted by my fellow players.
... What disturbs me most is the feeling of being trapped. Not trapped by the companies that are willing to put P2W into their games, but by YOU - my fellow players. ..
So then that leaves me trapped. By my peers who would like to open their wallets and pay to win. EA even said in the presentation that we humans are used to social inequalities all over the place. In sports (buying better wheels, engines, clubs etc than our competitors), and it works great in games too!...
welcome this wonderful opertunity! The OP calls this "disgusting". I agree, but I dont know if Im more disgusted by my fellow players.
It has always been that way. Pay 2 Win existed far before any company introduced an item shop: running multiple accounts, buying gold, buying powerful weapons/items or skilled characters on e-bay, 3rd party aim-bots or radars, buying power-leveling services, speed hacks, macro-ers. When you have a competitive game you also have cheaters, can't have one without the other.
Mind you, I'm not saying that all competitive players are cheaters, far from it, but a significant number of them are.
Basically there are two types of players in the genre: the ones that like to play and the ones that like to win. For some people playing a game is fun, for others fun is winning a game. And amongst the winners you have a good number of people that will do whatever it takes.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
Business and creavity are pretty damn exclusive these days. And of course you need money as a company, but implementing "Pay 2 Win" is the complete opposite direction you should be taking. That will only effectively REDUCE your revenue when pissed off fans leave your game permenantly.
If you're correct and microtransactions effectively reduce your revenue by making people get pissed off and leave a game forever, then why are the most active forum users and most active gamers the ones who spend 10x as much money as the more casual fans?
They are the casual fans. Anyone who prefers quick, easy satisfaction handed to them on a silver platter is a casual. Real gamers are those who treat their games as a hobby and like to work hard towards their goals due to the stronger sense of reward and achievement that follows.
All this greedy shit does is degrade the hell out of your game and drive away your real loyal fanbase (you know, the people you owe your initial success to).
So, the only "real" gamers are the non-casuals? I always thought casual gamers are the ones with jobs, families, etc. who can't play more than maybe a few hours a week, and who progress their characters much more slowly due to lack of playing time.
Now i know they're the lazy ones who want the same game rewards but who don't want to "work" for it. This is also strange since I always thought of games as being fun, not work.
Thanks for setting me straight. I always wondered what an elitist gamer was. Now I know.
This is also strange since I always thought of games as being fun, not work.
Most people think of games as games, and as being fun. Very, very few think of them as work.
Just look at EA's numbers. The vast majority of their customers never go to message boards, or if they do, they never post. It's only about 2% of gamers that get emotionally invested enough in a game to post about it on boards or to spend extra money on it through cash shops.
It's that 2% vocal minority that dismiss the other 98% as lazy, shiftless gamers who don't want to work for anything and who want to Pay2Win or whatever, while the other 98% are looking at them wondering why anyone would get that bent out of shape over a video game, and over a few extra items being sold for extra cash. They look at those item malls and cash shops the same way they look at the Marketplace on XBox Live or on the PSN -- filled with items that they don't need to play the game, but which are available to them if they want.
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Actually, it makes total sense to market to the other 98%.
Focusing on the FREE part of F2P + cash shop or Freemium models gives the causal player incentive to come and try your product. They don't have to invest anything upfront except time. If they like it and feel like spending the extra cash is justified, then they will. If not, it doesn't hurt the game developer, because making an ROI isn't based on the total of people playing the game, but on a small percentage of players taking the extra step and spending money. They also make money on advertising.
If that 98% that comes to your free game and doesn't spend any money likes your product, they might be inclined to buy a paid game of yours down the line. Ergo, you've increased your overall customer base wihotut much effort, and by giving people a product they enjoy and without much investment on their part.
Which is why, even according to EA's numbers, a vast majority of gamers don't invest that extra cash. They don't see the point. It's a game, after all, and games should be about fun, not being a hyper-competitive douche who drops a lot of cash to prove how uber you are.
Still, for some people, that's how they have fun. They need to be that guy who gets to the newest max level in a WoW expansion first, or they need to have all the top gear and weapons in the game to show off to others in order to feel validated as a gamer. For most gamers, however, it's not an issue at all. They just play what they like and when they don't like it anymore, they move on to the next game.
This is why I love turbine's model. it is free to play SOME areas. If you want to play additional high level content you have to pay, and most of the stuff they sell is not game breaking. I spend money on both DDO and LOTRO, recently i was playing Uncharted waters and cash shop items are just overpowered and game breaking, so I stopped playing that game and I suggest you to stay away from any Gpotato/Netmarble game.
It kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it? I mean, take SWG for example. Thousands of negative posts, tons of bad press, and everyone seems to think the game just completely bombed -- but none of us have the exact metrics on this.
SOE mentioned they were losing subscriptions faster than they could count before the NGE hit, and yet, once the NGE hit they took notice of a substantial drop but never deviated from their intended focus. Perhaps the game was still profitable to a point, or they evened out shortly after the NGE. Who knows? Same with AoC and WAR, everyone thinks they are massive failures for whatever reason, but for all we know the numbers behind those games may still be very profitable.
I really liked the presentation actually. Even though I hate F2P, and I DID play BF heroes for a bit, but never spent any money, (though I will admit the game was fun for a bit) I found it really interesting to see some numbers on what forum posters think and how people perceive these models and what is really going on behind the scenes. It just goes to show you that we here are just a very small part of the community.
Disgusting? The only thing disgusting is that some of you whiners come here day in and day out to just complain, complain, complain, and then you end up spending the money and pretend the developers forced themselves upon you. Free will is evident ONLINE just as it is offline. You can stop yourself from eating a cookie, or drinking poison (regardless of how tasty it looks), or surfing websites about porcupine male pattern baldness, but you can't stop yourself from playing a pay 2 win game and paying for it? Ridiculous.
This.
The bottom line of the presentation is: If you go P2W, players will cry wolf, then give you all their money anyway. Obviously, devs will start to think P2W just isn't such a big deal. So If you don't like the direction that a game is taking - quit. That's the only action that will send a clear message to the devs.
Hype train -> Reality
the guy gave a perfect presentation, I think the correlation to Golf is perfect. I go out and buy all the latest clubs, just to hopefully improve my game. So why should it be any different in gaming. I was a total anti-f2p/p2w guy before this presentations, but now put me in the pro side.
Pay2Win
Grind2Win
I am repulsed by both.
The video was informative.
They had to take a chance and a risk to save the game and peoples jobs. To be honest I can not blame them for doing what they did. More people who play the game would have raged if it had closed down lots of people would have had to find new jobs. Free to play games need to make money end of, if people can not see that then sorry but there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Like he said 2% was vocal about it and most continued to play and spend money in the cash shop. The game was saved and people did not have to go job hunting.
I take it OP that your studio does not like to make money or cover the costs ? You will not last long if you have no business sense. Also look at the weapons in game a 1.5% advantage compared to skill ? Come on not like it was a 50% or 100% advantage.... And yes I have played BF:H quite a bit in the past I used normal weapons my KD was pretty good before and after the weapons was added.
You said in another post:
I cant blame them for trying to do what they can to maximize their profits, hell I do it every day in my work, why should a gaming company be any different.
it is understandable then that you are on the pro side. Well I am not trying to maximize my profit at the expenses of others. Maybe I will never be rich with this mentality but I do well nonetheless.
Your analogy with golf is maybe accurate but is still wrong to buy victory with money even if everyone is doing it. It is an elephant in a room and when I see it I shout loud: ELEPHANT
... and I have the luxury that I can say when something smells greedy or not ...and this presentation really stinks
Lol business sense. For every filthy dealings, for every illegal scheme or practice you can use this word - it is just business. No responsibility, no explanations. Like you can do everything just because you are in process of .... maximizing profit.
... but there are ways to do it mate, not for all you need to mislead customers.
No you cant. You cant stop eating a cookie if you dont know you are eating it. You cant stop drinking a poison if you are thinking that you are drinking orange juice.
This presentation is marketing in its pure sense: an illusion. They dont sell you what you really need, but what you think you need, what they must do so that you will think that you need it.
Welcome to capitalism.
We here in America are so used to democracy in an open media... we autothink that the loudest voices are what people base their decisions on. In this context, we think that if we complain enough, developers will ignore their data and do what those loud voices say.
And for some strange reason, we believe that they'll listen to what those people say, while not being slightly curious regarding what they DO. Even in a world of the developers creation, where they can find that info very easily.
Since, here in America, we have both a democratic republic and a hybrid social-capitalist economic model, we always think the former, when intense enough emotionally, will influence the latter. In this case, there is no real reason to believe this. Particularly under threat to those employees that they may not be able to feed their families in the future.
The developers haven't been called upon to steal food from children. They haven't been called upon to imprison the innocent, or torture someone. THERE IS NOTHING MORE CONSENTUAL OR UNNECESSARY TO SURVIVAL THAN A F2P VIDEO GAME. THERE IS NO COMMITMENT, NOT EVEN TO GET YOUR MONEY'S WORTH OF ENTERTAINMENT FOR THE BOX. Your life will be IN NO WAY worse off after walking away from one.
So put yourself in their shoes. Would you starve your kids for the sake of denying players what data tells you they willing to pay for? See "Fistful of dollars", or better yet, our foreign policy for the past 40 years.
It IS sad for the world of online gaming, don't get me wrong. But to say that developers are at fault is dead wrong. They're doing what most gamers want, and quite often, those making the biggest stink over it do'eth protest too much.
Given the recent news... if Eve is going the P2W way that "leakages" suggest, I do hope they get punished in subs for it. But in light of this link(thank you, OP!), I wonder if that'll actually happen. Earlier today, I posted this:
"CCP, after years of cultivating slow, but steady growth, appears to have forgotten that while some people like to PLAY in the world of "greed is good", few like to LIVE in it. Even fewer like to be made the victim of it.
Unless they pull a complete 180 regarding what they say and how they say it in the next week, they're on their way to the SWG:NGE promised land."
I may end up eating those words... and yep, IMO, it's a sad day.
You know, there's things we know and things we don't know, and the knowns we know we know are known as Known knowns. Things we know we don't know which are known as no no's among the knowns and the no no's we know go with the don't knows.
Sorry, what you said just didn't make any sense to me. Nobody put a gun to anyone's head (no pun intended) and forced them to purchase permanent weapons or advantage items. I'm very VERY anti-P2W but you can't blame people with bad spending habits on video game companies that offer additional items. That's like people who are overweight trying to sue Wal-Mart for having low food prices.
Of coure you dont but I will not explain it to you. You need to do some reading, educate yourself For example:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Does_marketing_create_or_satisfy_needs
p.s. this is just one article that I pulled out of google in like 3 sec. You should do more research on the topic but is really a philosophic depate that you need to put some effort into
There may be ways to do it and maybe that 2-5% extra damage gun killed the game in an FPS... Sorry but it was something they needed to do to help save the game. I am fine with small advantage items it is the 50% more damage item games I stay clear of. In an FPS 5% is nothing.
Sorry to say this but FPS players will pay for a small advantage over others it is just what sells. And I am sure if you hd millions of your own money on the line and staff you would risk the same.
BTW if what they did is so illegal then take them to court
Like I said I was playing the game before and after when the cash shop was booming and I never had issues with killing people with a small advantage.
Sorry, what was that? I believe we FPS players like using methods that are honorable and wholly skill-based. Casuals pay for convenience (and it doesn't help them, B-T-DUBz), real players do not.
lol, love the pc fanboys who immediatley blame a,ll of lifes problems on consoles, maybe if pc gamers actually spent money on these games they go on and on about instead of sinking all there money into there rigs and pirating games they wouldnt be in this situation.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
then it woulodnt have been F2P, it would have just been anohter battlefield game, or do you not get the FREE in free to play?
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
So you're saying games with microtransactions (which imbalance the game and are basically forcing you to buy their items to do well) are F2P? I see no difference other than the fact that buying a boxed version is significantly less money than a microtransaction store.
Oh ok so people playing on a 19 inch screen at a lower res with bad FPS and sterio sounds are honrable? And enyone playing in high res with high FPS and a large monitor and 7.1 surround sound are less honrable because yes hardware gives you an advantage.
I will agree I never went cash shop route in the game but I had no issues killing people with premium weapons because the few extra in a clip or the 2.5% extra damage just was not an issue. In fact my K/D went up without premium weapons over time.
I dont know if any of you took the time to listen to the presentation by an employee at EA that was linked to in the OP? It was extremely interesting, and I ended up listening through it at around 3 am this morning (I was dead tired, but the presentation woke me up). I am still wondering if that presentation is a hoax or not - I think it is genuine. And it's quite disturbing.
What disturbs me most is the feeling of being trapped. Not trapped by the companies that are willing to put P2W into their games, but by YOU - my fellow players. According to EA, we here in the forums make up a mere 2 percent of the player population.Around 80% of the gamers actually never ever go into the forums of the game they play. 18% only read the forums, but never post. So those 98% of the players (most of which are not here reading this post, unfortunately) answer surveys asking their opinion on p2w. And you know what? Around 50% say they actually WANT p2w into their games. Only a handfull are negative to it.
EA demonstrated in one of their games that even though the forums were in uproar after they implemented p2w weaponry into their cash shop (4000 posts in to weeks, fiendish letters to the devs etc), their player base kept stable, and their "conversion rate" (the amount of the total player base actually spending money in their cash shop) SKY ROCKETED! If anybody left it was hardly noticable.
So then that leaves me trapped. By my peers who would like to open their wallets and pay to win. EA even said in the presentation that we humans are used to social inequalities all over the place. In sports (buying better wheels, engines, clubs etc than our competitors), and it works great in games too!
These days we read about "the Mass Exodus of EVE"; the gamers speak like they are the choosen people walking out of Egypt. It all began with an internal momo saying that CCP shouldnt listen to the players, but rather look at what players actually do. According to EA - CCP is damn right. What probably will happen is that the great majority of people (95+ %) will spread their legs and welcome this wonderful opertunity! The OP calls this "disgusting". I agree, but I dont know if Im more disgusted by my fellow players.
I do agree with you on that EvE is P2P adding RTM's is wrong. But when it is a F2P game I don't have an issue.
It has always been that way. Pay 2 Win existed far before any company introduced an item shop: running multiple accounts, buying gold, buying powerful weapons/items or skilled characters on e-bay, 3rd party aim-bots or radars, buying power-leveling services, speed hacks, macro-ers. When you have a competitive game you also have cheaters, can't have one without the other.
Mind you, I'm not saying that all competitive players are cheaters, far from it, but a significant number of them are.
Basically there are two types of players in the genre: the ones that like to play and the ones that like to win. For some people playing a game is fun, for others fun is winning a game. And amongst the winners you have a good number of people that will do whatever it takes.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
So, the only "real" gamers are the non-casuals? I always thought casual gamers are the ones with jobs, families, etc. who can't play more than maybe a few hours a week, and who progress their characters much more slowly due to lack of playing time.
Now i know they're the lazy ones who want the same game rewards but who don't want to "work" for it. This is also strange since I always thought of games as being fun, not work.
Thanks for setting me straight. I always wondered what an elitist gamer was. Now I know.
Most people think of games as games, and as being fun. Very, very few think of them as work.
Just look at EA's numbers. The vast majority of their customers never go to message boards, or if they do, they never post. It's only about 2% of gamers that get emotionally invested enough in a game to post about it on boards or to spend extra money on it through cash shops.
It's that 2% vocal minority that dismiss the other 98% as lazy, shiftless gamers who don't want to work for anything and who want to Pay2Win or whatever, while the other 98% are looking at them wondering why anyone would get that bent out of shape over a video game, and over a few extra items being sold for extra cash. They look at those item malls and cash shops the same way they look at the Marketplace on XBox Live or on the PSN -- filled with items that they don't need to play the game, but which are available to them if they want.