Forget F2P. Buy only what you want.

Divide your games primary features and draws up into sections. Sell people only the sections that they want. The core of the game can be free and can include a few basic levels, but new adventures, characters, battle arenas, and even online play can be sold separately.

If you were to buy everything, it would exactly add up to what the game would cost if you just buy the whole thing.

No scamming, just giving the people only what they want and nothing else.

Can't wait to hear how much you all hate the idea.

 

It's far from being new, it actually has many names: expansion packs, dlc, episodes...

Sure, for most games, it is on top of a base that also costs something, but still.

 

No you're completely wrong lol

You have to buy those entire game for full price and then for some reason you have to keep buying more and more content that arguably is just part of the original game you already bought.

I think people just like, lack basic arithmetic skills in the 21st century, because if by the time you're done buying all the DLC and expansion packs the game cost like $89....

I don't know what to say

 

Somebody else please respond :/

 

I like pizza. Pepperoni is a favorite. Double pepperoni with extra cheese is even better.

 

Well that's why I'm getting a little Caesars pretzel crust pizza sitting right beside me in my work van

 

I just don't understand how you can confuse breaking your game up into modules with buying a game full price at retail cost and then also having to buy a whole bunch of other content in order to even enjoy it

 

That's not necessarily right.

I mean, there are "f2p" games that allow to buy all the "pay" content in one go, for way less than the total it would amount to, and including future content.

But seriously, if you are just posting to up the message counts, wouldn't this belong to the "gossip" instead?

The "you're completely wrong", having price as your basis, despite never stating prices in your first post...


The main point I'm trying to make is that those names are all for the same thing, and nothing says that it should only apply for products that are already pricy to begin with, does it?

 

It's kind of like here buy a pizza for $11.99 and each topping is an additional $1.99. And also every time you take a bite it going to cost you 22 cents. But if you act fast we can give you pizza points which you can use to circumvent all of the cool downs on your pizza consumption and we just happen to be having a special where you can get a thousand coins for $89

 

I'm not going to get into some big huge ridiculous argument when you're not even listening to what I'm trying to say to begin with

 

Nor do I feel like reading 16 paragraphs about how you didn't actually say what you actually said or blah blah blah blah blah

 

If you feel like actually talking about the thread topic do let me know...

I mean every single time?

 

??? This topic certainly fits in game design. It definitely impacts the game play experience. Why come out guns blazing? Lol

That would be a lot better than the way many of these f2p games currently are run.

For instance, I once played Kingdom's of Camelot on FB. I joined a clan or whatever it was called. Let's just say group. Made some friends. We all played nightly. Another group was roaming around declaring war on many groups. I got tired of their antics so started buying stuff to power up my own kingdom so i could produce troops faster, achieve max speed, damage and so forth. Then started hammering them hard whenever they hit. I ended up sinking a couple hundred dollars into the game through these stupid micro transactions. It was fun but the cost was insane. I got bored a couple months later and gave my account to another person in our group.

The system definitely worked for the developers (Kabam) but it also made it so I probably won't play another game made by them. You kind of feel "raped" after a while. I mean $50 even $100 I could see for a great game (such as Diablo 3) that gives you years of gaming (my cousin and I played D2 for about a decade). But these other games like KoC. No. The game should have been designed so you spend say $50 or at most $100 and you get every damn thing they come out with. I mean how much money do they want to make from each customer? I know most people will say "duh! As much as possible!" and that is my point. It is just wrong. Set a dang limit an upper amount that is reasonable and even if the player gets there by spending a bit at a time unlock evrrything when they hit the "full price".

Anyway, yeah I like the idea of a free game allowing you to buy custom content. I would never do it for fluff (just changing the look of the game, etc) but for things that imlrove or expand on game play sure I'd buy it. But it needs to be reasonable. Make it like "pay only $10 to unlock the Mega Wizard and get all future new characters free!" Things like that.

 

See now that you're actually talking about what I was talking about... erhm... One good example is that I don't really like online competitive play.

So why can't I pay like two thirds of the price of the game and just not get online competitive play?

 

For what if I'm okay with just enough characters for the game to be playable... I don't really want to buy 32 different characters

 

I guess I'm just kind of trying to say invert the model instead of saying you can't have any fun unless you buy all this crap, and there's no limit to how much crap you can buy and how much currency you can bury into this game, I would just say different people play different ways and everybody doesn't necessarily want everything. So I think what you would end up with is actually more players then you would have had

 

I mean McDonalds has a menu, why are game developer still trying to sell a one-size-fits-all approach and the only alternative is the equivalent of a crooked casino

It's like buy a factory model car, or lease used junkers... no alternative.

 

I see what you are getting at and it does make sense. Unfortunately, I doubt most developers make their game architecture modular enough to actually split out things like online multiplayer pvp from coop mode or even single player mode. Same for characters and other stuff. But yeah that would be awesome for games to truly be modular and you pay to add only the modules you want. Expansion packs like D3 Reaper of Souls do that but you get the whole enchilada. But in that case they basically refined and changed the whole game structure in the process.

 

I'm not suggesting that you get rid of DLC or expansion packs in those kind of huge games, I'm more talking smaller titles like indie games that might have a hard time selling but if you were to break it down into different packages, kind of how cars can come with power windows or your burger can come with bacon.

But now I'm actually realizing that I think the consumer isn't savvy enough to handle that much choice

 

You basically have to tell them to buy and they will buy. In my limited sales experience If you give them the opportunity to think about it, they will probably say no and then buy the next guy's crap when they're basically commanded to buy. Consumers are just that way. Once you get into thinking about saving money, suddenly there like wait why do I have to pay for this at all?

 

Dungeons & Dragons Online does this for the most part. They sell adventure packs which consist of anywhere from one or two major quests to several minor quests.

 

Ic...

 

It is true the more choices you present to people the less likely they are to choose any of them. At least as far as sales go. But I think you could offer a basic and full version of a game. Just give the customer 2 choices. Then when they play the basic version have an option on the title page like "Customize Your Game!" and it shows the modules from the full game they can buy. That might work well.

 

Seems like selling content is perfectly legit. I mean there's a lot of precedence for that outside of games. But you would have to convince people that the content you're selling them has value, and I think for that you need many hours of gameplay and new content.

So maybe it just doesn't apply at this level

 

I think it might be able to work, you might even be able to let them have a sample of the other content before choosing to buy it but you have to have a game that has quite a scope

 

Not sure considering the casual gaming market uses micro transactions to get customers to continually buy buy buy.
I think it is more of a price point thing. Like people are playing their casual games having fun with their friends. One of their friends takes the plunge and buys something. Talks about it. So this player probably thinks about it and almost takes the plunge several times but doesn't. Finally they check it out again and think "well, it is only $5. what the heck!" and does it. But if the coins / gear whatever was priced at $20 that might be out of their disposable income range. You know, it is kind of like stores putting all of the cheap stuff around the cash registers. Gum, candy bars, and so forth. The impulse buys.

 

I don't know, maybe the multi posting and complete dismissal of anything I said in a semi insulting way had to do with it?

In the end, the price you put on your parts is only one of the variables at hand, and just for pointing out that there were already games that somewhat worked by a system like described in the first post, I got completely shut down with examples that made no sense.


I kind of like the idea, and I even posted it a few instants before that whole thread was created.

It really is a system that can be fair for both the players and the content creator.
In fact, it can even make it viable to sell "mods" that way, for profit for both the game creator and the mod creator.

 

I do think it is very odd that people have made games (good games) for a long time and tried to sell the whole dang game for $5 to $10 and often made few sales. Yet these casual games which are basically empty shells in many cases seem to be able to get people to spend $5 to $10 very often just to "add the golden dragon" and so forth.

The only thing I can think of is it goes back to the old days of shareware. Like when they discovered they could sell games very well if they made a 3-part series of games. Gave the first away for free. Then when you completed that free version they pitched "Awesome Game You Just Beat Part Two: New Challenges Await!" and people would buy because they were already hooked on the game and they wanted more, more, more. I think that is what is going on with these F2P games these days. The key is they already have the players hooked. So, they can sell a gold dragon here for $5. A Rainbow Dragon there for $5. Or whatever. Actually have to give them credit for trying it out and discovering it worked so very well. From what I have read, many of these casual games (on FB anyway) are pulling in tons of cash. Like MAJOR money.

 

I think this is a great idea, I bought Arma2 for some ridiculous amount just so I could play the DayZ mod for a couple of hours. I would have loved it if there was the Arma2: Multiplayer for half the price, all the singleplayer content was wasted on me.

Maybe a few options could be available initially e.g. Singleplayer $5, Multiplayer $5 or Both $8. Give them a little incentive to buy the full game with a discount, but also give them the option. Then once in the game, you could have the smaller things such as new skins and additional missions available for purchase.

Would love to try this out!

 

I would just make sure that whatever I sold them would be complete in itself. I can't see selling people the first five levels of a game, for example, and then there are five more levels after that they need to buy. When you building your content with encouraging more sales in mind, you've just compromised your game's design.

 

I can't see how it would work since how is a game supposed to function with half of it missing?

 

You probably have to install a different version for each different version that you bought... It would become pretty complicated. The other alternative is that all the code is there it's just locked, and all of the content like art resources, etc. aren't on your machine unless you buy them.

Basically you have been blocked from downloading certain parts of the game and also blocked from playing certain parts of the game, but you also didn't have to pay for that stuff.

 

So basically a huge pain in the arse as an engineering project and design wise, thus a total waste of anyone's time. How is this really different from in app purchases to buy another fighter or avatar since with the proposed model, you'd be able to obviously clear the game still.

 

It's really not a good idea, to be honest. Like I was saying you would probably actually end up costing yourself more sales then you would if you were just like hey here's package A and here's package B.

And then selling any decent content packs that you make later on.

If I thought it could have some positive benefit, I wouldn't write it off as an engineering nightmare. But I think its better off to just try selling your game. :\

That said anything mentioned in this thread is still better than F2p

 

But it's good for design discussion (if you remove the actual pay thing from this) - for example, is a modular game possible? how would it work? why would it be interesting? I can form a few game designs from it, in that respect.

 

As in the game itself is modular? Hmm... I can't think of anything right now but it definitely sounds like something different.

 

Any time I've seen talk of a game splitting the parts and selling them separately, people get all pissy about it. I've seen a lot of them sell 1 chapter at a time, or 3 chapters at a time. In theory this is better, right? If you don't like the first chapter, you don't buy the rest.

Instead, people get upset about having to purchase them separately, as if they believe it's somehow better to purchase them all at once and risk everything. You're battling emotions here, not logic, and you can't really use logic to overcome it.

I've also seen the same reaction for selling single-player and multi-player bits separately. Personally, I like the idea because I have no use for multiplayer, but most people who respond to the idea are very vocal about how much they hate it. Why? I dunno. It's emotion again.

Sure, this could be the vocal minority, right?

But I've seen games try it, too, and the companies don't do it again. Could be a bad game, but it's all adding up to companies not being willing to risk it any more.

Stephen King once sold a book in chapters, The Green Mile. They came out like once a month for 6 months. It was *horrible*. I bought the first chapter, was very disappointed not to be able to continue immediately, and then forgot about it for 6 months. I bought all 5 of the last chapters at once, and then a few weeks later they released the entire book version for less than I paid for the 6 chapters. (Actually, I think there were multiple chapters per release, but whatever. I don't have a name for it.) It was a miserable experience and I basically swore never to repeat it. And I'm guessing King did the same as I haven't seen it again. This was a book that was good enough to be made into a movie, and it failed to go episodic.

How does TellTale survive it? Hell if I know. I do know that I never buy single chapters of their games any more, though. I buy the set when they come out, if at all. And those chapters tend to be complete tales in themselves, and rather enjoyable.

Finally, if we're only talking about the player, it sounds like a good plan on paper. But if we're talking about *profit*, it's a horrible plan. F2P doesn't reign because players like it. It reigns because it makes so bloody much money for them in comparison to other things they've tried.

 

F2P Zombies, riding a wave of cash into the apocalypse. One begins to wonder... is it so bad to let rich western people blow money by clicking little buttons on their $500, pocket-sized digital robot assistant?

 

Ddo has that. The base game is free but some of the expansion are to purchase including some races etc. You can play just fine without purchasing additional content.
The additional packs expand areas and creates adventures for you to enjoy but aren't necessarily needed to enjoy the game.

 

If it were only "rich western people" who were the whales, I'd be a lot less concerned about it. A lot of not-rich people get hurt in the process, though.

 

Don't they do that all the time? The Sims had numerous expansion packs and you buy what you want. I never bought the magic one because I didn't want magic in my game and it didn't really hurt me at all. I could still play what I wanted to play.

The problem with this is that even buying the ones you wanted cost a lot of money in the end. The completed game was hundreds of dollars and without some of those EPs, the game was boring and unfinished. So people complained. Also, it was tough on your computer. A person with a laptop could not install all those expansions.

 

Sounds like the sort of people who would get involved in drugs, without the games to satisfy their lust for blowing their minimum wage check?

 

You may be right, Misterelmo. Addictive personalities often are addicted to more than one 'substance'.

Can't believe I am saying this, but is it the responsibility of the game developer to protect other people from their own vices? My guess is that there is a line here. My son has little money so he doesn't spend money on in-game purchases but he still is horribly addicted to video games. He just choose games that allow him to feed that addiction without spending his little bit of hard earned cash.

Once he gets out of college and has a job, maybe that will change. Maybe he will be one of those people unable to pay his bills because he spends all his money on video games. Or maybe not. I know people who spend money on designer purses and clothing and at the same time are being chased by creditors for not paying their bills...addicted to superficial status? Not sure.

 

I would argue that social status is the number 1 thing that all people desire. So if in game purchases can lead you to have a higher status in the virtual community then you are going to see a lot of people willing to fork over the cash.

 

A lot of people might miss out on this. But in our modern age every game is effectively social in nature, as well. Even if it's a single player game is going to be a high score table and even if there isn't you can always share your experiences in the form of videos and stories online. It's really just all one big social experiment

 

Really depends on if the game lends itself to that.

DCS World is modular. It's a high-fidelity combat flight sim. Base game with the Su-25 aircraft (and associated missions) is free. You want to fly the A-10? Buy it. The Huey? You can buy that. And if I have the A-10 module, I can still fly against someone who hasn't bought the A-10 module.

In this case, it works great because the idea of having each aircraft be a purchasable model doesn't add a significant amount of engineering overhead. I think the line in the sand so to speak though, is how extensible your game is to expansion in any given area. For example, since most network code has to be integrated at a fairly low level, I doubt having a version without multiplayer vs. a version with it would be an economic use of development time.

 

^^^^ Here we go. Just because I haven't figured it out yet, that doesn't mean there's not still something here... It's just a matter of thinking about it and putting the pieces together maybe not exactly how I'm describing but there has to be an alternative to F2P that's better.

 

I can see where this is going. However, wouldn't that cut people from testing each module? What i mean with that is that when i got GuildWars2, i was only playing PvE. No PvP, no WvW, because i actually didn't think i would like it due to past experiences with other MMOs. But after just going in once, i really liked it.
Where i'm going with this is that many won't know what they'll like and end up spending money for it.

The planes in that plane MMO are just different characters. You can still see the whole game can't you? It's not so much of a module as a different gameplay section as it is different armor or weapon.

Plus try to get in the gamer mentality rather than the developer one, because they will be the ones paying.
"WTF?! are you giving me half a game?!?! screw you." I've seen studies where people are more reluctant to pay 0.99c than 5.99.
It's the feeling that the game has blocks in enjoying the whole game and you have to pay more to simply play it, instead of pay if you like what you see.

Think of a car. Powered windows could be an extra (well it was ) but you could still wind the window down.
Seat warmers are may be an extra, but you can still drive the car anywhere it can normally go. Like that special hat that changes your appearance but doesn't change your armor.