Monetizing Free-To-Play Gaming Models 164
eldavojohn writes "Last week, a game consultant named David J Edery gave his two cents on why free-to-play (F2P) game models aren't as prolific in the West as they seem to be in the East. Aside from a few unprovable cultural divides, he makes some interesting claims concerning conversion rates of non-paying players to paying players. Some customers pay hundreds for functional items and only a dollar on aesthetic items while other users might be the complete opposite. He also notes that converting a non-paying newbie into a paying customer is not the same as converting a non-paying salty dog. He defines 'aggressive monetization' to mean how much money will advance you 'unfairly' in the game. He focuses on two classes of items: those that provide performance-neutral aesthetics and those that provide performance enhancing or functional advancements. He claims to have access to ARPPU ('average revenue per paying user' per month) rates among several game developers and states that 'more aggressive monetization model and a loyal, niche userbase can hope to generate $50 per paying user per month, on average,' while 'a F2P game that limits itself to flat subscription revenue and/or non-functional items is generally more likely to fall somewhere between $5 and $10 per paying user per month.' Like any good consultant, he also gives ethics a footnote in an otherwise verbose post on monetizing free to play games. Has anyone here had experience pricing items and content in free-to-play games?"
Gaming profit models (Score:5, Informative)
There's probably more, but that's the ones I've seen.
It can be done right... (Score:2, Informative)
To my mind, Kingdom of Loathing has done a fantastic job of handling this type of problem. Though not what most people think of when they think of a F2P MMO, they have made all items that one donates for tradeable, allowing non-paying players to experience the "premium" content if they are willing to farm hard and long enough for in-game currency. So people who are willing to pay can buy extra to sell in game to people who are not willing to pay real life money for them. It's a system that could easily have broken down horribly and made the whole economy wildly unbalanced, but through attention to detail and a commitment to making all items and content available for every player, they have succeeded where many games have failed.
Re:Long time lurker, first time poster. (Score:4, Informative)
Default posting mode for a new account is HTML, which ignores most whitespace (converts any amount of any type of whitespace into a single space, more precisely). You can either manually insert <p></p> or <br /> tags, or you can switch to Plain Old Text posting method. POT method still lets you embed HTML, but it will also auto-convert new lines in your comment "source" to new lines in the result that gets posted.
Also, always preview before posting.
Re:Gaming profit models (Score:2, Informative)
Otherwise I thought your post was pretty accurate.
Re:Best of BOTH Worlds (Score:3, Informative)
I can buy a PLEX (30-day Pilot License EXtension) for real-life money and then selling in-game for in-game currency.
So let's see...
You are a player who doesn't really have enough money or is unwilling to spend them on a monthly subscription, but at the same time you have a lot of spare time. So you make lots of in-game currency (called ISK). I am a guy who can afford to pay the monthly fee but because of my job/real-life lack of free time, I can't afford making lots of ISK; however, I could use the ISK to buy in-game ships, modules and the like, for a better gaming experience. Therefore, I buy the PLEX for real-life money, sell the PLEX to you for ISK.
In the end:
- CCP (the game maker) gets its money;
- You get to play for free (no real-life money spent)
- I get my ships and modules (which I can lose in the blink of an eye if I'm a bad player...)
There are many good things about this whole approach to transactions:
a. PLEX value is not fixed, it varies in-game because it's a market commodity, based on the in-game demand/offer. b. The stuff you buy for those ISK amounts is all destructible. All of it. (okay, except stations, but if you are crazy enough to buy one with PLEX-ISK, you can still lose it.) It's not like in WoW, where if you die, you still get to keep your gear. Here, it's gone for good.
c. It reduced the ISK farmers to 0. A year ago, when I joined, most of the trading hubs chats were pestered by spamming trial characters flooding you with commercials such as "500M ISK for just 20 USD!" - now they are all gone. It's been months since I saw the last one.
d. It doesn't affect skills, skillpoints or how well you perform. Also, it doesn't affect which ships you can fly. You still need to train for those
So IMO, CCP really nicked the goal with this PLEX approach.