Pay Less If You're a Nice Person: Valve's Freemium Model For DOTA 2 316
Canazza writes "In a podcast interview with Seven Day Cooldown, summarized by Develop, Valve Boss Gabe Newell discusses the payment model for upcoming strategy game DOTA 2. 'The issue that we're struggling with quite a bit is something I've kind of talked about before, which is: how do you properly value people's contributions to a community? ... An example is – and this is something as an industry we should be doing better – is charging customers based on how much fun they are to play with. ... “So, in practice, a really likable person in our community should get DOTA 2 for free, because of past behavior in Team Fortress 2. Now, a real jerk that annoys everyone, they can still play, but a game is full price and they have to pay an extra hundred dollars if they want voice.'"
Re:Good Model (Score:4, Informative)
Were you about to make some argument either way, or is that it?
Re:More Importantly (Score:3, Informative)
A new account means you don't get all your previously earned cheevios linked to it.
Re:First Jerk to Fine: (Score:0, Informative)
If you don't know what DOTA is I think you might be on the wrong site.
Re:First Jerk to Fine: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:personal pronouns are your friend (Score:4, Informative)
That, as opposed to which, can be used for both people and things.
Re:I like this (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with any good justice system is that it has to balance a number of factors. Would you suggest that everyone that, I dunno, J-walks get the death penalty? Not only would the punishment be exorbitant, but now you'd be encouraging J-walkers to carry weapons and dispose of witnesses, as doing so doesn't really make the punishment worse, but could let you avoid it entirely.
Valve is trying to make an effective deterrent to being a jerk. The problem with simply banning is that it gives users no ability to reform, and really ups the burden of proof as the ability to appeal a ban is basically nil (and pricy for Valve if it's not). Also, banned players can usually just get a new account and continue to be an ass until they're banned again, but this time around they aren't going to care half as much as they've already lost everything tied to their original account.
So they have to set the punishment at something that is reasonable in the face of unreliable justice and the cost of creating a new account. Allowing players to play on probation (no voice) or charging them $100 seems like a decent balance to me.
> So you think that someone should not have to behave nice if he is a rich?
Rich? lol. I think that if you combine the demographics of "jerk" and "has $100 to blow" you'll find more basement dwelling trolls than rich people, who usually do other things to do with their time besides being a jerk on online games. A hundred dallors just ain't that much in this day... It won't even buy you two new games.
> Does it not make far more sense to charge everyone the same and ban the jerks?
> Is it really worth it to Valve to decrease their multiplayer experience for everyone for as little as $100 jerk tax?
I for one, think it's fine, as you can sit back and laugh at jerks, knowing that they heavily subsidized you copy. Also, I still expect that there will be normal bans if they're really so bad.
Re:I like this (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, let's make computer game prices a popularity contest. We all really enjoyed that in high school, didn't we? And the nice people were always the most popular, weren't they? People who bubble up to the top of communities are always borderline sociopathic types, "politicians" if you will. They play the people, not the game. Most people will think these people are nice, until they learn their true nature when they find themselves in disagreement or antagonized for some mundane reason.
A game operator needs to make sure that a game is fun regardless of jerks being in it. Trying to keep the community "nice" is doomed to failure.
Re:First Jerk to Fine: (Score:5, Informative)
DOTA [wikipedia.org] = "Defense of the Ancients".
The basics of the game are that you control a single unit (a hero), and you work with a team of people (normally 5 other players). So it becomes a 6 vs 6 battle where you are trying to destroy the other teams base. This game style has been dubbed ARTS [wikipedia.org] (action real time strategy).
It originally started as a Warcraft 3 mod. Since then, numerous companies have copied the style.
1) You have Blizzard creating [battle.net] a DOTA mod for Starcraft 2.
2) You have Valve creating DOTA 2 [dota2.com]. (note that Valve and Blizzard are having a trademark war [joystiq.com] right now over DOTA). Dota 2 is a stand-alone game.
3) LoL (League of Legends [leagueoflegends.com]) is a DOTA style came released back in 2009. It's a stand-alone game with persistant characters.
Re:More Importantly (Score:4, Informative)
Only Counter-Strike really gets patches, which is still insanely popular. As far as that goes, that really makes sense; they are making significant profit off of it, they better keep the game running as smoothly and secure as possible. I'm sure Half-Life 1 gets a trickle of sales, but nobody plays multiplayer HL1 anymore and the game hasn't had an update since 2006; the single-player experience isn't affected by multiplayer cheats.
Re:More Importantly (Score:2, Informative)
I think Sierra's WON servers may have been turned off, but Steam-based versions of CS and TF(1) work just fine.
Do you mean Team Fortress Classic? Team Fortress 1 was a Quake mod.