On Micropayments In Gaming

Thanks to DIY Games for its article discussing the possibility of using micropayments to pay for videogames. The author argues: "With the spread of high-speed Internet and some experiments with on-line game authentication, it seems only natural that game developers, especially the smaller ones, take advantage of micropayments", but goes on to point out possible issues, both monetary ("The most obvious argument against micropayments remains the real transaction cost. As the argument goes, each monetary transaction generates certain fees and these fees may be higher than the payment") and technical ("...the regulation of micropayments by European bureaucrats.") Are there situations where you'd prefer micropayments for playing episodic, small, or regularly updated games?

Shitty programming?

[Lehk228]

Everquest does something similar on a larger scale, you pay every month and you pay for the game and you pay for the expansions, and it's still fucking buggy, the idea of micropayments for games will just encourage shitty programming.

No it won't

[tod_miller]

Business models are still based on users giving money for the next expansion. If you pay for shitty programming, when you know the last was shitty, then you are encouraging shitty programming.

Nothing else in the world can possibly encourage shitty programming.

Micropayments can actually tie a developer into keeping a game good, as it becomes a longer source of income, not just a WHAM bam, 2 week sales.

If people can get the game for a low price, but enjoy paying it, and the world evolves and keeps growing

Re:Shitty programming?

[Ayaress]

The fact that its on a micropayment-like system doesn't cause it to have shitty programming. The fact that they have an addicted userbase that they probably wouldn't lose if they rigged up a system to kick them in the balls every time they logged on means they have much less incentive to fix the problems they have.

Less popular MMORPGs with scavenged userbases who live under constant threat of their userbase going back to Everquest have a good incentive to keep their bugs dead, and they do (or die).

micropayments scropayments...

[Anonymous Coward]

(with apologies to SpellJammer fans everywhere)
A payment is a payment, how big it is depends on your capacity to pay, and how much work it takes to get it to the seller.

We'll stop calling them micropayments the minute they take off, they'll just be "small payments" then. In the meantime, they're micropayments because some of the intermediaries(your local bank in most cases) charges a transaction fee that's larger than the payment.

The solution to large transaction costs are batches, arrangements with loca

Alternate Reality Games

[NashCarey]

I am a creator of ARG's see http://www.realworldgaming.com/ [realworldgaming.com] to see some of the projects in play. While I don't ask for any money from players at the moment I intend to. I can't afford to market my game in stores, the risk involved can make the game flop (see Majestic by EA). But, I plan to take a small amount like $2.99 a month from players interested in playing future games to build my quality and allow for people have affordable gaming. Many time life just gets in the way and what better way than inst

Micropayments are doomed

[AuMatar]

Wake up to reality already. People hate being nickled and dimed, they don't want to pay for every bit of content on the net. The fact that people have been discussing micropayments for years and that no one is using them yet ought to be a clue already. If a product is good enough that they wannt that particular thing, they'll pay for it without micropayments. If it isn't, they won't buy it even with.

Re:Micropayments are doomed

[Lisandro]

So damn true.

Re:Micropayments are doomed

[pjay_dml]

I just hope you are right. It just takes a bunch of willing people to get this started, and where will it end?
I fear, if the concept of small payments ever takes of, we could be screwed, as this would start an avalanch of new payments that will be asked for!
I agree with your point, but think of it, once they start batching payments, then it wont be 'percieved' as 'nickle&diming', but rather as a (possibly) justified payment for made consumption.
That could be the backdoor. If you make a call on a ph

Re:Micropayments are doomed

[Jahf]

Agreed ... micropayments for web services is not going to make people happy.

I was thinking that I would like micropayments for online gaming, but then realized that the online games I pay for already have my credit card information. So no, I don't need micropayments there either. I just need a good MMORPG to come along that is will to charge by the minute instead of the month.

If I found a game that would do this in a fair manner (let's say $.02 for 5 minutes of play, coming out to around $10 for 40 hours)

Re:Micropayments are doomed

[chris_mahan]

> to charge by the minute instead of the month.

Phone companies charge by the second, and they have worked out who pays for what (some calls you pay for (you call them), some call they pay for (they call you)).

Down to the second.

Micropayments are already here...

[sevinkey]

A lot of people like to pay for what the use, ESPECIALLY in the European markets. Those guys are willing to spend many times the price that Americans will for services just to not get the long-term contract.

I agree people will pay for a product that's costs, lets say $2, if it's good enough, but most vendors aren't willing to sell anything for that low of a price because of the transaction costs involved, and the banks aren't willing to lower transaction costs because it really does cost them more money t

I'd support it.

[Inoshiro]

If I could get some games that'd give me 8-10 hours of gaming time, which is all I usually have time for a month, for a price less than 20$ CDN, I'd probably go for it. I don't really like spending 70$ on a game, playing 10 hours of it, and giving up because I have other commitments.

The only games I ever get to finish are short ones.

Console or PC?

[obeythefist]

This wouldn't really work for console games, because only a very slim minority of consoles are ever plugged into the internet.

A vast number of PCs, gaming PCs are internet connected so they have the capability of making micropayments.

Clearly this is a move to raise revenue from the "ailing" pc game industry - generally the quality and replayability of a PC game is much higher than a console (eg, half-life, BF1942, hack/angband, etc). Games like that sell once but are played for years after the initial sa

European regulation ?

[dago]

The rant against EU regulations falls someone flat for me. The main point is that micropayments are considered as electronic payments (!) and this fall under the same regulations aimin to protect customers against fraud/bankruptcy/... and to fight against money laundering

Another fact they forgot is that (micro)payments trough SMS, for SMS or web services, are largely used and probably generate more revenue in the EU than the other forms micropayments worlwide.

They are right ..

[RedLaggedTeut]

They are right in treating micropayments as electronic payments, because lots of people will invest $1.000s, then someone will hack, spam, and scam their way to $1.000.000 and people will get mad.

Now if people treated micropayments as toy money, everything would be fine, but some don't, which is reasonable because they spent real money.

Ultimately I think there still will be micropayments, in fact I toyed with the idea of creating such a server, because of its cool, physics like laws, but my glass ball pre

Micropayments and billing costs.

[tod_miller]

A simple business model:

Base rate $5 a month. This gives you 5000 world credits, or special bonuses, that allow you to progress in the game, etc.

When you reach certain goal points, moving through game chapters, which for the average player could be 3-4 days of playing, you can accumulate a few cents of transactions, that get dealt with in a very expensive way:

"insert into table user_trans(fldUser, fldItem, fldCost) values(" + theUser + ", " + theItem + ", " + theCostInCaseItChanges ")";

Now you use an ex

Or you could make it easier...

[*weasel]

Or you just have them precharge their tokens upfront, and cut them off when they run out.
It's really no different than the game card you get at any of these neuvo-arcades like GameWorks. Each game you play there is essentially a micropayment, and unlike physical tokens, there isn't a real cost to processing the transactions. There's nothing to move back and forth -- just an account to debit.

That way your actual CC/paypal/gamecard processing transactions aren't any more frequent, aren't made after the use

silly

[andy_fish]

I see this going two ways, depending on whether they actually tell you how much you payed per month:

1) Say they tell you how much you payed per month. In this case, who cares how those payments added up? If you see that you payed $28.50 last month for the game, then you're gonna seriously evaluate whether that game is worth the extra money. Here's what's NOT going to happen: you're NOT going to curtail your spending for next month, because when you're constantly worried about your in-game spending, the gam

Re:silly

[KDR_11k]

Number 1 is my prime worry here and why I dislike paid-for online services, in general. You can't just play around with random stuff since you're paying for time. You no longer want to "waste" time on things that might be fun but won't bring you any advantage in the game. I bet people playing GTA would spend a lot less time doing random crap and instead more or less go through a checklist of things to do (finish missions, collect packages, do stunts, ...) and try to do these things as fast as possible to av

Gunbound has some funny micropayments.

[88NoSoup4U88]

Gunbound, yet another freely released game (www.gunbound.net) also has some form of micropayemtns.

Gunbound is a Worms incarnation, with a few differences : the main one being that one is able to earn cash in multiplayer games, and spend the gold earned on items which enhance your avatar (more attackpower/defense power etc) :
So pretty much, it works like an MORPG , whereas the more you play , the more money you earn, the better your avatar gets.

Now the developers also make it possible for someone not to '

No Thanks

[Lord_Dweomer]

I for one do not want micropayments for games.

First, it will encourage the large companies to start nickle and diming for every damn thing they can. Want to go to this zone? 25 cents. Want that new uber item? 25 cents. And of course, they would start out by giving people who pay these micropayments an edge over those who don't. You can get a free complete heal/mana regen for only .10.

And of course, there would be all the little games out there who would start charging tiny amounts to play, possibly a

I'd welcome this for MMORPGs.

[scowling]

I've been playing City of Heroes, but to be honest, it's getting repetitive and boring, much like every other such game I've played. I don't want to pay $14.95 a month for it -- but I'd definitely pay fifty cents an hour, metered, to play it.

Sadly, that's not an option, so I'm going to end up canceling my subscription entirely rather than pay fifteen bucks a month on a game that I'm not going to play every day.