Friday, September 20, 2013

Freemium Monetization Systems: Or, A Copy & Paste of What I'm Writing Right Now


"Think of in-game sales like drugs… they can produce a high followed by a hangover, and if used habitually they become a habit you can’t break without a scene from Trainspotting." - from Fixer Studios TOP SECRET Business Models document.
Damn it, I started a developer blog yesterday, didn't I? I totally forgot to budget time to write something and I figure this is sort of like going to the gym; if you miss day two you might as well write off the $40 membership fee and throw away that sweet new sports top. Alright, since I committed to honesty I'm going to share a chunk from the Fixer Studios "Business Models" document I'm updating right now so that I can focus down on our metagame design tonight.

In this excerpt, I'm just banging out a really quick synopsis of some systems developers use to give and sell rewards, then merchandise them to be more profitable. My goal on the doc was to make it so that anyone on the team can scan quickly and get a sense for which options we're choosing and which we're choosing not to do. It's broken out to be very simple to read and only covers a couple of the many axes you can use... which is a nice coincidence since I think only a few people will read this blog (HI MOM).

The following is reprinted with permission from Fixer Studios, © 2013. It was also typed really fast, is certainly missing things, and likely needs a good editing.


Reward Systems Evaluated

Known Rewards

These systems are very well understood, and operate much like a traditional store. Players are given a menu of goods at explicit prices, and when they choose to spend they get exactly what they’re expecting.

Fully Random Rewards

Systems like this make is so that players never really know what they’re going to get when they buy something, but they may have some idea.
  • Collectible Cards: Like Baseball or Magic cards, you may know that you’re buying a booster pack from a given set but you have no idea which cards you’ll receive. Buying one pack does not change your likelihood of getting different cards in a different pack.
  • Slot Machines: One pull does not affect the results of the next pull, each time you get a pull there is an equal chance of winning every prize.

Semi-Random Rewards

These systems emulate a random system, but modify the odds. Sometimes this modification is apparent to users, other times it is concealed from them.
  • Gacha Machines: The little capsule toy dispensers in malls are effectively random, but the as toys are removed from the machine the odds of getting the remaining toys in a pull increases. In other words if there were 100 different toys in the machine, you could get exactly one of each by buying from that machine exactly 100 times. This is more apparent to players when the machine walls and capsule are clear. Note, that there may be multiple different gacha machines to select from too, so there’s an extra dimension there.
  • Staked / Loaded Odds: Basically anything that’d be illegal in Vegas, including giving machines hot streaks, making it so that your first pull on a slot wins, ensuring you can’t get the last card until you’ve paid at least $100, etc.

Progress-Based Rewards

These systems include either prerequisites before purchase or allow players to make incremental progress to a reward but skip that by spending.
  • Hurry Mechanics: Anything that requires players a period of time to complete and can be “skipped” or fast-forwarded for money (note: this is a blurry distinction from Energy Mechanics)
  • Buy Resources: If a player can skip or auto-complete a task for which they can also save up or build up some number of in-game free things, be it coins, XP, or even “win a game with Finger of Death”
  • Prerequisite Premium: Some things may not be available for even premium purchase at first. Instead, players need to reach a particular level or progress before they get access to buy something. Often times, the things that can then be purchased are items that are available for regular currency or progress rewards buy even further down the progress curve, thus granting a temporary advantage to buyers.

Breakdowns / Combines

These systems actually allow you to melt-down items you no longer need in order to improve things you like or to get extra chances at getting a random reward you like. This is a great way of removing surplus stuff from the game, ensuring that players never feel they’ve completely wasted resources or money on something they didn’t want or already had, and allowing continued, incremental reinvestment. Sometimes even the process of breaking down items requires spending for the privilege.

Arbitrage

By mistake or by design, these systems allow players to ‘exploit’ varying prices or values to their advantage. For instance, if you can buy a rare item for $5 or spend three minutes grinding partial components then buy it for only $2… then you’ll perceive the opportunity to trade three minutes for three dollars. That’s a good deal, right? Some designs do this to actually inflate the item from its normal price of $2 because the ‘phony’ price to give players motivates us to seize the opportunity for arbitrage.

Meta-Rewards

Some combination systems make for complex and compelling situations. Instead of spelling them out, I’ll just include the example of “Kompu Gacha


Merchandising Systems Evaluated

No Merchandising

When there is no merchandising, all prices are fixed, static, linear. That was easy, maybe too easy...

Volume Discount

A basic technique, this allows players to buy more of a given thing at a discount. In other words, you can buy a 350 ml soda costs $1 while a 2,000 ml soda costs $2. Almost all in-game currencies in major games offer this sort of discount. These are relatively easy to design and very easy to implement...No need to elaborate here.

Bundle Discount

Similar to a volume discount, this is where you can get a bonus something that is different than another thing it comes with. For example, this is where you get a $3 hamburger, $2 drink and $2 fries combo for a total of $5. Many games offer this sort of thing, such as buying three common items and getting a fourth rare item free. This can be tricky to design well, and even more tricky to communicate the value proposition to players, but totally doable.

Sales

These can be tied into any of the above systems where the price of something can be reduced for an explicit period of time. It can drive up to a great deal of business, but if not handled wisely can cause a long-term “sale hangover” where players don’t need to buy anything because they stocked up, or even “the Macy’s Problem” where players come to expect sales and refuse to buy anything at regular price. Think of in-game sales like drugs… they can produce a high followed by a hangover, and if used habitually they become a habit you can’t break without a scene from Trainspotting. These also require a fair bit of back-end tech to schedule and communicate.

Do Overs & Fallbacks

In these systems, players likely have a random chance of something they like, and for a discount can either get another try or even outright buy it.

Temporary Products

Basically, this is when you release a “limited time only” item… which is to say launch an item with a plan to cancel it. Not too tricky to manage and is very compelling for collectors. ‘Nuff said.

No comments:

Post a Comment