On Monetization and A Gamer’s Soul Worth Saving...
Let’s get this point out quickly: Monetization is not inherently evil. Free-to-Play is not inherently evil. Making money from games is not inherently evil.
There.. we good? No? Well, I don’t blame you given a lot of the “free” games out there today. But give me a moment... just one chance... to tell you how I think it can be different and how I did so in my own game, The Null Society.
1. Premise: Good content is worth paying for.
Yes, I’ve heard the player complaints and I’ve opined as such myself. Variants aside, these reasonable critiques boil down to this statement: Free-to-Play is just an attempt to nickel-and-dime players.
This is patently wrong. “Free-to-Play” (F2P) is a business model. Judge how it is implemented and brings value to players ... or fails to do so.
Ideally, F2P allows players to decide how much of an experience they want to pay for. The model allows players to essentially invest as they go and to buy further content if they feel the experience has warranted such thus far. In this manner, F2P is like buying individual songs from an album or television episodes from an entire season. F2P is like a subscription that you can opt-out of at any time.
More importantly, F2P allows players to decide with their pocket books that content is valuable or not. F2P starts by giving players a portion of the game for free, normally a complete game limited only by further gameplay like missions / quests, special items or, usually, time (see below). Players can decide not to pay at all, ever, or pay until they’ve had enough.
So, if the content is deemed good by you, the individual player, then decide to pay for more or not. I believe good content is worth paying for. You get to decide when that is true.
Example: Jokes aside, League of Legends (LoL) is a helluva game and it is Free-to-Play. According to an October 2014 article by VentureBeat, “... League of Legends has racked up $946 million in in-game spending revenues since the beginning of the year [2014].” The data comes from SuperData Research who also reported that this revenue breaks down to an Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) of $1.32. Why is that ARPU interesting? Because as popular as LoL is with players, the conversion rate of paying users must be low. That is, a small number of paying players are supporting the game so a much larger number of players can enjoy a free game.
2. A Typical Example: The Energy Mechanic
In many F2P games, there is an “Energy Mechanic”. Put simply, this is a content gate that manages how quickly players can consume content. It is a method by which game designers can pace the game play. It is also a method of monetization where players can decide to invest more time or more money in order to progress in the game.
It works like this: A player has a certain amount of points called “energy” or “action points”. For every action a player can make in a F2P game, there’s an associated cost. Often, different actions cost different amounts of points. This creates an opportunity for players to come up with strategies that best maximizes the number of possible actions for the current amount of energy on hand.
Once the player’s energy is depleted, the game is over. Either the player must wait some amount of time for their energy to replenish (ie: “rest”) in order to play again or they can pay for more energy right away. It is worth noting that this does not affect how well a player does in a game. It merely allows the player to keep playing immediately if they so choose. (I recall one game industry professional comparing this with putting more quarters into an old school arcade game when you run out of “lives”. Indeed, similar, but not exactly the same.)
Example: In The Null Society, the Energy Mechanic associates the point cost to use a particular weapon in combat. In the image above, the weapon, T Riddle (aka “You Know Who”), fires at a cost of 53 attack points (noted by the crossed-daggers icon). From the HUD, you can see the player currently has 80 attack points. T Riddle is a heck of a weapon, “Epic”, in fact. But for this particular player, the cost is 66% of their current attack points. That’s a rather expensive attack. If the player uses up all their attack points during combat, they must decide to quit playing for a while or use Gems (the purchased or “hard currency” in the game) to replenish their attack points, immediately.
3. An Hybrid Approach: Loot Drops, Gacha, Fusion and Slots
When I decided to make a F2P mobile game, I did not want to make yet-another Clash of Clans or Candy Crush. I am not judging those games and they are clearly very successful. But I wanted to make something different. I wanted to create an RPG, a genre I’ve spent my life both playing and developing. But, most attempts at mobile RPG’s were merely copies of how successful PC and console games were designed. Leveraging a successful design is not a terrible idea at first blush. But it does not account for the differences in mobile as a platform and the associated player behaviors.
In future posts, I’ll discuss in more detail my game design for The Null Society. For now, let’s talk about a hybrid approach to monetization that I designed for the game. It involves a few well-known mechanics:
- Loot Drops: This is a classic RPG mechanic. Players find a chest or defeat a monster and by doing so earn some loot, a weapon, armor, money, resources, etc. The type of loot and its value is proportional to the difficulty of the quest / mission or monster the player defeated. There is also a “loot table” that is quite literally a spreadsheet that determines the percent chances for particular loot to drop. The more valuable or powerful the item, the less percent chance that it will drop for the player.
- Gacha: “Gacha” is a Japanese mechanic that started with physical vending machines. People put money in the vending machines and receive a toy prize. The toy is part of a set and collectors attempt to complete their sets by putting more money in the vending machines. Of course, some toys are rarer than others and repeated attempts are necessary. Essentially, Gacha is akin to gambling where players are betting money for a rare outcome they hope to achieve. Japanese game developers started adding Gacha to their games with huge success, particularly for Card Collecting Games (CCG). (Read here for more of history of Gacha.)
- Fusion: “Fusion” is a mechanic often seen in CCG’s and card battle games. It is a method where players can upgrade or level-up their cards with more abilities and powers by sacrificing lesser cards. Usually, the art of the card also changes to indicate that the item or character or monster leveled to a greater status. Players get to decide what cards they feel are the most valuable to their style of play and can then focus on leveling just those cards. Thus, Fusion adds another level of strategy to basic card collecting.
- Slot Machines: We’ve all seen these. Put in a token. Pull the handle. Watch the reels spin and hope a bunch of fruit or bars line up just right so you make a lot of money. Slot machines are insanely popular. A quick look at the Top iOS Apps shows many casino slot machine games. I’ve personally worked on slot machine games and they are surprisingly addictive. The seemingly simple combination of spinning reels and sound effects - which our friends in Las Vegas have spent a huge amount of time on to hit the pleasure centers of our brains just right - is very effective.
For The Null Society, I wanted to have classic Loot Drops which all RPG’s contain. I decide to marry a Slot Machine user interface along with Gacha and Fusion to add both collections and a means to level-up weapons.
Example: A player finds a locked briefcase. (It’s a spy game, ’natch.) Players use earned currency called “Intel” (ie: “Information is currency!”) to unlock briefcases. This causes the briefcase to open and become replaced with a spinning reel animation of all the possible weapons found in the game. The reel starts out fast and then slows down until it finally stops on the found item.
If the player clicks “Collect”, the weapon is added to their inventory. The first time a weapon is added, it unlocks and reveals three stars on its interface. Every time the player collects another weapon of the same type, their current weapon automatically levels-up and gains more abilities, increases in Intel value and a star is added. When a player hits three stars, the weapon additionally levels in rarity. (For MMO fans out there, rarities are color-coded: Gray - Poor, White - Common, Green - Uncommon, Blue - Rare, Purple - Epic, Orange - Legendary.)
If a player doesn’t like what they got from their spin, they can click “Spin Again” at the cost of Gems, hard currency. In this manner, players are again choosing to pay for further play. It isn’t required. Eventually, given a lot of play time, any item can drop. But if the player wants to trade money for time, they can certainly choose to do so.
4. The Importance of Choice
Successful monetization is not just about optimizing a single call-to-action for players to make a purchase. Indeed, implementing several vectors of monetization is beneficial for the game developer to test and maximize revenue, but also gives players a choice in how they wish to invest in your game. If your game sells energy packs and nothing else, well, you’re effectively telling players you have nothing else interesting for them to purchase. Imagine walking into a store with a single item on a shelf. Yeah. Not so much.
So what else can we sell to players?
5. Other Monetization Ideas...
Buffs: The Null Society has a store like most F2P games. It features several items and resources, called “Buffs”, that players can purchase for Gems. Buffs temporarily increase a player’s stats. For example, a healing buff might heal a small amount of hit points over a period of time. In many fantasy RPG’s, healing buffs look like vials and potions that a player’s character consumes. These types of buffs are usually a one-time use resource. There are also wearable items that might have permanent buffs that increase a player’s stats when equipped. In The Null Society, for example, there is a pair of “Nerd Glasses” that heals a player slowly over time when worn.
Unlockable Content: Some F2P games have content that can be unlocked only by purchases. Again, these types of content are optional and offer a greater experience for players that wish to pay.
- Dungeons & Dragons Online is a F2P MMO that has several character races for players to choose from. A few of these races, including Warforged, must be unlocked via a store purchase.
- In Neverwinter, players may receive a Dragon Chest loot drop. These chests contain items not normally found, ranging from “uncommon” to “rare” to “epic”. The only way to unlock these chests is with a Dragon Key purchased from the store. Note, the actual items dropped are guaranteed in rarity but not in terms of the exact items received. This is also a form of Gacha!
Advertising: Yeah, I said it. I also struggle with adding adverts to my games. But, just like implementing F2P as a business model, there are good ways to add adverts and bad ways. My suggestion here is to only use adverts at point-of-sale opportunities. For example, when players are prompted to replenish their energy for Gems, give them an option to watch a short video. So, you’re not interrupting their game play - it was already halted. You’re giving them another choice that both benefits the player and yourself.
Well, did I convince you that F2P is not inherently a bad thing? Still have your doubts? Send me a note and tell me what you think! Feel free to ask questions. I believe good content - great games - are worth paying for and F2P is a business model that can benefit both players and game developers to that end.
Play The Null Society, today! :)
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