How much would you pay for PS?

[Spekkio]

Cronky, you don't get it. If you give a limited demo version but charge for a "full" version, you are punishing the paying customers by limiting their player base.

Games that are extremely popular like COD4 can get away with this, even though it frustrates most consumers. Games that have a cult following of about a dozen players like PS can't afford to divide the community.

[frvge]

Maybe a few dozen 'active' people, but we do get big leaps in visitors on other pages too.

[Cronky]

Spekkio, I do get it. I understand that with this system you are separating your player base into two groups. That's the only way THIS system works though. And with this system you need to give the customer a reason to buy. Gamers are used to that now a days. It's how you pay for game everywhere. Usually potential players are given even less information to base their purchase on though. Giving a "Demo" like I've explained lets players judge the worth of the entirety of the base game (plus a little taste of what's possible). Denying them access to the content outside of the base game is normal.

It's not the only way they could do this though. As you stated, Ads are another possible direction. Selling Map packs is another possibility. You could mix these systems together also, but because of the small market to play with means that you don't want to take TOO many risks. With each system though comes a new set of pros and cons.

With Ads you would need a large, constant, and active community just to make a little bit of money. Nothing says those who play are going to play often just because it's free. Or even that a lot of people with play at all if it's free. Usually games with Ads have a different source of income within their game also. If you are giving your product away for "Free" then usually you try to find multiple ways to profit of it.

Map packs on the other hand could quickly become redundant with community made maps. Why pay for a Dev map pack when you can download as many community ones as you want for free?

In my opinion though the 1 time, reasonable fee, coupled with a pretty open "Demo" of the game is their best bet at making the most money. IF that's what they are wanting to do.

[Spekkio]

Cronky, define "a little bit of money."

Judging by the amount of people who visit this site regularly, if PS sold 100 copies at $10/ea, they'd make $1k. Then they'd divide that up into however many developers worked on the game. Finally, you divide that by the over half-a-decade worth of work, and you're down to mere pennies an hour. Perhaps ads would generate less revenue than that, I don't know. There are way too many variables to consider, such as longevity, frequency of play, etc. I will concede that the up-front pricing scheme would generate more revenue AT FIRST, but once the game peaks and tapers off, wherever that is, revenue will cease. Either way, neither scheme is going to pay the bills at first, so you might as well try to use one that brings the community together rather than divides it.

But your post hit the nail on the head wrt how ads generate revenue -- you're absolutely correct that for an ad system to generate profit, players have to want to play the game, play it often, and continue to play it. But isn't that the goal of PS? A one-time payment scheme doesn't give any incentive to create a game that has lasting appeal, nor does it create any incentive to give patch support. The developers will make the same amount of money if people play it for 10 minutes or 10 years.

Finally, you keep focusing on giving players a "reason to pay money" without focusing on the reason NOT to pay money. Let's say you release the demo with a pay option, and 35% of people decide to pay for the "full" version (I think it would be a poor assumption that a higher percentage of people will purchase the full version than just use the free version). Let's also be generous and assume 100 people started playing the demo. By paying for the game, I just reduced my player base from 65 people to 35 people. Now of those 35 people, only a smaller percentage are going to be in my time zone and willing to play the game at 8pm-10pm EST. So I just paid money to have access to more maps/features, but now I don't have anyone to play the game with! And there's no singleplayer option to keep me occupied until more people purchase the game. Oh, but now you want to charge money for more individual maps in the future. Well, let's say 2/3 of paying customers purchase your new maps. Now that brings the number down to 24 players who have full access to the game.

Again, the system you describe is punishing a paying customer, but you're not looking at it that way. You're looking at it from the perspective of a seller who thinks he ought to get paid for content. While that is true, the traditional payment scheme you are proposing doesn't work for dedicated online multiplayer games that are intended to lure players in for continued play. It was created for single player games that would be replaced within the year with the next single player game. Nintendo doesn't make more money when I fire up my NES classics, they only make money when I purchase a new Wii game. That's why successful MMORPGs are a subscription service. It's also why Angry Birds can still make money for its developers when I fire it up, but not COD4.

[LoChang]

Which is why I do agree revenue should be ad-based, and anyone that wishes to donate freely should be allowed. Good points, Spek.

[Cronky]

...Just showing a quote to clarify who I'm talking to...

So first off, when I say "a little bit of money", I mean the difference between dimes and dollars.

Secondly, I agree with you that my personal favorite option does not think about longevity of funds. I also am optimistic about the number of players this game will have since competitive multilayer is a popular genre, even if S.A.M. isn't. If only 100 people play PS in total then either option will be a bust if profit was a plan from all this.

Thirdly, while paying for the game in my idea would limit you on the new maps player count initially, this would in no way limit you in overall player base. As paid players could play with free players, on the maps that free players have access to. Yes, shit deal it seems to pay for a product and continue using the stuff you used for free. That's why I suggested more than maps be available to paid players before. None of the things I mentioned though were set in stone. I don't know where the perfect balance would lie in this system, but it's a fact that there WOULD need to be something that would be worth paying for.

Trying another approach... Perhaps the free version would have ads. Perhaps it would also have the ability to create maps and share maps with friends. Then perhaps you have to pay a fee to get an ad free game and the ability to upload the maps to the PS site for others to play freely. I'm not sure what the appropriate way this system would work out would be with this genre and type of game.

I also didn't specifically say that you'd pay for extra maps after you paid for the game. I was pretty clearly against selling map packs in my last post. I did say that it would be possible (though not entirely well thought) to combine the multiple ways to gain money off of PS. As you've said multiple times, as have I, the market for this genre is small. You shouldn't take too many risks lest you shrink the already small pool of people you potentially have. This combining idea holds true with what I said above about ads for free players and a way to pay up front.

Lastly, I AM thinking of this strictly from the PS Devs perspective and how they can get the most money. Not a good way to think probably. Sounds big business-y. So while it all hangs on who would actually pay and how many people actually play, if you could only pick one system then I would probably say their best bet for possibly the most money would be the upfront, 1 time fee with a free demo.

Keep in mind this was an idea initially said by you Spekkio...

I just read an interesting article on wired.com about video game pricing [summary:  console games are too expensive in lieu of free to $3 mobile products]. If PS cost money, the initial pricing is going to have to be about $5 with a free trial option to get people hooked.

You have the right to change your opinion, but I'm simply elaborating on how the idea might be able to work. This also is under the assumption that the Beta will be well advertised and completely free.

[frvge]

Even simpler games can get 10k copies sold on Steam, if the price is right.

[VaNilla]

Yeah, you're deluded if you think a game marketed and then sold on Steam could only muster 100 copies. There's nothing wrong with simply advertising in a free version of the game, and charging for no ads. If the team puts effort into marketing the game (I go into more detail in an earlier post) then they could sell way more than 10k.

Look at Trials Evolution on xbox live arcade. 100k launch day sales, a world record. The game was sold at £10, and the free version is limited. Yet you see no split in the audience. Why? Because there's a lot of content available for the game, and user generated content is embedded by design. This gives people a reason to buy the game if they like it, because there's a huge difference when the game is unlocked. The difference with PS is that the brand has a much smaller following, and there's far less replay value than Trials because there's much less content in the game.

This is why you can't limit content in an early version of PS, there's only going to be 1-2 maps max in the first beta. You'd be best off doing what Mojang did with Minecraft, start at a low price for the beta and increass the price to £10 when the game is in a more complete state. Sorry for the bad grammar, writing from my phone :P

[LoChang]

I think it may come down to "do you want to sell (generously) 1000 copies at (for example) $2.99, 200 at $9.99 or 100 at $14.99." Seems to me you'd want to get the game out as much as possible with a revenue system  designed to be long-term, not a one time affair. More people that have it the more that contribute toward the revenue stream, which would have to be something like ad-based.

[Spekkio]

Cronky, my overall points are 1) the scheme still punishes paying customers, however way you spin it and 2) is that charging a one-time fee lends itself to one-time developer efforts. The devs can't get paid for patches, new content, etc, so they aren't likely to try very long after the game's release ala Ubisoft. Well, they can if they start nickle and diming everyone for DRM, but that's the same type of payment scheme that frustrates consumers with companies like EA Sports. If you want to go that road, we might as well just go back to playing CT because PS will just be an independently developed version of that with regards to lackluster support. The majority of the dev team will move on to bigger and better things with all the money they are going to make off the game already in hand, regardless of how perfect or imperfect it is.

[Cronky]

Again, it does punish the paying players, but every way you go about this leads to a situations where someone is punished. If it's not, initially, the paying players (1 time fee) then it's everyone, all the time, with inconveniences (ad based). There's no one right answer, only answers that try to get to the same end in a different way.

I do think you are being very assuming on how the PS devs will support their product post beta though. Yes, some will inevitably leave, there is the possibility though that some will actually stay around.

[NeoSuperior]

How about being able to buy an "ad-free" version, and on the other hand being able to play a free version with ads? Then we have a compromise, that sounds OK to me.

[frvge]

I'm personally thinking about that. That's on a personal basis. Not what the team actually wants.

[gdog182]

I would pay $60 max. Unless there are some amazing features that make this worth being some subscription based game, then the average price for all games seems about right. However you could do something like give a 50% discount to people who beta test or who do something to help spread the word before release, kind of like how the xsplit pricing was.

[Spekkio]

I do think you are being very assuming on how the PS devs will support their product post beta though. Yes, some will inevitably leave, there is the possibility though that some will actually stay around.

No, I just understand economics. If PS becomes about money, then the only way to make more under a single-payment scheme is to charge for additional downloaded content or release a sequel. Patches only serve to generate more sales as glaring bugs/balance issues are discovered, but as the game's lifecycle moves past the sales apex, there's no more reason to patch the game.

Additionally, with such a meager production team, "some" people leaving is enough to stagnate development. Need proof? They still haven't produced an actual game after over 6 years of supposed development.

Finally, ads only punish players if you don't do them right. Putting an ad banner or two on the loading screen, for example, is unobtrusive to the game experience. The "beta" isn't the final retail version, btw...that's why it's called a "beta."