The Psychological Science of Bilking Money
DID YOU TOTALLY KNOW that in addition to creating Spellirium, a word puzzle/adventure game hybrid, we’re also working on a top secret project behind closed doors and blacked-out windows? While wearing masks and sunglasses?
This is pretty much the only way to keep your game a secret.
i have cooked up two monetization plans for this magical mystery game – two separate versions of the product that i am considering releasing simultaneously, in an effort to maximize moneyification, which is absolutely not a real word.
Here they are:
The game has 50 levels. In both options, the player gets to play the first five levels for free. That’s where the two plans diverge.
Option 1
You pay 99 cents to access the remaining forty-five levels. The game includes a shop where you buy items that essentially serve as cheats. Buying these items is optional, and you will only need them if you kind of stink at the game. These items will be sold via microtransactions. More powerful items will cost more money. They are single-use consumable, which means they disappear after one use. Prices range perhaps between 10-50 cents.
Option 2
You pay five whole dollars to buy the remaining forty-five levels outright. All purchases from the shop are made with the currency you earn in-game, so they are “free”.
Yes, there are lots of other ways we could do this. Conspicuously missing is Option Greedy, where we charge five bucks AND charge for items. There’s also Option Risky, where we don’t charge for the game at all, and hope to make it up on virtual item sales alone. Finally, there’s Option Stupid, where we don’t charge for anything and keep our fingers crossed that Mochi Ads will really start paying off in a few decades.
So i’ll put it to you! If i release these two versions of the game simultaneously, which do you think will perform better? Of course, if you think this is a terrible plan, please speak up in the Comments section.
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I’ll believe either plan when I see it working but I think people look for FREE games….so much so that they even will find the hacked version of your pay to play flash game.
Thanks, Bret. But the people who bought Fantastic Contraption, Doodle Jump, Angry Birds, SAS Zombie Assault, Machinarium, Sword & Poker, Zenonia, and Farmville (to name a few) disagree with you.
I voted option 1 on the basis that there’s a good chance that you could make up the price difference on volume alone with such a low price point, even before factoring in revenue from in-game microtransactions.
As a user though, I’d probably prefer a 3rd option where 99c unlocks the remaining 45 levels, and I can choose the “item buffet” option at any point, since there’s a good chance I won’t really know how much help I’m going to need through the whole game after playing just 5 levels.
It seems like there’s a chance that for some users, the presence of the booster items will color their perception of the difficulty of the game too. A level that might otherwise be viewed as deviously-constructed and enjoyable in a traditional single-price game could be seen by some as an unreasonably difficult level designed to drive additional purchases.
Jeremy – very good points.
How about option #3 you can buy levels in smaller batches or a la carte. That way you have to worry about trying to sell virtual goods and you avoid scaring the customer away with a “big” price tag upfront. Or option #4, my personal favorite, sell the user “Tokens” which he can then “use” to gain access to any level he wants.
Alex – those are good ideas. Your token system wouldn’t work for this game, because the levels are essentially identical and ramp up in difficulty. They’re not varied the way you’re thinking, like Peggle or Break-Out levels – it’s more like “here’s the same challenge, but now we’ve added a timer”, or “here’s the same challenge, but now we’ve taken away your hints.”
We’re talking about the App Store, yes? I would say by and large, people only pay more than 99 cents for brands they already know they love. Tetris. Scrabble. Myst. Etc, etc, etc.
Traci – agreed. The game will be released on multiple platforms … i was considering these particular options for the web version.
Maybe you should make one version:
$0.99 – 45 level pack
$0.10 – unlock item 1
$0.20 – unlock item 2
….
$0.50 – unlock item 10
and
$5.00 – all in one (45 level pack + unlock all items)
Andrey – it’s a good idea, but it wouldn’t work for this game. i could see this working for games that have reusable tool-like items, like the hookshot or boomerang in the Zelda series. The items in this game are single-use consumable. One of them entirely skips a level if the player finds it too difficult, so i definitely shouldn’t make it multi-use! :)
I see that most favour the “lower entry barrier” option. But is it really the lower barrier?
For most users the issues of merchant trust and even the physical motion of whipping out a credit card are a lot more of a barrier than $4.50 price difference. Their decision to pay is not dependent on price when the range is this low. In fact, $0.50 price makes the game look “cheap”.
I remember reading one indie’s experience of how they lowered their downloadable title price from $15 to $10 – the sales volume remained practically the same (and they took a revenue hit).
Normally, I am hugely in favour of the sellable item concept (it’s like printing money!) but not in this case.
Frankly, the success stories of median games (read: NOT Zynga) that implement micro-transactions don’t impress me. “So-and-so made $3,000 in microtransactions last month” to which I reply “I made more than that at my relaxed day job with 4 weeks paid vacation and health benefits”.
Even the $8,000 a month that Desktop Tower Defense was touted as making from ads isn’t enough to run a real business with an office and employees. That’s “dude working in his basement” money.
I voted for option B as the lesser of two evils. It at least gets you paid the most up front.
In my grumpy old age I’m definitely leaning towards “fewer people paying more”. I’ve already been burned trying to follow the freemium / dollar-store commodification business model. Never again. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice and I’ll stab you in the ear with a fork!
Bwakathaboom – That’s the spirit! This industry could use far more grumpiness and ear-stabbing. And i’m very glad that someone else has a concept of what constitutes chump-change. If i have to hear one more story of how two developers working 60-hour weeks made $30k in a year (as if it’s a good thing), i’ll positively bite my pillow.
Do you have any blog entries detailing your freemium exploits? i’d like to read about them.
I love the idea of two releases, in the app store for example, you could release a free version (with upgrade inside as mtx for both 99c and 5$ versions), a 99c ‘Full Version’ (with mtx) and a 5$ ‘Super Dope Premium Collectable Version’ with free items. Multiple versions and price points really boils my potato.
Did you hear that, folks? Andy’s potato is boiled. End of conversation.
Not that I know what I am talking about but I voted for option 1 although in hind site I am wondering if a higher % of players would end up wanting to go for the $5 (4.99 is sneakier) version for a more immediate return. If they are going to pull out their credit cards to pay anyway, the minimum purchase is far higher than 10 cents is it not? So they end up buying a bunch of virtual currency that may or may not be used on your game or someone else’s. I would take into consideration the “pain in the *ss” syndrom. How much of a pain in the *ss is it going to be for me to buy what I want to play this game? One stop result?
Rob – micropayments are all the rage these days, but as a player, i much prefer to pay my money and be done with it.
“Option Risky”, really isn’t that risky. If your charging people for levels, then you’re already in that virtual goods domain. My 2 cents, is that if you’re selling items for earned currency anyway, why not introduce a dual currency and charge for some of the better items.
If you do become interested in the Virtual Goods route, check out http://virtualdoubloon.com – it’s free to sign up, free to try out, and has a ton of payment options, fast integration, and forthcoming features.
Chad – thanks for your informed perspective! Why might a Flash developer use your service over Social Gold?
You’ve provided the only blog post that needed to be written about MochiAds and the Flash biz. Last I checked I was at $12 dollars in earnings. Not bad for 3 months work! Thankfully I wasn’t banking on success. I only released the game (a port of one of my earlier puzzle games) to screw the publisher who never paid royalties and ported the game to mobile without my consent. Let’s see the bastards compete with their own game online for free!
My low budget effort pre-dates the blog rush, back to the shareware biz 2001 to 2003-ish. Had a successful (by Flash basement-coder standards) full-priced first game and then killed my momentum by trying to sell cheap-o puzzle games at a $4.95 price point. Disastrous. Low revenue = no resources to invest in support, updating and making better games. No growth as an artist or a business.
If I really made a go of it I could have stayed afloat but it would have burned me out eventually. Without a significant margin there was no way to see a big picture beyond having to develop the next game, and the next and the next.
TBH I haven’t tried microtransactions. They reek of SSDD to me.
If I made a movie I wouldn’t charge 25 cents a minute to watch it, if I wrote a novel I wouldn’t charge 5 cents a page. People shriek at the the film and publishing industry for charging almost the same prices for digital copies as they do for physical ones but IMO that’s what makes film, music and publishing “mature” industries capable of supporting superstar performers and fattened guild and union coffers.
I think Nick really hit it on the head. For a web game(the App Store is a very different beast), the difference between $1 and $5 is almost nothing if the user has to do the whole transaction/credit card thing. That changes if you use Mochi Coins or something like that though, I suppose.
Aaaaaanyway, I think when you give users a choice, especially a somewhat confusing one like this, they actually just won’t choose either. If you’re using mochi coins or something like that where it’s not a specific transaction, the 99c plus paid items seems like a good idea if the game is good enough and if the items are actually cool and useful.
Youve listed: Fantastic Contraption, Doodle Jump, Angry Birds, SAS Zombie Assault, Machinarium, Sword & Poker, Zenonia, and Farmville as examples. But i think its dangerous to think “theyve made money, therefore mine will too”, there have been loads more games that have failed to make significant money out of microtransactions and out of those games youve listed i think only Machinarium used a model like the ones you are describing above.
The important thing that all those games above did (apart from maybe zombie s.a.s), is get the player hooked before trying to sell to them. So as long as your game is good enough and seems intriguing enough to new players then option 2 might work well, but i would descrive that as “option risky” as you might have trouble spreading the game around portals etc if for free its just a “demo”, and will have to survice on hype alone. If you are to take that route, I would suggest, having the full version on your site, and putting a lite version round the portals that is presented as a full game, but when people get to the end, you can link to the expanded version
oh and as for paying a one time fees vs tiny payments, the advice is to offer every option you can think of: offer small payments for help etc, and then offer an unlock everything option, and everything inbetween. Don’t use yourself as a way of judging what peopel will do, chance are that general players will view things different to a game developer – especially one thinking about making money.
Bwakathaboom: Making $8k or ($3k) a month when youve finished making the game months ago is nothing to be sniffed at, you could still go back to your relaxed day job and have that still coming in. I still make about $1500 a month from a game I made 2 years ago now and other small amounts from other game which helps tide me over. I’m not getting rich (yet) out of games, but I am not starving either, and personally I would rather spend my days as a game dev that work in an office cubicle. 60 hours a week is only bad if you dont ove what you are doing.
BTW: I do less hours than my old job as a web dev, and earn more money, and enjoy it much more.
Passive income is great, the theory being that it’s cumulative ($8,000 a month from every game, making $xx,000 or more total) but the problem is that I haven’t seen it happen – especially in the Flash / App world. It’s like banking on winning the lottery every six months.
So while it’s possible to support oneself in relative comfort I haven’t seen where or how developers will fund real business growth. Even successful Flash developers like Nitrome take on regular contract work because the games themselves don’t cover everything.
That’s why 99% of game development offices are stuck in crappy industrial zones surrounded by water filtration offices and parts manufacturers. I mean, even crappy animation companies can afford to locate downtown and Canadian broadcast animation hasn’t been viable since the 80s!
But you’ll have to forgive me. As I said before I’m feeling old and cranky and can’t shake the feeling that there’s something inherently wrong with the game development business across the board. Like Nick Cage in National Treasure, I keep seeing clues but don’t have the whole picture yet. I’ve got Monkey Island installed…but my codewheel is broken.
Until then the art and joy of game development is lost on me. I want REAL cash money or I’m not playing.
Sweet, a topic up my alley :) to bad I was away when posted, enough of that though.
Really Mircotransactions are the future, but so are Subscriptions and Purchase Fees, all bundled together, or taken as needed.
The best option for Flash based games, well there is none, it depends on the game. For a puzzle based level game or there abouts from the little you have said. I would suggest going like this.
Free – 10% of the Game Content, and 2 “Items” of Store Credit.
Paided – 100% of the Game Content for $4.99, and 10 “Items” of Store Credit
The Free Version can buy 10% more of the Game from the Store for $0.75
Both Free and Paided can Purchase “Items” from the Store
This allows you to maximize profit, have a single game version with several options and pushes people to pay ourright for the game because it benefits them sooner, and people are always looking for the instance gratification of something, it is in our nature.
I would say that the game Development Industry has hit the pre-teen years and is just being to talk back to its parents, but there is still alot of art and joy to game development, posted on the walls of therapists offices.
Chris – did you say “paided” ?
Apparently I did, but I am not sorry, I am so busy now, if I let a few spelling mistakes slip through on my off time, I can live with it. Which also explains the 16 odd day late reply.
I don’t know if my views are mainstream in the gaming community, but here goes –
I detest the idea of paying for single-use items. You want me to pay for the game? That’s reasonable. You want me to pay for additional levels? That’s reasonable too. You want me to pay for special abilities that then become mine in perpetuity? That’s pretty reasonable too. (think 1 extra consitution for micropayment, or faster mount for micropayment, or +1 to hit for micropayment, etc.)
You want me to pay money for an item in a game that will dissapear after I use it once? No. The idea just pisses me off and if I find that that’s the case after I’ve ALREADY paid the barrier-to-entry initial cost to buy the app in the first place… Ugh, that’s just messed up.
Option 1 – 99c for 5 levels, hefty-for-a-micropayment charge to enable in-game-currency purchase of consumables. $1 to enable the pineapple power up. $1 to enable the purchase of the greasecan consumable. You then buy these things with the golden bananas you earn by playing the game.
Option 2 – $5 for all the levels and all the powerups/consumables are purchasable via in-game-earned currency.
Agreed – consumable items are for suckers. As a player, if i were going to spend money on a game, level packs are great, functional items that don’t expire are great, and goodie bags are super-awesome … that’s where you buy a bundle of maybe 4 weapons, 2 hats, a level, and a new character. Cool! Makes me feel like i’m getting more value for money.