monetization
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Medium is working on paying its contributors
Getting paid to write is hard, a situation that's not helped by so many places asking you to work for free. Medium CEO Ev Williams has let slip that he's working on a way for his service to enable writers and publishers to get paid. In an interview with BBC News, Williams revealed that his team was "just starting to work on that now, actually." He added that a monetization feature is being built "right now" and will be available before the end of the financial quarter.
Microsoft Studios lays out Let's Play monetization rules
Microsoft Studios has outlined a revised ruleset for players looking to monetize footage from Microsoft-published games on video-sharing sites, granting permission to Let's Players and Twitch streamers with some stipulations. Under the publisher's rules, players may monetize footage from Microsoft Studios games if it was captured during normal gameplay, without the use of reverse engineering or hacking. Microsoft's rules additionally prohibit the use of gameplay footage to produce content that is pornographic, lewd, obscene, vulgar, discriminatory, or otherwise "objectionable." "Whether an Item is 'objectionable' is up to us," the rules page states, "but you can expect us to be concerned if a significant number of people in the game's community or the public at large report the content as offensive." Additional rules prohibit gameplay footage gated behind paid-access websites and subscription-based services. Revenue earned through network partnerships is still permissible, however. A full list of Microsoft's revised guidelines is available here. [Image: Microsoft]
John Smedley praises free-to-play on consoles [Updated]
Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley knows a thing or two about running free-to-play MMOs on consoles. The studio already has DC Universe Online as a free-to-play title on PlayStation 4, it's bringing PlanetSide 2 to the console soon, and both titles are already free on the PlayStation 3. And there's good reason for it: Smedley said recently to Gamasutra that players on the PS4 have been monetizing on DCUO at nearly three times the rate of PC players. This isn't unique to the newest console, as DCUO players on the PS3 shell out cash twice as often as PC users. He also notes that it's a challenge to port to the console, as the lack of a mouse has to heavily influence design, plus it requires a method of dropping simultaneous updates across multiple platforms, which in and of itself can be a tricky venture. Read the full article for more insights from Smedley regarding the console market's free-to-play sustainability. [Update: Smed further clarified his statements over Twitter earlier today. "People think we're becoming a console first shop. NO! consoles are a great place for F2P, but we have always been a PC first company because that's our heritage. We aren't dumbing down PC ever."]
Facebook isn't planning to monetize Whatsapp just yet
Whatsapp has always had a pretty low-key business model: your first year on the service is free, and every year beyond that'll cost you a whopping $1. Now that the ink is dry on its $22ish billion buyout deal with Facebook, is the social juggernaut planning to change things up? Maybe, but according to a new report from Reuters, CEO/chief hacker Mark Zuckerberg isn't planning to try and make more money off the incredibly popular app in the short term. Makes sense: after all, Whatsapp currently has well over half a billion people using it each month, thanks in part to the company's no-nonsense way of making money. There are no obnoxious ads to be found, no sponsored deals -- just a simple, functional way to communicate that runs on nearly any device with a processor and a screen. An attempt to shoehorn in-app purchases or paid services into the mix might only serve to alienate some of Whatsapp's most devoted users... not to mention trigger weeks and weeks worth of meandering opinion pieces. Ugh.
Pathfinder early access starts September 15, cash shop structures revealed
GoblinWorks has posted some "major announcements" on its Pathfinder Online website. They include the start date for early enrollment (September 15th) as well as tweaks to early enrollment packages and a new Explorer Access package. Gameplay-wise, the firm has unveiled premium cash shop items, which it says "are not going to be mechanically superior to player-character crafted items." Two of the items will regenerate power, though, so it's worth reading the full explanation if you're concerned about potential monetization intrusions in your fantasy sandbox. Finally, GoblinWorks talks up Pathfinder's individual player structures, which are also available via the cash shop. Base camps serve as adventure-sustaining settlements when you're far from home, and they remain active for five days once deployed. Once they despawn, they're on a 15-day cooldown. They're priced at $50. Smallholdings are also available and feature "a substantial amount of local storage" for $200.
New Minecraft EULA exceptions drafted to clarify monetization
The fact that Minecraft users can run their own servers has always been a bit of a double-edged sword - a blocky, low-res sword yes, but one sharp on both sides nonetheless. Players can do just about anything they want on these servers, which is great, but these players also sometimes end up breaking terms of the game's EULA, which gets developer Mojang in trouble. "Some privately run Minecraft servers do charge for in-game items, for xp boosts, for access to certain game modes. Some of them even charge quite a lot," Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson wrote in a new blog post yesterday. "I don't even know how many emails we've gotten from parents, asking for their hundred dollars back their kid spent on an item pack on a server we have no control over." To help protect from such accusations in the future, Mojang has created new rules regarding monetization. The rules have been detailed on Mojang's site, but what it boils down to is fewer restrictions on creating and selling in-game items and other monetized goods. Just make sure to communicate with your customers that you aren't Mojang, don't sell items that impact gameplay, and don't charge real-world money for in-game money. Oh, and one last thing, a request straight from Persson: "Herobrine is not real please stop asking." [Image: Mojang]
Stick and Rudder: How Star Citizen is turning the game industry on its ear
When this column began, the first thing I talked about was Star Citizen's then-unique development model and how important it was both for fans and the game industry as a whole. Over a year later, the jury's still out on whether or not Cloud Imperium's opus will bring balance to the Force and give starving hardcores a home of their own. It's already safe to say that Star Citizen has turned the industry on its ear, though.
John Smedley discusses H1Z1 monetization
Player characters in H1Z1 won't be concerned with money, seeing as how they'll be busy trying to fortify themselves against hordes of shambling zombies. Sony Online Entertainment, however, does indeed want to make money off of the game. President John Smedley took to Reddit to share the details of the team's first monetization meeting, and while it's not a decisive list of how the game will make money, it serves as a preview. The early list contains character slots, wearable items, crates with random selections of wearable items, and emotes. The team also intends to allow players to loot wearables from other players, but looted cash items will degrade over time rather than being perpetual acquisitions. Smedley makes it clear that resources like food, water, and ammunition will not be sold, nor will any boosts to those resources, since acquiring these assets makes up the core of the gameplay. Take a look at the post for the details and the community response.
Norrathian Notebook: What EQN Landmark's business plan says about you
As surely expected by all involved, EverQuest Next Landmark's proposed business plan ruffled a few feathers. After all, it's a given that you can't please everyone. And also just as expected, some folks are crying foul; you can't have SOE say boo without someone screaming doom and gloom. But has the studio laid a big goose egg with this monetization plan? I say nope. It may appear a little scrambled in an aspect or two, but the majority of it seems to sit pretty well with players. In a nutshell, the strategy as currently outlined focuses on selling cosmetic items like outfits and pets, shortcuts (like potions, paying upkeep, and renting market space at the hubs), additional claim flags, claim music/sound packs, and raw materials. We know what the actual plan itself says because it was posted front and center on EQN Landmark's alpha forums, which are viewable by the public. But instead of dissecting what the plan is, today I'll focus is on what it says. It's more than just the sum of its words; the plan says something about SOE. And did you know the plan also says something about you?
The Daily Grind: Do you play MMOs without spending money?
Yesterday, Massively's Beau Hindman pointed me to a Touch Arcade article that explains to readers how to spend as little real money in The Simpsons: Tapped Out as possible. I know, I know; it's not an MMO. But that urge to beat the system by playing a free-to-play game without paying a dime is one that MMO players feel more and more in an era characterized by free-to-play and hybrid MMOs. Some folks call it frugality; others call it leeching. But today, we want to know whether this is how you play free-to-play MMOs. Do you try to spend as little as possible, even turning your ability to save money into its own sort of game, or do you chip in money as thanks to developers for a game well done? Are your attempts to penny-pinch thwarted by clever but annoying monetization design? Have you ever successfully hit endgame in a free-to-play MMO without spending any real-life cash, and why? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Lost Continent: On the 'failure' of ArcheAge
This week's rumored XLGAMES restructuring brought with it a predictable cascade of "fail" catcalls from pundits and commenters who never climbed on board the ArcheAge hype train to begin with. Leaving aside the fact that it was a rumor as well as the fact that post-release game teams routinely suffer staffing cuts, I have to wonder at the cocksure I-told-you-so crowing with which some folks declared ArcheAge dead well before it's even arrived on Western shores. While some starving sandbox gamers may have prematurely labeled ArcheAge as the second coming, anyone who has actually played the game or followed larger MMO industry trends could have told you that it's a niche title regardless of how much money XLGAMES gambled on its development.
Black Gold Online changes business model for NA
When Black Gold Online's monetization model was introduced, you could say that it caused a bit of a stir. A very big stir of unhappy once-potential players. Now, Snail Games has attempted to quell the dissatisfaction by clarifying a few points, first and foremost by announcing that the previous model was geared only for China and revealing a different plan for North America. Producer Kee Zhang stated, "We're refining this new system and our top priority is [to] develop a transparent and accepted F2P model for the North American audience." The studio insists that Black Gold's time save system is a completely optional bonus to supplement game progression; players can still acquire all equipment and materials from normal in-game means of questing, drops, and auctions. This system will not affect PvP or PvE rankings. The system appears to work this way: The game will auto-save the player's loot index (which is based on your actions during that saved time) every hour, and players can claim that loot index -- through either the free saves or purchased ones -- in the form of a vial of time that can be traded for credits or opened for the random loot within.
Black Gold Online's payment model will make your head hurt
Black Gold Online's payment model might well be one of the most convoluted and bizarre plans ever instituted in an MMO -- and it's coming soon to the North American continent. Identical to the model that's being used in China, Black Gold's NA payment plan alleges to bypass subscriptions and cash shops entirely. How? Well, it's not explained very well, but that could just be because this monetization model was obviously crafted by a lawyer who hates gamers. The gist of it is that you won't be getting your good loot when you play; instead, your loot will go into a "save file" for optional cash purchase later on. The system holds back rare materials and premium equipment, giving you the chance to purchase the past one, two, four, or six hours of accumulated goods. You can also gamble to try to lower the cost of the purchased save. Snail Games Founder Shi Hai thinks this plan is just peachy: "We're focusing on giving our players choices when it comes to their gameplay experiences -- they decide what premium items to pay for and whether a play session is worth saving." [Thanks to Paul for the tip!]
RIFT's Ffinch on monetization and playing incognito
RIFT senior design director Simon Ffinch spoke to PCGamesN about the fantasy title's free-to-play conversion recently. Ffinch said the switch has "been amazing," and he also offers a few quotables with regard to both F2P discourse and the perils of playing a game you've developed. "I just hate that word 'monetize,' Ffinch said. "'Let's monetize our players!' They're people and they're playing a game because they want to have fun, they're not a frickin' ATM machine. I don't like that attitude at all, and in the business world you can't help but hear it." He also drops a few interesting tidbits about his in-game experiences. "I'm in a guild and they don't even know I'm a dev," Ffinch says, before adding that he avoids voice chat but tries to "gently probe" his fellow players for useful feedback. "Some of the responses just make me glow inside," Ffinch explains," but then there's also the other side of it, when they respond with 'I don't know what those devs were doing, they're frickin retarded!'"
Massively Exclusive: Red 5 talks pay-to-win and Firefall's open beta
If you haven't yet noticed, Red 5's open-world, MMOFPS, action-adventure, jet-boot-featuring Firefall is now in open beta. The sci-fi shooter saw an extended closed beta period marked by major overhauls to core systems and a slow-but-steady trickle of new content, and last week's open beta launch is the next big step in pushing Firefall toward its eventual release. We posed a few questions to Red 5 about the nature of beta testing, the complications brought on by monetizing a game in progress, and the future of Firefall.
Ultima Forever reduces most freemium prices after Canadian beta
Ultima Forever, being made by EA for iOS platforms, has received some major tweaks to its freemium currency prices. The RPG has been available in Canada as a beta for a while now, and producer Carrie Gouskos says the biggest change – besides performance adjustments – has been to the cost of things. In the free-to-play RPG, your character has items that will break over time. You'll need to spend keys of various qualities (that can be earned in game, or purchased with real money) to repair those items. Gouskos says player feedback made it clear that repair costs were too high, and repairs for the highest quality items have been lowered from about 60 keys to around 8 or 10. Additionally, the cost to increase storage space in your stash was lowered, as the team found it was a mistake to charge people an increasing cost for simply wanting to collect more of the game's items. One price went up: The cost to loot the highest quality chests was raised a bit to make up for the decreased costs elsewhere. Gouskos also says that once players had good items on their characters, they tended not to loot as much as when they first started playing. For her part, Gouskos says she's "worked too hard to have people not play" the game, so she's striving to make sure there's a way to play that's both free and fun. The team is still considering providing an optional "buyout" fee to essentially negate the game's freemium elements, but no matter how the final product works, says Gouskos, making the game fun takes priority over the tangled monetization model. If you want to make money from a freemium game, says Gouskos, "you've got to get people to love your game first."
Wargaming.net removing 'pay-to-win' options from current and upcoming games
Spend any time in a comment section or forum thread pertaining to World of Tanks and you'll inevitably find accusations of pay-to-win monetization. Wargaming.net has apparently heard the discontented rumblings, as it just announced via an interview with Gamasutra that it is "removing all pay-to-win purchase options from all its current and upcoming titles." The initiative has its own marketing slogan ("free-to-win") and will ostensibly do away with "all payable options that could be viewed as giving a player an advantage in battle." How will the firm make its money, then? "Revenue will come from sales on non-advantageous content such as premium vehicles, personalization options, and the like," Gamasutra reports. Click through the links below for the full interview with Wargaming VP of Publishing Andrei Yarantsau.
Burstly restructures, now offers three services for code-to-ship functionality
Burstly acquired the beta testing service TestFlight just a few months ago, and TestFlight released a mobile analytics service called FlightPath soon after that. Now, Burstly has announced that it is restructuring its offerings, to set up a full set of services to take developers from developing and testing their app with TestFlight, to preforming analytics with FlightPath, and then monetizing with Burstly's tools, now rebranded as SkyRocket. This is a smart bit of revamping -- TestFlight is very popular, but FlightPath has just started out and SkyRocket's name is brand new to most developers, so combining these tools under the same umbrella should make them all more accessible to developers. All of these services are still available separately, but not only do they share a parent company now, but they also can combine functionality, such as having high profile users from FlightPath get offered different monetization options or deals via SkyRocket. Burstly's wasting no time making its TestFlight acquisition useful. We'll stay tuned to see, going forward, how this trio of services plays with mobile developers.
MMO Family: First Impressions of World of Trinketz
I have to begin this week's column with a disclaimer: I am not a fan of Facebook, and I'm even less a fan of Facebook games. The only one I found enjoyable was Ian Bogost's Cow Clicker because it was a giant middle finger to the bottom-feeding practices so commonly found in Facebook Villes. But when I got a Google alert in my inbox about the world's first family-friendly 3-D MMO for Facebook, I had to head back to the blue-and-white wasteland of Facebook and see it firsthand. Could it be that the era of isometric views and mindless clicking is finally over? Have we finally moved on from agriculturally themed games? I decided to check out World of Trinketz to seek some answers.
Report: Customer retention is a major factor for the App Store
Yes, the conclusion of this report might be a little obvious to anyone who's been following the App Store closely, but it's true: Flurry's latest writeup of App Store stats suggests that keeping users playing a game or using an app can be a major factor in that app's success. Flurry filed the apps it follows into a set of four categories, based on star systems. Black Holes feature low amounts of monthly users, and low amounts of retention over a couple 30-day periods. Shooting Stars have put a lot of users together quickly, with high user numbers, but relatively low retention. Red Dwarfs have lots of user retention, but low numbers overall -- these are cult favorites, used by a smaller amount of very loyal people. And finally, Supernovas have it all, in Flurry's estimation: Lots of users that stay with the app for quite a while. When you take those categories over to the average number of minutes of usage per month (in the chart above), then things get really interesting: As you can see, the more retention an app has, the more engaged its users are (and whether you're talking about premium apps or apps that use in-app purchases, more engagement usually means more money made). So this is where Flurry gets its conclusion: User retention is extremely important. Even if an app doesn't take off right away in terms of user numbers (if it's not a Shooting Star, with a lot of users who don't stick around), keeping those users over a longer period grows the user base and that user base stays loyal over time. In the past, a lot of developers have aimed for that Shooting Star status -- they push on big launches, and try to put a huge number of users together very quickly after an app's release. But this report shows that there's another market on the App Store, one that moves a little more slowly (and doesn't collect as many users as quickly), but that can become very large and engaged indeed, sometimes over a matter of months or even years.
