Anyone have an idea what is happening to their margins by the way? Who is competing against the same ad dollars as Google (FB seems a bit different), if cost per click is going down, why?
I think they are like any other big industrial company.
They build out factories (datacenters, networks, etc) based on a projection of long-term growth. Once you start missing those growth targets, it's like compounded interest... the impact of a small miss in year 1 has a big impact on the year 5 bottom line.
They have a few issues IMO:
- The market is saturated... how many more tiny classified ads can you sell?
- The "less sophisticated" users who click on ads use Bing -- the Windows default.
- There are real competitors out there... Bing, Facebook, etc.
- They piss off their hardcore users too much. Google+: enough said.
I would guess it's mobile/tablets. I rarely see tasteful advertising geared towards that space, and "regular" pages shown on a mobile phone force me to zoom in on content and scroll past ads.
Also, wouldn't all those hundreds of "box of the month"-style subscription sites where you can pick a product to send and get it periodically be prior art?
It's the only explanation I can find for the fact that patents like this are approved :)
(My alternative hypothesis revolves around evil conspiracies to extend property rights into the realm of generic ideas, with the aim to create a modern equivalent to the medieval landed gentry who can get rich entirely by rent-seeking[1]. All in all, I prefer the "examiners don't understand what they approve" explanation :)
I've just read all the claims and everything looks trivial once you realise that this is the basic specification for a repeating delivery system. Can you point to a single aspect of any of the claims that would reasonably be described as novel?
Big spenders or "whales" are much ignored when considering how to make money with a game. There really are people out there that are willing to spend thousands a month on a social game. You could even think that all the other players merely exist in the game to entertain that small slice that really brings in the money.
In my own apps with virtual currency I could see this only in a small way as the incentive was low to spend a lot, so this is more based on the experiences I have heard from fellow devs.
I believe it has been widely recognized that Zynga, GREE, etc earn most of their revenues from "whales". And I think it's an ok practice. But in order to get the money from the whales, it often seems that the rest of the players (the 99%, if you wish), have their experience hampered by constant dangling of offers in front of you. As a player, I'd rather pay a small sum once to avoid the virtual currency - and find other ways to create whales (e.g., as suggested, more like content creation, sponsoring and some vanity items).
>> As a player, I'd rather pay a small sum once to avoid the virtual currency - and find other ways to create whales (e.g., as suggested, more like content creation, sponsoring and some vanity items).
Except that I bet you wouldn't. Most players when asked say they would prefer a "fair price, pay once" model. Yet in aggregate they act very differently. If that weren't true we wouldn't now have a market where:
1) Seemingly most people complain about F2P
2) F2P is increasingly the most successful model
I think the people annoyed by monetization efforts are a relatively tech savvy, vocal minority.
>> it often seems that the rest of the players (the 99%, if you wish), have their experience hampered by constant dangling of offers in front of you.
I don't think that's really the case. Again, vocal minority.
But let's say it is. Speaking as a game developer now, we don't have to present the same experience to every player. A "cheap" player may be nearly a lost cause for direct monetization but valuable for word of mouth. If they're not buying we can actually scale back on the amount of ads presented and instead gently persuade them to, say, post their high scores on Twitter. If you're the type of player that likes to brag, then a prompt with a pre-filled Twitter post won't annoy you at all. It's not hard to figure out which player is which and it's not hard to adapt in-game marketing efforts to suit that player.
I can happily say that I've given up on free to play games. The vast majority of free to play games out there are fundamentally flawed. At their core they weren't designed to be fun to play, they were designed to milk the player of money, or pester them until they give in and pay or give up and quit.
Sure, there might be a few free to play games out there that break this mold, but I'm at a point in my life where money is expendable but time isn't. I'd much rather spend money up front to play a game that has a good chance at being designed for fun than waste time trying to find a diamond in the free to play rough.
I believe there will always be a place for paid games, but if the market shift towards free to play continues I'll have no problem giving up video games entirely. Will the 'AAA' free to play games like Hawken, Mech Warrior Online, or Planetside 2 be fun to play? Perhaps, but I'll never find out.
Well you're pretty obviously on the extreme end of the spectrum.
Personally I don't play many F2P games and am much more 'core than the center of the market as well. Probably 95% of my gaming time goes to console games and I prefer the biggest budget, most polished titles available (just finished my second character in Borderlands 2). And yes I pay for them up front (and have them delivered by messenger to my home the day they launch, which absolutely makes my day every couple of months).
But as someone trying to build a profitable games company it seems suicidal at this point to not at least attempt to make some form of F2P work with my other design goals. Does that mean I'm going to make shitty games? I don't plan on it. I can say that designing a compelling in-game economy (that can be monetized) is without a doubt the most challenging part of design for me.
You can do what Zynga has done and build games from their monetization outward, but I don't think that's the only way to do it. I hope to do a lot better and I'm sure other companies have or will as well. Don't forget that the F2P model that is now so reviled (by people like you) is relatively new (freemium is not of course) so I think it's a little premature to say that all F2P titles will suck, forever and ever.
I don't. I suspect the 'whales' aren't the 1% that Occupy Everything talk about (the richest 1%), but rather a mix of people who may be able to afford the addiction, but many that are not.
It's probably akin to dealing addictive drugs or promoting irresponsible gambling. It might be legal, but I think it's slightly predatory and on the grey side of ethics/morals/karma or whatever you like to think of as 'do good things, not bad' to others.
Do you similarly oppose all luxury brands? There's no quality difference between a $5000 LV handbag and a good $100 one exception fashion, trends and branding. Once you get past about €100/bottle, quality of wine making process rarely increases, it's all just hype.
If someone can sell a $1000 handbag, why can't I spend $100 on my super-duper legendary Diablo 3 item? It's all artificial scarcity. People who spend money any kind of luxury consumer goods rarely get quality. My mechanical watch is worse at telling time than a quartz watch 1/1000th the price. I don't go to Zürich with a tent because of that.
> There's no quality difference between a $5000 LV handbag and a good $100 one exception fashion, trends and branding
While I understand and perhaps agree with your larger point, I have to disagree with this claim. LV stuff is expensive, yes, but the product is very good quality, and comes with what is essentially a lifetime warranty.
Yes, LV is several times the price it "should" be. Problem is that everything else is also several times the price it "should" be. In the larger context, I don't really think LV is particularly bad value, or that the sale price/actual cost multiplier is that much different.
And there is simply no such thing as a good handbag for $100, for pretty much any definition of "good" (substitute briefcase if you are male). To sell at $100, the manufacturing cost of a handbag would have to be maybe $10 or $20 max - whatever you think about LV you cannot possibly claim they cost only $10 to make.
I don't want to sound like an asshole but the brands you mention are all "deep budget" brands and have no design credibility whatsoever. The idea of a professional woman bringing a Jansport bag to the office is totally unthinkable. They are not even remotely comparable to an LV handbag.
The link you quote is to a tote, which is suitable for perhaps taking stuff to the beach. You will not find any professional women coming to the office with this bag, unless it's filled with gym gear or something.
So you pay 10x more for design credibility, rather than something that actually affects the quality or utility of the item?
The idea of a professional woman bringing a Jansport bag to the office is totally unthinkable.
Again, you are comparing the items on intangible benefits which are clearly little more than an emotional feeling telling you that brand A is inherently better than brand B (regardless of the actual item in question).
Promoting an item that is 10x more expensive than another based solely on intangible properties like it has design credibility or it's from an in-fasion brand and that using anything else is simply unthinkable is no better than having me pay 10x more on a game than the average player does.
I, for one, find telling me that I have to buy a certain brand or design that's currently in fashion because not doing so would be unthinkable or I would lack some kind of credibility or the items just don't compare (even though the items actual tangible properties are not even discussed) as exploitative when these items cost so much more than the tangibly-comparable items.
It's not about the disparity between the price and the functional value. The value is subjective, anyway. Expensive jewelry communicates commitment, expensive handbags signal status, and a wine you paid more for tastes better to you. I may think it's foolish anyway, but I think throwing your money away foolishly is a God-given right.
As long as you're in your right mind.
It's when I start to think you're not in your right mind, or when the seller knows things about game theoretic implications of the arrangement that you don't understand (Penny Bids), that I take a dimmer view of things. And when there's compulsion or addiction, especially if it's introduced or reinforced by the seller, and the buyer doesn't really understand it . . .
Then it may not be illegal, but it's a dishonorable way to make your fortune.
You make a very good point, and I guess the distinction I can see is that freemium apps are marketed as free, with the hidden cost to someone susceptible occuring after the initial 'taste'. It's easily arguable that luxury brands tap into the same 'desire center' but at least they're upfront about the costs and people can vicariously enjoy the thought of attaining them without the freemium sleight of hand.
I think there's a significant difference between the F2P games by Zynga and what not, where you play very poorly compared to people who spend.
Vs typical arcade games, where it's just more fun and a bit easier. But you can still have tons of fun without buying IAP. You can typically spend a couple bucks and use those items forever.
In the first example - you have to keep spending as long as you keep playing.
I imagined I had given some thought to these subjects, but Permutation City did have new ideas. If you slow down a simulation to some ridiculous degree, the simulated beings don't notice. Even if you run the simulation backwards or in random order, they wouldn't notice. If you abruptly shut it down, they'll just continue finding the pattern somewhere.
How did you get started in organizing such a collaborating group, are you offline friends or used a forum? How does leadership work? I see no collaboration at all in the shooters I play, so curious about how that emerges.
Everything that Axxl said. Eve in particular lends itself too cooperation, since you can literally do nothing enjoyable without other people helping you. To answer your questions:
My corp was (is) one of the biggest ones and was derived originally from the Something Awful forums. So that certainly helps a lot. The corp has a long history, a very unique culture and personality and commands pretty intense loyalty (for an internet spaceship game).
Part of the cooperation in Eve is also because of the "player-owned space". Most competitive corps live in nullsec, which is free-for-all territory. You become invested in the place you live - all your possessions are there, you are familiar with the geography. It's your virtual space-home. Which also means you try to make it better, and try to defend it from other corps trying to encroach in your space.
Leadership is a complicated political mess that leads to a lot of hilarious moments. We have a CEO who is either elected or assigned, depending on the whims of our leadership. The CEO is assisted by a board of directors who basically oversee everything else. A lot is pretty standard - defense, fuel logistics, finance, etc. We have Fleet Commanders who don't hold political power, but are in charge of commanding fleet engagements and organizing defenses/raids. We also have squads, which are basically informal social groups. A lot of people like to chill with their squads when not involved in something else.
But we also have a lot of directors that manage groups of players involved in "unorthodox" gameplay.
For example, we have a large foreign intelligence division, whose sole job is to infiltrate other corporations. They feed false information, obtain intel and occasionally pull of theft on hilariously grand scale. A lot of these agents have accounts bankrolled by the corp (through in-game timecards) as compensation for having to play with terrible "pubbies" all day long.
We also have a diplomatic corp, which is basically the public face of the corp. I was in that for a while and it was very fun. I spent all day chatting with other corps, even ones we were at war with, trying to work out political solutions, swap intel, intimidate, etc.
There are so many more: extreme finance (exploit new CCP releases), foreign legions (helping allies in their wars), scamming/griefing, black ops (lone players that live in enemy space making their lives miserable), Bomberwaffe (stealth bomber raids), counter-intel (finding spies in our corp), etc etc.
Also, EVE makes it impossible to achieve the heights of internet spaceship power without cooperation. You cannot hold a region by yourself, etc.
That said, the "unorthodox" gameplay is what makes EVE the best MMO ever. As a veteran of XZH, I helped run logistics for a 3000 person force. At our peak, we were returning pilots to the front within 10 minutes of their death - new ship, fully fitted, ready to fight - at no cost to them. I was spending 6-8 hours a night and loving every minute of it. Sadly, that's unsustainable with my life goals. =)
But let's be honest here, in eve "unorthodox" gameplay generally meant ruining the game for 99.99% of the players apart from a tiny few who were in leadership positions. Eve is about fantasising about what you could do, rather than enjoying what you actually do.
Unless you spend an extremely sad and unhealthy amount of time playing the game you will never, ever get to do anything polyfractal describes.
A good example is the end of the BoB/Goonswarm war (the latter being polyfractal's alliance). Not that I ever had anything to do with either.
Basically a single guy from Goonswarm infiltrated BoB and got granted privileges to delete the BoB alliance. That meant they lost all their territory. OK, the game mechanics sucked at the time with too much advantage given to BoB's defence, but after the alliance got deleted, game over for BoB. And CCP didn't know what to do so just kinda went 'um, yeah, that's a real mechanic, not a bug/exploit'. Game over. No epic spaceship war. No amazing tactical genius. Just some guy lying about who he was with zero consequences and smarming BoB leadership until he could click the iwin button. Just a single click.
And that's the essence of end-game eve, find the exploit, click it, laugh, then wonder why the hell you were even playing the game in the first place.
polyfractal sounds very much like he's in the bright-eyed bushy tailed phase of eve before you realise, hang on a sec, I was supposed to be playing a spaceship game...
Hmm, well, I'm not really sure if you are attacking me personally or the game. If you've read my other posts in this thread, it's pretty obvious I'm not in that "bright-eyed bushy tailed phase". I quit because of time and the fact that it's internet spreadsheets in space. If anything, I can proudly wear the "bitter vet" badge who will probably never play Eve again.
I would argue that the alliance you are a part of is more important than the amount of time spent. I got to do some really cool stuff because I was part of Goonfleet - which was very well organized and interested in playing all the parts of the game...not just the shooty parts.
You are also leaving out all the history that happened after that single "disband alliance" event. Did it suck for their alliance? Sure. What happened after that? They rallied and led an impressive one-year campaign to retake their homeland.
What other games allow for a year-long campaign against other players, keeping everyone involved actively engaged and interested? There were battles so large that the servers crashed, because there were several thousand people playing in the same system at the same time.
Hilariously enough, the same thing happened to Goonfleet (our CEO went rogue, deleted alliance, LOL). We were booted from our homeland as BoB took it back over. Guess what happened? Player engagement rates went through the roof. The alliance had been stagnating and people were quitting...after the exodus many players rejoined and started being active again.
My point in all of this is that the people who gravitate towards EVE are the ones that find this kind of gameplay enticing. It makes it so much more interesting than WoW or any other fluffy MMO where there is nothing to lose.
I think part of the problem with collaboration in shooters, is after that particular game, there's no reward to collaboration. So what if you teamkill, you're on a diferent team the next match. In EVE there are long term rewards to playing along with a corp, for both the corp and the player. You make money for the corp in some way and the corp provides you benefits (free play-time, ships, etc), security in risky places and the opportunity to explore places you can't on your own.
MMO's like EVE (or WOW or whatever) reward long term group collaboration. At the highest level of play the level of teamwork required is significant. People who want to participate in this degree of play seek each other out.
When I used to play shooters there where guilds, and the better ones ran in the same way to the guilds in MMOs. A group of players gather together, plays and trains together, discusses strategy etc. The difference is that you can start up Call of Duty or whatever and play a quick fun game by yourself. Playing EVE solo is going to be a lot less rewarding.
This is magnified as the reward structure in MMOs is usually designed around the best rewards being available only to the most coordinated groups. Thus a coordinated group of 15 players will gain rewards far, far greater then 15x that of a single player.
EVE has its guild system built into the game, there are recruitments posts etc. So finding other players is fairly easy. The forums of course extend this, and most serious groups will have their own websites and forums.
My favorite was staying in a $10 / night hut in Thailand, next to a resort that probably cost $100 / night. It was near enough that I could use their wifi.
They wanted to hop on trains at the last minute, but tickets sell out quickly. They ended up spending a lot more for air travel. They didn't get a guide book; therefore, they wasted a lot of time on logistics and wandering aimlessly around a city. They tried to get into hostels but these are sometimes booked up. They had no backup plan and went looking for a cheap motel. They are vegetarians and didn't know how to ask for "no meat". They ended up eating whatever they could scrounge from grocery stores. I'm a vegetarian and had some terrific meals. They will survive though.
