Hi all.. Been a lurker for awhile. I have come to respect a lot of the varying opinions on these forums, and I would like your input. Due to the game not being officially announced, I need to keep the specifics for the game play quiet for the time being. As we get closer to a beta I will be sure to post more specifics looking for testers. My friends and I have been working on a large scale MMORTS. It is built supporting multiple game worlds (as many as we require). There can be upwards of 30,000 people in a single world at any given time. Although for the initial release we plan to keep the game worlds smaller for management and testing purposes, probably in the 1,500 range. There will be multiple world servers for people to play in, so while any single game world will allow 1500 players, there will be as many worlds as we require to support whatever amount of players there are. Games are finite. Meaning that this is a strategy game with specific winning outcomes. We have slated a game to run 2 months. So every 2 months the world will reset and declare a winner, either by who has the highest acquisition score, or if someone actually achieved an end game scenario (there are different ways to end the game). Now here comes the question.. In the case of a MMORTS (it works well over 3G, or WiFi) since we have infrastructure to support to manage a large scale world, or several hundred worlds what should be be considering for a price? We obviously can't price point the game at 0.99c it would hardly be cost effective. While the game doesn't require huge volumes of bandwidth, the maintenance of the servers will come in to play. Our network is designed so we can create many future MMO style games for the iPhone/iTouch. What are your thoughts on the subject of MMO games. I am talking about real MMO, not stuff like Mafia Wars, or those types of games. Thanks for your input on the topic. Best regards, Veri
Your biggest problem is that your MMO will be a ghost town at first. So I wouldn't discount the 99-cent price point to begin with. You want to reward early adopters, and an introductory special might be a good approach. Make it clear up front that it's a limited time offer, then reprice after the introductory period is over and you've got some market feedback to guide you. On the other hand, if your game has solid single-player value then you might be able to sustain a slower growth rate without getting a lot of negative reviews over the lack of competition. In that case a higher price may work out better for you.
You want something like a .99 entry point and sustainable business model. The one that works the best of MMOs actually seems to be micro payments. This allows the CHEAP players to play free and the ones with less time but more $ to pay. Look up how the puzzle pirates economies work etc or even all these fake web based MMOs on the iphone now. Mafia wars etc I believe are all micro payment based.
Thanks for your thoughts. We have been thinking about an ad, or some kind of a micro payment option. Since it will be tough to get people playing right off.. The game is designed to scale, so game worlds game be run with varying sizes of player base. If game servers need to be created to support 200 people we can easily do it. We have thought about having 2 versions, one with the micro type payments / ad ware kind of stuff, and another one with no ads. We have actually designed a micro payment system that would work across all games we develop. So if you were to buy something in one game, what ever "credits" you acquired could be used in any of our games. So you aren't committed to spending everything in one game. Figuring out the business model seems to be more difficult than the game design itself. Any other thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks for the input. Regards, Veri.
If you're planning for this to be a 'big' game on the iPhone platform, and you're looking at it as a kind of mobile World of Warcraft… I'd suggest you making it free for the first year, to gather up momentum and players, but making it fully clear that after that cut-off point you'll start charging a monthly fee of, say, $5? I don't think that's too much considering how much most MMO games charge per month. Maybe you can charge less if you think you can handle it at a lower fee. Good luck! I'm interested in seeing the game.
Does Apple allow for a subscription scheme? I'm sure you could have some sort of quazi-subscription scheme based on in-game payments but I'm not sure a "renew or don't play" subscription such as that used for WoW would be allowed.
Yes, a subscription payment scheme is supported by Apple although I'm not sure if there are any games that support this business model yet. Somebody's bound to do it sooner or later and it will be interesting to see if players are willing to shell out a monthly fee when most games are bought, played, and forgotten in less than a month. I guess if your game is unique enough and has long lasting appeal it may be able to stand out against the constant stream of new games that keep coming out but it certainly won't be easy. In other words, you need to ask why a player would pay for another month of playing your game instead of buying a new game altogether. Anyways, best of luck to you. Maybe you will be the company that figures out how to make the subscription model work.
Apple allows for subscription But its been proven many times in real world MMOs that micro payments make a lot more money. Any how Im not sure how you handle jailbreakers with subscriptions or worse stand alone apps. As all these users will eat out your bandwidth costs.
Hey Verisutha, I love your idea about an MMORTS. I would happily cough up the $0.99 for it, as thanks for all your help.
Really? I haven't heard this before. I'd be very interested to read any articles or evidence, if you have any links. I think if you're using a subscription model, you don't have to worry about jailbreaking at all. If you're requiring users log into an account to play, even the jailbreakers would need subscriptions. A subscription model also means the app could be given free. After the game has become established in its own right, all new accounts could be automatically given a 2 month free trial, like WoW. This would hopefully avoid the problem currently plaguing the subscription-based, Spotify app, where customers are downloading the free app but, after discovering they can't use it without a subscription, go back and give it a 1-star rating. It currently has the most ridiculous rating I've seen on the app store, despite it being a really good app
hmmmm it depends on a lot of factors..... i would say if the production value is solid and it comes across as a game with a lot of attention to detail, art style and atmosphere you could go with price points such as 1.99 to 3.99 as long as it feels like a premium game with a great fun experience if so... I would start with a price point no higher then 3.99 and no lower then 1.99 and stick with it then as the game gets exposure try to add value to the game i would have some DLCs prep'd and ready to go if your not hitting any sales goals to boost hype or make more money from the users you already have and if the sales are "that" bad you could always consider a lite version if your not getting many early adopters the trick is to do whatever you can to hit your goals without having to de-vaule the game with a price drop i also wouldn't worry too much about initial emptiness or bother with a super cheap introductory price either just build hype give out lots of promo codes and hire interns done done and done i wouldn't go with a 1 size fits all model -- i would use a combination of different business models such as: the price of the game + micro payments for commodities in the game that add value to the experience but don't take away from the game play + DLC/episodic content like new world packs, different intertwining narratives that branch off from each other ect thats all i got would need more info/details to come up with more ideas and say for certain if the above strategy would work or not D
Actually we already have something in place for that. One of the big things we spent a lot of time on was working out a detection system. Apple provides a mechanism, but for most games it isn't workable due to design, or being able to have something that can monitor and check a phone to see if it actually made a legal purchase. We have thought about providing code to developers after we get our game out and tested (to work out any issues with the mechanism) so that other devs could also include our mechanisms within their own products. The biggest hurdle and the most time has been spent on designing the infrastructure, since after all this is what will make or break a game. Trying to figure out how packets need to be handled so that the phone using 3G could maintain a decent battery was a big hurdle. In the early days the network code would just kill a 3G phone. Now I have had things running for upwards of 5hrs, and saw minimal drain. Pretty much the same as if I was just using the phone. So the network code is running very well. Thanks for the thoughts. Best regards, Veri
Actually you bring up a great point. Since it does require login, we could actually give the game out for free and you can have the first couple of months free, or maybe be allowed to play 1 whole game for free. Then since they allow for in app purchases after you finish playing you can decide if you want to buy the game to continue playing. I'll have to talk that one over with the team and see what their thoughts are. Thanks
All excellent points. One of the things with our game is the world is actually built dynamically. So no 2 games will ever be alike. Due to the sheer size the world is capable of. Every game world that is created is done through intelligent code, built on rules of course. If you were to be in a game for 2 months and know the world really well, if you then go and join a new game you have no advantage over anyone else, since the world is totally different. We are very concerned with player input, we want players to shape the things to come in the game. After playing it we welcome feedback as to what people would like to see added to the game. With us using a finite game model it allows for us to monitor game play closely and make sure that there is no methods of exploiting are going on. We have created a huge "play back" system that allows us to watch a game in progress at any time, from any viewpoint either past or present events. We actually have a huge design based of micro payments. I have some friends that work at Zynga and I know they do quite well. So there is support for that model. I guess now that we are getting closer to a beta release more of these questions are arising, on what would be the best model. Perhaps some mix of the above is what we require. I really appreciate all of your feedback. Thanks for taking the time to respond. Best regards, Veri.
Would be a great business model, but unfortunately Apple –*I personally think misguidedly – won't allow in-app purchases for games released for free. So I guess that leaves your only option as to have one paid app that includes everything including the in-app purchases, and one free app that's almost identical but excludes in-app purchases, has a two month gameplay restriction, and then you can put in an "upgrade" button that links to the paid app (e.g. Geo Defense) Of course… Your business model could be different, and you could give other incentives to purchase the paid app instead of enforcing a 2 month gameplay restriction. Maybe more vehicles types and things like that.
Let see what i can find off the top of my head. Bit of an over view here http://dubitplatform.com/blog/2009/7/12/how-do-virtual-worlds-make-money-how-big-is-the-market-and-h.html From this week
Here's an interesting article that discusses how giving away an MMO for free and making money from microtransactions is working out nicely: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/10/ddo-free-to-play.ars
It seems Apple read my post! Just a few hours later and you can now allow in-app purchases in free apps. Not a coincidence in any sense of the word. Nope sir. TheBunny, and dansu – Thanks for the links!
Yeah, thanks for mentioning it. I guess Steve read your comment and responded right away! I was very happy to read the announcement from Apple today.
