Sports Games Toy With Pay To Play

Thanks to CNN Money for their article discussing videogame plans for the forthcoming football season, particularly focusing on the fact that "publishers are interested in discovering exactly how dedicated electronic football fans are to the online element." EA president John Riccitiello explains: "The online connected console is a brand new concept. We do not want to set a long term precedent that it's a free benefit, but we don't think we can get paid for the simple act of matching two consumers to play against one another. So what we've been doing is looking at alternatives." According to the article, EA will be trying pay-to-play tournaments (but only in NBA Live for now, not Madden), and the opportunity to purchase downloadable content, as EA learns "what the consumer is willing to pay for."

Comments

Can you say interactive seasons?

[JohnLi]

I knew you could.

Being a New Orleans man, I would like to see the teams stats updated when they are kicking ass in the first part of the season so at least i get some good feelings before they roll over and die around week 9. :)

match entire teams?

[prichardson]

How about instead of matching two players, match two teams entirely made up of players. You could also have a coach player. This brings many more possibilities, maybe even a cooperative game play (run through whatever single player there is with a team made up of real people). Then you could a have a football sim that simulated individual players.

You could even have it almost me MMO like. Have coaches organize teams of real players based on their records. I've never been a fan of sports games myself but I might buy into that. Even better, simulate even more, a sports caster, water boy, but have AI backup for whatever people won't do.

Madden wants your money

[August_zero]

Really people, don't get mad, just don't get the game. If nobody is willing to pay the price than they will give up and go back to free.

Sports games fans are a bit looney anyway considering the fact that they pay $50 a year for new rosters and for what is basically the same game as they bough last year. Whats more, the resale value on sports games are terrible.

Now If I was a hardcore Madden fan, and EA offered me a $60 a year subscription to Madden football, that included regular roster updates, add ons and online play. In other words, instead of me having to buy a new version every year, I buy it once and the game gets upgraded/updated continously. That seems more reasonable.

Wait a second, this is EA? forget it they have never been reasonable why should anyone expect them to be now?

Objective Commentary

[Tarivus]

I'm not much of a sports gamer myself but I'll try to break this down the way I see it. Back in the dark ages, when Blizzard of America knew what they were doing, I played Diablo2 on Battle.net. This is, of course, free but is plagued by cheaters of all types. Why? Becuase there is simply very little or no incentive for Blizzard to work hard on moderating it. They are not being paid to run these servers and one could even say that they are bleeding cash through them. If a hack comes out, they release a patch and that is even more than they are legally obligated to do. Blizzard could start charging a monthly fee to play on Battle.net but that would drive away a large share of customers that want only online play.

That is Blizzard, let us focus on these sports games now. After beating the computer AI 50,000 times, one may wish to find other players to test their mettle against. Friends are good, online is good when such friends are not around. My point is, unlike these computer based games that would bomb without online features, console based sports games can be played alone or with a local friend and be very enjoyable. If one can have a perfectly good time playing by themselves or with a friend, why not make online play an extra feature?

Now I admit, there are people with no friends, or no friends interested in such games and those people may have to turn to the online realm. The plan proposed here caters to them perfectly because they can play spot matches for free but if they wanted to face the real challange of online tourneys, they have to fork over the cash. While this plan may appeal to the customers quite well, I fear that it would not generate very much revenue. If you check out Yahoo games, you will find that they have a very similar system of "You play free but if you want to play seriously, you have to pay," also, you will find that NO ONE has subscribed to this service.

So what would be the solution? Cash prizes? Online kudos? A sophisticated rating system? No. Those may gather a few people but in the end, the one thing that will really generate cash would be forced payments from everyone who wishes to play online, and this would be unethical in my opinion because the service has set its own precident as a free to play gathering place. Returning to the Blizzard example: there does NOT HAVE to be a server for everyone to play on. It is a gift and complaining about something as minor as paid tournaments is just wasting your breath.

How about two-tiered playing?

[whitefox]

If I was in charge, I would do it this way: free head-to-head playing and an entry fee to compete in tournaments.

For head-to-head play, no stats are kept. You just play against your friends or whomever. This allows new players to learn how to play against real opponents. If expert players are willing to help novices learn, all the better. After all, I won't willingly pay to get my ass handed to me time after time.

But for tournament play (monthly charge), stats are kept on each player along with their rankings, games are scheduled between players with a choice of equal calibar or unbalanced matchups, and the occasional super-tournament can be set up.

I think something like this would be fair to everybody (novice players, expert players & the game companies alike).

Pay?

[Clomer]

All I'll say is this: I will be very hesitant before I ever pay for online content in a console game. I, for example, am considering getting Phantasy Star Online for the GameCube, but I doubt I'll ever subscribe to the actual online features if I do decide to get this game. There have been enough examples of fairly high-quality online games that are free to play that I don't really see how anyone can charge for anything but specialized situations (such as MMO's).

2 examples come to mind. First is Blizzard's Battle.net. Granted, it's not without problems, but by and large it's a pretty good service, and it has helped Blizzard sell literally millions of copies of their games. The second is what we see with FPS games like Quake 3 and Half-life. The end-users can host their own servers (assuming they have access to sufficient computing and bandwidth resources), and it doesn't cost the developers anything. That was a really smart marketing move on their part, and I'm surprised it hasn't become the standard. Full-featured online play that costs the developers very little, if anything.

Now the battle.net model might be tough for a console company to maintain (battle.net is paid for by ads, which would be tough to implement in a console game), but the FPS model where anyone can host a server would be easy. Maybe the developers could release a dedicated server app on their website that interested people could run on their computer to host games for the console. That's the direction I'd like to see online console games go.