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Linux Users More Likely To Pay For Games?
Teppy writes "I noticed something unexpected the other day when reviewing the subscriber counts for our MMORPG, A Tale In The Desert. Of everyone who tries our game, Linux users are definitely more inclined to pay money to subscribe. In fact, overall, about 15.6% of Windows users who do the free trial will subscribe, while among Linux users the number is 19.3%. Furthermore, Linux users tend to remain subscribers for a longer time. Are we the only game company noticing this?" Is this down to loyalty, choice, or other mysterious factors?
Perhaps the higher subscription rate among the Linux crowd is because we're game starved. There are far more game choices when it comes to the Windows game market, thus more to draw away customers.
I dti'r na ndall is ri' fear na leathshu'ile.
You have to consider the fact that Linux users are usually far more technically minded, and probably have more money and be more willing to give their support, regardless of their wealth. That user base is still far less than the Windows user base, so while your numbers are probably correct, they fail to consider the number of users for each OS.
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Is that its due to the fact that there are a lot more available games for windows users to subscribe to, while not as much content, as far as games go, is put out for linux platforms.
Or could it be b/c windows sucks, and blue screens whenever users try to subscribe? We may never know.
Nah, it's just that Linux users are geeks, which is a subculture closly related to hardcore gamers. Windows users are a much broader array of type. Someone who is just interesting in learning more about games and will try a free version here and there, is probably going to be running Windows.
As a person with a Windows machine, I have lots of choice for games. Hell, there are so many games released for Windows PC that I could take care of all of my entertainment needs entirely through free trials and demo downloads. This means that a game has to be really special for me to stick around and pay money for it. Linux users don't get as much choice.
I bet there is also an activist dollars aspect to it. I mean if you spend a lot of time championing Linux and complaining that there aren't enough cross-platform releases then when a company is finally good enough to make the effort, you'd better put your money where your mouth is and support the effort even if it isn't the best game available. If these companies don't see any return on their investment then they just won't do it next time.
It's kind of like those PC users who paid stupid amounts of money for the earliest PC games when consoles were offering much cheaper, much nicer looking games. Such is the sacrifice of pioneers, I guess.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects
Your numbers are so close that i dont think you can easily pick a winner. Without having margin of error, or a total sample size how can we realisticly calculate whom is more likely to pay for your software.
Their are other factors to take into consideration as well. What is the target audience for your game? If you are advertising mostly on linux blogs or sites, then your going to have an audience that is more steeped in linux.
I think that the numbers show that on average 20% of your audience will pay for the game. This says only one thing to me, that your game is not very good. Instead of looking as to why linux users are approximatly 4% more willing to purchase the sofware; instead look at why 80% of your users wont. Solve that, and you have accomplished something.
"Once upon a time men were lions and machines were mice, but since it was so long ago, now its twice upon a time."
Software is (was?) often distributed in this fashion. It is known as a shar file (SHell ARchive). I believe that Sun's version of Java is delivered in this way; it allows them to feed you a license agreement before creating the tarball that contains the file. The tarball itself is Base64 encoded (just as if it went through an email system) and tacked onto the end of the script.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
i'd think it'd be due to the fact that linux geeks are more likely to be part of the hard-core segment.
no offense to the poster, but their fairly good massmog is still fairly obscure. that's mostly due to independents having a hell of a time with marketing - and combines with no retail box on the shelf.
no box in best buy limits your exposure to the mass MS PC market, and all that's left is hardcore gamers who find most of their games through word of mouth or surfing.
then there's the gameplay. Atitd is really skewed toward the player-created-content segment (which is great) which one would expect is a natural fit for the linux/hacker mentality.
of course, given all that, i'm surprised the linux adoption rate isn't higher - though i'd bet that has more to do with the monthly price.
which imo, still intending no offense to the poster, is still a bit steep for anyone with only casual-gamer levels of free-time. linux fans being hardcore hackers - they could generally be expected to code just as much in their free time as play games. and then its all a matter of personal economics.
(naturally i know nothing of the actual economics of massmog production, so the price may be absolutely necessary. i do recognize that the price is on par with other massmogs, and combined with the no up-front box cost the game comes out dramatically cheaper - so its certainly reasonable.
but i do however know my personal economics. and $13/mo for ~20-30 hours of play isn't in the budget. of course, that's why no massmog is in my budget, but i digress)
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
That was my first thought too. But I thought about it a second and realized that ever since I started using Linux, the number of items of software I've pirated has declined. Granted, I still buy nothing. But I'd rather look for the GNU free and legal solution than the illegal pirated solution.
When I ran Windows predominantly, it was always a pirated copy. If my entire OS is pirated what's a few more small programs?
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Just to toss this one out there --
Linux users, on average, are probably more educated than Windows users. (To avoid a flame war, note that I said "on average". Everybody and their grandmother uses Windows, thus driving the average level of education down. Whereas Linux users tend to pick it up either in high-tech jobs, implying advanced education, or in the secondary schools themselves. Although the delta may be smaller for the MMORPG market.)
More educated people tend to make more money than less educated people.
People that make more money have more money to spend on things like game subscriptions.
Hence the slightly higher subscription rate among Linux users.
Just one theory... Though my personal bet is that the driving factor is the limited competition for online games that support Linux.
Having some one pay monthly is the most horrible thing a company can do ...
In another note i would rather pay +60$ more of the game price just for a unlimited subscirption for a massive multiplayer RPG game.. then have to pay monthly
That's not a viable business model for an MMOG. With a conventional game, the company has a large up-front cost to develop the game, which is recovered by sales of the game. Since making additional copies of the game is very cheap, costs after initial development are very low.
An MMOG has both an up-front cost, which companies usually recover by selling the game software, and an ongoing cost for running the servers, tech support, and developing additional content. A company that tried to cover all this with the price of the software would either price themselves out of the market, or go bankrupt trying to cover the support costs of players who keep playing month after month, just because it's free.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
2) The nature of ATITD appeals to Linux users more than Windows users. It's a very high-brow academic game with very little violence (none, really).
What it's not? Has nothing to do with a lack of Linux games. Linux users probably all have access to PCs - maybe on a duel boot, and if there was a PC game they wanted to play they would play it.
And there are Linux users that actually care about copyrights and piracy. In so much, they use Open Source or Linux as the method of overcoming the problems of piracy instead of using draconian politics and corporate cronyism.