Scott McCloud On Micropayments And Gaming

Thanks to Game Girl Advance for its discussion of a lecture by comic creator Scott McCloud at EA's Redwood Shores campus, during which he floated "the idea of using micro-payments for online gaming, which he analogizes to feeding quarters into the arcade machines of yore." The article's author muses: "Would you pay 25 cents for 100 credits of Bejeweled? What about a dollar for six hours on EverQuest? How about a virtual penny arcade that let you play multiplayer Joust or Gauntlet II online with people from around the world? No monthly subscriptions, just pure pay-to-play." We've previously covered McCloud's hands-on interest in micropayments on Slashdot.

Comments

Re:UT model

[Sylver Dragon]

What's wrong with selling/giving the server software to the people who buy and play your games, like Epic does for Unreal Tournament?

That method doesn't make for a consistent revenue stream. Sure, you get a bunch of sales up front, and then a few sales here and there from people picking up the game, but that's it.
What the author of the article wants, is to get you to pay him every time you fire up your copy of UT. You log onto a server, you pay him a quarter. You finish up a round, and start a new one, you pay him another quarter. Any idiot can see that this is going to add up to a lot of money fast, that's why he wants it, he's just putting a consumer friendly spin on it, to try and sell it.