On Micropayments In Gaming

Thanks to DIY Games for its article discussing the possibility of using micropayments to pay for videogames. The author argues: "With the spread of high-speed Internet and some experiments with on-line game authentication, it seems only natural that game developers, especially the smaller ones, take advantage of micropayments", but goes on to point out possible issues, both monetary ("The most obvious argument against micropayments remains the real transaction cost. As the argument goes, each monetary transaction generates certain fees and these fees may be higher than the payment") and technical ("...the regulation of micropayments by European bureaucrats.") Are there situations where you'd prefer micropayments for playing episodic, small, or regularly updated games?

Comments

Micropayments are doomed

[AuMatar]

Wake up to reality already. People hate being nickled and dimed, they don't want to pay for every bit of content on the net. The fact that people have been discussing micropayments for years and that no one is using them yet ought to be a clue already. If a product is good enough that they wannt that particular thing, they'll pay for it without micropayments. If it isn't, they won't buy it even with.

I'd support it.

[Inoshiro]

If I could get some games that'd give me 8-10 hours of gaming time, which is all I usually have time for a month, for a price less than 20$ CDN, I'd probably go for it. I don't really like spending 70$ on a game, playing 10 hours of it, and giving up because I have other commitments.

The only games I ever get to finish are short ones.

European regulation ?

[dago]

The rant against EU regulations falls someone flat for me. The main point is that micropayments are considered as electronic payments (!) and this fall under the same regulations aimin to protect customers against fraud/bankruptcy/... and to fight against money laundering

Another fact they forgot is that (micro)payments trough SMS, for SMS or web services, are largely used and probably generate more revenue in the EU than the other forms micropayments worlwide.

No it won't

[tod_miller]

Business models are still based on users giving money for the next expansion. If you pay for shitty programming, when you know the last was shitty, then you are encouraging shitty programming.

Nothing else in the world can possibly encourage shitty programming.

Micropayments can actually tie a developer into keeping a game good, as it becomes a longer source of income, not just a WHAM bam, 2 week sales.

If people can get the game for a low price, but enjoy paying it, and the world evolves and keeps growing and devleoping, they will play it more and more.

Graphics are not really going to improve drastically in a way that will improve the possibilities for game developers - we can already model things as close enough to reality - what will improve is the number of things on the screen, and the resolution of the polygons and textures.

Therefore, we are not looking for new games for 'wow' factor in Graphics, I think Doom 3 may be the last of its kind... except for attention to detail, and artistic skills, there is no technical (bar some excellent culling and efficiency algorithms they use, but still, it is opengl library calls... pixel shaders... oh pixel lighting :-) ) advances that will make a game 'obsolete' anymore.

Unreal 1 is still a damn cool game! Replace the low res meshes with higher res, double texture sizes, increase level detail, viola, a whole new game.

What this means is - you can have a game that remains playable for far longer. Micropayments make that a viable business solution. For both customers and businesses.

Micropayments are already here...

[sevinkey]

A lot of people like to pay for what the use, ESPECIALLY in the European markets. Those guys are willing to spend many times the price that Americans will for services just to not get the long-term contract.

I agree people will pay for a product that's costs, lets say $2, if it's good enough, but most vendors aren't willing to sell anything for that low of a price because of the transaction costs involved, and the banks aren't willing to lower transaction costs because it really does cost them more money to do more processing.

So you're left with two models for selling content on the web, subscription or micropayment. My company specializes in DRM videos, and we have clients offering videos in both subscription and micropayment environments.

People ARE willing to buy large amounts of micropayment credits, often times spending much more than the subscription cost of similar sites, because they can use them when they want without any contracts.

What isn't available yet, is a trusted centralized authority for providing access to webpages (which is where most people seem to bring up micropayments). Everything is there for this to happen, but no one has stepped up to the plate. I for one would be willing to pay for 1000 page views of quality content at $10/pop.

I'm starting to ramble... sorry.

I'd welcome this for MMORPGs.

[scowling]

I've been playing City of Heroes, but to be honest, it's getting repetitive and boring, much like every other such game I've played. I don't want to pay $14.95 a month for it -- but I'd definitely pay fifty cents an hour, metered, to play it.

Sadly, that's not an option, so I'm going to end up canceling my subscription entirely rather than pay fifteen bucks a month on a game that I'm not going to play every day.

Re:Shitty programming?

[Ayaress]

The fact that its on a micropayment-like system doesn't cause it to have shitty programming. The fact that they have an addicted userbase that they probably wouldn't lose if they rigged up a system to kick them in the balls every time they logged on means they have much less incentive to fix the problems they have.

Less popular MMORPGs with scavenged userbases who live under constant threat of their userbase going back to Everquest have a good incentive to keep their bugs dead, and they do (or die).