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Where Is The Metered Pay Model For Online Games?
bturnip writes "I just cancelled my account with the game A Tale in the Desert. I really liked the game- it had a fresh interesting approach, a Linux client, a non-linear style of game play, and was just fun to play. The graphics were pretty good, the sheer amount of stuff to see and do was impressive, and the online community was extremely helpful and friendly. My problem? I didn't play often enough to justify paying $13.95 each and every month. Is isn't that the price is outrageous, I'm not having any problems paying the bills, I just didn't play enough to make it worth my while. Where is the metered pay model for the casual gamer? If a certain game has a monthly fee of $15, and the average player plays 40 hours a month, a metered model might offer 40 metered hours for $25. Hours could be set to expire after a set time, say 4-6 months. Some months I might pay more than a monthly subscriber, some months less. This is a win/win situation. I can have more fun playing my character at my own pace without feeling I need to play more often to justify the montly cost. The game gets money that it would not get otherwise. If I end up playing often, maybe I end up as a monthly subscriber. The downside I can see for game makers is the overhead of running two billing models, extra work in tracking hours spent, etc. What are the other downsides? Is the potential market for this type of billing not worth the effort?" Along these lines, I think that Planetside would have been a huge success if it had launched with a different subscription model.
That isn't exactly "metered" as you acknowledge.
The reason metered doesn't work so well in the game industry is that developers and publishers need more stable revenue. It's easier to calculate how many people were playing last month, this month and how many will play next month. Then you can figure your revenue, expenses and so forth based on that. It would really throw a wrench into the works if you had to somehow figure out how to properly account for whether users were going to play more *minutes* this month than last month or next week than last week. Not impossible, but more difficult.
I think the current pay model is quite a bargain. Most games are around $15/mo for unlimited play. If you're one of those rare people that only plays the game 10 hours a month, you might prefer to spend only 50 cents per metered hour (you'd save $10). But how many of those people are there? I mean, if you're only playing 10 hours per month for an MMORPG style game, you probably aren't very into it and aren't going to make much progress with it anyway.
Still, it would be kind of interesting if they had the same kind of pay model old BBSes used to have. Systems like Major BBS / World Groups BBS let you set the price and you charged it on whatever you wanted (900 number, credit card, etc). Then it counted every second.
Anyway, I just don't think the current play model allows for that sort of pay model. It wouldn't work for most gamers and it definitely wouldn't work for the developers and publishers. Maybe for a different type of game - but not MMORPGS. Not world of warcraft or Eve Online or ATITD.