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.

Comments

WoW game cards

[Southpaw018]

World of Warcraft offers Game Cards, which give you 2 months at a time. You can let your account expire when you want and pick it back up when you want. Not quite the flexibility you're looking for, but it's an improvement over the hard line subscription model. Check here.

Re:WoW game cards

[screwballicus]

You can let your account expire when you want and pick it back up when you want.

This is true of most of WoW's competitors and always has been. Exceptions are 1) SWG deletes characters shortly after account cancelation because Sony is in league with Satan 2) UO does not delete characters immediately, but, based on the account in question, purges characters after extended periods of dormancy 3) EQ has purged meaninglessly low-level characters on dormant accounts. Otherwise, if you have a character in AC, UO, EQ, DAOC, etc., your character and their equipment will be there when you get back.

Personally, I recently went back to AC after four and a half years of dormancy. My character was exactly where I left him in 2000.

Re:WoW game cards

[Seumas]

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.

Re:WoW game cards

[screwballicus]

Around release, Sony had stated that characters would not be retained after account cancellation. There was a rather large, prolonged and furious response from the community over this policy. Doing some further reading on fan experiences in resubscribing a while post-release, it looks like they never stuck with that policy, perhaps as a consequence of the extremely negative response over it or perhaps because they were never serious about it to begin with and were merely attempting to fearmonger people into not cancelling in the first place.

Re:WoW game cards

[skreeech]

Any AC1 accounts not migrated to turbines billing system(from microsofts) will soon be inaccessable forever. Of course if they are in the turbine system they can sit there forever unsubbed.

"Account Migration
On December 7th 2005 we will be turning off the ability to migrate accounts through our three point authentication system or through our billing department. This change is being made due a necessary update to our billing system. If you have any accounts that you have not migrated by this point you will not have the ability to do so after December 6th 2005."

http://forums.ac.turbinegames.com/showthread.php?t =26714

Don't feel like you have to play

[Shimdaddy]

You paid for something you enjoyed... don't worry about it any more than that. You should never feel that you have to amertise something after you've made the decision to buy it -- especially if it's not a large expenditure. In my experience, trying to "get your money's worth" ruins the fun, whether it's eating too much at an all-you-can-eat buffet or by playing an MMO past the point of fun.

Another good way to look at it is by percentages -- was the game worth $14/(your monthly salary)? This helps me justify (or reject) stuff all the time, because it puts purchases in perspective of their size.

Re: Don't feel like you have to play

[An Onerous Coward]

Excellent points, but I need to take issue with your formula. It should be more akin to:

$14 / (( monthly_salary * 0.9 ) - ( food + rent + utilities + transportation + clothes + health_insurance + keep_gf_happy_money + pay_off_the_credit_card_debt_from_that_one_bender_ in_college ))

In short, the question isn't "Is this worth it as a percentage of my salary?", but "Is this worth it as a percentage of my disposable income."

I make under $1000 per month, but taking your formula literally, there is very little I would ever deny myself.

Oh, the * 0.9? It's crazy not to be stashing away at least ten percent of your income.

Lose the big gamers?

[Aziel777]

A large portion of their player base are the players who do play for 40 hours a week. If they decide to charge these guys $100/month because they play nonstop, then they are going to go to a different game. Unless your thinking of letting players choose which billing model they want to use. Although I think the majority of people who would be interested in these games would be willing to pay the flat fee, and by letting them pay a smaller amount, they might not earn as much profit, even if they do pick up a few extra people.

Re:Lose the big gamers?

[ZephyrXero]

It may not be the best business move...but perhaps it would be better morally? If people had to pay more for playing the game excessively maybe we wouldn't see as many people getting addicted to MMOs. When they see...damn, I play $100 worth of game time this past month maybe they'll think, "Damn...I need to cut back."

I too have always wished they offered a "metered" pay version as well as I would probably play no more than 10 hours a week, if that even...so I can barely justify paying $10 a month, let alone the regular $12-15.

Perhaps the best solution would be to just offer both ;)

Re:Lose the big gamers?

[AlphaDecay]

Although there is a reason why they won't, there is no reason the company couldn't roll out a system whereby a less hard-core player could pay by the hour and those who want unmetered access pay the $15 a month.

The company has access to every online metric for their product, I'm sure they could determine a decent per-hour rate. I'd still be subscribed to World of Warcraft right now if that was the case. This way if a casual player gets alot of free time and wants to go hard-core all they have to do is upgrade their account for the month.

The reason why the above will probably never happen is because companies like Blizzard most likely make a metric-ton of money off of very inactive accounts that are maintained by card debits. For example, if you aren't paying attention you might miss your payment date, thus you've already paid for the month (one where you many not be playing). Or you may not be playing alot this month but plan on it next month, so rather than start and stop payments you just let the month ride...

--AlphaDecay

Health-Club Membership Business Model

[justanyone]

You're forgetting the famous health club business model:

- Sign up as many people as possible in January and Feburary when everyone's fat from Christmas and being inside all the time and bored with life;
- Make things seem interesting for a while with 'fun' programs;
- Gradually make things seem less interesting;
- HOPE NO ONE SHOWS UP.

Health clubs make their money on people paying for a membership they rarely use, or at least start out using and then don't keep up with.

The MMPORG business model seems the same. They have less server cost if fewer people show up; They just want people to show up occassionally and keep paying their dues, guiltily or not.

easy

[FadedTimes]

it is easier for the companies to have a flat fee for monthly subscriptions. If they did meter, it would require more work for the company, now that they have to track time per subscription, and send varied amounts to different subscribers.
Players who play a lot of hours may get screwed in a metered subscription. They may end up paying higher than the flat fee because they are on more than the average player.
I like paying one fee, and getting unlimited play time for the month. If I feel I don't play the game enough I cancel the subscription.

Re:easy

[CriminalNerd]

It is because in Asia, a lot of gamers hang out in Internet cafes where they play the MMOs and pay their metered rates ALONG with the cafes' rates.

Whine much?

[shawb]

Where's my metered usage for my ISP? I want to be able to surf one or two hours a week and pay a small amount of money. Oh yeah, the vast majority of users don't want that, and adding the extra code and overhead, along with all the complaints from parents who got $100 AOL bills ended that business model.

Puzzle Pirates or GunBound

[cgenman]

Puzzle Pirates -
There is an option in puzzle pirates to play in a "dabloons" ocean. Dabloons are basically a form of in-game currency that you buy with real cash. While you need gold to buy things, you also need dabloons. You can use dabloons to purchase badges which allow you to do certain things in-game, such as play certain puzzles or lead a team of pirates. These badges generally last for 30 login days (as opposed to 30 calendar days)... in other words, they only degrade as you log in and use them. You can play Puzzle Pirates perfectly well for free, if you so choose, or you can pay to access certain features of the game. And it's pretty cheap: a badge that will allow you 30 login days of access to the most commonly used puzzle costs the real-world equivalent of a dollar.

Certain Asian-style games, such as Gunbound don't require a subscription, but allow you to use money to purchase in-game items. Or you can play for a really, really, really long time to earn the gold to have those items.

Planetside?

[Dragoon412]

Along these lines, I think that Planetside would have been a huge success if it had launched with a different subscription model.

Nothing shy of launching as a completely different game with an entirely different set of developers would've made Planetside a huge success. ;)

I suppose you'd like it even better if

[MarkusQ]

I suppose you'd like it even better if...

• There were different rates for peaks hours and off-peak hours, so that when you were feeling cheap you take that into account
• You had a variety of rate plans to choose from (say, some with a base of pre-paid hours, or others with "anytime" hours) and so forth so that you could choose a plan to suit your needs
• Some games came bundled with a computer, or you had the option of getting a new computer "free" if you signed a long term contract with a game
• Every game came in two dozen flavours, all basically the same but with a non-systematic assortment of the features enabled or disabled
• There were different payment plans available for new players, existing players, active players in other games, etc.
• Some payment plans cost more than you wanted to play, but came with a piece of paper that, if you filled it in exactly right and sent it to the right address, on the right day, you might get most of your money back.
• The payment plans were only available for a limited time, and the next time you looked into it they would have subtly changed.

If I'm right, you may want to go cell phone shopping.

For my self, I far prefer a company that simply tells me what their product costs and then lets me decide if I want it.

--MarkusQ

Downsides

[Jumbo Jimbo]

There are two big downsides that I can think of...

Firstly, if the model is 'pay as you go' I would worry that it would reduce enjoyment of playing. If the longer you play the more it costs, it will always be in the back of you mind that each minute / ten mins / hour you play costs you more - breaking the immersion. If you don't worry about the cost, you can explore more freely, experiment, and just have more fun.

Secondly, if I had kids who wanted to play a MMOG, but knew it was charged by the hour, I'd be worried about them running up costs. Even if there are parental control, I think many 16 yr old gamers can beat their less tech-savvy parents' passwords by guessing them / working out common family passwords / finding the post-it note ( will Pop have a 16 character alpha-numeric password, or will he use the name of the dog??).

That's my 2 cents (a minute) worth.

$15/month is cheap entertainment

[kherr]

I don't understand the notion that MMOGs are too expensive. How much does it cost to go to a single movie in a theater? That's two hours for about $10. How much is a night in a bar? Even nursing cheap beer, you'll spend at least $10 in a few hours.

For $15 per month you can play an MMOG any time you want, for as long as you want. You get regular patches and new content added every few months. This seems like a decent entertainment bargain to me.

Re:$15/month is cheap entertainment

[NeMon'ess]

If I'm paying ten bucks to see a movie, I'm pretty sure it's going to be a good, if not great show. I have never seen an MMO that came anywhere close to that level of enjoyment for a full two hours. Meanwhile I don't bother with bars because I'm trying to save money. If I'm going to spend ten to fifteen dollars it'll be at a restaurant so at least I'm not hungry. Beer and pretzels don't do that.

Basically at fifteen a month that works out to 45 every three months, or the cost of buying a new game. Truly great games can offer months or years of enjoyment. Merely good games, probably a month or two. So for a MMO to be worth it, it has to be good to very good for the entire time I'm playing it. Except now factor in how much time casual players can afford to give to gaming. Folks playing ten hours a week could make a great game last for four times longer than someone who games forty hours a week. Bringing that back to MMO's, for many casual gamers it then is not worth paying $15 for 1/4th the enjoyment.

My suggestion, meter playing time up to 15 hours per week. Anyone playing more than that pays a flat $15/month. Everyone playing less could be charged $0.25 per hour. So anyone playing 8 hours a week pays about $8 a month.

Re:$15/month is cheap entertainment

[Targon]

I used to play EverQuest, and I can remember some GREAT times in that game before everyone knew about every little item and a lot of the fun was just exploring. I can honestly say that the magic of not knowing what was next, or on the next floor was great in those days.

The thing that killed EQ for me and for many others was the raid only mindset. That in order to get an equipment upgrade for most people, you need a group of at least 20 people, all of which needed to stay focused for four or more hours at a time. After a while, it got to the point in my life where I couldn't stay up until 3am just to complete the raid where out of the 20 or 30 people present, perhaps 3 of them would actually get an equipment upgrade. That means that for every one of the people who went on that raid, in order to get an upgrade for all of them, they need to go through 6 of these raids. Because of the random nature of the reward as well, you need to do the same damn raid over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. That's why the fun fades for so many people.

For good times though, I remember one dungeon in EQ called Dalnir(Kunark). Because the equipment that people had when Kunark first came out wasn't great, this dungeon was a lot of fun for those who explored and discovered this place. It had a fun feel with three dungeon levels. You could adventure there solo, or pick up a small group of people and just hang out and chat. As you grew in power, you could go down to the second level and adventure there. Or even go all the way down to the third floor which was very tough for the time.

Now, it's all about set encounters that the players are supposed to beat. The journey stopped being fun and it was all about the destination. That's why I've been looking but not finding a new MMOG that's worth the monthly charge.

This is how Asia does it

[Edgewize]

Asian games tend to support pay-by-usage and/or micropayments to unlock content. There is no technical reason why this isn't done in the states; it is just a cultural difference. North American publishers have done small-scale tests and they do not believe that there is a large market for pay-by-usage or micropayments in the US.

Case in point: World of Warcraft is pay-by-the-minute in China, and the client is a free download as opposed to a $50 boxed CD set.

Reason we never went to a per-hour model

[Teppy]

(BTW, I'm lead designer of A Tale in the Desert)

Actually the main reason in this case isn't a business one. Many of the challenges in ATITD are formulated with the assumption that most players have a single character (account). For instance in "The Test of Octec's Ghost" you are given twelve identical crystals, and are given the task of trading to assemble a collection of twenty different crystals and using them to build a huge animated statue. I intentionally designed the Test in a way where there would be a scarcity of crystals overall.

Now I realize that even as-is, some people will just buy an extra ("mule") account, but most do not. Setting up a strictly hourly system would, I believe, tempt a lot more people to do so. And it's a slippery slope: Once that happens, the game would likely develop a culture of people buying their way through challenges, and that doesn't strike me as much fun.

There are some business reasons as well that other posters have hit upon, though for some MMOs such a model may make sense. FWIW, bandwidth costs per hour are negligible: $0.0065/hour by my quick calculation.

One thing I gave serious consideration to, and may still do in a future Tale - is a separate casual server that limits players to 10 hours/week, but still charges $13.95/month. Why would anyone opt for this? By *far*, the biggest complaint and reason that casual players leave ATITD is a feeling of being unable to compete with the hardcore 40-80 hour/week crowd. The game then becomes about playing the smartest 10 hours/week you can, rather than grinding.

Re:Metered Pay Model?

[sdhankin]

I'll pass on point 1. I think the MMO world is going to use instances more and more (see Dungeons and Dragons Online.) Whether you consider that a MMORPG or not is up to you.

On point 2, however, Guild Wars has been out since when, April? May? They have added loads of new content, and haven't released a single expansion. $15/month is $180/year. I spent $40 on GW, and have had access to it for 9 months. COnsider World of Warcraft. Over that time, the WoW player who started in April (let's just say that's when GW started) has spent $50+($13*9) or $167. If GW released an expansion pack tomorrow for $40 (and that's the same amount I paid for the original game), I'm still ahead by $87. I could be ahead by more - the expansion packs will likely cost less than that. (The WoW calculations are generous - I assume the player pays the lowest possible amount - $13 - per month, even though that would only available to those who prepay in 6 month increments.)

Note: none of this makes any claims about which game is more fun. Also GW might very well change their expansion pack release schedule to something more frequent. I'm only observing what I've paid so far for GW, and what I'd have paid for WoW. WoW was chosen because it's a MMORPG that's very popular. I've also heard that they're to release an expansion pack shortly as well, cost unknown.

Puzzle Pirates uses this...

[nifboy]

If you care at all for puzzle-styled MMO's, try one of the green oceans (Viridian or Sage) in Puzzle Pirates. Instead of making you pay every month, you can buy doubloons (think "Tokens") with real money and every time you buy a major item (many of which are merely decorational), you pay an additional "token" fee. If you don't play much, you don't pay much.

But also mind that Puzzle Pirates is vastly different from the majority of MMO's *because* it is puzzle-based, and not the "kill stuff, get bigger, kill bigger stuff" model.

(that sucking sound you hear is my karma plummeting)

About making money.

[LordVader717]

It's all about making money. Monthly costs in no way reflect the costs in development or maintainance.

They want to make revenue. They want to make as much as they can. And sadly publisher are just happier when their customers are paying an overly inflated price every month.

I played WoW for 4 months.
Minus the free month, I payed for 3, so that makes 40 Euros. Did I cost them 40 Euros when I was playing? Shit no!

The bandwidth costs next to nothing.
Support? I wrote them an Email once, they didn't answer.

Content updates? Bugfixes and stat corrections, done by maybe a few dozen people. Based on the amount you pay, the game should be getting signifigantly better every few months.

Character storage? Complete bull! Are they seriously suggesting this is an Issue? Even with quite a few characters the Data from one account could hardly exceed a few Megabytes. Gmail gives me 2.5 Gigs for free. The price I payed for the game, Blizzard should give my characters guarantee of existance for the rest of all eternity. Instead Blizzard deletes them if you go 6 Months without subscribing. Mine will be deleted next month. Why? They hope to scare me and get me to take up the subscription again so that I can keep my precious characters.

There is no reason why MMORPGs couldn't be completely free after paying full price for the game.
But the way it is, the publishers are making a fuckload of money, and they damn well want to keep it that way.

I don't want to start too much of a discussion about value, but there is no real reason anyone should have to pay 15 Dollars a month so they can play a game they already bought.

The price is totally unjustified. They say they've got 4 Million subscribers.
What kind of black hole have they got that needs $50 000 000 plus every month?