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Activision To "Monetize" Call of Duty Online Play
With Call of Duty: World at War set to hit store shelves this November, Activision has been making plans to monetize the online component of the game. "Infinity Ward-developed CoD4 has paid downloadable maps available on digital storefronts, but with CoD5, developed by Activision studio Treyarch, downloadable content will be a considerably bigger priority. Griffith added that Activision 'plans to increase online monetization' with CoD5, offering '3x the amount of content available for download and premium content called Day One Advantage.'" Activision also announced that for Call of Duty 6 they will be going back to Infinity Ward for development, the company who developed the first, second, and fourth offerings in the series. Treyarch made the third and fifth installments.
Better not have to pay the same as PC/PS3 users since we already have to pay for a gold account to play online in the first place :(
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
Monetize
Money ties
I've bought the game
but in order to play it properly, I have to spend more
and more
and more
So basically they unbundled the stuff that should have come with the game and charge you extra for it, I love the new freaking game industry.... It's like they see the money that Blizzard is making and just figure, hey it's online so it MUST be a license to print money. What crap. What they fail to realize is that Blizzard made money online for a long time without raping the customer. Hell they still make money off the Diablo model to this day.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Ah so you are a Treyarch developer are you?
Seriously those guys have no clue. Infinity Ward IS Call of Duty. A comparison between CoD3 and 2 & 4 will show that.
Make SELinux enforcing again!
I suppose that explains why CoD3 was so horrible. I suppose that means we will be waiting till CoD6 to get another CoD game worth playing.
I love how they invented a totally new word that really means screw the consumer.
With all the complaints surrounding Call of Duty 3, and then Call of Duty 4 being critically acclaimed, you would think Activision would realize NOT to go with Treyarch. I guess they're cheaper than Infinity Ward?
...when the Day One Advantage simply isn't sufficient. That's when you go for the 0-day advantage. Monetisation creates antagonistic customers and reduces the player base. Sure, you may get more out of that player base, but there is going to be a larger-than-otherwise percentage that just doesn't want to deal with it--and suddenly you have cracked servers.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
in the game dropped off after I saw it wasn't being developed by Infinity Ward.
This sig is false.
They're trying to run a racket on console gamers.
PC gamers do not put up with these bullshit tactics.
If this game is going to make you pay for all the content, they had better sell the game at a very steep discount. I'm talking $19.99 for nextgen consoles. Anything more would be offensive and unethical.
This is part of the reason why I don't play mmo games. I'm not paying for content that should be in the game, and I'm not paying to play.
I forsaw this years ago when I first heard about DLC. This is an unethical attempt to rob their customers by nickel and diming them for content that is already on their disc but cannot be used due to this shit.
I hope they get sued for putting the Day One DLC on the disc. Simple explanation is, I've paid for this game and I can't use the stuff on the disc because EA is charging ransom for it.
Good night gaming.
They're using their grammar skills there.
So basically they're giving an extra incentive to pre-order or spring the extra $10 for the CE. This is not a new concept (how many MMO's have given exclusive items to people who pre-order?), and I personally still think it's BS, but it's not nearly as bad as the summary (and original article) make it out to be. It's sentiments like this one:
by Activision's publishing CEO Mike Griffith that worry/scare the crap out of me (anyone who uses the phrase "increase the monetization of these activities" referring to gaming should be kicked in the nuts). On the other hand, the "3x content" bit FTS leads me to believe that the extra "monetized" content is likely to be extra maps. As a PC player who got the CoD4 maps for free, I'm not terribly concerned. If I buy it, I'm going to wait until the first rounds of actual DLC come out anyway, just to see how big of an issue it really is. But given Treyarch's history with the franchise, I'll probably give it a pass and stick with CoD4 and TF2 for online FPSing.
People need to start realizing how the game industry works. You have multi-million dollar franchises at stake and games generally only get one shot to make their money. They don't have 3 releases, they have one. Movies can be shoved to theaters, make money there, then shoved to DVDs, online rentals, and TV. Games take a lot longer than most movies to make and are far far more complex to make than any other entertainment out there. Stakes have become higher with next gen games. It takes a lot more effort in creating a next gen game than people realize. Budgets have skyrocketed, teams have grown in size and to understand the new systems takes time and a ton of effort.
People also need to start distinguishing developer from publisher. Developers have very little say in what to do in a lot of cases. Marketing, advertising, producing, DLC deals, etc. all of that usually gets decided from the publisher not the developer. There is a big difference. People need to stop hating on developers for decisions made by publishers. It just needs to stop.
As for the content, content gets cut, added, rearranged, and thrown all over the place during a project. Developers may not have time to complete a certain cool piece of content before they hit their ship dates. It takes time to develop these ideas or pieces of content. At some point a game has to be released to make money for the publisher. There are constant milestones for the developers and some things make it and somethings don't. DLC is a way for people to experience more content that generally was left on the cutting room floor for a number of reasons. Think of it like you are getting a directors cut of the game. You either have a choice of buying it or don't. It isn't going to ruin the game if you don't have it, it is only going to enhance it if you do buy it. If everyone had it their way to produce a perfect game, it would take 4-5 years on average. Think about that, pretty much one console cycle because you want the perfect game which would never yield perfect scores anyways. Get real people, that isn't how it works and it will never work that way. Only a few instances will games take that long to make (ie. Halflife 2 and Doom 3, and a few others).
Everyone needs to get off their high horse and accept the fact that this is the way it is probably going to be for long while. Activision Blizzard, EA, Ubisoft, Midway, Microsoft, etc. they are all corporations and their main focus is to get your money and make sure their shareholders are satisfied. Whether that mean they will release a buggy game or a game that will blow you a way. These are calculated risks that they take. The developers are generally the ones that care about how well the game is made. Some have the talent and some don't. If games were easy to make, then we would have 100's of thousands of people working to develop games and you don't see that. You see a small selection of people that can make games, just like acting, athletes, musicians, etc.
I suggest anyone who doesn't agree with me, go buy Unreal 3, Unreal 2004, Quake 4, Doom 3, Farcry, Halflife 2 and open up their editors and you figure out how to make a game. You will find that it isn't easy and it takes a lot of time. DLC is what happens when developers want to continue their content to enhance the game. Yeah, maybe that content could have made it in the game when it shipped but like everything, there are sacrifices to be made somewhere along the line whether it be quality, or quantity. Be happy you get extra content from any developer.
Computer hardware notwithstanding, I always saw online gaming as a kind of meritocracy where the most skilled could advance to the top and achieve some kind of fame in whatever social circle they played in.
These kinds of "monetizations" seem to unbalance that a bit by offering new, useful things in-game to people who can afford to pay a bit more. Can't afford to buy the maps? Well, too bad, because you won't be able to practice all you want on those maps. Can't afford the gear, the guns? Too bad, you'll have to make do with what you have.
It's a shame. I think they should either just put the stuff in the game or not put it in at all.
Can you imagine if you had had to pay three bucks per upgrade in Mega Man X, and ten bucks for the special hadouken? What a ripoff.
http://www.tenjou.net/
hilarious spin
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This will only work with the console section of their customer base.
Microsoft attempted to start an xbox live type model for their pc games in the form of the failed 'Windows live'. Due to the nature of the pc gaming demographic, windows live was shunned as a subscription service, until microsoft decided to ceased charging for it.
The fact is that the PC gaming demographic has been conditioned in a different manner to their console gaming counterparts and should therefore be expected to act in a different manner.
I think this all went downhill when they started charging for pizza delivery. "Why?" You ask. Well for one they had a survey that asked if people would pay more for the pizza if it was for delivery. People stupidly said yes...however that money doesn't go for the delivery at all, it goes straight into the coffers. Same principle..people paid for DLC, now everyone is going to start having DLC on their games because people pay for it. Even now I saw a commercial for Samba de Amigo and Wii points... I'm not going to buy a game until I know there is some crack, patch or Download I can get that will give me the FULL game.
It's more of a temporalocracy. Rule by those with the most spare time.
Actually, I'll go even further and say that any game which officially sells in-game advantages (e.g., "Gun +1") for RL cash has already elliminated itself from my purchase list. It taints any claims of skill or achievements, much in the same way as being able to pay to use a horseshoe in the glove at a boxing match.
Honestly, what's such a rigged contest supposed to prove? Who has a bigger disposable income IRL? I just need to look on my bank account to see whether I'm doing fine there, I don't also need to blow that money so a stupid game can tell me essentially, "yay! You're so great! Your $1000 payment puts you ahead of the guy who paid $900, but you're still way behind the guy who paid $20,000." (Don't laugh, I've been briefly in a web-based game where supposedly someone had paid that ridiculous sum for unfair advantages.)
And if anyone still thinks that that's a kind of achievement, hey, here's an idea: just send me the money and I'll put up a top score page with the rankings by sum paid. You don't even have to bother ganking newbies with bought loot or anything. It goes directly to your score. Won't that be fun?
Ah, wait, I forget that the whole point there is for some loser to pretend he's so much cooler and achieved something by paying for enough advantages to finally muster up the courage to attack a newbie. Carry on.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
#1) You can't practice enough to be the Best Fragger The World Has Ever Seen because you can't pay $3 for the map you want to play 4,000 times
#2) You can't practice enough to be the Best Fragger The World Has Ever Seen because you can't donate $3,000 of billable hours to play the map 4,000 times
This is more of a serious question with MMORPGs, particularly those whose grind is not actually fun to play. (WoW was fun, the first time through. I think WAR is really, really fun from what I've seen so far. Every other grind was called a grind for a reason.) If the "real game" costs *four figures* of an employed person's time to unlock, you're ALREADY paying to play. Don't come telling me that putting in a shortcut for $5 kills the meritocracy, because there is none -- its already an aristocracy ruled by the Dukes of Unemployed Single Men.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
In these times of economic uncertainty, Activision can't afford to give away stuff that we are willing to pay for (ie: stuff we really enjoy doing). Consider it a real "Call of Duty" for us gamers who received stimulus checks from the government.
If you haven't received the check because you're not american or didn't qualify, just..save up and send some money to them. Where there is a will, there is a way. That's what my mom used to say.
I know console users are willing to pay for extra content (800 M$ (£6.50) per map pack on Halo 3 for example) but I doubt PC users are. When its something like Shivering Isles for Elder Scrolls IV then it makes sense its a vast amount of content, more than any mod could realistically produce and its at a fair price but what PC user is willing to pay for new maps or guns etc.? Up till now all game additions were free (especially on the UT series from Epic) and with the mod community able to pump out more content and infact sometimes better content (for example Counter Strike) then who would pay for more content from developers? I know I wont be buying any of there extra stuff, ill think about getting the game but no more.
If you read the article it has been updated to explain what the Day One Advantage is. Its just unlocked content for pre-orders or collectors edition. This isn't anything new, or sinister. As usual though people on here have run off without being in possession of the full facts.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
and they are simply dipping into that revenue stream.
all games have people who will get advantage by spending more money. they are just making that 'legal' now.
the only way around it would be to make it so these games are based on skill, not on leveling up.
True, but that's like saying the 100 meter sprint is unfair because other people might have practised sprinting the 100 meter more. Putting in you own time into a game is part of the actual game and if you play longer, you will get more.
Wouldn't you be upset if an athlete could give $1000 to an official so he'd get a 10 meter headstart?
"Outside the game" activities(giving money) shouldn't trump over "inside the game" activities(grinding,leveling,training) because you are reducing the importance of the second in favour of the first. The 100-meter sprint is about 100 meters of sprinting in which you reduce the time you need for it by training. Online games should be about training and fighting ingame to become the best ingame(if that is your goal).
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
There's this assumption among many people that unless you play one game 8 hours a day like those darn unemployed teenagers, you will invariably suck. That's silly. Most online games of a genre share enough similarities that some skills will transfer. Sequels even moreso. You can play Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Call of Duty in almost the exact same way and do fine (assuming you learned how to play MOHAA). Scifi gladiator deathmatch games like UT, Quake, and Halo are slightly less transferable, but the ability to aim and lead a player don't change, only your general approach to movement.
Beyond that, there's even better news for you. Some games are starting to take importance away from sheer aiming ability and putting it toward teamwork. The biggest example is Team Fortress 2, where a team of all snipers is going to lose, period. Aiming ability will not help you against spies who look like your team's sniper, or automatic turrets which are nigh impossible to kill with a sniper rifle.
Of course, if competition isn't your bag, period, you can always play one of many enjoyable coop games like the Serious Sam series, Half-Life: Sven Coop, Gears of War, Timesplitters, and the upcoming Left 4 Dead. The Call of Duty game mentioned in the story will have Cooperative play, and I'd be surprised if it didn't become standard in all the sequels thereafter.
I love CoD4 for the PC, its a fun game and I did not get tired of the game its self. What I did get tired of was the uncontrolled cheating.
I have played on high ranked teams in various leagues and I know that people can be so good that it seems like they are cheating, but I spent a few weeks observing people I thought were cheaters and it made me sick. You could watch people track other players through walls and perform other feats that were at best, highly suspect.
I went so far as to even talk to some of the cheaters and tell them I was writing a college paper on the subject - this got many of the people who previously denied it to open up and talk about it (although it was often in the context of "if I was cheating, this is why:")
Punkbuster is completely impotent to stop this. I have found websites where people sell the cheats and release updates everytime PB is updated. It is an unwinable war.
I don't care about paying for maps or guns - I may or may not pay for those, but it is unconscionable to charge for content when the basic integrity of the game is so completely broken.
Yeah, I've been trying to increase my nunchuk and knife skillz... Seems no one wants to practice w/me.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
I currently play COD4 I'd like to know what content is being charged for?
This model makes no sense if it's a map.
You pay x for the map, you upload it to your server, people join, your server is set to allow map downloads. Not sure about other servers, but the one I play in. that's 10k people daily getting your map free.
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Rolo D. Monkey
EA, who's norotious for doing "Bad Things"(tm), is giving out downloadable content for free on Burnout Paradise. It's nice to see Criterion giving something back to the gamers instead of letting EA hang them upside down and shaking every last cent they have.
I hear alot of companies justifying their paid DLC by saying they need to recover costs of making it. I'm seeing alot of people online picking up Burnout because of the buzz around the new DLC. In the event Criterion decides they want to charge for the Island Update, I'm probably going to pay for it. I don't feel like I'm being ripped off (as often happens with "download 4 new maps!!... for $15"). After all, I will have already gotten new game modes, new cars, and bikes for free.
Not to mention that free DLC helps replayability, and keeps return/trade-in rates down. I'm sure somewhere, some executive cares about this metric.
For affordable price give them less than they will need. For little more money, give them too much. They won't use 50% of the product, but who cares, you get extra money you wouldn't if you charged a fair price for the right amount of product. It is one thing that outrageous everywhere I go. From the 3 cup sizes at the movie theater, to cellphone plans, I get more and more agitated. I know I'm not the only one. How long before we rise up and outlaw marketing as a major?
Turns out this is not as bad as it first seemed:
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/World-At-War-Day-One-Advantage-Explained-12249.html