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South Korea's Free Computer Game Business Model Hits the US
Anti-Globalism writes with this excerpt from AFP via Yahoo! News:
"Seoul-based 'free-to-play' computer game titan Nexon on Wednesday blasted into the US videogame arena with a 'Combat Arms' online first-person shooter title that makes its cash from optional 'micro-transactions' by players. The game makes its money from players that buy animated helmets, outfits, emblems or other virtual items to customize in-game characters. To keep the battlefield even, players earn experience or advanced weaponry by skill so people essentially can't pay for power. ... Startups and established game makers including Japanese goliath Sony are venturing into the free computer game market, according to DFC Intelligence analyst David Cole. 'It looks like it could be very big,' Cole told AFP. 'It's one of the things everybody seems to be looking at. The challenge is it is a very new model and it remains to be seen whether customers used to a free model will be tight when it comes to actually spending money on it.'"
Fails to mention EA's Battlefield Heroes no? I haven't played yet, but I've heard it has potential. Just a fun game to mess around with for half an hour or something.
So essentially, people will be paying for pieces of flair on their characters?
How many pieces of flair should you wear to express yourself?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
We've heard about micropayments for years, mostly for web content. But clearly this kind of market for virtual goods emerged in WoW -- without the explicit support of the company. It looks like the vendors are catching up! Still, there are lots of games that aren't based on continuous user profiles, and where the imbalance created might be significant and disruptive.
The other concern I have is about how to manage this between kids and parents. It's one thing to have a fixed up-front payment to buy a game, but to have kids (teens) linking credit cards (or even pre-paying) to a game seems like it might not go over well with the parents...
--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.
I have played several Korean MMO's (with engrish interfaces, of course) based off the business model (Maple Story, Flyff and the like), and from my experience, most people can't/won't spend money on them, but those that do tend to spend big, customizing every piece of equipment they possible can. The fact that these games are still running several years on is proof of profitability.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out. It might be quite nice to play a free game with decent english ingame.
Has been doing this for a while with different games. I don't see the what's new.
War of Conquest has a similar model. Its free, but you can buy upgrades, items, tech, etc. They even give out points that you convert to either cash or buy more items, tech, etc.
Nice. This article forgets that there are tons of free-to-play MMO's already available in the US.
Knight Online
Fly For Fun
Granado Espada
And lets not forget our own domestic free-to-plays, such as Guild Wars, Minions of Mirth, Graal Online and the like.
Here's a great resource for all of these- http://www.gameogre.com/
AAPL dropping to under 90 Friday. It is expected to rebound Monday but that only marks the start of the sell-off. By the end of next week AAPL will be at 55.
puzzle pirates
Why would I care what my character looks like in a first person shooter? Looking at the combat arms website, it suggests that the stuff that you buy is cosmetic, which makes sense in an MMO or even a third-person stylized action game like GunZ, but in a military style shooter? You won't be able to see your character in game, so the extra stuff is only a display of wealth. Plus (and this may be simple personal preference), customized military gear doesn't seem as exciting as shining armor or flashy action anti-hero clothes.
That said I hope it works out for them, but I'll take my $50 games with everything included.
http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/
Different type of game entirely, but same basic business model. And they've been doing things that way for 4 years now. Free to play, but $10 gets you a nifty trinket.
Yes, the business model works in principle and in practice. And it's about time that more genres of games that use that model become available.
The Bottom Line is that the game has to be enjoyable enough to keep players interested for them to continue spending on items.
This appears to be the same model that the Korean game PANGYA uses. You play the game for free, but you can buy (or earn) items that improve your play or just make you look unique. It just so happens that it is much easier to pay money for the items than it is to earn them.
PANGYA was released to US Americans a while ago as Albatross18
They had an open beta a while back for Kart-Rider, which was basically a Mario Kart clone. It was excellent, dare I say even better than Nintendo.
Just some background on the company.. as for buying anything for my 'character' I don't see myself doing it.
See Maplestory, Gunbound, and Gunz.
The game makes its money from players that buy animated helmets, outfits, emblems or other virtual items to customize in-game characters
I'd play for free then. I'm the kind of person who refuses to pay a cell phone provider to grant me the right to add a custom ring tone to my cell phone.
Gunbound
WarRock
Albatross 18/Pangya
Project Powder
and so on. Most were localized from Korean, but...
Also, they often suffer problems with myriad hacks and little (comparatively) effort to fight them. Usually it amounts to banning someone, and then they create another free account. Updates to anti-hack monitors can never keep up with the hack tool community. I guess this post could be modded redundant, though.
I've been playing Combat Arms off and on, and have to say for free it's definitely not a bad game. Granted, it takes a while to push through the ranks, and the weapons "buying" is really renting, but that's not the only challenge. It seems the recoil and accuracy are more realistic, prompting a dire need for 3-shot bursts, unlike Counterstrike. Runs smoothly, even on old(er) hardware, and is constantly updating.
Granted, my review may be useless in slashdot comments, but the game itself is (very) enjoyable, and worth the download.
"I'm a well-wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm."
Every MMO to appear in Korea for several years now have been based on the Free-To-Play model.
Even those who were launched on a subscription one migrated to it, forcing their western licencees to do the same.
Example :
_RF Online (CodeMasters dragged their feet but had to accept the free to play model)
_Granado Espada aka Sword of the New World (K2 Networks wanted a hybrid system, but had to change to a pure free to play one)
Even legacy power house Lineage 2 from NCsoft is heading towards a cash shop item addition to its subscription based model.
More recent ones like Perfect World are free to play from the start.
To sum up :
Free-to-Play IS the de facto business model in asia, and has been for years. The western licencees also are bound to use free to play.
I know he is marked off topic, but he is right, the tags are overlapping. Well, for me at least. Another AC
As others have said, the game industry has been doing this for awhile. I actually quit playing combat arms a few months ago, its a decent FPS and the money you make in the game (from winning or losing based off of a Kill/Death ratio * win||lose )
Maple story has been around for awhile, its fun and free. the way they make money is selling flair items, and they have made ALOT of money. *to lazy to search and paste urls*.
Other games coming out are BattleField Heros (think battlefield and team fortress 2s art style combined) and quake live ( browser based quake arena or quake 3 [I forget which]).
I cant wait for quake live to come out, they have been beta testing for some time.
Ways of making money for these two, battlefield is going to sell accessories for your characters (yea more flair), but they are also going to sell power ups like double exp from battles so you can catch up (or get ahead, they might put level limits on buying these power ups though) to your friends when you were too busy to play, this is a nice aspect and should sell well.
My favorite way, is quake lives aproach, they are going to have InGame Advertisement. Not pop ups or anything. But during loading screens they are going to have advertisment instead of some sort of screen shot. This means the game is free, fun, makes money, besides, who really cares about the loading screen?
Shoot Yourself In the Foot
The problem with this I see outside of South Korea is the infrastructure, the reason why this works in Korea (from what I understand) started way back with the ubiquity of mobile phones they developed the technology to make payments through their mobile bill, and as an evolution of that they can make micro payements through their phonebills.
That infrastructure does not really exist in the west so it will make it hard for people to adopt this system, how many kids do you know that have access to a credit/debit card, and how many do you know with a mobile phones.
The convenience in micropayments makes this system work maybe gaming will spearhead the release of this system in the west...
Some American-based MUDs have had a similar payment model for at least 10 and probably more like 15 years.
I don't see western audiences paying for that particular game. It's so rife with cheating there's no point to upgrading your character.
The people with money will pay for the extras and the people without money will play because its free (not really free just being paid for by people willing to do so). All the free players stay because its free fun and the pay players stay because there is always something interesting going on when the server is full. Cash shops are usually addictive as hell too. I've had to set some pretty strict rules on myself about using them or else I'll go nuts and spend spend spend.
The International (U.S) Ragnarok Online just opened a free server with a few gameplay tweaks to make it harder and the population is already consistently higher than the two smaller premium servers. The Korean RO opened a free server a while back and its population is substantially larger than all the pay servers combined and I expect it will be that way in IRO too. In fact a lot of people from premium servers are probably going to want to transfer their chars to the free server since the guild wars are probably going to be much better with such a huge server population.
My biggest problem with free to play servers is the fact that the population is a lot younger and not as english speaking as pay to play games/servers. I like having a reasonable expectation that I can communicate with anyone I come across in the game. I also like not having to assume everyone is 12. I'm a young adult with some disposable income and I want to play my video games with people like me. A monthly fee does an ok job at insuring I get what I want.
The reason why these games are successful in the Asian markets is because, over there, the micropayments are deserving of the name -- they are very, very small amounts. As in, completely decking out all the optional gear for a few US$. The reason why it succeeds is because it's basically spare change and people don't really feel like they're paying much of anything. But when you or your friendly communist neighbor has a market of 1 billion people, those little bits of "almost nothing" add up to a lot of something.
In the US, the tendency of "micro" payments has been to charge $2.50 just for horse armor. That kind of shit wouldn't fly over there, either. Here in the sparsely populated US you can't really make up for things with volume on the same scale that Asians can. You have to make margins on each unit sold, and then you're no longer really engaged in "micro" payments. This is real, hard cash payment involved here, the only thing that could be called "micro" is the content that you get for it.
So yeah, I just pulled an RMS there. Don't call it the micropayment model, that's marketing bs that the companies want you to believe. Call it the microcontent model, because that's what it really is in the west.
But back to the original point, the model can only succeed if the price really remains close to nothing. "Worthless" is roughly the same in every currency.
Combat arms has been out and available ("Blasted into the US video game arena") quite a while before Wednesday folks.
Only old people in Korea get cheap car insurance for playing free video games.
www.k2network.met Has been bringing in Free to play microtransaction games into the US for awhile like 3 years Warrock an FPS and Sword of the New WOrld... Hell even Nexon brought had one like 6 years ago in the US with Shattered Galaxies. As for Virtual markets... EQII runs it own, and even UO had a strong real money economy going.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
Get a standards compliant browser, tags are fine here.
Buffet. Pay once and do/eat what ever you like.
open source sub sim. I might start coding again for this. http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/contribute/
Take a look at Habbo Hotel. Even though not a MMO, they have expanded globally to localize different online worlds within many other countries using their free-to-use approach. Although currently they have started to incorporate advertising into their worlds, a large part of their revenue originally spawned from the purchase of furniture to decorate your hotel room.
Well, if you look at their other game, Maplestory, I'd say you might want to take that back.
The whole setup of these games is easy:
1. Make a free game
2. Get a large userbase
3. Make special 'NX' clothing items available for a small price
4. ?????
5. Profit!
The price of many of those items will be cheap (well, 50 cents to 4 dollars... not cheap IMO), so the threshold is really low.
But then with only one item, you'd have to buy more to complete your 'look', for yourself and for your ingame friends, and that's when the 60$ charges comes kicking in.
Knowing Nexon, they will put a timer on those items, like 90 days.
So if there are any regular players, that's a steady cashflow every 90 days from each player.
As for cheating, some people want to distinct themselves from noobs, so cash items are standard gear for them.
If one sees that someone is better than him, and he gets a small advantage from a cash item he bought, he'll think it's only fair if he gets those items too.
Monkey see, monkey do.
With clanplay and such, there will only be cashitem players at the top.
With people spend 270 dollars on a videocard for 25 fps more, it's not so hard to imagine that they'll add some cash items to their arsenal.
On these things you pay money to customize your player - clothe them etc.
On second life you pay money so you can take off your clothes and not be the only one lacking a virtual penis.
Second life has you by the balls my friend!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Yeah, I know we're beating this one to death with examples of free-to-play business models. Hasn't Runescape ("approximately fifteen million active free accounts, over 136 million accounts created") been doing the same thing for years?
I like Combat Arms alot... much more than my
wife thinks I should, at least to the point
that when I'm on my computer, "You're playing
that damn game again". Usually... I am.
But... the 'hacker' problem is TERRIBLE.
[Please no diatribes or otherwise about how
using a cheat is not hacking, I'm just using
the word that gets shouted in-game all the time]
The thing is, Nexon could care less about the
hackers. And that's fine... as long as you do
something about equalizing the playfield.
I mean, it's so bad that I've seen THIS NICK
ON THE DAILY TOP 5: YESIHACK
I'll be fair on one point, although not verified
first hand (that means hearsay), I heard that
Nexon sent Ghoster of game-enhancements.com
a cease and desist. But that doesn't take care of
the free hacks out there. And probably at best
will increase the downloading of non-pay hacks.
I don't think it's going to be possible to get
rid of the hackers... so, integrate them.
Give the cheats away for free, let everyone
have them if they want... then segregate the
cheaters from those that want to play a legit
game.
How to segregate? It's not my failing business
model, I don't have to come up with solutions
for them. Be happy I don't have a car analogy.
Oh wait, as I was typing this I did come up with
a way to segregate. Let the cheats be part of the
server you play on. Thus if you play on Delta
server, it has chams and aimbot. Alpha, legit,
etc.
However... if Nexon DOES want to do something
about the cheaters... such as figuring out who
is, that's easy. And if anyone at Nexon wants
a SIMPLE solution... email me, alienintelligence
at gmail dot com. I'm not free... but I am cheap.
=)
-AI
aka -WarHawK-
aka DRAGUN0V
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
Sounds like a business model of your typical MUD game. The concept has definitely been proven and one does not need Combat Arms as an example. The premise is that a gamer will invest more than the average $15 per month for playing an online game by purchasing additional, immediate content. In contrast of having to wait for an expansion, then investing additional time to advance the character through the new content. Instead, a gamer has to wait for a paycheck. Another neat thing about this type of a model is that players will be more inclined to play the game. For instance, Second Life is a prefect example of a great demo. It's free to enter the realm and experience it. Those players which enjoy the game play will stick around and eventually pay premium prices... of course, others will abandon the game. However, due to the ease (e.g. free) of entry to play, a much larger population pool had an opportunity to participate. Another advantage is that the company can apply price discrimination to maximize profits by selling content at the highest price anyone is willing to pay for it. An example if you will. Player A is willing to spend $10 for item X; while a more thrifty player, will only spend $5 on item Z. An expansion, is a more fixed-price item. A fixed-price of development is much more costly and risky. Adding lesser updates throughout the life-time of the game has much smaller costs and thus will generate more revenue. I think gamers will benefit.
dick
How does the white separatist dude keep getting on the front page?
Is there some gaming of the moderation system going on?
Slashdot! Get this racist fuckhead off of your front page all the time!
It has been okay in Firefox off and on all night as I've gone through the site. I haven't loaded it up in IE or Opera yet though. If anything I'd expect it to render best in Opera and worst in Internet Explorer.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I've been drooling over some of Nexons games, however they have a bad practice of smacking GameGuard on anything they put out. That's basically telling linux-users to go fuck themselves.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
Entropia Universe has been going on for how many years now?
And every once a while you hear of people spending 100,000s of bucks to buy things there as an investment.
Kingdom of Loathing does something very similar to this and has been around for several years.
Firefox 3.0.3 is not standards compliant? Since when?
Combat Arms plays and feels like a fps in late beta.
Most of the game mechanics are down, the guns and game physics are okay, and the net code is decent. There is a lot of potential in the customization of characters and weapons but even at this stage the kind of upgrades are neither give you significant advantage nor have a "wow" factor apart from "I have a red dot on my ak now." This is important because other games with similar business models, such as Pangya Golf, give the user the option to buy items and upgrades that significantly increase one's performance in game.
How would one create these kind of upgrades for a game that is decisively skill dependent? Imba body armor upgrades? Super speed combat boots? auto-aim? All of these upgrades would be neat and all but what they won't do is make up for players who are terrible at FPSes but have Mom's Credit Card.
Three Rings has been doing this for several years with Puzzle Pirates, Bang Howdy, etc. So not exactly new here in the US. Three Rings does offer "traditional" US subscription model, a second currency track, doubloons, for purchase with out of game money or trading in game money for the doubloons.
Please don't tell me that these pieces of equipment have ads on them or linked to them. That could be both the most evil and brilliant idea ever.
The original article just link on some evoluted blogspam, no link to original editor website, to some image to ...well sorry if I have to google around all the details I'm going to read the news elsewhere else.
I don't know about you guys but I just don't even want to have to think about money when I'm playing a game. I'm playing a game to relax.
Leveling up is fun... until you realize oh, wait, next level I get the awesome bazooka but I have to pay $10 for it. Lame. This wouldn't interest me for the same reason subscriptions wouldn't interest me - I just want to buy a game once and play it whenever I want.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
NEXON NA does not care about it's customers, relying on disgruntled customers being replaced by new ones. Using one of their games mabinogi; as an example, Customer relations are limited to a forum mod and four GMs who spend their time preening in front of players and suspending accounts without a single warning.
Several weeks ago there where stability issues that would cause the loss of both hours of game effort, but also any items purchased with real funds. Any attempts to communicate with them result in a generic form reply, or horribly spelled replies shorter then the witty signatures they had attached to the end of them.
The game mentioned in the summary is not the first game in the U.S. to embrace the micro-transaction free-to-play model (not by a long shot), but it is true that this model is becoming increasingly popular. We just got back from the Austin Game Developer's Conference and that was the hot topic on everyone's lips. "Are subscriptions dying? Is F2P the future?"
What about weaponry upgrade etc (that affects game play) is only earned by skill - but you additionally have to pay for (some of) it?
This would simulate elite sporting equipment that only really helps if you are already very skilled... and the brands become potent symbols of ability.
The difference in games is that improved weaponry usually gives a great advantage, whether you are skilled or not. Linking possession to proven skill would legitimize it... and also make it more desirable.
Having been playing this for a bit, I can't say I thought their model was revolutionary, or even new for the west.
There are numerous games western players have had access to already that support this approach.
The irony is that at present, their biggest challenge is not their pay model but that a popular player perception (whether true or not, I can't speak as to validity past my own experiences) is that they are riddled and plagued with hackers using aimbots, Scripted movements, god modes, x-ray vision, etc.
In an FPS environment where your advancement and access to new goods (which DO provide competitive advantage) is keyed to your ability to compete on a level playing field, having even the perception of these things drastically alters their value proposition to a player. Every curiously good demonstration by an opponent feels like cheating, whether or not it is, because you simply cannot rule out the possibility.
I would expect CAs success to hinge on their ability to actually clean up demonstrably their technical flaws against hackers in a reliable and visible fashion, otherwise, you won't have anyone paying for convenience or fashion; the core dynamic of competition simply won't be there to support the population that would invest in such a thing.
And yes, I'm posting as an anonymous coward as I haven't gotten around to making my slashdot account yet as I post so rarely. :P My bad. :)
Hey, what's with the racist white separatist stuff from "Anti-globalism," the poster of the article? He keeps getting stories on the front page as a platform for his white power site. That's fucked up.