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Interest Growing For Pre-Paid Game Cards
Worlds in Motion is running an interview with GMG Entertainment, a company finding success marketing pre-paid "digital currency cards" used online for games and other entertainment services. Customers and retailers alike are enjoying the simplicity and utility of the cards, and GMG suggests that this segment of the industry will only continue to grow:
"I estimate this year that you'll see EA enter this space for some of their games, and a few other big names are absolutely interested. In fact we're in final negotiations with a couple of recognizable names. We tend to estimate the size of the total pre-paid gaming card business when we do our numbers, and this year we're looking to something between $75-100 million dollars in sales across North America. We see that going to $250-300 million in 2009 and being in the region of a half-billion by 2010. We see this market growing dramatically in the next two to five years."
Pre paid? Does that mean someone already paid for them and they are free?
Whole sections of value cards, all incompatible, are showing up in stores now.
A Hispanic organization has been researching the various "Call Mexico" phone cards, and on average they deliver about 60% of their face value. It turns out that some of them have no value at all.
Thank God! After WoW destroyed my life and my credit cards were all canceled, I thought my days as an undead thief were over.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
So, let's see, "Pre-Paid Game Cards":
The customer pays upfront, giving you 100% of the card's face value immediately. At worst, they end up giving you a little loan. At best, some or all of the card is never redeemed.
These cards bring the nickel-and-dime micropayment experience to consumers too young for credit cards.
The system can use the same, or similar, electronic payment infrastructure as credit cards already do, making it cheap to administer.
Well, I can certainly see why interest is growing in selling prepaid cards, they are basically just an online rehash of the old gift card scam. What I find harder to understand is why interest would be growing in buying them(underage gamers with no other way of paying excepted). The whole gift card/prepaid "value" card thing is a gigantic scam.
Thorax is a nice ship.
Don't know why you've been modded flamebait (I'd change it if I had points), what you say is correct.
At my peak of Eve I was able to afford anything I wanted, making billions a week from plexing and moon mining. Now I've rolled my time back, I can play every so often, lose a ship or two with the confidence I'll be able to make cash via ETC trading. One or two every so often keeps me in T2 ships, battleships and battlecruisers for weeks.
and i never will. how and where they find these people, is beyond me.
i did play MUDs, i know the type of game, and I honestly think the only reason people play these games is to sell items, characters etc, to people with money but not the time, who want a tricked out sword and armor that make them godly in a video game, and they can brag about having so and so a sword.
i played MUDs for about 6-8 months, and i never looked at an everquest box and thought 'this might be fun' i got over the genera as a whole, and it shocks me that people like these games. I know WOW is designed by great game programmers, but to me a video game should have a one time up front cost. paying by the month? forget it.
not even for a console, where i can play many video games online for one 'extra' fee, forget it, i pay for internet, that's the most i'm willing to pay to play online. i know some people are willing to pay extra, but i just don't see the entire gaming world bending over to pay a few extra billion here and there to bolster the economy. the gaming venues have been hit or miss all through the gaming history, i've seen every major player from atari to nintendo have trouble treading water. there are reasons why companies like 3do are a legacy, and why EA owns half the gaming properties on the known face of the earth.
trying to figure out what people want to do with their free time, is not a measured science, it's an art.
i spent 2-3 years struggling with an addiction to online real time strategy, and i know i have an internet addiction, but after 3 years i learned how to deal with my online strategy addiction, and i now have time for television, the internet, and whatever else, all without usually having trouble falling asleep at night. during my addiction i was so problematic that i would play til 2 am and physical exhaustion set in, i would at times shout from getting angry at other gamers without even being aware of having spoken.
it wasn't pretty, and i didn't have to go cold turkey. i can take measures to control how i game.
sadly i don't know if kids can learn how to be grown up until they're 30. i'm 30 and i don't know if i could have said or done anything to prevent me from making the same mistakes i made. ah well.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
You were modded flamebait because of the "immature graphical rendering" line. And lets face it, unless you have a decent machine, eve looks like shit.
WoW maintains its look and feel across a broad range of hardware, something EvE can not claim.
You mad
(Kids+Money)*(PayForPlayGames-NeedForCreditcards)=profit
A key growth limiter to online games has always been the need for credit cards, either because kids don't have them or adults don't want to risk fraud from either a fly-by-night game company or EA getting their billing department hacked.
One-shot electronic money transfer are the future, I wish my credit card made them easy to do for everything. Maybe they should go talk to those cell-phone money guys in India.
I played WoW for about 6 months, leveled a character to 70, realized that end game sucked because I was paying a monthly fee to play a game where everything end game is on a timer....Wanna do X dungeon? Only once this week! Wanna make some material? Only once every 3 or 4 days...
Screw that...
Soooo now I'm playing a bit of Combat Arms which is a free shooter, but Nexon has implemented the micro-transaction system in such a way that its completely unappealing to attempt to "purchase" anything with game card cash. It would be one thing if I dropped 3 or 4 bucks on outfit or a weapon I got to keep for as long as I played the game. Nope...you pay real money to RENT outfits, guns and characters. 10 bucks a month to rent a character skin that gives you some hypersonic speed boost. There are some games coming out which promise that the microtransaction items are merely going to be cosmetic and game enhancing, not player ability enhancing....Im looking forward to those coming out soon, hopefully they will get the formula better....
But, if the currret trend is where gaming with microtransactions is headed? Count me out for them ever getting money out of me. On the other hand, if it really was a *micro* transaction (think 2-5 bucks an item), could be done with my debit card, I kept said item for the life of the game and and items weren't introduced that completely threw off the game balance? Then they might very well be looking at getting 20-50 bucks out of me if its a game I like..
The use they had when I've seen them was for playing online games without using a credit card. Believe it or not, many people who play MMORPGs are under age. Some of them either can't, or don't want to give their parent power over them by having them pay for the games directly. Instead, they go to Best Buy every month and purchase the game cards themselves. This system really isn't a bad one, and it doesn't really take advantage of anyone. The trick is, it needs to remain what it is and not become something more. If I am forced to buy game cards instead of use my credit card, I would be a little angry. I don't want to drive to the store to purchase these cards, nor do I want to purchase extras so I don't have to go back. I quit online games fairly often, so paying for them in advance has always been a bad deal for me.