Slashdot Mirror
How Much Money Do Free-To-Play MMOs Make?
simoniker writes "Over at Gamasutra, a new feature article discusses how much money free-to-play MMO games make, with specific real-world stats from game developers willing to discuss how they make money with microtransaction-based PC games. In particular, Puzzle Pirates co-creator Daniel James reveals that 'the average revenue per user (ARPU) is between one and two dollars a month, but only about 10% of his player base has ever paid him anything. As a result, he says, approximately 5,000 gamers are generating the $230,000 in revenue he sees each month.' It's obviously quite a different model from the regular $15/month for World Of Warcraft, but it evidently works for some companies."
Stop making your games for Windows only and maybe you'll see more money.
Hint: on campuses there's at least 50% Mac users.
most people are going to play it like it's free, as in, not paying for anything. You'll still have a minority that will help to boost the sales by paying a whole lot more than they should for in game items. Likewise, I have never played a free MMO that didn't have someone running around the home city just shouting out advertisements.
Xaotik Designs
Maybe it's because the $1-$2 range is across ALL users, not just those that pay. Of ALL the users, only about 5000 pay anything, and what they pay is about $230,000. The only thing "bad math" about it is that the 5000 users probably represent slightly less than 5% of the userbase, not the 10% he mentioned. But that's hardly a big enough deal to get worked up over. Perhaps you just misread the summary and instead of re-reading it, posted about how bad the math was.
<Complete your profile by adding a signature!>
Wow, when did $46 become a micro payment?
From when you RTFA:
Three Rings' MMO Puzzle Pirates takes in approximately $50 each month from each paying user (ARPPU) for a total of $230,000 a month, all resulting from microtransactions.
I lost my sig.
if the average user gives an average of 1-2 dollars per month, how can 5000 users generate 230,000 dollars?
I believe that the average per user is $1-2 per month.
However, the average per paying user was something along the lines of $50. So the math would go something like:
($50/paying user)(5000 users) = $250,000
or
($1.50/user)(160,000 users) = $240,000
($50/paying user)(5000 users) = $250,000
Clearly it should read:
($50/paying user)(5000 paying users) = $250,000
I suspect that the median monthly payment is much smaller, and that there's a "long tail" of people-who-would-be-called-irrational-by-economists, who see the game as a social venue and thus are chipping in a lot. I used to play Kingdom of Loathing, and some of the hard core users seemed to be spending upward of $100 a month on the game partly because they spent a lot of their social time in the game and meta-game (forums; auctions; clan dungeons; &c.). They seemed to be getting a whole lot more out of it than I was and I was very impressed at the tight-knit community. Anyway, I just chipped in $10 after my first ascension and shortly thereafter lost interest entirely.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
"(ARPU) is between one and two dollars a month, but only about 10% of his player base has ever paid him anything. As a result, he says, approximately 5,000 gamers are generating the $230,000 in revenue"
So 10% of the player base is paying him and that player base equals 5,000 people. So there are 50,000 people a month playing - nice.
But wait a sec...ARPU is only $2 on the top end and 5,000 people pay this, so that's $10,000 a month - where is the other $220,000 coming from!!!!! Even if all 50k people were spending $2 a month that's be $100k - Where did I miss something?
OH I GET IT NOW - From the actual article....
"Indeed, James reveals that Three Rings' MMO Puzzle Pirates takes in approximately $50 each month from each paying user (ARPPU) for a total of $230,000 a month, all resulting from microtransactions."
This is different than what the blurb mentioned - I guess it did get me to read, but only this time - you're tactics won't always work on me!
Ave Molech Setting
That 5000 is the percent that actually pays, the 1-2 dollar average is across all his users. There's still some bad math or heavy rounding in there since they say that 10% of the users pay, and so the average paid by paying users should not be 25-50 times the average paid by all users.
is it 6? I'm guessing 6, 6 right?
"approximately 5,000 gamers are generating the $230,000 in revenue he sees each month."
If you knew, why the hell did you ask me?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, however your spell it, I love buying Squishies from that guy.
Yes... the ongoing decline is partially caused due to rampant USD farming.
Once upon a time, the $$$ you earned were based on real work, and/or legitimate investment using your own cold hard cash.
And then the $$farmers (botters) came... and didn't follow the rules... they exploited bugs, that allowed them to leverage obscene amounts of phoney $$$ they weren't supposed to have access to.
They created an inherently deceptive market. Distorting the value of things such that it would be valued increasingly higher, at ridiculous price momentum.
They got their cronies in place throughout the political arena, so $$farmers have better representation than the people.
Instead of the past fair work/investment-based economy, huge profits came from breaking the game rules.
They bring the world economy to the verge of collapse. And the real world is by no means out of the woods yet.
The $$farmers continue to look for and try to get short-term fixes from their puppet government And matters continue to worsen
In 48 months, $1000 may be a "micro" payment.
Guild Wars is pay to purchase, but from then on it's free to play. Its graphics are astounding (better than WoW IMO - much less cartoony) and it supports huge numbers of players. It's got a huge amount of content - after 2 years of solid playing there's still lots that I haven't done yet.
I've got 3 accounts (mine, brother, mule - used to be 4, but I gave one to my nephew). The interesting thing with GW is that there is no significant advantage to buying additional stuff beyond the 3 campaigns (each standalone) and one expansion (which can be used with any of the campaigns). There are lots of things you can buy (extra character slots, extra account-wide storage, skill unlock packs, etc) but nothing that gives a significant advantage in the game - e.g. everything in the skill unlock packs can be unlocked by playing the PvE game, or doing well in PvP and using the points you get to unlock things.
Over the past 2 years we've gradually bought all the campaigns and expansions (most at sales, some full price) - all up, we've spent approx US$500 on the 4 accounts. ArenaNet has continually added new content and updates - enough that last night I finally bought the other 2 campaigns for my mule account.
GW has been more than worth the money I've paid - and maybe some day I'll buy some more character slots, etc.
I was looking at Warcraftrealms.com overnight; WoW's population is about to drop like a rock. It's already begun, in fact.
Character classes have been nerfed into the ground, with the Paladin or DK now being the only two worth playing. Any originality is gone. WotLK had the worst instances the game has ever had, and the only thing the developers now focus on is the Arena.
I can see it in my own behaviour; I'd be lucky to log into WoW once a week, now, and even just this last night, while I got up planning on playing WoW, it never happened, even though I spent practically the entire night idling on IRC, bored.
When I'd rather spend a night vegetating on Freenode than playing World of Warcraft, (which I used to genuinely love, incidentally) I know that the game has truly died in the ass...and it has.
I'm starting to think Guild Wars might be worth a look. WoW sure isn't getting much of my time these days, that's for sure.
Maybe I read this wrong, but I could see that as being several smaller payments throughout the month, totalling up to roughly $50 per user in a month.
So if you paid around, say, $1.60/day you'd end up around that mark but each payment is in itself rather small.
this topic seems appropriate as it was just recently announced that my favorite MMO, Dungeons and Dragons Online, was moving towards a Free 2 Play Hybrid model. The way it'll work is that existing subs at the standard MMO rate of 15/month or so will be converted into VIPs who will have access to all content as well as 500 points / month. Once the game is relaunched this summer, people will be able to play entirely for free, play for free but pay to unlock certain pieces of content or customization options or pay to be a VIP and have the 500 points/month to spend on convenience and customization options. This system is a generally well planned but highly complex system aimed at providing the most options and attracting the most players in a financially responsible way. More information about the specifics of the announcement can be found at the website for the game at http://www.ddo.com/
BlueBadger
Interestingly, I can confirm those percentages. I run a free online game (see footer) where you can donate, if you want to. Whenever I checked, it was around 10% (+/- 2% maybe) of the long-term player base that had donated anything, ever. "long-term" here means that I don't count the accounts that go inactive within a few weeks, those people obviously just took a look and decided the game's not for them.
At the same time, those people who do give anything are often very generous. Again, confirmation there.
Does this work as a business model? Not for me (too few players) but then again I've never tried to make a living off what I consider a hobby. Very nice to know, however, that it can work. The problem is, of course, long-term viability. If your income depends crucially on a fairly small number of customers, you're always at risk of them moving elsewhere. Online gamers have a bit of a herd mentality, they often take their friends with them when they move somewhere else.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org