I read in the newest article that the game will be F2P, with no "one-time purchase" option. Can we discuss this? I feel pretty strongly that this is a mistake, but I'm not the developer, so I don't want to start throwing big words around.
Yeah I don't know what the precedent is for this model in competitive games... I'm guessing it's either "coin op arcades of the 90s" or it's just a bold new unprecedented move, this pay for plays thing. I personally am not a fan of it either. It effectively means "Keith plays 2 games of yomi or puzzle strike a day". At least FS has the subscription model too, which I am happy to use. And this is coming from a person who has probably given David Sirlin close to $300 in various ways over the years. I like the idea of a pay for play system, but in practice I just really have zero desire to ever pay for a play. I expect others feel similarly?
Of course we can discuss this, but it's a bit late to change right now (in the short term anyway). I've attached the prices below for discussion. One tier is left out, because it replaces the one in the middle if you haven't bought it yet. You can buy 720 crowns for the price of 400 ($5.99) once. Let me give my rational for doing this, and you feel free to voice why you think it's a mistake. This is very similar to the system that exists on Fantasy Strike right now. Where you pay gold to play each game, except I'm calling it "crowns" instead of "gold" because that sounds more thematic. The prices are far too reasonable when you actually do the math (though, the Kotaku article didn't go into detail). For your first buy at $5.99 you get 720 crowns + the 240 free starting crowns = 960 crowns. 8 crowns per game means 120 games. At half an hour average per game, this comes in at a whopping 60 hours! There are few games on Steam that I own where my playtime exceeds 10 hours, let alone 60. For most people, this *is* a one-time purchase option. If 60 hours isn't enough though, buy this and add the $19.99 option for an additional 1600 crowns totaling 160 hours of play... or basically enough play time to beat Skyim and Oblivion handily but only costing $25.98. Or if you're totally nuts... go for the $49.99 option. But, that would be... nuts. Like a donation or something. The point of the pricing tiers (attached) at all is that people can buy the game at what they value it at. Personally I'm sick of buying $60 games and putting them away after an hour. I wish I could pay for games after knowing how long I'll play them for (or whatever approximation of how much I like/value the game at) With the 30 free games (15 hours!), that's enough time to know whether or not you're a devotee, and buy accordingly... preferably between $5.99 and $19.99 I could go on, but I'd like to hear your objections first rather than build up a defense against an argument when I don't know what your argument is in the first place. Or who knows, maybe I'll immediately agree with you :)
Not that I've really thought about it much, but pay-per-play just seems like a tough sell to me. I mean, it's almost always an excellent deal if you do the math, but it just seems to make people go ugh. ('People' possibly being a tiny number of vocal people—again, I'm just a clueless say-haver here.) I wonder how it would be received if the Fantasy Strike store options were: Extra tokens (non-expiring—just a re-branding of gold), Day pass, Subscription, Bulk subscription.
Oh, no doubt it's fair. Way, WAY more fair than the $60 dollar "slam it in the trash" model. I think my problem falls into the category of that JC Penny thing, where like even if this is better for me, for whatever reason it just doesn't feel fair. I mean, Ludeme Games - do you personally play games with the pay-for-plays model? Perhaps this is something I actually have to actively "get over". I'm happy to try and do that, but I think for a lot of people, you might just be ahead of the curve on this model, which can actually be a bad thing if you're too far ahead.
A-side, unfortunately the Ouya does not have an API for a subscription model... or it very may well have been included.
Generally I agree with you guys, that there are probably psychological barriers. No, but I might... trouble is I haven't ever seen any games that are actually good do this since the arcade era. It worked pretty well then, but there were flaws that games had to be designed around killing the player off every 3 minutes or so to keep the game profitable. Because there's no arcade cabinet serving a single player, we're beyond that problem. It stands to reason it could work even better today... but I've been unable to find any market data on the subject at all. (I don't consider it remotely F2P, which people seem to conflate it with) Releasing first on the Ouya at least gives an opportunity to try and see whether something like this could be accepted. Though, apparently if this forum is any indication... the answer to that question will be no. Let's give it a shot at least, and then I can at least write an article on Gamasutra or something saying the model is dead. And, if it really is broken I'll change it to pay-once.
Why is it 8 crowns per online play? That seems like a strange choice, as opposed to 10 crowns or 1 crown.
So I'm now back to thinking about an idea I had in a different thread: What kind of game is Chess 2? It's free as in beer, but is it free as in libre? I had this idea that the game would proliferate like chess, where independent platforms appear to host games, and where websites for replays and discussion could be made no problem. The pricing of the app makes me think it's more like Yomi, where there only exists an official version and nothing else. I had the former idea because it's a chess variant, and because of how it was published: Nothing physical, little to no art, a cheap/free pdf. And with Sirlin's focus on balance, I'd expected that the goal would be widespread adoption and analysis. Obviously, that last bit can happen with only one implementation, but I don't see it happening on the same level as chess unless the game is as open and recreate-able as possible. As for the Ouya app, I'd thought it was just the first to the market. RE: The pricing: Obviously, for a game people play a couple times, the pricing is fine. For a game that we might want to be played competitively, it's terrible. Right now as an amateur, I have 727 games of Dota 2 logged. To play the equivalent number of games, I'd have to pay $70 and then keep paying as I play. I'm on the low-end of games within my friends group, and I'm not even anywhere interesting compared to the people who play on reddit or who play professionally. Comparatively, I'm pretty even with the number of games of my go playing friends on KGS and Nova.gs (now online-go.com), who are near 1 dan. How much will it cost for a newbie to play Chess 2 to reach the equivalent skill level? To sum: my problem is that this is an arcade pricing model, for a tournament game. It won't breed a competitive scene, because to experiment will cost money, and to practice will cost money, and to play will cost money.
I have played 1351 real matches of Dota 2 according to Dotabuff and wtf? I play the game a lot and for me it would have cost about $5 a month with Chess 2 pricing. A WoW subscription is $13 a month. Fantasystrike.com star membership is $9 a month. I agree that paying per game feels terrible (see: The Pain of Paying) but the price overall is anything but too high. Also I laughed at "people who play on reddit".
I also fear there will be a gap between fairness and perceived fairness for customers here. You can imagine someone new to the game being stomped on for a few quick loses and wondering where his money went. It's sort of like the pain of playing poker for the first time: you're going to spend money being crushed for a little while. I remember I once made an account on Quake Arena (browser-based Quake) and everyone on there was *lightyears* ahead of me. If I had to pay per game, I don't care what the cost, there's no way I would have done it. This customer, the casual interest, give-it-a-shot type is way more important to you than the dedicated fans (I'm sorry to say). We'll grumble while we shell out, but the casuals will just disappear. Basically, if you're going to charge in this way I think you'll have to do a lot of customer service to keep casual players until they're hooked. I.e. if you see a client lose his first three games, you might want to send over some free crowns. I don't know if that's a thing Ouya lets you do as a proprietor, but it's something to think about. I think what this boils down to is that if you buy a game outright, every time you play it you gain something; your initial investment gets wiser. If you pay per game, every time you play it you lose something. That is especially true if the game you played was somehow unsatisfying. I think you'll see a lot better adoption if you go with a one-time payment. Perhaps an ideal model is to have the crowns as a cheap way to give it a shot, with a one-time option for permanent ownership. You should also probably have crown payments build toward that ownership. Even if the permanent-ownership cost is high, the fact that it's there will make the crowns look cheap, which is good too. My vote: definitely change it, but probably only via addition of a permanent-ownership price that crown purchases build toward.
in agreement with most that "actual fairness is not a problem, perceived fairness probably will be (at least to some extent)." but i mean that's the advantage of having an exclusive release on the Ouya initially i will say that it doesn't bother me personally, as a person who is acquainted with competitive games. arcades still do well in japan, those are typically 100 yen per match when it comes to fighters. i mean, if you win, you can keep playing, so that's something, but a fighting game match is like, five minutes if you're lucky. even if you're dramatically stronger than the average competition, spending 2 dollars for the equivalent of, like, 7-8 hours of gameplay is completely out of this fucking world ridiculous. that will never ever happen. if you don't like the arcade model but want to play modern, mainstream fighters, you have to shell out $60 for the full game. that is what you have to do. serious players do this without thought. then what happens is, the game either gets DLC that is preeeeetty much required for the most serious of players (blazblue), or it gets updated outright (everything). so if at Blazblue CT you became a serious Blazblue player, you'd have to shell out 50 or 60 dollars for CT, I think something like 30 dollars for CS1, maybe like another 30 dollars for the CS2 character DLC? Maybe CSEX was free? And then CP was 68 dollars. Lots of people did this, they're serious about the game, blah blah blah. It's something like 190 dollars, spread out over 5 years, in addition to actually traveling for the game because online play is *not* a feasible substitute for offline, in addition to possibly buying expensive equipment like an arcade stick if you don't have one. Note that I'm not talking about "professional" players here, who make money off the game or something. I'm talking about serious hobbyists on up-- i have done most of this stuff for three different fighting games, not because i'm a 'professional,' but because that's just what you do to get a decent experience out of fighting games. Anyway, the point of all of that is just to say that Chess 2's pricing model is totally not even remotely unfair to serious players. I think the main difference is that, if you drop below the "serious player" threshold, in fighting games you could easily be spending 60 dollars for some meager amount of gameplay, whereas in Chess 2 you have a real option. On the other hand, it doesn't really matter whether the model is "actually fair," it's all about how people perceive things. And yeah I could see people being bothered by the model, so some sort of one-time payment option might be worth considering. Dunno!
Good points about the fighting game community, Kristoph. I'd forgotten about them when considering the cost of competitive games.
I'm in agreement with the rest. Very fair price specially after you think about it, but it might not feel fair to casuals who might not have put any thought into it. Rodeo and Kristoph make very good points. I don't know what the Ouya is capable of doing in terms of sales, so I don't know what I would suggest so that Zac can get fair remuneration for all of his efforts. It might be the best option with what is available for all I know.
I've listened to the input here. It seems most people (except maybe one) find the current situation very fair, but worry it might not bring in as much revenue or attract as many people as possible. There's one more thing that is worth mentioning, just because it wasn't explicitly mentioned in the article. All offline play on the Ouya (play against a dumb bot and more significantly local multiplayer using either 1 or 2 controllers) is free forever. Charging for online play helps me keep the cost of the servers running (which, is more expensive than one might expect).
I have been giving this issue a lot of thought. The problem is not for those of us who are fans of the game. We would probably be willing to pay more to support it. The problem is new players who don't know anything about the game. The people who will probably need to get quite a few beatings to stand a chance to win games or the ones who play a lot of chess online for free. That might be a big barrier for such players. As soon as they realize (and it will probably be soon after they are introduced to the game) that it requires payment per game played they might immediately disregard the game. As soon as a new player starts to think about how much they are going to have to invest in the game, even if it is not going to be an immediate issue because of the first few free crowns, the fun they might get from it is reduced and thus the likelihood of them coming back for more is reduced. Everyone has given their thoughts about the barrier of entry issue and, at the risk of beating a dead horse, I'll give some of mine too. The problem is the type of barrier of entry. If it is a one time payment, wether it is fairly priced or not, it might deter some people, but some will just pay it and forget about it. Continuous payments are a continuous barrier of entry. Every game, specially for beginners, is a chance for someone to think "this is not worth it to me" and not play anymore. How to deal with this issue though? I started thinking about what little I know about chess-cube, an Internet chess portal. I don't play there myself, but what I have heard of it might be relevant (someone might have to correct me though...). They charge for tournaments in which players can earn more cubes and other rewards and they charge for rated games. But for unrated games they either don't charge or they charge a lot less. Now that might work when you have a big and stable user base, but might not be a solution right now. So what then? I started thinking about, and I hate to make this comparison, smoking. I have only smoked heavily once in my life, but there was a period there where I almost start again. I was able to stop myself because I realized that the same things that happened the first time were happening again. It starts with a friend offering you one. Then another. Then you start asking people to give you one. You don't REALLY smoke, and you only REALLY want to one more so it doesn't make any sense to buy a pack. You continue with this mentality for a while until no one wants to give you one. And then you give in and buy your first pack, of which you will probably only smoke a couple because everyone of whom you asked one before is going to ask you for one back. It was it this point that I stopped myself the second time, but the first time it continued to me paying very close attention to whom I had given one before and only giving one to those who were not REALLY smokers but wanted one. Starting the cycle anew. But this is a video game and not an unhealthy vice so I wouldn't feel bad about following a similar pattern. I am assuming that both players need to pay 8 crowns to play a game. My recommendation would be to introduce a way to challenge players (if there is not such a system already) paying for their crowns for them. That way senior players could pay for junior players until they develop enough interest to pay for their own games. It would mean paying 16 crowns per game for senior players, but it would promote interest in the game on players who are still not hooked on it. It might have an added benefit for newer players in the sense that it would make it more likely that a higher ranked players would accept to play against them. So, is there a method to challenge players directly at the time? Or there is only match-making at the moment? Would it be too difficult to implement one? What do you guys think?
Vendavalez's sugestion is very interesting. It got me thinking and it ocurred to me that you could foster these "smoker" behavior if you give a discount for paying for others. In Vendavalez's example it would cost 16 crowns for a game, but lets say you charge 12 crowns only when someone is paying for both players. That way people would want to bring friends, because if their friends start paying they would get cheaper games. Then there is the problem of the whole playerbase doing this and effectively paying less (25% less in my example) but this is fixable by making the discounted price the intended or "real" price that you're expecting to charge. As said, it's very interesting but I don't know if this can overcome the percieved unfairness of the continous paying.
I considered such a model, but I took into consideration that the current price is 16 crowns for a reason. If it is cheaper to play this way then there is no incentive to play any other way and you don't want to discourage any modes of playing. Then I thought that, since the intention would be to cover the costs for junior players, you could limit the discount to players bellow a certain rating or bellow a certain number of wins. But then the learning player has no incentive to win. Actually, his partner could just tell him to not play the last move even if he is about to win so that they can continue to play for cheaper longer. Then I thought about limiting the discount to challenging players who have only played an "x" amount of games. But everyone learns at different rates and then if the number of games is too low then you leave some players out, and if the number is too high then you might as well extent the discount to all games. Another problem of limiting to a certain number of games would be that some players would continue to make new accounts to play for cheaper. I thought about mentioning why I decided against it, but my post was already long enough. Right now the cost was set at 16 crowns for a reason and I think that should be maintained until a moment is reached that it is pretty clear that it would bring benefits and growth to the community and the game. The way I see it: if everyone gets a discount all the time, then no one gets a discount ever. And with a business care should be taken to not discount yourself out of business; it is easier to do than it sounds.
I like this idea a lot. If it can be implemented practically it would be awesome. I think the discount is also great. The value in bringing in a friend is *much* higher than ensuring you get 16 crowns per game. The cost of the servers to Ludeme is more or less constant I'm assuming, so more games is definitely better. Having a friend who plays means more games. Even having social connection between two players who already play on their own is a benefit, and probably worth a discount, as they now have someone to play with on a more consistent basis. Basically, as long as there's not some too-easy way to abuse the system (e.g. through a general chat room) the discount makes great sense. I guess the big question is whether it's actually possible to implement in Ouya and with the present Chess2 build. edit - If there is a difference between ranked and unranked games (which is also a good idea) I think the ranked games would naturally not include the discount.
I had the thought that if there's an MMR/Elo/chess equivalent, one has to play a number of calibration games before knowing that score, right? So make those games free. That way, win or lose, crushing or being stomped, it doesn't cost money to find a pool of players on your own level. Then, once you're ranked, you'll probably feel better about playing, because it's going to be a "good game" (to a point, naturally).
I have a question about the ouya. Can you have many acounts in the same console? Because then playing online would be totally free you would only need to keep creating acounts. I guess that climbing the ladder in ranked would be the only reason anyone would want to stay with one acount.
I think that for this idea to work there needs to be a sizable and stable user base, but at that point I think it would probably be the preferred way because there might not be enough of us to take care of all the possible interested users.
Assuming the marginal cost of another player is ~0, I think it makes sense to go even more extreme: For a ranked game using the matchmaking system, cost is 8 crowns. From each player. (also the default option) To initiate an unranked game with a specific player, cost is 8 crowns. From initiating player only. Players who are $$ constrained will end up spending the same amount of money, but getting more playtime Players who are time constrained will also end up spending the same amount of money, since they won't want to wait around to be invited into a game (they will either play ranked, or invite a random player from the "please invite me pool") Serious players will be playing ranked, or will be "getting 50% off" for thier practice matches...that most of them could have played face-to-face if the $$ was too high for them.
I was about to post to say how on earth are you going to induce the userbase to behave like cigarette-sharers, UI-/instructions-wise, but this sounds feasible.