$2.99 for an increased game limit?

[worldfamous]

I'm a big supporter of developers of games that I like, buying skins, teams, and whatever else is being offered. Having said that, this is an extremely risky business model you have here. If I'm going to pay $3 I'd like to know that I received some sort of content even if it's just another choice of colors. Even riskier is bumping down game limit to 5 for the free users. As much as I like the idea of sticking it to the freeloaders, I'm concerned this will have an overall negative effect on the community. It may drastically reduce the number of players and we know it will drastically reduce the number of possible matchups. This seems like a move that should have been announced long ago. I love the game but I can't say I like this virtually unprecedented move.

[bmike]

I appreciate what you are saying but disagree and worry that they didn't set a time limit on the increased game limit.

Renting servers to serve the moves database is not a trivial expense - and I have experienced the opposite on gameplay for free versus paid in the quality of people that engage to play a game. When people pay to play (even if it's the price of a hamburger or sweet drink or an ice-cream sundae) they take the game more seriously and are less likely to abandon games or just be immature and complain if you take 5 minutes to make a move.

I think they have made a very good tradeoff - 5 simultaneous games for free. 20 games if you have bought one player pack of any sort and 35 games if you just pay for added game play and storage. I worry any time a single payment covers an on-going cost for a business to bear. If they are planning on being in the game for the long haul - they have priced two or three years of maintenance for a single purchase. If they are in it for the short haul, what happens in a year when they need to come back and ask for more or slow down the access since we're no longer paying for our server costs to play the game?

[GreatGonzales]

I think 3 dollars for every bit of new content they produce, ever, is a great deal. That being said, I can imagine some free people getting pretty pissed off when they can't start new games all of a sudden, and quit playing because of that.

[worldfamous]

(09-07-2012 08:29 AM)bmike Wrote:  I appreciate what you are saying but disagree and worry that they didn't set a time limit on the increased game limit.

Renting servers to serve the moves database is not a trivial expense - and I have experienced the opposite on gameplay for free versus paid in the quality of people that engage to play a game. When people pay to play (even if it's the price of a hamburger or sweet drink or an ice-cream sundae) they take the game more seriously and are less likely to abandon games or just be immature and complain if you take 5 minutes to make a move.

I think they have made a very good tradeoff - 5 simultaneous games for free. 20 games if you have bought one player pack of any sort and 35 games if you just pay for added game play and storage. I worry any time a single payment covers an on-going cost for a business to bear. If they are planning on being in the game for the long haul - they have priced two or three years of maintenance for a single purchase. If they are in it for the short haul, what happens in a year when they need to come back and ask for more or slow down the access since we're no longer paying for our server costs to play the game?

I understand that servers don't run themselves but I'm not most consumers. Most consumers don't give rip what the cost of doing business is. Consumers seek value. All they need to do to stay in business for the long haul is introduce a new team every couple months. They could even charge for new maps. People pay $10-$15 every quarter for new COD maps. You just can't tell your customers to cough up $3 to run the servers. We need content and value.

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(09-07-2012 08:51 AM)GreatGonzales Wrote:  I think 3 dollars for every bit of new content they produce, ever, is a great deal. That being said, I can imagine some free people getting pretty pissed off when they can't start new games all of a sudden, and quit playing because of that.

I agree that's an amazing deal but I don't think it's available anymore. It's $6 or $7 now (still a good deal IMO). I don't know why they didn't just put ads in for the free users.

[Cookie]

(09-07-2012 08:16 AM)worldfamous Wrote:  I'm a big supporter of developers of games that I like, buying skins, teams, and whatever else is being offered. Having said that, this is an extremely risky business model you have here. If I'm going to pay $3 I'd like to know that I received some sort of content even if it's just another choice of colors. Even riskier is bumping down game limit to 5 for the free users. As much as I like the idea of sticking it to the freeloaders, I'm concerned this will have an overall negative effect on the community. It may drastically reduce the number of players and we know it will drastically reduce the number of possible matchups. This seems like a move that should have been announced long ago. I love the game but I can't say I like this virtually unprecedented move.

I think that you are probably right, although with a well-balanced game like this, it does feel a bit strange to me that the "list price" is only $2.99. But that is the nature of the app store.

Probably the best way to make more money from the game would be to pump out new maps, units and teams. This will keep people playing (because of variety) and willing to spend as long as the content is good. Then, it doesn't really matter how much the users are playing, because server costs will not be important in comparison.

My personal feeling is that 5 games is not quite enough. Outwitters is a "slow" game, and with 5 games, even if you only check in once per day, you might only get to make a move or two. This might make people quit instead of paying up.

[Necrocat219]

Well there is a possibility that they didn't realize how much 20 turns per player on free players would cost and went overboard in bill so I don't blame them. on a positive side note, it might improve the quality of matches? For fluffy, clever and gifted league at least due to free player not being able to play 20 games then abandon them.

[Yipperpants]

(09-07-2012 10:14 AM)worldfamous Wrote:  I understand that servers don't run themselves but I'm not most consumers. Most consumers don't give rip what the cost of doing business is. Consumers seek value. All they need to do to stay in business for the long haul is introduce a new team every couple months. They could even charge for new maps. People pay $10-$15 every quarter for new COD maps. You just can't tell your customers to cough up $3 to run the servers. We need content and value.

It works really for major companies who can basically "buy servers in bulk". For example, Zynga owns roomful of servers, have market analysts that guaranteed them that their hundreds of millions of users will each average $2 a month, and have plenty of pocket change to spare if any gamble fails. On the other hand, unsupported startups (that is, those that aren't working on commissioned jobs on the side) have very little pocket change (these two guys are in their early-mid twenties with student loans to consider) and often indebted further due to taking out loans to start, can't bank on a steady revenue, but can bank on their rented server billing for tens of thousands of dollars to house half a million free users (which like Necrocat219 mentioned, might have been a bittersweet surprise).

(09-07-2012 10:14 AM)worldfamous Wrote:  I don't know why they didn't just put ads in for the free users.

As I understand, there may be a few less obvious reasons. First, ad money isn't significant unless you're popular enough to be respected by big ad companies. Second, it comes at the risk of sending your players mixed signals to play other peoples' games, which most ads currently are. Third, the game is perceived to be lesser quality product. Both two and three may be especially undesirable since Adam&Alex are trying to build a up brand name. And finally, consumers are less willing to invest (in terms of money and in trust) in a developer if they know that the developer already has a source of income that they're making off the players anyways.

The announcements have been pretty honest: "As long as Outwitters is paying the bills, we can keep working on it!" Much like for servers at American restaurants, a simple thanks to indie developers doesn't keep the lights on. I think many people can understand that; if US gamers* can learn to tip waiters, we can learn to support developers. I mean hey, these talented guys have likely turned down really nice offers from Zynga just so they can make awesome games for us. I applaud developers who are willing to be honest with me and give me the option to vote with my money instead of selling my data and time without my consent to ad corporations.

*International gamers are more awesome.

[oneadamleft]

Ads are annoying and tacky, which was why we didn't include them with the release. We weighed the cost, and the money they'd bring in isn't worth the time we'd spend adding them now anyway.

The game limit increase isn't required, it's just an option for people who like to play a lot.

[worldfamous]

(09-08-2012 05:53 AM)oneadamleft Wrote:  Ads are annoying and tacky, which was why we didn't include them with the release. We weighed the cost, and the money they'd bring in isn't worth the time we'd spend adding them now anyway.

The game limit increase isn't required, it's just an option for people who like to play a lot.

I understand and appreciate your decision not to put ads in the game. I personally paid the $2.99 for the expanded game limit. I probably won't even play that many games but you guys have made one of the best games in the app store and I'm happy to support you. I just don't like the idea of taking away in order to encourage in app purchases. Maybe if it was made clear from the beginning or you grandfathered those that downloaded before the update, it would be ok. Your strategy from the beginning, at least as I understood it, to give the game away and the rest will sell itself, was a good one. As long as you continue to produce maps and teams, I believe you will have continued success. Just don't yank your loss leader. You need the freeloaders too. I own a particular hamburger franchise that you would know and we sell items for $1 to bring those types in. I hate doing it and I lose money on those transactions that don't add anything on, but it's a necessary part of the bigger business model. I'm probably looking too deep into this, but just some food for thought. Keep the cheapskates around in order to reel in the premium buyers such as myself.

[CombatEX]

5 games is certainly enough for free users. I don't play much anymore (I still love the game! I'm just really busy), so I usually have around 7 or so games going. I paid for the game and I'm still happy with almost as few games as a free user. Hey guys, you're playing for FREE! 5 games is plenty and if you really enjoy the game that much that you want to play more you should be able to give the devs the paltry sum it takes to boost that limit up to 20.

As for the $3.00 for 35 cap limit, it makes me a bit nervous. As I've already said, this doesn't affect me since I don't even get close to the 20 game limit, but it worries me that the Uber Pack is the 'buy this if you don't want to be nickeled-and-dimed' choice but then now the door is open for microtransactions - a practice which I despise. Again, I don't mind at this point, but please don't start adding a lot of things like this. It's not about the price which is more than reasonable, in fact I would pay $20 for Outwitters, but it's about the idea. I'd much rather pay $20 for something which gets me the COMPLETE package than pay $5 for a base game and then $1 seven more times for little micro-features that come out here and there. At the end of the day the latter would be cheaper by quite a lot - $12 instead of the $20 flat fee - but the latter also leaves a bad feeling compared to the $20 full purchase.

On a side note this is one of the reasons I'll never touch Hero Academy.

Now to clarify, expansion packs are fine. Something approximately equal to the price of the original game or 60-80% of that but which adds a huge amount of content.

As an example, take Starcraft 2.

Heart of the Swarm is a nice way to add content and charge for it. A huge expansion with plenty of interface and gameplay additions/improvements. Now imagine if instead Blizzard decided to monetize the game with little features you can buy here and there. Want to customize your menu backgrounds (something which you could do pre-patch 1.5 by mpq-editing)? Sure, there's a $1 microtransaction for that. Want to use dark-themed Protoss units in game (these variants exist in the custom map editor)? Sure, there's a $3 microtransaction for that. Want to replace the Starcraft 2 background music and sound set with SC:BW? Sure there's a $1 microtransaction for that. And so on...

These features wouldn't be bad and you only need to pay if you want them, but the fact that all these microtransactions are there instead of just getting everything from your one time purchase feels wrong.

On a final note, an example from another iOS game that I enjoyed. I won't name names here but this was a cheap game. $0.99. For the price it provided immense value and I was amazed that the dev sold the game for that price. Now as the months went on he added a donate button where you could support him. I gladly donated to the dev who I believed more than deserved the money since the game was great and way undervalued at the selling price. However as time went on he started adding little features here and there and charged people to buy them. Things like increased storage space, in game currency, extra skins, etc. Now, this is a single-player game so it's not like these are making the game imbalanced. You don't need to buy them. You could argue that this game is the same as it was before but just with the option to buy these things and as such it shouldn't bother me. However it did! Because I bought the game with the idea that I was getting a complete package - but apparently that wasn't the case. Again, it's not about the money (as you can see since I donated to him), but about the principle. I would have rather paid the $5-$10 that I thought the game was worth at that flat fee than pay $1 and have all these $1-$2 microtransactions. PLEASE don't go down the road that this other dev ultimately took. He's now making an interesting new game but I'm not going to give him a cent for it.

Again though, it's not a huge deal at this point. Just don't overdo it.