I think most console users welcome these $1-$2 (or local currency) transactions. It’s nice to not have to spend $50 on a growth pack to get some decent rewards.
Lots of players asked in the past for < $5 transactions and assured the devs they would certainly spend more money if offered impulse purchases of those denominations. Looks like they may be testing the waters to see if it’s true…
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QFT.
I’m sure you know this, but just because this is a “free” game, does not mean that the game is free to operate and develop. There are very considerable operational costs in maintaining the game that have to be covered, before even considering the costs involved with developing new content as well as expanding the game onto new platforms.
Unlike small businesses, ventures funded by publishers don’t get to skate by with just breaking even or turning a minimal profit. They have to generate a return on investment that satisfies the publisher providing the bulk of development costs. If those returns aren’t there… well, the publisher just moves its resources onto other projects that will generate the returns the publisher desires.
We can discuss until the sun sets about the ethicality of the gacha business model. But as you mention, the model works, and is working well for GoW.
We can discuss how the industry has slowly over a generation conditioned gamers to accept microtransactions as the primary revenue generating model for games because of the consumers’ price inelasticity to “full-price” retail games over time, or the drive by free to play games to reduce the barrier of entry for new consumers to $0 and make the difference up with microtransactions.
At the end of the day, the model worked for GoW for the past four years. By all perceivable anecdotal public-facing measurements, this model is still working very well for the developers now.
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And in spite of this, F2P games are the big cash cow in the industry if a publisher/studio even does a remotely decent job with their game (or is really, REALLY good at manipulating addicts’ impulses) to the point where the app stores are absolutely clogged with F2P games. Or I should say, clogged with really, really bad/predatory F2P games.
I’ve got nothing against the F2P model either when it’s done correctly. GoW used to do it correctly, but they’ve been slipping for a while now. (I’ve also been very careful to lay blame directly on the publisher. The devs are just doing their jobs, and you can tell they LOVE the game, which is cool to see.)
Whether $2 for 100 Gems is mathematically a “good deal” or not, I’m not biting. I do think it’s nice that they’re actually offering a “deal” that isn’t $30-50, and that’s something people have been asking for, so that’s cool, but as long as the “stamina system and gem shop for every event” stuff continues I’m not supporting the game with more money because these are practices I disagree with. I don’t give money to people who make decisions I disagree with. I gave them plenty of it when they were making decisions I supported, though.
Slightly off topic but I think something changed with the popup logic because I’ve had that stupid $2 ad pop up 3 times today while I’ve had my PC logged in the entire time. At least the “do you want to waste $35 to upgrade your new Mythic?” ad only pops up once. The timer is easy to tune out and doesn’t bother me.
Or subscribe to disable ads on this site!
At a certain VIP level we should be able to mute the annoying adds.
GoW players: “Ugh I hope they don’t add P2W stuff, this game should always be accessible for free”
Also GoW players: “Hey can we get some more features gated behind VIP levels?”
I agree with you about the passion the dev team has about their game.
And while I also agree with you regarding the monetization path on a personal level, from a business perspective the existing evidence says otherwise.
Case in point, here is a brief story from last week about revenue growth in Pokemon Go for 2018.
In the back half of the year, Pokemon Go began its campaign for the fourth generation of Pokemon. Unlike previous years, where generations of Pokemon were generally openly released (outside of raids for Legendary Pokemon), for the fourth generation the game adopted much harsher gacha mechanics that very heavily priortized monetization via making what would normally be common Pokemon into ultra rare drops/spawns or gating them behind raid paywalls.
As the article briefly notes, revenue grew 35% for the year, with a very strong December (where this practice was at its harshest). As much as I personally find the change distasteful, there is no denying that the tactic does indeed work from a monetization perspective. As we know here in GoW, with the expanding of the game onto new platforms and new content being developed, that tactic is working effectively here as well.
I’m not really sure that the devs at this point can avoid the “gem shop for every event” at this point in the game’s life without completely overhauling the global economy from scratch (which would cause the mother of all fire bombs to explode here on the forums, if not elsewhere as well). There’s far, far, too many free gems flowing into the game that necessitate these kind of sinks. Otherwise veteran players would be sitting on a massively ever-growing pile of gems (great for players, very bad for the life of the game). As long as 35 kingdoms are averaging ~10ish gems per tribute per hour, an avid collector can already pick up well over a thousand gems per week and that’s before event prizes and the blue statue.
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Right, and once players smarten up and stop walking into the trap, profits will go down and we’ll see a shift. Sadly, newer generations of players are seeing this practice as normal, so I suspect it will be a while before that happens.
Resources should not be balanced around “avid collectors”. I would hazard a guess that the percentage of players who can collect 14 tributes a day (to get the 100 tributes per week for 1000 gems in your example) is very, very small.
There were more free gems when we could get them from Legendary Tasks and before the Blue statue was nerfed. Nerfing these nerfed the “average players” more than the “avid collectors” because at least the latter was/is able to get a somewhat reliable flow from tribute.
Also, shifting Guild Wars to once every 4 weeks took a huge bite out of the free Gems entering the economy. I think having more events to choose from is great (and I was never a big fan of Guild Wars) but even I can see the motive behind that change.
Part of the enticement of hitting “veteran” status, in my opinion, is being able to benefit from all the effort you dumped into building your account up to that level. At any given time there are going to be far more people climbing the mountain than sitting atop it, and the ability to relax a bit and enjoy the income is a powerful motivator for those still climbing. It’s also an enticement to new players to stick around and put in the effort (and yes, that includes buying helpful things in the shop, like the DK armor, which carries a premium price tag) because at some point they too will be able to relax a bit.
I also know this thought process is the antithesis of mobile F2P gaming - for maximum profitability, no customer should ever be allowed to “get comfortable”. I wonder how much this contributes to player churn…people realize the hamster wheel never slows down so they hop off.
Not the same people saying those things.
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If the prices were lower I’d probably actually look at buying stuff. But ya, $50 for stones and keys… I don’t even glance.
This thread is currently about stuff that is $1.99 so mischief managed!
I just like the fact that the $2 LTO is still available on xbox
Ok so far the flash offer has popped up 4 times already. How many times will I have to refuse the offer over the weekend?
Also, the “value” is wrong yet again saying a higher amount even though it’s cheaper than that to buy 200 gems from the store any day of the week. (AU)
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$4.99 for 200 gems is not a good deal.
As-is, for $4.99 you can get the “15 gems for 15 days” deal and get 225 and the same number of VIP points. This deal is worse than what’s already in the store.
That should also tell you something about the value of the $4.99 for 50 gems deal.
At least that answers, “How do they think 200 gems is worth $20?”, even if it raises, “But if I can get 225 for $4.99 too, isn’t this a $4.43 value?”
Bad form, devs.
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