Is it time for pay-to-play?

At some point in the future, game developers will look back on moment when the “pay to play” model for online games burst into the mainstream. The tipping point might be tomorrow or it might be 10 years from now, but at some point a casual game developer is going to step up to the mark, bet on the “pay-to-play” model, and win. In my mind, there is no question this will happen. In fact, aside from “Who will do it?”, the only real questions are: “Why?”, “When?” and “Why did it take so long?”

Let’s answer each question in turn.

“Why?” is the easy question. Pay-to-play will eventually take off because other casual game business models have their limitations

For example, many of us are willing to download and install game — either paying upfront or after a trial period — but some of us find downloads to be too big a commitment. Casual games, after all, were meant to be casual. Likewise, the download models generally rely on credit cards, but some are still concerned about credit card security, and teenagers cannot get credit cards at all. So the download models are perfect for some, but not for all.
Likewise, many of us are willing to tolerate sponsorship or advertising that is wrapped around or placed within casual games, but ads can be distracting. Also, game publishers are vulnerable to market forces that affect the price of ads across all web sites, not just ads on casual game portals.

So all the current models are worthwhile, but none are perfect for every player and every publisher in every situation, and that leaves the door open for pay-to-play.

“When?” is a little harder to answer, but there are certainly pay-to-play models in the digital space that are pointing the way.

For example, while pay-to-play is not yet common for web games, it’s already an option for pay TV and mobile phones. In the UK, the pay TV operator Sky uses the pay-to-play model for its Gamestar service, which attracts almost 2 million users a month. Users play games on their TVs using their remote controls and the system charges them by dialling a premium phone number. Depending on the game, users pay 50p – £1 each time they play.

Micropayments models are also starting to point the way. While not strictly pay-to-play, micropayment allows users to buy pieces of content for small fees by grouping together a number of transactions into one larger purchase. istockphoto.com and the iTunes Music Store are good examples of this.

Also, we know micropayments are popular in virtual worlds like Second Life and some Korean and Japanese casual games like Kart Rider. However, in these cases you pay to add features to your avatar or kart, not to play the game. These examples show micropayments can work, but they are not “pay to play”.

Another model from the UK that’s interesting is UKash. With this system, customers buy tokens from regular retail outlets with cash, and then redeem the tokens when purchasing products or services online. Users don’t register, so there’s no risk of fraud or invasions of privacy. It’s almost as free and simple as a cash transaction.

The final question, “Why has it taken so long?”, serves as a reality check. There are still significant barriers we must overcome and most of them are to do with barriers posed by payment systems.

We need global micropayment systems, not just one-country systems like UKash.

We need micropayment systems that work for every internet user, not just the customers of one mobile phone network or pay TV channel.

We need micropayment systems that are so popular that the game developer can assume many customers are already using them — instead of having to explain the system to every new customer and requiring them to jump through hoops before they can get started.

We need micropayments systems that pass almost all of the revenue through to the game publisher, rather than keeping a hefty slice of the action for the mobile phone operator.

And we need to create a gaming culture that values and is willing to pay for the experience of playing a great casual game.

Ultimately, “pay to play” will take off when a game portal embraces a simple, affordable micropayments system that bills the customer once for a session and then lets them play as many times as they like. But none of this will happen of its own accord. Someone will have to bet their business to create this universe. When they do — if they get it right — the rewards will be incredible.

The Little Gamer

Everybody’s an expert

Marketing managers often fall into one of two categories.

The first kind is looking after the whole marketing cake. Of this, advertising is a small chunk. Of this, online is a small chunk. Of this, games are an even smaller chunk. So we’re there on the radar — but we’re off to the side.

The other kind of marketer has all these things to do too, but has a bit more freedom. This marketer likes games, and gets right into it. Advergames become almost their whole radar and the other stuff becomes less interesting and just falls away.

But whether the marketer is focused on marketing in general or advergames in particular, the briefing process should still begin with the question: “What are you attempting to achieve here?”

We don’t kick off the conversation by saying a game is necessarily the right thing. We start by asking what they are trying to do. Then if we think a game can help, we’ll push them in that direction.

But there are times where we’ll say, “Why do you want a game? I don’t think it’s really going to work.” After all, it’s much better to be honest and have these guys come back with a better brief rather than proceeding in a way that isn’t going to do them any favours or make anyone any money.

What’s ‘Hot’ and What’s Not?

One of the perennial issues in the casual games industry is what constitutes game idea theft – there’s been a bit of discussion recently on IGDA’s Casual Games mailing list. For every hit game there are any number of rip-offs produced in a short space of time. I have no evidence for this, but I would guess that Bejewelled is� one of the most copied games� of all time, there are a lot of hot versions out there.

Some developers (and I’m not one of them) argue that the sheer volume of ‘imitations’ of Bejewelled indicates that the game concept is almost in the public domain. Popcap, the original creators, probably wouldn’t agree, but it does raise the issue of what constitutes a rip-off and what is a new game - inspired by an original, but with enough new game play to be considered an evolution of the form.

Of course, to some extent, pretty much all games are an evolution of another, older form. Bejewelled, as is argued by Jesper Juul on his blog The Ludologist, took its inspiration from Nintendo’s Panel de Pon. In fact, it could certainly be argued that the entire industry is based on evolution rather than revolution - its pretty unrealistic to expect every game to be completely new and original - rarely is any art or entertainment form truly a first.

At 3RD sense, we’ve evolved our own Bejewelled-inspired game, Sea Jewels. We’ve taken the basic Bejewelled idea and added some new game-play features which we believe makes Sea Jewels different enough to be new . We haven’t attempted to hide our game’s influence - in fact, we’ve very deliberately nodded towards its Bejewelled heritage in the name - but we think we have made enough changes to the game to make sure the player gets a quite different game-play experience� from the original Bejewelled.

But that’s our opinion. Take a look at Sea Jewels. Do you think we have put enough ‘new’ in the game? Where should a game developer draw the line? When can you sleep at night, comfortable in the knowledge that you have put something into the industry rather than taken something out?

We know that copyright laws aren’t sufficient to deal with this problem, and when developers go down the patent route, it just stifles ongoing development and creativity. As an industry that’s growing up, shouldn’t we be pulling together our own set of guidelines for developers new and old to help them understand what is and isn’t acceptable? At least then we’d all have something to work from.

Tell us what you think is and isn’t acceptable and what you think should be included in the guidelines. Then we can maybe work out if we did enough with Sea Jewels.

The Little Gamer

Quick Links 12-July-06

http://www.viralchart.com/games.php - a handy new tracking tool for viral content. Like Mochibot but with better graphics and organised lists of content.

Advergaming grows up

In the earliest days of our industry, most advergames were fairly clunky rebadges of existing games. So you’d create a basic game for one product, then someone would come along and say we want our True Blu Cola™ in there instead, and we’d plaster their logo all over it and charge them a fee.

That was well and good, but there was no real conversation about what the objectives might be other than having a game that sported their brand. It was very much a “me too” thing. Marketers reasoned that games were cool, sticky content, and decided to involve some of their brands. And why not?
Luckily, the market is now much more mature. You’ve still got jokers who are willing to take anyone’s money and run, but most advergames developers now have a much more sophisticated approach to creating what’s effectively an online advertising solution.

They’ll now invest in a proper briefing process in which they try to establish what the objectives are for the campaign, what the assets are, and how you can measure the game’s return.

Why has this happened? Simple: marketers are seeing the benefits of developing bespoke content for their campaign, even if it costs a little more than rebranding someone else’s content.

If someone still wants a rebadged game and their objective is simply to have a game, then that’s fine, because the rebadged game has met an objective (even if it hasn’t helped their business).

But there is a lot more you can do with games, and people are starting to realise their potential and be more ambitious.

I’m not saying these games must be created from scratch. After all, there’s no such thing as an original, creative idea. Everything takes influences from other parts of life. We reuse game engines, we reuse bits of code, we reuse promotional ideas.

The point is not that games must be created from scratch, but that every solution we offer must fit with what our client is trying to achieve. It must be created on that basis, rather than just because we’ve got an engine that’s lying dormant and we want to use it for another game.

Integrated marketing

Every day, advergaming moves further up the food chain, and we take our briefs earlier and earlier in the planning process. This is a good thing, as it dramatically increases our effectiveness.

However, sometimes we still take our brief very late in the process, when the marketing campaign is almost ready to roll. As a result, we miss out on opportunities to integrate the game into the entire marketing strategy, and we may even miss out on the chance to achieve sign-off on the game concept itself.

Late briefings happen for a number of reasons. Maybe no one has considered how games can support and feed off the other elements of the campaign with well thought-out integration. Maybe they’re thinking “this campaign is almost ready to roll, better add a game to make it complete”. Sometimes it’s a scenario like “Oh look, we’ve just realised the World Cup is next month, can you come up with some World Cup related brilliant idea that we can strap on to our campaign?” Or it’s “we’ve got some money left over, so let’s do a game”.

Whether, the strategy is in place and they just want us to embellish it or there is no strategy at all, coming in late is a problem. Of course we still do our best in these situations; we always want to be proud of our work. But it’s better to be involved much earlier.

For a start, if you come in late you may not have time to get buy-in from all the decision makers. Often we’re approached by just one member of the team — from the agency or the client — and until several other people are on-board with the idea, it simply can’t go ahead. It takes time to build relationships and that can be where the process comes undone.

The other concern is how effectively the game can be integrated into the marketing strategy if the briefing occurs too late. If you want to see how an integrated campaign works, check out our work for Crusha, where we tied the game in with SMS, TV, online and the in-store experience. This level of integration — and these results — are only possible if you get in early.

quick links 6-July-06

http://www.nudisttrampolining.com/ - an eye-wateringly worrying concept to promote the movie, Confetti.
http://www.kaizenracinggame.co.uk/ - Hmm. It’s the pits (where I got stuck). :-S