Zynga Games

[Falstar [MOD]]

I recently heard about Zynga and their likely IPO to for public trading. On the program I was listening to, they talked about their business model which was essentially that people could buy credits/coins/game money for actual money to get ahead in the game. The most notable Zynga game is of course Farmville. They also discussed what impact it may have on other game companies, and if this would be an embraced model or not.

What do you think? I could certainly see several companies going for it, but I would think that players would not support it (game industry wise). Then that may just be me not liking the fact that those with more money ( in real life) would automatically be getting ahead of those who didn't have means. Other views for or against?

[Bacchus[IS]]

I think game companies are pretty desperate to combat botting/gold farming so it's only logical that they're gonna shift towards offering those services themselves (in-game currency/xp boosters) to make more money and stop illegal RMT.

But I think this is a slippery slope as imo most players will quickly label those games as "pay to win".
I know I would.

Bacchus

[jrichards]

[quote name='Bacchus' timestamp='1320762363' post='48211']
I think game companies are pretty desperate to combat botting/gold farming so it's only logical that they're gonna shift towards offering those services themselves (in-game currency/xp boosters) to make more money and stop illegal RMT.

But I think this is a slippery slope as imo most players will quickly label those games as "pay to win".
I know I would.

Bacchus
[/quote]

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To effectively use this model, and a number of games have, the game must be designed to give benefit to those that purchase content but not to the point where it makes players that do not purchase this content unable to compete/play. The easiest way to do this is to have some servers where players can buy gold and some where they cannot. Sony did this with Everquest and on those servers where players could buy gold it killed the gold farmers. WoW takes the 'paid' content and does about the worst thing possible with it: sell content that has no in-game value. This keeps gold farming rampant and also reduces the number of purchases by a significant margin.

So what would a developer sell, that players would want to buy, that could be worth paying real money for but not negatively effect players that do not spend real money?
1) Levels/Zones/Instances: This is the easiest idea of what to add but it requires a system that can check if a player has access before they can play the content. Additionally the 'l00t' dropped in these areas cannot be much more powerful than the items dropped in the 'free and/or default' areas. If this occurs then the non-paying players will be at a significant disadvantage and will tend to stop playing. These assets require the most time, for a development team, to implement. For it really to be worthwhile a large number of these asserts need to be sold but if the gear is not that much better than the 'free' areas will players pay for it? Only if the content (quests, boss fights, game-play) is worth the money invested. However the same slippery slope then applies (IE: if they best parts of the game are only in the paid content why would non-payers continue playing the game?). This can be a difficult balancing act.

2) Items that increase player skill/damage/leveling: These are much easier to implement and the balancing, via 'l00t' that was not purchased is pretty easy.....in the initial pay point. However this can become a nightmare later on. As an example: does the developer sell a sword that does +1 damage and increase xp gains by 10% to starting players? How much better is this for players than normal 'l00t' and for how many levels can a player use this weapon? All of these things must be balanced as you do not want to piss off free and/or default players, by making an item too powerful, but you want players to purchase it and believe the item was worth the money spent (you can kill off your purchasing player-base very quickly if you sell the same item over and over with only slight increases or level dependencies as they will feel your are milking them of their money for little gain).

3) Vanity items/pets, character adjustments: WoW has mastered this as they sell everything from moving your character from one server to another to flying mounts. These items/actions do not give a benefit to players in game, that have purchased the items, vs those that do not. However the number of players that will purchase these items is the lowest of the the options.

4) XP gains/level jumping: WoW does not offer xp gains and they have in fact given this away to all players by reducing the amount of xp needed to level by a huge margin. While this may seem like a good thing to do it also destroys the content that was designed to be played though at a certain pace xp/hour rate. So the developer has encouraged the players to skip through the majority of the content to get to different content/end game content; likely that they had to purchase via an expansion. While this does open up players to then enjoy end game items/instances and expansion packs it also reduces the amount of game that the player has access to (sure you could spend a month doing all the quests in a game but if the xp gain is not present and all other players have advanced beyond your level are players really going to ever experience this content? I think the ideal answer is that xp is always static unless you have a purchased and item that increases the players xp gain or simply increases their level (E&B did this with skill points). By adding the ability to pay money to jump levels and join friends, a player can skip content, that they do not want to play, but still have it present and playable for those that do not purchase this and/or for their alts. Developers can also give level gains away with expansion releases or as rewards for finishing content.

Now what happens if all 4 options are initiated into a game? Zero gold farming, a ton of content, both from the normal game and via 'real world' purchasing, that is fun to play(or the whole thing is going to be a failure), and the ability to skip/go through content more quickly if the player is willing to spend real world money. Time=$ and I know I would be willing to drop a few dollars to save spending 3 days+ leveling an alt. While such a system has never been implemented, probably due to the difficulty with scaling purchased assets vs free assets and the amount of work it would take to get such a system going and remain viable, I think it could be highly profitable.

The biggest downside I see with 'pay to play/additional content' model is having assets that people will pay for, at a reasonable price, that users will continue to want to purchase without feeling cheated/ripped off. If I was to design such a system the first thing I would do is remove levels completely and make all game content scalable. So regardless of a players skill level whatever they, or their group was fighting, would be a challenge. However this would be a whole world of design and implementation hell......but it is the only way to keep old content fresh for all players regardless of when they start. Otherwise you have a curve of players joining, getting bored, quitting and being replaced with new users. Sound like a few MMO's you may have played already? So this problem pops up even if you don't have the purchasable content......so is it really worth spending all that extra time developing it?

End wall of text

[Tienbau]

thanks Crichton, that's pretty much how I feel about this subject too.

A while back I played a bit of Travian with some friends (and made a few friends too). I'm afraid E&B did suffer a bit back then, as the game is completely insidious - starts off taking 10 mins a day to run your village to being a full time affair once you've got 20 villages and are defending other alliance members and preparing your own synchronised attacks too (with all the relevant nasty tactics). I got to the stage of deliberately drinking a lot of water before going to sleep so I'd wake up in the middle of the night needing to pee and also checking on my Travians. This is quite minor compared to what other players did. Some had iPhone proxies that would wake them if there was an incomming attack. Some of the attacks could be nasty - you'd try to work out what timezone the player was in, learn their sleep pattern and send attacks just as they went to bed.

Travian has a near perfect financial system. You pay for Travian gold, it's very cheap - you can get pretty much all you'd need for a whole 8 month game for 25 pounds (UK). You can then use that gold in different ways which can be boiled down to either automating things and giving production, research and combat bonuses, equating to mining/loot, XP/skills and combat for us respectively. BUT - if you got carried away you could also use it ad-hoc to complete builds or research - doing this would really whittle away your gold fast.

However as we all know this can't apply to us until we have our own client. We have a whole plethora of ideas for really neat things once we do - but as with all these things it's easy to visualise them but somewhat different to actually get them working ...

[Falstar [MOD]]

Tienbau, that reminds me of a game I played years ago called Planetarion. People did the same sort of thing - guids coordinated attacks, fleets were recalled or sent out, feints initiated, and people playing/messaging via sms. I could easily see someone getting up in the middle of the night to see how their attack was going and see if they needed to flee or stay. Just like you said, some guilds had spies in other guilds to determine schedules and others had people online at "night" to spot attacks. Very intricate but very well put together if you were in the right Galaxy with competent people. Sometimes our guild would launch an attack at someone just to get them to recall their fleet and the other way around.

To bring my tale to an end, they eventually moved to a paying system. They had invite codes for the first round or something so I got to play that for free, but rather than trying to get one each round I bowed out. I do have to say that they didn't charge per thing or offer bonuses, it was just a flat rate to play.

[EnderTheXenocide]

Thanks Crichton, I definitely agree with you on that, I don't even need to add anything