No Man’s Land, and the Challenge of Pricing A Home Game
by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief
So. As I write this, it’s launch day for VEEMEE’s new cover-based shooter, No Man’s Land. And I’ve just spent the last nine hours alternating between studying real problems and studying perception problems.
I’ll explain. No Man’s Land is a technologically sophisticated game for the Home platform. You can almost hear the groaning of all those hamster wheels, hard at work, trying to keep the beast moving. And, as is nearly always the case when a new game launches in Home, bugs appear.
The big issue is just trying to join a damn game. You see your name on the list, along with everyone else. You try to click “Ready.” And it won’t let you. So everyone is stuck in limbo, sort of in the game but not really. Which inevitably forces you to back out and go back to the Drydock staging area, followed by an impatient return to the subway launch zone. Where it happens again. And when you finally do get in, there’s an unhealthy chance that a screen will pop up in the middle of your session, telling you, “Something has gone wrong…you need to leave No Man’s Land now.”
I don’t even want to think about how much bandwidth something like this game chews up on launch day. You’ve got, what, tens of thousands of users all going to the same event? Hundreds of thousands of users? And they’re all trying to download video content, music, each other and so forth?
There go those hamster wheels again. Some town somewhere is having rolling brownouts right now.
Oh, and there’s another lovely bug which gives you “Error” when you see a virtual commodity and want to purchase it. Granted, this isn’t as bad as the Cutthroats bug that steals your money and doesn’t give you coins in return, but still. Annoying.
So, yes, the game has problems that need to be worked through. Real, measurable, easily observed problems.
Pricing, however, ain’t one of ‘em.
Now, if you read the Sony forum, you might reach a different conclusion. People are going absolutely bugnuts over a fifty-dollar commodity that’s available for sale, and screaming that the game is too expensive, it’s overpriced, what was VEEMEE thinking, Home’s just a big money grab now, et cetera.
Oh, for God’s sake.
It is not morally reprehensible, a crime against humanity, or a sin unto the Almighty if a developer chooses to offer a premium commodity. As consumers, we have the right to deem something unworthy of the price tag and refrain from purchasing it, but that’s not the real issue here. There’s a fear — and it’s been growing for years — that Sony and other parties involved in Home are creating artificial upward pressure on pricing in order to squeeze the consumer for as much sales revenue as possible. What everyone forgets, however, is that Sony had to give away the house for years when Home was first launched in order to retain a user base for an application that had precious little to offer. And now there’s a lingering false expectation that things would always stay that way.
The fifty-dollar item in question: a bundle of superheavy armor and special weapons that give you better protection and firepower in the game.
Is it aggressively priced? To all but one or two percent of the consumers playing the game, the answer would be yes. But let’s do some math to explain things for a moment. Assume — and I have no idea if I’m anywhere close to being accurate or not — that No Man’s Land cost $100,000 to produce (we’ll ignore the cost of maintaining the game on the servers). Now, just to keep things simple, let’s assume 200,000 unique individuals play it. If you’re exceedingly lucky with the Pareto Principle, twenty percent of them will spend some sort of money. That means your average transaction-per-user must be $2.50 in order to break even. If you can entice a greater percentage of people to spend money, the average transaction-per-user goes down. Conversely, if you anticipate a narrower level of audience spending, you need to try to derive more income from fewer people.
Here’s where it gets interesting, though. Virtually all social games follow what’s known in economics as a power-law distribution: this means that most of the people won’t spend a dime, a small percentage will spend something, and a really small percentage will generate a tremendous amount of revenue.
To them, VEEMEE’s fifty-dollar commodity will not be a big deal; to them, the value will be worth it. If one-hundred users — just one-hundred — buy that bundle, that’s five-thousand dollars. If the game cost $100,000 to build, that’s a five-percent return on a very small fraction of people.
I’m sorry to reduce you to a statistic. But gaming is a business, and ROIC is a function of three elements: number of people, average sales price and closing percentage. I don’t care if you’re selling video games, resorts or pineapples. That’s what it always boils down to. Everything else is how you package it and sell it.
Do some Home games have a more financially sound freemium structure than others? Absolutely. Lockwood’s Sodium games, along with Hellfire Games’ Novus Prime, are all excellent templates to follow. Digital Leisure and Mass Media have refined the art of repetitive microtransactions to a science. Cutthroats, on the other end of the spectrum, is an example of how to fiscally do nearly everything wrong. So there’s a wide range of case studies to examine at this point.
As for No Man’s Land? It’s priced almost exactly how I figured it would be. I’ve spent a little under ten dollars so far, and I’m carrying heavy armor, a sniper rifle, a machine gun pistol, and two types of grenades — in other words, I’ve completely duplicated the same build I used during the closed beta. And — thank Buddha — it’s all permanent. None of this limited-use crap.
For nine bucks and change.
Let me repeat that, since it’s kinda important. NINE BUCKS AND CHANGE.
Nine bucks. And change.
Christ, that’s less than what I spent on SodiumOne. And I get to run around handing out headshots from the other end of the battlefield? Cool.
Ah, but is it fair to allow people to buy their way to the top of the leaderboard? Doesn’t it confer an unfair advantage and make the game lopsided?
Um, yeah. That’s kinda how freemium games work. And the reason why freemium has swept the games industry is because it’s the ultimate try-it-before-you-buy-it approach. Zynga’s disclosed at the time of their IPO that they had 300,000,000 users. Only three percent of them spent any money. That means that their business model is built on 97% of their consumers being freeloaders.
Holy fark, I only had to deal with ten percent in resort development.
I have no problem with the majority of people not spending a dime on a game if they don’t want to. And I like how the freemium gaming model really forces developers to innovate. But let’s be brutally cold for a moment: if you’re content with enjoying a game like No Man’s Land for free, then don’t come whining to me when I ventilate your avatar with the handy-dandy sniper rifle I paid for, as I notch another kill on my way up the leaderboard. If you want to compete, then you’d better hone your skills or actually…y’know…pay for the gaming experience.
My god, what a frightening concept.
(Fifty dollars later) I hope this game is good…
Maybe I’m a dinosaur who’s too used to the last thirty years of having to spend fifty or sixty bucks on a guess that a game might be good, based solely on the box art and (later) internet reviews. But it really irks me when I see people recoiling with some sort of moral outrage that a developer, offering a free game, would dare to try to sell a high-priced commodity. Get over yourselves, already.
Does that mean VEEMEE’s freemium model is perfect? Nopers. In the closed beta, you could compare all the various weapons and armor before selecting which loadout you wanted to go with. The release version of the game doesn’t have this. You have no idea what the relative levels of protection and damage output are for the commodities in the game until after you’ve purchased them, and this is a huge design flaw. It creates an incentive to not spend money, because you’re not certain you’re getting what you want. Bad move.
In Sodium2, for instance, you can see exactly how much enhancement a particular commodity gives you before you buy it. In Cutthroats, you can even go target practice with the cannons before jumping into the game space itself. There are different ways to show the consumer what they’re getting before they purchase it. I knew exactly what I wanted because I’d been in the closed beta, but if I hadn’t been, I’d be pretty annoyed with paying for firearms and armor that sat unused. So if there’s any opportunity for VEEMEE to fix this surprising oversight, it would almost certainly help their sales.
Beyond No Man’s Land, though, we get into a larger question: what should a Home game cost? What’s the sweet spot on the tennis racquet? After this many years of open beta, Home’s got plenty of consumer data to help developers build realistically accurate projections of just how many people might invest in any particular type of game. Which means you can reasonably figure out your average sales price per customer and thus how much you should cost you should sink into a project.
I don’t know what the answer is. Ten bucks? Fifteen? Twenty? Push the number too high, and people drop off because they could get a AAA-rated disc title for comparable money. Keep the number too low, and you run the risk of not making back enough money to pay for the game development, or stunting what features go into the game as a preemptive cost-containment measure.
I recognize that this is a somewhat loaded question; the consumer has a vested economic interest in responding with a low number, in order to try to prevent encouraging upward pressure on pricing. And, frankly, the hypersensitivity to microtransaction pricing in Home’s marketplace genuinely astonishes me. I get that Home is an escapist fantasy where a lot of people try to take emotional solace from the plutocratic banana republic we live in, but does anyone truly expect more complex games and other projects to adhere to some artificially low (and likely subsidized) price structure from three years ago?
I’m aware that this article doesn’t exactly support the populist sentiment flying around the forum right now. It’d be so much easier to simply jump on the bandwagon and cry, “Yeah, it’s overpriced, what was that evil-stupid-greedy developer thinking!?” But the reality is that if you look at the pricing structure for all the various commodities in No Man’s Land, it’s about average in terms of Home pricing, with the added wrinkle of a premium-priced bundle for the one to two percent of gamers who will actually lay out the money for it. Just as you have the right to not purchase something, so the developer has the right to offer it to people who just might.
June 21st, 2012 by NorseGamer | 38 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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There may be plenty of consumer data on Home, but I wonder just how much of that data is shared with the developers making these commodities? If I owned a development house producing products for Home, I would value such info quite a lot.
After playing through the intro, am not likely to play again. Got a taste. That was enough.
That said, if a product is not a necessity to play, or finish a game, who cares how much they charge for it?
Not this Homeling
So basically what you are saying is games on home are that expensve to develop that veemee need to recoup that by producing a 50 dollar premium item which overall is putting games like sodium two and no mans land into the cost realm of buying real games like wipeout, resistance etc, but if they are in that cost realm shouldnt users judge the game against something they can get for the same money, if thats the case then home will always will have an issue with people saying they want me to pay full game money for a sub standard game, to me if you can justify it to yourself pay it, if you cant dont,
The big misnomer I’m seeing floating around out there: “No Man’s Land is a $50 game, and there’s no way it’s worth $50.”
No. No Man’s Land is free. You can arm yourself to the teeth for less than ten dollars. It just happens to have a fifty-dollar commodity, and everyone’s getting hung up on this.
Is NML justifiable at ten to fifteen dollars? For me it is. And at that level it escapes being compared to AAA-rated shooters with huge budgets and tons of features.
Thats where veemee get accused of money grabbing unfortunately, because they made this bundle available at any level so a low level player could come up against a game full of these outfits which makes it hard for a low level player not to think ive gotta buy big or not bother playing, thats where the user has justify the spend, it looks like veemee are cashing in on it, they should of not let you upgrade weapons or armor until you get to certain levels in the game
so how much is Sony or VeeMee giving u for this bunch of BS for 50 $ u can get a couple of disc games that may be 100% better than this game in mention , i have play it for about 20 mins and i must say i won’t be at that space in the near future and a year down the road when people stop playing it altogether and sony deletes it than wht a 100$ game
Neither Sony nor VEEMEE paid me a dime to write my coverage of No Man’s Land. I’ve actually spent a little under ten dollars of my own money in order to check a few things for this latest article.
Keep in mind that for ten bucks I’m loaded out with grenades, sidearms, heavy armor and a sniper rifle, which — given the practice I already put in during the beta — is allowing me to rack up some pretty awesome rankings in the game. As far as I’m concerned, this game has already paid for itself in terms of hours-per-dollar of fun.
So you cant give a bad review otherwise you might not get another beta invite lol just kidding, home has got two extremes people that use it but complain about everything and people that think its all goodness and light nether are right or wrong
Well, as is the case in most endeavors, the voices which are the most memorable tend to be the ones which are the most polarizing. It’s fun watching the hyperbole fly when people want to be heard.
The HSM theory is that a well-composed, logical voice of reason is going to, over time, have a greater impact. Yes, we’re a pro-Sony/pro-developer/pro-Home publication, but we’ve lobbed quite a bit of criticism since our inception. The difference is that we try to direct the criticism in ways that might be useful, instead of just playing to populist sentiment for some sort of misguided sense of “street cred.”
Early access to something doesn’t guarantee a positive review out of me, or the HSM team at large; that said, we do try to give developers the benefit of the doubt, for a couple of reasons:
1. If you look at Home from their perspective — as a business upon which you need to make a living — it gives the average consumer a lot more insight into how things are run the way they are.
2. I doubt most of us want to see Home or any development house fail; the only way they can succeed is by offering commercially successful commodities, and in order to be commercially successful, they probably have to appeal to a lot of people. So consumer insight — actual insight, not loose-cannon fanboyism or trolling — becomes very important.
I do know what you mean about voices segregating into extremes, though; the sad byproduct of the internet is that it turned cultural dialogue into an open-mic shouting match.
off topic a bit i know, but if you say something pro home your a butt kisser if you say something against home your a hater, I try and be a bit sensitive if I can, thing is no one knows the facts and the people that do, dont say, but if you take aurora, it took a year for aurora to get a million unique visitors over the whole psn world, you do start to understand why the costs for premium items are there, but no one explains it and in this case veemee have been insensitive to freemium items and how much they cost.
in answer to your question the right cost for home games can be as much as it needs to be if its put across well enough, take granzellas fossil digging game in japan to collect everything you got to buy 2 personnel spaces several premium digging items, several premium furniture items and tickets, costs a lot more than no mans land to play but the items are put to the user in a much better way that users pay it
So true, and I see exactly where you’re coming from with this Norse, but as a consumer I have to take a different angle. So…
I am a consumer. I am always right. I am always looking for a “good deal”. The first thing I see when I skip through the menus of this “free”mium is a suit of armour that cost more than a years worth of Plus. A suit that cost more than the latest Assassins Creed game, a suit that costs the same as my food shop for the next week. Yes, as a consumer I get to compare these things, since I’m always right. That’s the first thing I see and after being killed in the TUTORIAL (lol, first time for everything I guess), I’m worried if I don’t spend 250 coffee’s worth on it I’ll be nothing more than cannon fodder. I am the consumer, I am scared. I earn 200 bucks a week washing dishes, after my bills, should I spend what’s left on a virtual suit of armour?
I know that’s pretty extreme as an example (and a little psychotic) but there are people out there like that. Personally, that price tag made me laugh my head off before walking away shaking it. But I’m an oddity it seems; I won’t pay over £20 for a full disc title anymore. The industry has changed, and I’ve been burned with exclusive content codes gone wrong, seen people enticed into buying sub-par games on release from fear of never getting that elusive, exclusive content etc. If I can’t keep it forever and play it ANYTIME I want, you won’t see more than a few quid from me.
See here’s the problem, I don’t like download only copies of games (I’ll try to keep this short) and Homes games are even more unstable than a straight case of DL the game, shove it onto your HDD and play whenever you like. Now with Home based games it’s like this; are the servers up properly, no? Can’t play the game then. Is it maintenance day? Yep, can’t play the game then. Too much traffic today? Can’t play the game then. And so on and so forth.
I am a consumer, the world revolves around me, and only me.
You’ve got some great points here, Krazy — especially the observation that the *first* thing the consumer sees is the fifty-dollar outfit. Not smart. Since it’s first, it becomes the baseline against which everything else is mentally measured. It should be placed last in order to give the consumer a better impression of what the average commodity prices are.
The second flaw is that the consumer has no way of measuring the different damage/armor ratings prior to purchasing them. So unless you were in the beta and remember how they all relate to each other, you’re more or less in the dark as to what to buy.
So, um, why *aren’t* you contributing articles to HSM…?
Exactly, that suit should be the very last thing offered after you’ve trawled through all the other options. That way you get that escalation of “Ooh! That’s a cool gun, ooh! that’s wicked armour… OMG! LOOK AT THAT AMAZING SUIT; oh but it’s $50, maybe I’ll take that other cheaper but still cool one I saw earlier”. Enticing the customer further up the ladder of offers until they’re at the dizzy dizzy heights of ‘I can’t afford this’ will allow them to descend to a place (and pricing) of comfort. Car dealerships do this all the time; all the great deals are the first thing you see in the lot and you instantly have the “I could buy that” thought process, yet we all know the cream of the crop is inside, all polished and shiny. We might even cheekily get in that showroom model just to pretend for a few minuets that it could be ours, knowing however, the ones outside in the rain are the ones you should be looking at. At the same time, that same guy will just drive right past a Ferrari garage KNOWING he simply can’t afford to even LOOK at them.
To answer your last question, I umm… don’t know?! lol
Well if you don’t know then what is stopping you? LOL
Sorry Krazy I am with them on this. Love to see what you have up your sleeve, or better yet, what you keep under your animated Lockwood bed… Take out that shoebox with the manuscript, blow the dust off its lid, and throw down with some of that god-given talent you have been hording from us. I triple dog dare you.
Guys there is no magic bundle here. The 50.00 premium gives you good odds but not invincibility! Norse did the same as me. I bought a few items that I liked, less than 10.00, and still can get wiped out by a new player WHO HAS nothing but the dirty shirt we all start with and a rusty gun. The consumer does not equal God. If you can’t put the vendor consumer into perspective than you will never be happy.
After trying the tutorial I have decided to put this game on the back burner for awhile. I knew right away that it would be too popular to go into it right away and that the ensuing bugs and issues with loading,ect,would be a problem. This is par for the course in Home, anyone who has been around for awhile should know that.
The pricing is a bit off as you said, but it won’t affect me too much as I won’t spend anything on this, it isn’t my type of game. I am waiting for a few of the other freemium games to come out to snag my dollars.
Nice writeup Norse, I agree with your assessments and they should tweak things to be more appealing to people.
I’ve gotta admit, the high prices and the sheer number of upgrades for this game were so overwhelming that I didn’t even bother to play. I’ve also got a serious beef with Veemee right now, so I refuse to support them at this time.
Maybe if they offered some kind of discounted starter pack, I’d consider checking it out. But for now, it seems like the game requires a large investment of both time and money, and both are in short supply right now.
While I agree with the opinions you’ve expressed here I don’t see how this qualifies as a ‘News’ article. This is clearly an opinion piece and that’s fine. Most people in the Home community have opinions regarding changes made to Home. I’m often amazed at how strongly people’s opinions are within the community.
Journalism has gone through many evolutions over the centuries, including the Yellow Journalism phase in the 19th century when news was not fact based and included exaggeration, opinion and sensationalism designed to improve circulation and legitimate a particular point of view.
Journalism went through an evolution early in the 20th century because exaggeration, sensationalism and the publication of opinion as fact discredited and tainted all of the other information contained in the publication.
The result of this evolution was the creation of editorial pages, opinion pages, and op ed pages for the publication of the official opinons of the publication, the opinions of individuals, and an op ed spaces for the expression of well reasoned opposing views.
HSM contains many well reasoned and well written news articles that are based on fact. Opinion pieces like this should be published as opinion pieces and not as ‘News’ because publishing them as news has the potential of tainting the legitimate news articles contained in HSM.
Look more closely. The group header is “News and Articles” — the latter being a catch-all for everything that doesn’t fit into more specific categories, including content with more of an editorial slant.
Generally speaking, the contention you raised is something that comes up when a reader disagrees with the stance espoused in the article, no matter how cleverly such response is disguised. This is not the first time a reader has suggested that we change our form of journalism in order to avoid “tainting the legitimacy” of our press, nor will it be the last.
As you wished to provide a capsule history lesson on the evolution of journalism in an attempt to support your stance, Julie, I’ll remind you that HSM has, publicly and repeatedly, stated that our brand of journalism most closely reflects Gay Talese’s New Journalism — a style which can still be readily seen and enjoyed today in publications such as The Atlantic and The New Yorker.
We apologize if the method of delivery is not to your personal satisfaction, and your feedback has been noted and will be given consideration. Given the consistent growth of our audience numbers overall, however, there appears to be little reason to deviate at this time.
Thanks for reading HSM!
$50, $10, $5…doesn’t matter to me.
I tried the game a couple times and it just isn’t any fun. Took forever to get a game going. Once the game started, there was one chap in the golden suit running around killing everyone. Half the players left the game after 5 minutes. I made a couple kills and was killed probably 15 times.
I haven’t bought any upgrades and I won’t be playing again. Kills aside, it’s just a tedious drag of a game.
Sooner or later, devs are going to realize that they can sell us “god mode” and cheat codes at a hefty price. Veemee has taken a huge step in that direction with No Man’s Land.
The problem is the lack of balance. People who pay to buy the best guns are always going to have a significant advantage over free players, and those who shelled out the $50 for the “ultimate” bundle have an additional advantage over paid players. The more you pay, the closer you get to in-game immunity. Why not just sell immunity or inassailable camping spots for $100?
Piling this on top of a game with a very unusual mechanic and a steep learning curve has contributed to perhaps the most flawed game launch in Home history. Home isn’t the best platform for PvP shooters to begin with, as those who enjoy those games, and are skilled enough to compete at them, make up just a portion of the community. Casual gamers will give the thing a try, meet instant death from unseen snipers while fighting with the controls and give up on the thing before they ever learn to get good at it. If they do manage to find some enjoyment in it, they’re certainly going to notice that Heavy Armor and a sniper rifle provide a decidedly unfair advantage.
Then comes the question of why bother. There are no goals, no rewards and no point in accumulating stats other than the fleeting promise of securing a space on the leaderboards. That’s attractive to a small percentage of Home users, and they can buy their way to the top in true Steinbrenner fashion.
Veemee deserves some credit for choosing one-time purchases over consumables or pay-to-play, but without some level of balance, there’s no incentive to own any of the items.
Consider the freemium games in Home that do work: Sodium 2 launched with no rewards and was a huge hit, thanks in part to its “Taunt” system that kept groups of friends engaged (and still does). It also gave players the ability to balance gameplay.
Paradise Springs is giving away extremely limited rewards and immortalizing its top players in the Casino itself.
Midway offers jackets for completion that are walking trophies for those skilled and determined enough to earn them.
Granzella rakes huge amounts of cash out of Great Edo defenders and fossil hunters with an ever-changing stream of items, spaces and outfits that improve performance in the game.
Hellfire produces items and outfits that enhance a player’s abilities in-game, but not so much so that those players will dominate.
No Man’s Land offers none of these features and reserves its best items for those who will shell out the equivalent of a disc-based game to buy every item, even though only the handful of premium items in the bundle are worthwhile.
It’s stunning to see something executed so poorly at this stage in Home’s development. The right way to do this would have been to release the game without any buyable items, let people get used to it on an even footing for a week or two, then release the premium content. Create a matching system so that unpaid players aren’t cannon fodder and give people a reason to go back and play again, such as rewards or a campaign mode.
Personally, I found the tutorial far more compelling than the multiplayer game, and the lack of balance was evident during the open beta. It may be possible to fix what’s wrong with No Man’s Land, but at this point would enough people care?
Great points. I do have one question, though: if the game was released without any for-purchase commodities for a week or two, how would it generate revenue?
One thought that’s been floating around in my head, as a temporary power-up which could generate sales: what if there was a random (say, 1/100) chance of a downed opponent “dropping” their premium firearm for you to pick up and use for the remainder of the round? It would be a way for players to experience a premium item without having to initially pay for it, and that might be sufficient enticement to acquire it on a permanent basis.
Another reward might be to offer some sort of free item (either a functional piece of armor/weaponry or just a piece of clothing) after racking up X-number of kills. Since the game penalizes ragequitters, it would cut down on people trying to abuse the stats, and create an incentive to play the game for people who aren’t motivated by the leaderboard.
Norse, all Veemee had to do was copy Lockwood’s model for Salt Shooter and Project Velocity. Easy as pie. Let everyone start with the same basic set of equipment and accumulate experience points to unlock upgrades. Put the upgraded weapons and armour in the store for a reasonable price and Veemee makes a tidy profit. I don’t think it had to be any more creative or complicated than that.
You should go back and read through your Forum thread about “Defining Home’s It Game”. See how well this game stacks up to your own criteria and the public opinion that follows. Aside from the permanent upgrades and a somewhat social aspect, I don’t think that it fares well. The people behind Mercia and Home Tycoon might be well served to peruse that thread as well.
HearItWow’s review is dead on target. Veemee had an innovative concept for a game and botched it on multiple levels. I give them credit for trying but this could be a harsh lesson learned. They could always overhaul the game and re-release it as John Carter of No Man’s Land.
I don’t disagree at all, Liza. Compared to the freemium commerce models being used by Lockwood and Hellfire, No Man’s Land is trying a formula which is inherently riskier.
No, my unusually sharp invective has to do with the knee-jerk rage reactions to the fifty-dollar bundle. My god, the way people bleated about that, you’d think VEEMEE was out massacring civilians in Darfur. It was creating this false notion that someone had to pay fifty bucks to have any hope of playing the game effectively, which just isn’t true. The rest of the game’s commerce model is a completely different topic, and HearItWow laid out some excellent points.
One small point worth mentioning: Salt Shooter (which I’ve made no secret of extolling as the thing that hooked me on Home, and I consider to be one of the most remarkably well-structured games Home still has to offer) *did* have a method of monetizing right up front: purchase an outfit to unlock forty-five more game levels. I wouldn’t have objected at all to No Man’s Land being deployed with only one virtual commodity for sale (grenades, perhaps?), just to give everyone a sense of the game at first, but there has to be something which allows for immediate monetization.
I was using Salt Shooter as an example about beating challenges to unlock upgrades. Other than that, it’s apples-to-oranges with No Man’s Land. Salt Shooter is a single player game that’s clearly free-to-TRY. No Man’s Land is a multiplayer game, advertised as free-to-PLAY. Except that the inherently uneven playing field means that playing for free means you get slaughtered by the paying players. It’s either poor anticipation by Veemee on how things would play out or a heavy-handed way to sell upgrades. Either way, it’s a lousy marketing strategy to introduce the game.
The rage over the $50 package may have been misdirected but a lot of the blame still rests on Sony/Veeemee. First of all, the package wasn’t even listed properly in the store. Then, it failed to include all the items for people who did buy it. The outrage was largely out of confusion, not cleared up on the Forum until the next day. If they want to start selling premium-priced bundles, they’d better get the listing and transaction right at the very least.
The other problem over the $50 package was their analysis of the intended audience. The casual Home gamers accustomed to microtransactions were shocked to see anything in the store for that much money. The hard-core gamers were appalled that people could buy themselves onto the leaderboard with disproportionately powerful equipment. Again, Veemee’s fault there.
Just a poor rollout of a mediocre game.
Norse don’t you still get killed even with your armor? The limitations on weapons such as accuracy help balance the game also. I don’t die as quickly with my 1.99 armor but still get hosed by regular no equipment players. I am not at any great advantage with the weapons either. In the end its tactics and communication with your team. Everyone take a deep breath and dry your tears.
What tears are you talking about? It doesn’t affect me how well the game performs.
The Veemee staff might be in need of tissues when a misguided marketing strategy causes their blockbuster game to bomb.
Oh, I definitely still get shot up by players who haven’t spent a dime. Last night, I ended up in a gaming session where I was alone against two players in default loadout, but they successfully used team coordination tactics to give me a real headache. I like playing as a sniper, and that works great when you’ve got a fireteam in front of you, but it makes for a real challenge when you’re by yourself. And armor can only protect against so much.
Simple: After you let people play for a week or two, you roll out the premium upgrades. By that point, users understand the game and can see the benefits of buying upgrades. They’re not asking, “Why do I suck at this?” they’re seeing the benefits of having a sniper rifle.
This is the approach that Granzella has very successfully used with Great Edo and Southern Island. Buying upgrades provides clear advantages to the user, and in the case of the new Ninja gear, customizes the game experience to the player’s preferred style. That’s ultimately what Veemee is striving for with the different weapon types, but as you pointed out, Norse, there’s no indication of what they do.
Let’s follow your logic. I have a good idea for a cheap fuel efficient vehicle for small family. Developement and test will cost me say… 1 million. Without any distribution network I probably wont sell more than 10 on the first year. So if I add $100 000 to my expected sale price I’m in busness right? Probably not
As 1 of my former teacher used to say: The market will kick you out.
Thats one thing with economic “laws”, it’s not a hard science as Physic or chemistry. The major difference is the human factor. I think VEEMEE was counting on that one.
Shooters are the most competitive type of games. Typical Shooters player are not the standard PsHome user. But yet, this game is on home. VEEMEE is aware of all that.
It’s not the first time you mention Zynga in one of articles. A good, well thought example. But theres one difference. NML is a PsHome based game. Thats where the human factor change the deal. On a regular online base the player sit alone in his living room. On home you have friends… Wich means, social pressure from peers. You remember that I said shooters are the most competitive type of games? Competition and Social pressure are two incentives that push the power distribution up.
I first logged on home 2 days after the outtage. So the store was close… for about a month. I didnt planned to spent money there anyway
Found this neat old school game called Novus Prime, met friends, rest is history. I make it to the top rank on free stuff(Cptn, lvl 20 back then). Sure I was slow as hell. Had to leave neb balls behind sometimes, but i was able to “fly with the guys”. In a coop game like Novus, if I can kill the ennemy faster, everyone benefit from it. I’ve helped many “non-gamer” at Novus.One of them is “my girl” She made it to 11 on All time and spent ($) much more than the market value on that game.
You like bell curves and power distribution? I love them
You can apply power distribution to hours played too. Hardcore players spend way much time playing then casual one. They are more competitive and more skilled too.(Thats one thing. Yes skills is probably better than $. But usually the best players also buy good armor.) So aplly all the power distribution… Only an infenetisimal portion of PsHome user buy that premium bundle. But most of PsHome user are not interested in shooters anyway. So of the small amount of players a fraction buy the bundle. But they are the hardcore portion, the one who play the most… Wich means theres a good chance i’ll face one. Especially at 4h00am..
I could go on and on.. but my gf is hitting me!
No making profit isnt evil. Banks also found a quick way to make profits a couples years ago remember? Hardcore capitalism aint holy. Last time i checked the thread was named “A $50 outfit..” Not “A $50 game..” Yes VEEMEE have the right to try that. Peoples have the right to complaints too
I read many cheerleaders say “you dont HAVE to buy it”. I have only basic 101 knowledge on marketing. But i’m pretty sure saying that is not a good strategy.
If memory serves, Home’s population is approximately 85% male (regardless of which gender they portray themselves as), largely in the 16-25 age range. Which makes developing a shooter for Home very logical.
Your example of a hypothetical $100,000 car is irrelevant; as you pointed out at the bottom of your comment, the forum thread deals with a fifty-dollar commodity, not a fifty-dollar game. Thus the behavioral economics need to be examined in accordance with what’s actually being offered. If NML itself cost fifty dollars to play, that example would hold up. However, it doesn’t require that kind of money to play, nor does it even require anything close to that money to achieve a tactical advantage. As little as $1.49 for an upgraded firearm, in the hands of a skilled player, can make a huge difference.
This is not to suggest that the game does not have issues with balancing, or is using a perfect freemium commerce model. HearItWow and Liza have already touched on several excellent points in that regard. This has specifically to do with the outrage that a developer would dare to offer a fifty-dollar commodity in Home. I think a lot of frustration regarding the game’s commerce model is feeding *into* the invective about the premium pack, but if we exclude the flaws in the game’s balancing for a moment, the *pricing* is actually very reasonable.
With regard to behavioral economics: what Home developers should keep in mind is that the PSN is free, Home itself is free, and nearly every game in Home is free to at least access. And when studying the games which consistently and blatantly generate huge revenue — Midway and the Casino — a strong case can be made that the easiest way to pull large sums of money out of a sufficient number of people is to bleed them through microtransactions. This neatly avoids any cost comparisons to disc-based games, and a lot of users never bother to add up how much they’ve actually spent.
The catch with such a model is that it tends to be reliant on limited-use items, rather than permanent power-ups. Cutthroats could have duplicated the same success as the Casino and Midway, but they got greedy and wildly overpriced their goods (which is where your example of the market kicking them out becomes apropos).
Personal opinion: a good, full-scale game in Home is worth about fifteen to twenty bucks. You can potentially get more than that (along with a more normal distribution) if you go the microtransaction route with low-priced, limited-use goods, whereas permanent power-ups require a different pricing scale — most notably, one or two high-priced commodities which will sell in low numbers to the most-engaged percentage of users enjoying the game. Which is exactly what VEEMEE did. And it makes perfect sense.
Would had made perfect sense, if customer didnt felt a “cant win situation” if you dont buy the premium outifit.
As you pointed out theres no reference to the armor/damage value. What are my odds if i dont have the premium outfit? I see two scenario there.
1. The “quality” of the goods are proprtinal to the cost (X5). Wich mean non user are cannon fooder.
2. Rating have linear increase. Wich mean the outfit is a rip off.
A lose lose situation.
I dont think VEEMEE “forgot” to list rating info. As an experienced Home customer i feel someone deliberatly leave me in darkness. Hoping i’ll make the wrong choice first so i’ll have to buy a 2nd set, maybe a 3rd…
One thing that’s very important to emphasize, particularly since it was an error in the original release, is that the $50 value pack contains *everything* in the game, plus the specialty armor and weapons. That completely changes the relative value of the price.
Now, is it worth it to me to purchase it? No. But that’s because I don’t want all the stuff it includes. I may end up buying one or two additional weapons, but that’s about it. I’d be shocked if my total expenses in NML exceed fifteen dollars.
By the way, for what it’s worth…VEEMEE’s not trying to deliberately hoodwink anyone by not showing the comparison stats. Trust me on that. It’s worth noting that NML isn’t the only Home game which doesn’t show you comparative damage ratings. Cutthroats (which, yes, I hold up as an example of how to do things wrong) didn’t show you damage stats, either, so you had to go strictly off of price differential. And keep in mind that I *want* games to show me comparison stats; it’s much more conducive to sales if I know what I’m buying first.
At this point, what I would like to see in here is a response from VeeMee on how THEY feel about the reaction to their game and their pricing strategy. Are they willing to make changes? Would they rather stay ‘as is’ and see what happens after all the furor dies down? And what do they think about the constructive criticisms and suggestions made in this thread. Is it a waste of time for us to talk to developers after the horse has left the barn? Or can it make a difference?
I would also like to hear a lot more from the people who are actually playing the game now -- both those with and those without the controversial $50. package.
I think you may safely rest assured that any time a new game is launched in Home, the developer keeps a watchful eye on the Sony forum and prominent satellite media sources (including HSM) for feedback.
Constructive feedback (positive *and* negative) can have an impact. We’ve seen it before in Home. Remember that godawful Konami video in the Jetsetter Apartment?
The thing to keep in mind is that what’s also studied is sales data. Much as x7 is rather unpopular here at HSM, the seven-day pass (which is the single worst way, economically, to gain access) has cracked the top-ten sales lists for the last two months. So everything has to be factored in.
A developer may not always overtly announce their presence, such as with responses to comment threads (even though it’s super cool when they do), but they’re watching. And taking notes.
Thats one of the many points i left out (HSMis just not the place to rant
) Silence from VEEMEE. I screamed on home forum about Sony’s silence on F13 and other issue. But here we got a reaction. Tempest_Fire, a mod on the forum posted about the “error”, the bundle not delevering all the weapons and armours. But it took 24hrs… way way too long. Ususaly we have almost fair reply time from our dev and total silence from Sony. This time Sony saved the day for me. I will try the game.
The fury or price of the bundle isnt the issue for me its the way as above no real thought or format has been used, a 50 dollar bundle with everything in it is a stupid idea as if ive got the best armor why do I want to use the rest of the stuff, in someones mind it justified the price, theres no real objective its kill or be killed like a hundred other games I can play that are far better games that I can pick up from the budget bins, what do a lot of people play games on home for, rewards there are none, its like veemee has taken everything that makes a home game a success and forgotten it, now when I try and play everyone trys to join the same team as upgraded players, making teams unbalanced so you cant start game, in fact currently its been another mission to find a game, what should of been a time to be proud of a landmark moment in home has turned into a farce.