GDC Online 2012 that took place in Austin, TX (US) earlier in October (9-11) was my first and last GDC Online. That's because the event is changing its format and switching to mobile and tablets, even though F2P market is flourishing nowadays (as well as mobile platforms).
Austin Convetion Center
Among the biggest participants in client-side section (apart from Wargaming :)) were Riot, NCSoft, CCP. Plus there were lots of Zynga-kind ones and a few F2P research companies. All in all, the online version of the GDC appeared to be poorer than the general one held in San Francisco.
While monetization, marketing, and business development talks were mostly ok, the ones on production, programming, and tech were somewhat worse (based on the feedback of our tech guys) - less innovative, although with some nice exceptions.
I will share some my thoughts on the lectures I have visited personally.
AION example.
By making AION EU F2P (which I believe is not strictly correct since they practically adopted hybrid model) NCSoft managed to overcome underpopulation of game servers and significantly boost the revenue. Their steps were focusing on core community (more likely to spend), making purchasable stuff achievable by playing, not flooding the in-game market at once, investments in huge marketing campaign (they needed to sell 2.5-year-old game once again), and going localized (6-digit amounts are spent to produce single pack VO+text).
General F2P trends.
The share of F2P market (US) in game industry went up from 1% (2007) to estimated 10% (2012). While sub-based games reached their plateau back in 2009 with 7+ mln of users, F2P audience has grown from 9 mln (2007) to estimated 42 mln (2012) - that's taking into account web-based and mobile. F2P has become the dominant MMO revenue model these days, social games (FB) boast ~40$ ARPPU (average revenue per paying user) with conversion to paying user of about 2.5-3.5%. Obviously, client-side MMOs can have noticeably higher conversion rates (up to 25-30%), while for browser games, it's 5-15%.
F2P has become MP3 in games. It's accessible, affordable, interactive.
Having gone F2P the following titles got much better:
- DC Universe - +1000% CCU (concurrent players) gain, +700% daily revenue
- Everquest II - +40% daily logins, +300% new players
- Everquest - +150% daily logins, +125% boost in Item sales, +350% registrations
The new game ecosystem is now the following: eSports + marketing + global community + livecasting (video streaming). The key focus is now on emergent and sandbox gameplay.
How F2P games are monetized.
The basic principles:
- regular currency is earned through game mechanics
- premium currency is earned by money spent
- no two-way conversion allowed.
Item shop should be a natural part of the game, both regular and premium items should be there.
Leveling/tiering is key to monetization: early game -> mid game -> end game, each with the respective items and prices.
Most popular monetization methods:
1. By unlocks
- unlocks and access to high tiers give access to new items
- monetize rarity: sell rare resources
2. By limits
- monetize storage size or inventory size
- monetize limits of economy power (total cap)
- monetize items with less limits
3. By tiers
- monetize accelerated needs of tiers
4. By power variants
- monetize similar but better items
- use 3 or more power variables (price, duration, power)
5. By time
- universal monetizier: more money spent - less time needed
6. By trade
- amount & slots
- frequency
- time
Pricing guidelines:
- tiering, lowest price is assigned to the lowest tier
- have enough flexibility to adjust prices
- account for psycho barriers - 50, 100, 500, 1000, etc
- use matrix for pricing
- going online a bit expensive, raise item amount per money amount spent
I Invite you to the discussion of the F2P stuff.
