http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25888

Very interesting article of how game designer can get more money out of people.  Interesting quotes:

""But in the free-to-play world, especially in China, a lot of game designers believe fairness is not a goal, just a means -- the goal is to create a highly dynamic environment and community where a lot of conflict and drama can happen; if it helps to create conflict, fairness and unfairness can be used as tools to create those conflicts and add tension to the game world."

"We let rich people fight with rich people with the help of poor people."

"Good monetization design is based on a deep understanding of human psychology. The best game designers in Chinese people all understand what Chinese people want, what they think; their weaknesses, actually. Good free-to-play game designers are exploiting people's weaknesses in the game."

"For example, add peer pressure, and it becomes more more effective. "It's very easy to play with peer pressure," because of the volume of users in an MMO. One of the most popular items that Ye knows of is one that lets you respawn with your party when you die instead of returning to town. "Most people will say, 'I'll just pay', so they don't let their friends down." That's convenience and peer pressure rolled into one."

Very interesting article, thanks for going through the trouble. As someone with some f2p experience this made some things click. Glad im sticking to p2p now...

Wow, I can be a poor person helping rich people to fight! I didn't realize that. I used to think F2P games were just crap to stay away from, but now that I know I can play a poor person, I'm dying to log on to one of these amazing games!

Good thing its those free to play games are really free..I am so poor i am looking for a cheap game to play...rofl

I used to do some volantary admin work for Tales of Pirates under the company IGG and I can tell you that the main focus is income. Basicaly all we did was buy a game that was already developed and went through and translated it to english, changed some things around but basicly it still was the same game. Then we got told that we had to get people to buy X amount of item mall points in X amount of weeks / months. So, we paid sites like this etc to put banners up etc and posted events in the forums. I wanted to change mob UI, how xp was gained and class skills which would have took 3 years etc (or a long time to take the f2p feel out of it) but got told to leave it as we needed the developers permission. I guess so people can plvl each other and buy points to level up etc. So, then we had to post events on the forums etc and it does take awhile to get games stable so there was delays. And of course there is alot of behind the scene work.  I enjoyed the admin work but would prefer to do it for a different company/

Their pretty amatureish company to work with but their making a profit. I'd reccoment staying away from anything f2p though unless your desperate.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25888

Very interesting article of how game designer can get more money out of people.  Interesting quotes:

""But in the free-to-play world, especially in China, a lot of game designers believe fairness is not a goal, just a means -- the goal is to create a highly dynamic environment and community where a lot of conflict and drama can happen; if it helps to create conflict, fairness and unfairness can be used as tools to create those conflicts and add tension to the game world."

"We let rich people fight with rich people with the help of poor people."

"Good monetization design is based on a deep understanding of human psychology. The best game designers in Chinese people all understand what Chinese people want, what they think; their weaknesses, actually. Good free-to-play game designers are exploiting people's weaknesses in the game."

"For example, add peer pressure, and it becomes more more effective. "It's very easy to play with peer pressure," because of the volume of users in an MMO. One of the most popular items that Ye knows of is one that lets you respawn with your party when you die instead of returning to town. "Most people will say, 'I'll just pay', so they don't let their friends down." That's convenience and peer pressure rolled into one."

 

 

www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php

Yes this is all sad but true.Koreans obviously did tons of marketing in this area for years,since gaming there is an epidemic.

Although they can scrutinize spending habits,i think everyone misses the point when you look at actual players playing these games.F2P is the easiest way for Rmt to flood these games,and just as the design is good to weed money out of rich players,it is also a good design for RMT to flourish so it is a fail fail for a game.I have already eluded to the fact ,that in these games ,there really is not that many ACTIVE players playing,the populace is usually quite low.

What i noticed is on weekends you may see a decent number of players in the noob areas,but for longevity of the F2P games at the higher levels you see very few players.The players that stick around are most likely the spenders,so it gives a real false impression as to the demographic of a game.Example you have 2500 stable long term players/spenders,it looks like you have the perfect formula,because 90% of the long term are spending more than a P2P game would cost.Where they miss out on is that P2P games will sell 100x more on the initial cost to buy the game,since F2P usually gets nothing from players in the first 20-30 levels or so,witch coincides with the time that most freebie players begin to leave these games.

Nice read, thanks.

Originally posted by Wizardry

Although they can scrutinize spending habits,i think everyone misses the point when you look at actual players playing these games.F2P is the easiest way for Rmt to flood these games,and just as the design is good to weed money out of rich players,it is also a good design for RMT to flourish so it is a fail fail for a game.I have already eluded to the fact ,that in these games ,there really is not that many ACTIVE players playing,the populace is usually quite low.

 

Is that so? That is not my impression on Maple Story (i don't play but my kids used to), and DDO. Given the financial success of MS, ROM, and the new revived DDO (sub up 40%!!!), i tend to think that while we may question the whole practice, they DO know what they are talking about and it has becoming quite a successful business model.