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June 7th, 2010 |
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This is largely a response to a news post at Gamasutra that described the psychology of Steam Bundles. Unfortunately, I don't have much experience with Steam bundles themselves other than having bought the Half Life 2 Silver bundle, which included the original HL and a number of original and "sourced-up" remakes that I never owned, having only played them at net cafés or friends' houses. With the exception of the Deathmatch games, I wanted everything in the bundle and got good use out of it all. Other bundles? Nope. Every other bundle I've seen either included too much junk or games I already had. Rather, I want to address one of the points made in the original Gamasutra article, that of "sales." There's another psychological effect at play, one that doesn't seem to apply to most Americans, but has certainly caught on to Quebecers. I read an article long ago comparing "brand loyalty" versus "sales" marketing strategies, and for the life of me I wish I could find it again to prop my argument up with a reference. Basically, the article suggested that in some markets, the use of "prizes" and "contests" build brand loyalty which in turn drives sales of those products; in other areas, brand loyalty is extremely difficult to buy because consumers are only interested in getting the best "deal", no matter which brand meets the need. Moreover, in such areas where consumers are driven by a sales mentality, the sales mindset becomes so strong that they will often refuse to buy a product not on sale, since they know that, in a few weeks, it will go on sale. The drive to buy a product is rarely strong enough to encourage a non-sale purchase, but rather merely strong enough to buy a "less than the best" sale price. As a very common home-grown example I grew up with, a box of 12 cans of soft drink will normally sell for $5.99, but will go on sale anywhere from $5/box to $2.50/box. Generally, the $3/box was the upper range of "normal price" and anything over that was expensive. If you were really feeling the pressure for some pop, you might break out the wallet at $3.33 or $3.49 a box, and $3.99 was the upper limit for those emergency "we're throwing a party and we need pop NOW" situations. Anything higher than $4 and you'd just go without. The thing is, the frequency of sales on Steam has really driven home the same mentality in Steam games. When I saw the new expansion for Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising, I said: hey, great. I want that. Now I just have to wait for it to go on sale. I waited and, sure enough, it went on sale. Bam. 50% off. Steam's predictable sales cycle saved me $15, which is still a bit more than I'd have liked to pay; I'd rather have taken it for $10. Maybe there'll be a 66% off sale in a few months and I'll be going "tisk, I should have waited" but I guess even my patience has limits. Anyhow, my rebuttal to Jamie Madigan is: how many of Steam's customers refuse to pay full price and wait for products they want to go on sale because of Steam's predictable sales cycle? The psychology of sales and bundles goes both ways. |
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June 4th, 2010 |
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This bit of news caught me completely off-guard: Turbine's other big-name MMO, Lord of the Rings Online, is following in the footsteps of its brother, Dungeons and Dragons Online, in adopting a free to play business model. This is pretty fantastic for fans of the game who aren't up to paying the monthly fee, but it seems an odd move; I thought the game was going strong on its current subscription system, not at all like DDO's floundering population base. I had a lot to say about DDO's change, and most of it positive, but I'm not sure the same success will come to LOTRO. You see, DDO's game model, that of having lots of little adventure packs you can bundle together and sell piecemeal, works well for F2P: players only need to buy the adventures they want to play and, because the game has no linear design, nothing is required for anything else. However, I'm under the impression (based on 3 months of press review coverage when the game was initially released) that LOTRO is a fairly traditional MMO, with big open areas and strong linear progression. I don't really see how you can bundle up LOTRO in the same way you can DDO. I suppose the model might just focus on microtransactions: eschew selling adventure area and focus on selling supplies, cosmetics, and other goodies. This could prove catastrophic, however, especially since North American players typically despise the "buy your way to success" that fuels most Asian F2P games (and thus tarnishes the entire category). In DDO, convenience items were strictly that: for convenience. Because you only played adventures with a few other players at a time, you couldn't ruin the balance of the game world by introducing "cheat" items (like store-bought rest shrines). Players uninterested in such conveniences simply opted not to use them or party with people who did. Players who did want to use them could. But these decisions were isolated to the instanced adventure the particular players in question were in. In LOTRO, however, "cheat" items affect the entire game world and, more importantly, the opponents players face in PVP. I suppose this is all conjecture; I really have no idea what sort of items will pop up in the store, how the game world will be divvied up for payers and freeloaders, or what sort of gameplay will be most affected by all this. At the very least, the game going free means I'll be able to take a look, one way or another. |
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May 19th, 2010 |
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Well, that Ad experiment has run its course, the $100 of free AdWords got devoured in a handful of days and ran out May 11th, long before I had a chance to fix my broken feedback form which, unfortunately, kept overwriting rather than appending. Oops. All that feedback lost. The conversion from new visitors to new ad clickers didn't work too well either, of the 200-odd people that visited the site from AdWords on other site, only 4 clicked through ads on this site, turning the (admitedly free) $100 investment in Ads into $1.38 of revenue. Not exactly a good investment, eh? For what it's worth, I've gone ahead and updated the feedback form, so feel free to use it again. Regularly scheduled news and insights into the MMORPG industry will resume shortly! |
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May 8th, 2010 |
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I've been running Google's AdSense on my site for a number of years now, though it's never generated enough income to actually get paid (you only get paid when you earn more than $100). I guess there just aren't that many people reading my site, and that doesn't entirely surprise me, considering I've never really advertised it. Well, since I re-wrote the site considerably to use this new custom PHP display, I figured it was high time to actually get some real readers too. Google frequently mails out these "AdWords coupons" to get people started with their service, and I've just ignored them up until now, but I'm going to try one and see where it gets me. Rather than spend time setting some sort of elaborate tracking mechanism and since I'm not really as interested in mere "views" as I am in gaining "readers" I'm going to resort to a fairly low-tech feedback form. If you're reading this, please take a moment to fill it in; this is also a chance to tell me what sort of content you want to see! Note: all information is optional, you're welcome to leave any of the fields blank. Feedback form is now integrated into the main website! |
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May 7th, 2010 |
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I just saw the trailer for the new Tyrannis expansion for EVE Online, and I wanted to share it with you, just in case you missed it. EVE trailers took a turn from the mundane to the exceptionally well produced with the Butterfly video. Note, however, that they are WELL PRODUCED but completely misrepresent the actual game. Take a look for yourself. Now, could someone can show me how Gallente ships fire massive beams that one-shot Caldari ships, please? Though I've often wished to use weapons like that to blow up other players who are exploiting the open game system to harass and grief other players. You know, I could turn this post into a giant rant about EVE Online's lack of any semblance of respect for its PvE players, but I won't; I'm just sticking to the trailer. It looks cool, at any rate. You'll notice, however, that it once again focuses on hammering home the misguided notion that EVE allows individual players to play significant roles in the universe. Most worrying is the tagline "all these worlds are yours" near the end of the video. Of course these worlds aren't actually yours. In fact, the vast majority of players will never even see whatever interface will be added for planetary control. The promo site claims that there are over 60,000 planets and anyone (including New Players? hahaha!) can claim a planet and found a colony. Really? If it's anything like every single other mechanic in EVE Online, a few rich and powerful players will take control of everything. I hate to be a party-pooper, but the whole wormhole effort that was supposed to open content to new players just added more exclusive content for a rare few players and left most players eager to find adventure in exploration lost in the dust. Eh, well, EVE is designed for the Corpies. Theoretically, I suppose it could actually be good for players in a good corp, but with my 3 for 3 failure rate at joining a fun corp, I really wouldn't know myself. /bitter |
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May 4th, 2010 |
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As you may or may not know, I also maintain a Blog at Gamasutra, the premier website for members of the game development community. I recently noticed my status has been upgraded from mere member to exalted expert blogger, which, I suppose, means that my musings have gained tremendous credibility! In other news, a few quick-fire updates:
Anyhow, back to your regularly scheduled categorized news next post. |
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April 18th, 2010 |
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Well, I did it! Ding'ed 90 with my Warden in Everquest II! Actually, I had run out of quests to do, so I was doing instance dungeons to get that last bit of XP, and I got stuck at 99%, so I ended up blowing a plat buying collectibles and turning them in for the last bit of XP I needed to level. Felt a bit like cheating but, heck, I'm just thrilled with the result. One of the neat features they added to EQ2 is that for each level 90 character you have, you get a 10% bonus when leveling up your other characters. This applies separately for adventure and tradeskill XP, so I already had the 10% bonus on tradeskills for a while now with Tailor 90, but this is the first time I've reached 90 on adventure, so I'm looking forward to coasting ever so slightly faster through the game with my alts. On the topic of alts, I've got three now: a Necromancer that's tagged on my status here on soulrift.com, but also a Ranger and a Berserker. There's four main categories of character classes in EQ2, so I thought I'd flesh out a small stable and include one of each. I'm sort of switching between them as I go, since I don't really have the same desire to reach 90 as I did with my Warden. I guess now I can finally write about the end-game experience in EQ2's Sentinel's Fate expansion! |
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April 16th, 2010 |
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I re-installed Dark Age of Camelot on something of a whim recently. I played the game to the point of detrimental addiction the year it came out, I eventually had to cut my ties and sell my account to get away from it. It seems I did it at a good time, too, because, from what I hear, the first two expansions weren't all that well received by the remaining players. But I digress. Some 8 years later I'm playing DAoC again and I find myself pleasantly surprised by a number of things: it's still fun and it's still quite populated. The latter surprise may be the result of the game being merged into one (or 10?) servers. I'm not entirely sure why, but there are 10 "Ywain" servers, but everyone on each of them seems to actually play together in the same virtual world. Oh well, I try not to over-think it. I created a hunter; it was a class I enjoyed quite a bit my first time through, but never played much since my main character was a Hibernian Enchanter. I also tried out some of the new classes: a Bonedancer and a Reaver. It was a thrill to see all those old areas again, as well as to explore all the new content available. More importantly, the game is still quite fun and quite playable... though a bit long in the tooth when it comes to its interface. You see, DAoC is still tied to its relatively archaic command-line-based interface, where you type /commands (such as "/keyboard") to access menus and interface items. Sure, you can macro them, and sure, they've added buttons for many of these, but it's nowhere as polished as any MMO that's come out in the last five years. It's actually kind of a curious anachronism too, because DAoC came out in fall of 2001 if I recall correctly, only three years before EQ2 and World of Warcraft reshaped the MMO-scape in 2004. And yet, in the past 6 years, MMOs haven't changed much, visually or interface-wise. I suppose, in a sense, DAoC is one of the last great "golden age" MMOs, along with Asheron's Call and the original Everquest... all of which are all still running with strong, dedicated fan bases. If you're interested in a bit of nostalgia, or you're willing to take a leap way back in time to see how us old timers used to game, check out the official site and give the 14-day free trial a whirl. |
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| Lord of the Rings Online Vilya Telsia 35 Ranger |
| Dark Age of Camelot Various... |
| Final Fantasy XIV Desperately waiting for beta invite! |
| Everquest II Lucan D'lere (RP) Pyria 90 Warden Xastra 24 Ranger |
| Warhammer Online Gorfang Soulrift 29 Chosen |
| EVE Online Gaylen Della |
| Dugeons and Dragons Online Argonessen Stev 11 FvS |
| Final Fantasy XI Valefor Telsia 75 Dragoon (inactive) |
| World of Warcraft Earthen Ring (RP) Tyx 80 Warlock Riddle of Steel (inactive) |
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