Are Microtransactions the Future? Or, “OMG RMT!”
If I were smart, I wouldn’t touch this with a ten foot pole. Luckily for you, I’m not smart, or I’m at least foolish enough to talk about microtransactions. RMT, or Real Money Transfer (or Trading), is the catalyst for some of the most heated debates in MMO development. Is it wrong? Is it right? Is it even a question of wrong or right? Is it the model for the future? Regardless of the answer, almost all of us have a strong opinion about RMT.
I’ll begin by saying that I personally despise the concept as applied to the traditional massively multiplayer game. That is, EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot, and similar MMORPGs that emphasize achievement, advancement through dedication over time, and generally adhere to the more old school RPG notion of statistics and numbers over direct player skill.
My biggest problem with it? Allowing people to pay real money for something you are supposed to achieve removes what I feel is one of the main draws for even playing the traditional MMORPG–the achievement.
If I can either put forth great effort for a long period of time to get a Hulking Goatsmasher of Ultimate Destiny or spend $50, which one do I choose? I’d like to think that I would choose the former, but I’d almost guarantee you that I’d choose the latter if it were an approved method for acquiring items.
If I DID choose the former, and expended great effort to earn that item, is my achievement cheapened by the ability to purchase the very same item for real cash? I think it is. That achievement should be something I am proud of; it should be immediately communicated to anyone who sees me with my Goatsmasher that I achieved something great. The second you can buy that item, there’s no more achievement.
Okay, before I get too riled up here, let’s take a step in another direction. Let’s assume that you don’t actually let people pay for things that they usually need to achieve–items, levels, coin, etc. Let’s assume that instead, you can spend real money on unlocking dungeon access, allowing people to play certain classes, or other things of that nature that merely expand a player’s options and don’t necessarily infringe upon the foundations of the traditional MMORPG.
I’ll start with a quote from Daniel James: “If you’re charging a subscription fee, you’re either overcharging or undercharging every single one of your users.”
Absolutely true. It’s also true of cable, the internet, and any other subscription service. I get less out of cable than most people do, yet I pay the same. I get more out of the internet than most people do, yet I pay the same. Now, I’m not going to propose a solution to this (other than: charge people less than $15 a month if they play below a certain threshold), but I am going to use it as ammunition.
We’re still assuming that players can pay real money to increase the breadth of their experience or for trivial flavor “stuff,” rather than paying real money as a substitute for achievement. This is all well and good until you realize who will be impacted the most by this situation: the most loyal members of your community.
While some players may be paying nothing and others may be spending less than a normal subscription fee, your most loyal players will be spending significantly more than a normal subscription fee (this has to be the case if you intend to average out to make the same as a subscription-based MMO).
Woops! As soon as these incredibly loyal players realize they are paying out their ears to play your game, they may very well stop playing. And, you know what? These are probably the most important customers you have. These are the core players who must exist if you ever want to see the snowball effect occur in your game. These are the evangelists who will make fansites and get all their friends to play the game. These are the iconic characters of your game world who act as the glue for the community, and you’re basically driving them off.
If you drive off the most influential members of your community by overcharging them, you will also drive off many, if not most, of the members of the community at large. These core players need to exist for the community to truly thrive, but I’d guess they wouldn’t exist for terribly long if they have the option to play just as often and get just as deep and varied an experience in another game for much less money (because it’s using a subscription model).
Are microtransactions the future? I don’t personally believe they are the future in the realm of the traditional massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Is there a bright future for games using the RMT model? Most certainly, but only if the game is developed from the ground-up to support RMT. You will see smash successes for RMT-based MMOs in North America and Europe, but I have my doubts that these smash successes will look anything like your traditional EverQuest and World of Warcraft type games.
A friend of mine once hiked all the way up Mount Washington, from the base. He emerged at the top onto the road, only to witness family-packed cars on their way to the gift shop at the top, to purchase their “This Car Climbed Mt. Washingon” stickers before destroying their cars’ brakes on the ride back down.
For himself, he felt the sense of achievement at having to work for his goal. The view from the top was that much sweeter because of the effort it took to achieve it. For the carloaders, it was a great 30 second picture opportunity and nothing more.
He also noted that the park rangers at the top seemed to be a heck of a lot friendlier to the hikers than they were to the carloaders. It seemed that they understood and respected the hiker’s efforts.
This experience reflects some of the emotions that you’re describing, Ryan; the sense that since you worked for it, you should be entitled to something more, or rather, there should be no other way to achieve the same end except through effort.
On another one of your threads however, a reader noted their greatly limited time and the desire to purchase a moderately powered character so that they could dive in and enjoy some extended content without having to grind for it.
Could both playstyles be honored in the same game? Could the game allow RMTs to let the time-limited player dive in, but also have exclusive benefits for the grinders to honor their commitment (like the rangers’ respect in the hiker analogy)?
“If I can either put forth great effort for a long period of time to get a Hulking Goatsmasher of Ultimate Destiny or spend $50, which one do I choose? ”
Unfortunately, it’s usually just a long period of time with the great effort being jockeying for position with other players camping the rare spawn.
“Are microtransactions the future? I don’t personally believe they are the future in the realm of the traditional massively multiplayer online role-playing game.”
A different question is “Do time-sink based, err traditional, massively multiplayer online role-playing games have a future?” I personally believe they do, as a small niche. There’s a place for text-based MUDs and there will be a place for time-sink games.
“Relic gear is easy to get.”
Just remember that one, and you’ll be ok.
I never bought or sold anything ingame. To me its not even an issue, I really don’t care what other people do with there RL money or ingame items. In EQ you always knew who was ebayed and we always had a good laugh, but nobody cared. None of this takes away from my enjoyment of whichever game I am playing.
Now paying for how long I play, that I have a problem with. No need to get my BP up on that one
If I can either put forth great effort for a long period of time to get a Hulking Goatsmasher of Ultimate Destiny or spend $50, which one do I choose?
It depends on your situation. What about if you’re a college student with a lot of time and not much money? What if you’re a busy professional with a lot of money but not much time? What if you’re just a cheap bastard (like me)? What if you like a good challenge? What if you just joined the game and want to catch up with your friends who have already done the “Assemble the Hulking Goatsmasher” quest?
But, here’s the key question: what if my only option is to “put fort great effort for a long period of time” (read: join a raiding guild and keep raiding until I get the shiny), and I can’t invest that much time? Then, I might to play (and therefore pay for) the game. That’s money lost, in business terms.
Current MMORPGs cater to people who have a lot of time. They are also exceptional entertainment for the price. The current audience doesn’t want to lose these “advantages”. Unfortunately, the subscription-based model encourages pandering to the widest audience possible, limiting the types of games we developers can profitably make.
The design side is where microtransactions become tricky. You basically want to allow people to pay money instead of spending time (but don’t eliminate the option to spend time). Also, make sure others know how the player acquired the item, time or money. These two bits solve about 80% of the potential issues, IMHO.
Isn’t the point of a classical MMOGs to adventure (and tradeskill) and the reward for that is levels, loot, and most importantly fun? So whats the point in skipping the actual game by buying the reward right away?
I don’t accept standing around in Qeynos Harbor or [insert any random community hub here] and showing off your gear as alternative game “careers” LOL.
I seriously doubt that Microtransactions will ever gain any significant ground in the so-called “traditional” MMO market place, I believe this for a few reasons.
1. Our societies have been trained for the last 50 years around the concept of the 14 or 30 day budget.
2. We belong to the society of the Buffet. Pay once and eat all you want, the last significant obstical to this was crushed once broadband access became the norm rather than the exception (especially in europe where you paid by the minute for ISP access 10 years ago).
3. Pricing evolution has gone in the same direction of the Buffet society. First we bought one battery at a time at radio shack, then came the two pack, then 4 pack now 16 pack. 1 can of pop for 50 cents, 6-pack for 1.99, case for 4.99.
In short, there is simply no way that Joe-Sixpack will go to the microtransaction model, not when an all-you-can-eat model exists. This is especially true when you consider that JS has only been a online gamer since WoW launched.
-Gooney
You can’t make a society wide argument about ‘traditional’ gamers not going for microtransactions. Joe Sixpackers and Grumpy Gnomes may not like it but there are oodles of Sally Sweetcheeks and Harold Habbos that do.
A great quote from Raph Koster’s blog:
” People need to wake up and recognize that just because your particular circle of friends don’t play or haven’t heard of a game, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
‘Society’ isn’t just you and your buds in your raiding guild. Its not even everyone that plays WoW. Go look at the numbers for Maple Story and then come back and say ’society’ won’t go for it.
I’m appalled at the thought that future games will look more like Habbo Hotel or GoPets than LOTRO but I don’t kid myself that there’s no money to be made there.
I guess the thing that bugs me the most about microtransactions is that I have a hard time wrapping my head around how you could implement them into a AAA MMO title while still preserving the achievement value of doing things the hard way. I also wonder how you could make it work and still have robust crafting systems and in-game economies without also providing a cash-out option.
I realize that you can do MT around cosmetic options and the like and not touch things that really affect gameplay, but in order for MT to work, the things that are purchaseable with real world cash need to be desireable enough that people in general want to buy them. And for most achievement-oriented gamers that will mean that the purchaseable items will need to affect gameplay in some way. At least, that’s the impression I have.
The failure in most RMT arguments is the polarity in opinions. A lot of people will claim “microtransactions are the future” or “North Americans will not accept microtransactions.” There is room for middle ground, and I would argue that the middle ground is the realistic ground.
What I don’t see in the future is traditional MMORPGs utilizing RMT with great success. If you were to change World of Warcraft to an RMT model in which players could purchase equipment for real money that is equivalent to equipment obtainable through effort, I don’t think it would be terribly successful.
My belief is that the effort-based mechanic will have a hard time trying to coexist with the real-money-based mechanic in traditional MMORPGs.
However, I also believe that RMT has a place in games that are designed to account for its existence. I truly don’t believe you could release a World of Warcraft + RMT, even if it were labeled as a new game, and see significant success with the model.
I’m not going to point out the relative lack of RMT success for EverQuest II’s Station Exchange servers as an example; I think it would have been at least a bit more successful had it not come after launch. Meaning, I’m not just saying that adding RMT servers to WoW would be unsuccessful, I’m saying that making a game just like WoW or EQII and adding RMT to it would yield a relatively unsuccessful game.
In some ways, you’d really have to deemphasize achievement in an MMO that allows for RMT as a standard practice. Or, at least, create a different notion of achievement from the standard MMORPG. Or, you would have to retain the existing sense of achievement and make RMT a separate yet related system (flavor items, titles, alternative looks, etc.).
Either way, I think we’ll see both subscription and RMT models in abundance in the future with more RMT games in North America before, but I never see them replacing subscription-based MMOs (instead, they will supplement them and broaden the market further).
What I never see in any of these discussions of RMT, is how this changes the fundamental nature of the game.
To me, when I log in to a MMORPG, I am playing a game. Just like I did when I was a child and played Monopoly, or Sorry and when I got older and played D&D and other PnP games.
Everything you did in the game, was initiated within the realm of the game, existed within the “reality” of the game world. RMT, destroys that “fourth wall”. Monopoly would not have been the same experience, if I could buy more in-game money with real cash. Who won the game of Sorry? Oh, that was Timmy, he bought extra turns with cash. As we all gather around the table to make our characters for a PnP game, the first questions is how much do I need to pay to start at a higher level or gain a higher percentage of the XP earned by the group.
That is why I will never agree with RMT. I like to log in to play a game to do just that; if I just wanted to check my bank-peen against others, I could go to any myriad of RL activities that allow me to do so.
You want to use real money to boost your online gaming? Play online poker.
my 2 cents
People said paying $1 per song downnload was never going to fly, too. I disagreed with them in 1998. I laughed at them when iTunes hit a million downloads. When they hit a billion I wasn’t laughing any more. I hadn’t invested enough or early enough in that concept.
Nobody RMT’s in the GAME of Warcraft. It is in the WORLD of Warcraft that they do this. Ironic that it is the gamers, not the worlders, who drive RMT, then, isn’t it? Here’s a little bit of real money so I can skip your world parts and go straight to the game.
Dude… a look at the CURRENT traditional MMO stats shows this not to be the case. Most hardcore players already pay “significantly more than a traditional subscription fee.” In fact, the mean number of accounts per user is over 2! At the high end, it’s not unusual to see 10+ accounts in the hands of one user. That’s an average of double payment for an average user, and it’s $150 a month for a high end user.
That’s not a new or unusual stat, either. There’s metrics going back to the online services days on stuff like GEnie and CompuServe showing people paying well over $1000 a month.
And that’s not counting people who buy gold or other stuff… that is also a way of spending more money than the sub fee on their hobby.
I don’t know anyone who legitimately has 10 accounts, but I would like to see where those stats come from. The only times I’ve seen one person with more than a few accounts is in the case of gold farmers.
That said, those people would only be paying even MORE than I’d guessed. The thing with any kind of RMT that gives you more breadth of gameplay is that the really dedicated players will want it all, and in order for the business model to be viable, the “all” must be more than $15/month (and for the RMT games I’ve played/looked at, it is).
Which means these people would have more than just one account that they’d be paying more than $15 a month for, making it more and more expensive.
Theoretically, you could decide to allow more than one character from a single account to play at one time in an RMT model, but you could do the same for standard subscriptions (I’d bet the majority of multi-account holders have multiple accounts for simultaneous play, not for more character slots… while more character slots were attractive back in the day, I think we’re giving people enough slots these days that it’s usually not necessary to have multiple accounts for the sake of character count).
There’s a few things here I could pick at, but since I’m coming back to actually posting from a long break, I think I’ll pace myself.
Actually, if you’re doing digital item purchases/microtransactions correctly, I’d argue that these loyal players want to pay out their ears in order to maximize their game experience. To jump back to the getting-to-be-rather-overused golf analogy, golf enthusiasts are not required to purchase expensive golf clubs to play at any particular level, but they generally do so because they love the game and the super special awesome bag of golf clubs will really enhance the experience for them.
In Puzzle Pirates, $10 buys you 42 Doubloons. 42 Doubloons will unlock all the crew ranks to you for a month, as well as allow you to pick up a pretty nice outfit and a sword or blunt weapon, all of which will last you for 90 days. Alternatively, it can also unlock the higher officer ranks for you for a month, as well as buy you a new ship and some furniture for your house, which are both pretty much permanent. All of this is just icing: the basic game, such as playing puzzles or card games with other players or pillaging with a crew/guild, is free. The point is that if your DIPS/microtransaction game is structured as crippleware that’s intended to exploit your playerbase out of cash, your playerbase will have reason to hate the excess cost. But if you’ve designed your item sales to merely complement the part of your game that you provide free of charge, the ’significant’ extra spending that players will partake in will be done so with glee.
Time >= Money
if the effort of spending hours getting a virtual item is your cup of tea (still? really now, I call your bluff), then do just that.
For me the time needed to advance a tiny amount in games these days is rediculous. I’ll spend my time at work earning a better return on investment and just buy the item.
Here’s my opinion. It includes a solution - rare in an online opinion.
It should be possible to buy game items with real cash, through official channels. If you ban something, you only drive it underground where it cannot be controlled. This is what happens today. Macro’ing bastards are ruining the early-game of many MMO’s to accrue game currency for resale - the methods they use to acquire the currency are far more damaging than the actual sale of the currency for dollars. By allowing players to buy *items* through official channels, their industry would be sunk.
Only items should be for sale, not game currency, because currency is too powerful. Items can be bound to the player who bought them, preventing them from being resold and polluting the game’s economy. Additionally, the items could be made utterly generic so that everyone knows that the player is using items that weren’t found in the game. The appearance of the real item should be different, if not customizable.
It is very important to distinguish between bought items and game items. I don’t mind being ganked but I’d like to know whether my attacker is worthy of my respect or my scorn.
Alternatively, split the game into cash-driven and non-cash-driven servers. Let the brats with the dollars run around on one server and give the serious players their own server. (Allow characters to be transfered only one way.) (It would be important to sell currency for the one server at extremely low prices to defeat the macro’ing bastards.)
Ask SOE how the server division works for their RTM (company level) ideas.
It doesn’t stop RTM on the other servers, nor will it. It simply puts a ceiling on RTM pricing.
And if people who do spend money to skip past the time grind in a game are ‘brats’ than I must give those who do not a nickname as well.
Bandwagoning Sheep.
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Personaly I don’t like RMT. I consider that this spoils old-school games, not designed for it. But to make RMT in your game or not, depends on the market, where you want to launch it. As we look at Russian MMO market, there we will see the popularity of RMT and the growing popularity of Microtransactions.
The market is not huge itself, but it grows like in many european countries.
And people bring money both to developers and to black-money trade market (which is less controlled than in USA) via websites, SMS services…
This fact (RMT popularity) is supported with:
1. The audience is ready.These people are ready to pay real money for some stuff that is better than the others have.
2.The games I’m talking about were designed to be RMT based. Especially developed inside the country. And the market is full of MMOs
3.Russian MMO audience is much more hardcore in percentage than in other markets (exept corean)
4. People like to be blinded (I’m not bying the box, not paying any money and I can play). And the situation is the same: some are paying, some are not paying . This fact just attracts people — If I want I won’t pay any money at all
5. RMT and Microtransactions are mostly popular in browser MMO games, which are easy to start/easy to pay
[...] RMT isn’t because we want to keep our games pure — that’s the reason it leaves a bad taste in our mouth. The reason we hate RMT is because gold farmers dramatically harm gameplay. They grief. They train [...]