The Valve Business Model Thread (All Hail GabeN)

[K9]

This presentation from GDC 2012 (apparently) shows how Vale has developed it's philosophy regarding community engagement and monetisation of its games using TF2 as a model.

A lot of it doesn't make a ton of sense without the person giving the presentation I guess, but several slides such as these two stood out:





The 'lessons learned' points should be mandatory reading for all game devs.

[HaemishM]

Fucking hats for everyone, bitches!!!! 

[Malakili]

I skimmed over the whole slide show, looks good really.  I still think that adding tons of weapons to TF2 made it a worse game, and that going free to play in general makes content additions more frequent than they need to be.

I'd love to hear their thoughts on the idea that a good game is a stable game.  There is a reason people still play Counter Strike 1.6.  Granted, I understand that isn't what this presentation was about.

[K9]

I guess it depends what you mean by stable. TF2 isn't so super-serious as CS is, but it's a lot more fun if you just want something less stressful. I'd draw analogies with SC2 where people play custom games as an alternative from the tension of the ladder. There seems to be a huge market of people out there who just want a fun game, and I think TF2 does that really well.

Valve have done a pretty good job in ensuring that weapon balance is pretty even, and by making weapons easy to get, while cosmetic items are hard, it makes the game more playable and self-balancing to an extent.

[Malakili]

I don't disagree on any major point.  I guess my question is: Does Valve think it is possible to do a game like Counter Strike as free to play?   I guess CS: GO as a 15 dollar pay once title (which came out far after TF2 went free to play) suggests an answer, but there is also a lot of history they have to deal with there. 

[Sky]

There seems to be a huge market of people out there who just want a fun game

There is a market for games that aren't fun?

Also, hate the unnecessary virtual currency bit. Just put a dollar sign on it, ffs. Then you don't end up with that odd pocket change after buying what you actually wanted. Sure, the company you 'exchanged' currency with laughs all the way to the bank. Except for the part where the customer is left thinking they got a shitty deal and doesn't plunk down any more money and leaves with ill will toward the company.

My experience with small minis companies lately has left me quite impressed that good customer service still exists, it's just not in any tech industries.

[Ingmar]

There seems to be a huge market of people out there who just want a fun game

There is a market for games that aren't fun?

Sure, ask anyone who finished Witcher 2.

[Scold]

I don't disagree on any major point.  I guess my question is: Does Valve think it is possible to do a game like Counter Strike as free to play?   I guess CS: GO as a 15 dollar pay once title (which came out far after TF2 went free to play) suggests an answer, but there is also a lot of history they have to deal with there.  

The Asian port of CounterStrike with RPG elements and like 40 more guns suggests it's possible, though it will make your head hurt.

[Paelos]

There seems to be a huge market of people out there who just want a fun game

There is a market for games that aren't fun?

Sure, ask anyone who finished Witcher 2.

It wasn't fun? I liked it ok.

[caladein]

There seems to be a huge market of people out there who just want a fun game

There is a market for games that aren't fun?

A market for games that are "just fun"? Sure, tons of games are more than that. But I wouldn't play TF2 seriously any more than I would want to play Catacombs seriously.

[Lantyssa]

There seems to be a huge market of people out there who just want a fun game

There is a market for games that aren't fun?

Sure, ask anyone who finished Witcher 2.

It wasn't fun? I liked it ok.

It wasn't Dragon Age 2...

[Malakili]

I don't disagree on any major point.  I guess my question is: Does Valve think it is possible to do a game like Counter Strike as free to play?   I guess CS: GO as a 15 dollar pay once title (which came out far after TF2 went free to play) suggests an answer, but there is also a lot of history they have to deal with there.  

The Asian port of CounterStrike with RPG elements and like 40 more guns suggests it's possible, though it will make your head hurt.

 

[MisterNoisy]

There is a market for games that aren't fun?

I think it's called 'Korea'.

[eldaec]

Where I have my doubts about all this is that they already had a fun game with huge community before they started selling hats for revenue.

The fun game was built over literally decades using a bottomless money pit provided by HL1, and its contribution to the corporate business plan was more about getting us to try steam than about generating its own revenue.

Saying that hugely popular games that have been running for some time can get people interested in RMT hats without resorting to selling content or game advantage is all very well. But I'd be fascinated to see it work on a brand new game that can't afford to exist simply as a loss leader for the world's leading PC game retail platform.


The model any RMT games producer should be seriously looking at isn't TF2. It's M:tG.

[tazelbain]

The model any RMT games producer should be seriously looking at isn't TF2. It's M:tG.

Huh?  M:tG had a large pre-existing fanbase and a mature game system even before the first line code of written. How is that a model for something new?

[eldaec]

I don't mean MTGO, I mean the way MTG built an enormous fan base for a game about paying huge sums for crappy bits of card with built in obsolescence, and doing so in a manner that has an incredible degree of price discrimination built in to the game system.

MTG players pay exactly as much as they can justify to play the game. There are always temptations to pay more, but always fun to have at whatever level you operate at.

There are huge money hats to be made if you can bottle the balance MTG kept between game designers and money men (and which other TCGs generally did not manage), and apply it to the bigger computer gaming market place.

[Goreschach]

I don't mean MTGO, I mean the way MTG built an enormous fan base for a game about paying huge sums for crappy bits of card with built in obsolescence, and doing so in a manner that has an incredible degree of price discrimination built in to the game system.

MTG players pay exactly as much as they can justify to play the game. There are always temptations to pay more, but always fun to have at whatever level you operate at.

There are huge money hats to be made if you can bottle the balance MTG kept between game designers and money men (and which other TCGs generally did not manage), and apply it to the bigger computer gaming market place.

Out.

[Malakili]

I don't mean MTGO, I mean the way MTG built an enormous fan base for a game about paying huge sums for crappy bits of card with built in obsolescence, and doing so in a manner that has an incredible degree of price discrimination built in to the game system.

MTG players pay exactly as much as they can justify to play the game. There are always temptations to pay more, but always fun to have at whatever level you operate at.

There are huge money hats to be made if you can bottle the balance MTG kept between game designers and money men (and which other TCGs generally did not manage), and apply it to the bigger computer gaming market place.

One of the reasons that MTG works is that people tend to play against people with similar amounts of money spent, at least in the physical game (never played online).  The problem, it strikes me, with online games is that you are generally facing off against the entire paying population.  Obviously people breaking into true competitive MTG are going to face people who pay more, and there are a variety of formats which level the playing field (sealed deck tournaments are a brilliant idea).   I'm just not sure how easily you can translate that into, say, a shooter.  A shooter has a full server full of people, all of whom are likely to have spent differing amounts of money, there isn't a way to sort of self select your opponents who will be equal in terms of skill/time/money.

Going on the idea of sealed deck though, I'd like to see some sort of analog show up in F2P games.  I can imagine in something like League of Legends, where you spend a couple bucks for an evening, get access to a certain amount of heroes, and only queue up against other people who have purchased that "deal."  You could even get rewarded with some kind of in game money bonus for doing well in that format, which might give even people who own heroes a reason to play it with the hopes of getting back more than they spent by doing very well.  Just throwing ideas out there I guess.

[eldaec]

Online it works the same. You generally play against people in a given room who are playing the same way.

The sealed thing is certainly key to the business model, but the reason people are comfortable paying for it us that most of the cost can be recovered selling cards to constructed players. There is a whole ecosystem there which I haven't seen anyone get close to in any other online game.

Just to bring it back to hats, mt:g also collects revenue from vanity tat (foil cards, sleeves, collectors edition decks, play mats, hats etc). But the vanity sales didn't and couldn't become significant until the game got established. You need a revenue model designed into the core of the game in order to get you there.

[Malakili]

Online it works the same. You generally play against people in a given room who are playing the same way.

This is just flat out not my experience.  Could you explain what you mean?

[Ingmar]

Online it works the same. You generally play against people in a given room who are playing the same way.

This is just flat out not my experience.  Could you explain what you mean?

It matches my experience. I run into goofy shit in the goofy shit room, tournament stuff in the testing-tournament-stuff room, etc.

[Malakili]

Online it works the same. You generally play against people in a given room who are playing the same way.

This is just flat out not my experience.  Could you explain what you mean?

It matches my experience. I run into goofy shit in the goofy shit room, tournament stuff in the testing-tournament-stuff room, etc.

That works great when games allow the creation of community servers, which is becoming an increasingly rare feature these days.  Particularly in a free to play game, like we are talking about, it is especially rare (I can literally only think of TF2 off hand).

[eldaec]

Not sure what else to say - mtgo has rooms, people broadly choose the appropriate room with the same accuracy that real life players pick the right group to play with. Same thing would, in general terms, work in any other central-server game.

Other games work ok with ladder brackets I guess.

Gear-score systems are imperfect but outside of tournaments they basically work fine.

MTGO also has system enforced pauper formats (commons only) if you want it, plus some formats are considered serious business by the community and others not so much (Standard >> Block > Ext). And there is always Momir.

[Malakili]

Oh I see.  I agree that magic has managed this uncommonly well.  What I am not sure is how to translate their success with the model to other genres.

[Ingmar]

Online it works the same. You generally play against people in a given room who are playing the same way.

This is just flat out not my experience.  Could you explain what you mean?

It matches my experience. I run into goofy shit in the goofy shit room, tournament stuff in the testing-tournament-stuff room, etc.

That works great when games allow the creation of community servers, which is becoming an increasingly rare feature these days.  Particularly in a free to play game, like we are talking about, it is especially rare (I can literally only think of TF2 off hand).

I thought you were saying that wasn't your experience with MTGO specifically.

[Malakili]

Online it works the same. You generally play against people in a given room who are playing the same way.

This is just flat out not my experience.  Could you explain what you mean?

It matches my experience. I run into goofy shit in the goofy shit room, tournament stuff in the testing-tournament-stuff room, etc.

That works great when games allow the creation of community servers, which is becoming an increasingly rare feature these days.  Particularly in a free to play game, like we are talking about, it is especially rare (I can literally only think of TF2 off hand).

I thought you were saying that wasn't your experience with MTGO specifically.

Yeah, my bad on that, I should have been more clear.  I thought we were just using "room" as a generic word for server (as I've occasionally seen done).   In any event, as I mentioned above, I agree that magic has got it right (or at least close to right), but I don't know how to make it work the same way in other genres that use the F2P model.