The Economic Metagame

[pxib]

So let me see if I've got this straight:

Making a profitable MMOG is all about how long you can get the player to pay the monthly fee. Box sales help pay off the marketing costs, but an ideal player is one who continues to pay the monthly fee for several years. Ideally they stop actually playing the game, lowering the bandwidth costs and customer service budget. The perfect player buys the game, adores it enough to tell all her friends how wonderful it is and how they absolutely must buy it, and signs up for the longest-term subscription available to get the "best price". Then she stops playing. Not all at once, mind you, she pops on for a few minutes regularly to manage a time-sensative activity (Keep a house from collapsing, change which skill is being researched, inspect auctions, run a little PVP so her rank doesn't decay, saying hi to folks in the guild, etc.) During this time she continues to encourage friends to do the same, and when the subscription plan comes due, SHE RESUBSCRIBES... the long-term plan again.

Players must believe the game is a productive entertainment expense and then reach a delicate balance. If they play too little they'll realize that they're throwing their money away and find somewhere else to spend it. If they play too much, they'll realize they're throwing their LIVES away and find something else to do with their time.

From that standpoint, chasing the catass (Plays-Too-Much Incarnate) seems like economic suicide. The only way to convince him he's doing something productive with all that time is to keep throwing expensive new content at him. As soon as he thinks there's nothing left to do, he leaves. BUT every time that content arrives and the grind advances, he loses any of the progress he's fought for (mudflation makes his previous victories obsolete) there's a small but growing chance he rethinks his time investment and abandons ship.

He's always just one step away from the next big thing, jumping to whatever new game promises new content and a new hill to push boulders up. Somewhere he dreams he'll leave the rest of the players in the dust and be king of the hill for a while.

The other player, the one who barely plays, actually sticks with the current game because she spends so little time actually playing that most of the old content is still new to her. More to the point, she sticks around because she's investing... all that matters are those time-sensative cues and the fun that she has for an hour or so every few days. Being king of the hill isn't as important as smelling the flowers. Sometimes she even revisits old locations just because she remembers them fondly and heck, she hasn't been that way in a while.

Isn't that the player the bottom-liners should be chasing?

I'm not saying anything new. This is what everybody says. "Casual players are the holy grail" and whatnot.

So what needs to be done? How does a game make somebody pay NOT to play?

[geldonyetich]

As the lead authority, this thread gets the captain obvious seal of approval:

 

Last I heard, those "in the know" figure that every game will get boring for everybody eventually and therefore the idea of a MMORPG being an everlasting gobstopper of subscription pulling is a pipe dream.  Nonetheless, I think that it's the financial obligation of everybody developing a subscription-based game to try to pull this off (and it is here that I get some disagreement). 

As a player, I've grown suspicious of games that have subscription fees attached because the temptation on behalf of the developers to turn this game into a grind is apparently overwhelming for many of them.  Grinds suck, at the point where a game has become a grind I stop playing, and this is the mark of a veteran MMORPG player.  The catass is the rare breed of player who has yet to figure this out, and so barely factor into the equation.

The kind of "casual players" who barely play the game seem to me to only be subscribed because they're rich enough to spend $15/mo and not care where it's going.  They cancel their subscription because they've been reminded to tidy their bank dealings, not because the game has them 'barely hooked".  At best, they're just in a holding pattern waiting for a better game to pry them loose, perhaps attached to their virtual achievements.  Developers looking to hook these players will basically go for minimal commitment but the most powerful achievement illusion they can manage.  At that point they're not artists so much as capitalists, and have lost much of my respect.  Their money hats will cushion the blow of that, I'm sure.

[Morat20]

Star Wars Galaxies -- they spent three years fucking their customers square in the ass and still managed to retain 150k+ subs. Take a look at the difference between the NGE (whenever everyone finally just fucking gave up) and the versions before.

But if you go that route -- or EVEs or UO's -- you give up the big numbers. Do you want LOTS of customers for a brief time? Or half that (if you're lucky) that stick around until the lights go out?

[Merusk]

The logic behind 'chasing the catass', as has been explained in previous conversations is many-sided. Let's see how much of them I remember.

1) Catasses are the most connected.  They run the fan sites, they generate the hype.  Your casual player doesn't hear about the game without them.

2) Activites your catass is plowing through RIGHT NOW, the casuals can get around to eventaully.  2 years after launch, if you haven't been in Molten Core, or at the very least Zul'Gurub it's simply because you've chosen not to go.  It's just that easy to do, and will be easier after the expansion.  (Note: I didn't say completed MC, just been in, and messed around.)

3) As most of the 'hardcore' tend to be achievers, the content gets skewed that way.  Even in SWG, the hardcore players were achievers.  They were just achievers who liked tradeskills more than foozle wacking.  They were the ones who got things like factory XP nerfed after they'd already climbed the ladder.

4)  The 'catasses get bored and leave' argument has been tossed around since Everquest.  It's never been proven true, and more often proven that your 'casual' folks are the ones who game-hop. Just look at most of the players here.  Those of us hardcore into one game or another sub for years, those with the 'login every day or three' drop those games and pick-up others willy-nilly.   

5) "grinds suck."  All players have different expectations and see different things as grinds.  I saw SWG tradeskills and maxing UO skills as a grind, yet enjoy leveling in WoW.  To me Lineage was soul-crushing, but EQ wasn't so bad, and WoW is damn-near perfect in terms of developmental length.  To many of you I just vomited pea-soup as my head spun around spouting the words of the Devil, and to others I'm saying "I only like EZ-mode gamez".   This is something Devs will never, EVER, be able to satisfy everyone on, and so should pick their market and cater to it.

[geldonyetich]

Star Wars Galaxies -- they spent three years fucking their customers square in the ass and still managed to retain 150k+ subs. Take a look at the difference between the NGE (whenever everyone finally just fucking gave up) and the versions before.

You mentioned 150k subscribers, and NGE undermining their players.  My take is slightly different.  Prepare for a Captain Obvious production.

Star Wars Galaxies was never a very good game, possibly because its virtual worldly nature was heavily undermined by player expectations of an action-adventure game for an action-adventure licence.  However, even in a mediocre game, there will always be core following of players who tried the game and found something worth playing there.   Star Wars Galaxies' licence assured that millions of players tried it, so 150k was just the core following of a medicore game.  No SOE to customer abuse required.

After two years of trying to tweak and add to the existing game (much to the chagrin of players who enjoyed it just the way it was) the SOE/Lucasarts suits eventually decided that the existing game had to go.  This was the NGE.  However, the NGE had a problem in that now the existing 150k existing players were re-tested to see if they would find something worth playing in this new game.  It didn't ease them into this transition when they took the game they had bought and paid for and ripped it out of their hands.

The hope was to fish in the millions of players who had already left, but those likely would never return to the game ever again.  What they should have done was create an entirely different Star Wars MMORPG, but I suspect that Lucasarts wasn't willing to let them.

(This has been a Captain Obvious Production.  Obviously.)

So, anyway, how that ties into this conversation is that it can show how if you want to retain your existing playerbase there's such a thing as too much change and also that you might as well cut your losses and keep your core following by catering to them.

[Morat20]

I meant more that there were certain games -- UO, SWG to name the two most famous -- that kept a core group of players well past the sell-by date.

I think the virtual world/DIKU divide is pretty central to how your playerbase retains. A virtual world is "sticky" -- the people that play it get invested in the game and the world. They're making virtual lives, and the barrier to exit is rather high.

Diku games are conquerable. You don't play to make a virtual life, but to "win". They keep players by giving you  more and more to conquer, but sooner or later you've conquered it all -- or have gotten sick of conquering that world and want to move to the next.

Games you can win attract more players, but they leave when they feel they've won. Games you can live attract a lot fewer, but they stick around a lot longer.

[Merusk]

A virtual world is "sticky" -- the people that play it get invested in the game and the world. They're making virtual lives, and the barrier to exit is rather high.

Again, subjective.  Virtual worlds are no more or less sticky than Dikus.  It's more the player and what THEY want than the game.  I found it very easy to walk away from SWG and Eve both, but still get jonses for kiting with my druid in EQ.  Schild finds it easy to dismiss both types, and has an obvious passion for SP RPGs and still gets all knock-knee'd about Diablo-types.  Diff'rnt strokes for different folks.

[Morat20]

A virtual world is "sticky" -- the people that play it get invested in the game and the world. They're making virtual lives, and the barrier to exit is rather high.

Again, subjective.  Virtual worlds are no more or less sticky than Dikus.  It's more the player and what THEY want than the game.  I found it very easy to walk away from SWG and Eve both, but still get jonses for kiting with my druid in EQ.  Schild finds it easy to dismiss both types, and has an obvious passion for SP RPGs and still gets all knock-knee'd about Diablo-types.  Diff'rnt strokes for different folks.

I think I'm not being clear -- the sort of player that LIKES virtual worlds is going to find one, create a virtual life, and stay for a long time. The very nature of virtual worlds requires long-term commitment. People who don't like virtual worlds are going to try it, get bored, and leave. The stickiness is part and parcel of that sort of gameplay. Obviously if you don't LIKE virtual worlds, the barrier to exit is pretty damn low for you to exit a virtual world style game.

Games where you can win ultimately ends up with the player winning. Then they go on to win another game, unless the first is just so damn good that they want to win again and again -- and half the time that's PvP, where what you're doing is winning in different ways, against different people.

Games where you create virtual lives -- it's harder to put it down and move on, assuming you like virtual lives. Your friends, community, and investment don't come along very easily.

[Merusk]

No, you're being perfectly clear. I'm trying to point out it works the same way from the opposite side of the coin, you just seem like you're seeing it because it's not the type of game YOU want.  There's plenty of players who've been in EQ for 6+ years, or DAoC 5+ years, WoW 2 years, etc. 

[Morat20]

No, you're being perfectly clear. I'm trying to point out it works the same way from the opposite side of the coin, you just seem like you're seeing it because it's not the type of game YOU want.  There's plenty of players who've been in EQ for 6+ years, or DAoC 5+ years, WoW 2 years, etc. 

It's not an either/or proposition, either -- and there are so many more people who like "winnable" games that then you have to dig into churn and average sub length to get a real idea -- stuff companies don't tend to share.

However, I'd be willing to bet that the people who stick with a Diku for more than a year primarily stay there because their friends still play. Because their guild is still there. And when they move, it'll be the bulk of them moving at once to another game. They've created a community there, and their primary barrier to exit is that community -- not the game.

Why would it be surprisingly that a virtual world, designed to foster that sort of community and appealing specifically to the people who want that kind of community would be more successful at keeping such people?

I don't doubt there are people who still play EQ or WoW because they like it. Because it's fun. I certainly play WoW for that reason. But I can't imagine ever getting as invested in WoW as I can in EVE, or did in SWG -- even though the latter was by far an inferior game to WoW. And if I'm totally honest -- the reason I still find WoW fun is because I found good people to play it with. If I was still spending 90%+ of my time soloing or PuGing 5-mans, I wouldn't be there anymore. Hell, if a few guildies aren't on when I log on, I tend to log off rather than go grind solo without even guild chat to use.

[ajax34i]

Well, there's been a "done well" diku, but there hasn't been a "done well" virtual world, at least in my opinion.  So we can't really compare population numbers between the two kinds simply because there are a thousand other factors that also vary, making one game or another suck.

As far as MMO development, instead of aiming to keep it up indefinitely, I'd think that by now everyone's aiming for a 5-year lifespan.  An MMO seems to also be a lifetime achievement, one hit wonder type of thing, in that most of your talent will leave and go form their own dev house, before the first expansion.

Form corp., make MMO, publish MMO, dissolve corp. after 5 years.  Rinse (re-hire, or form another corp.) and repeat.

[Akkori]

There's never been a "done well" diku, in my opinion, but there *has* been one of a virtual world.

I honestly don't see why it's so hard to have both playstyles happy in one game. If WoW is so damn good, why wouldn't they put some of that gazillion $ they make and put in a virtual world part? My thinking is because those who DONT like the virtual world don't *want* it in their game. But those who like the virtual world are likely okay with the diku aspect being in their game.

[Strazos]

Because, really, if you're the type of gamer who is focused on DIKU-style gameplay, World-type content does nothing for you - it's essentially wasted efforts on the part of the developers.

Ask any of the leet raider kiddies in WoW - do they want houses or whatever other "world" thing you could implement, or new raid zones?

[MahrinSkel]

On "Every game getting boring eventually."  Some games that start out boring to the non-fan seem to suck a lot of people in for a lifetime.  Chess.  Bowling.  Darts.  Golf.  What's the point in hitting a little ball with a curved stick every weekend?  Why not build some kind of pneumatic CO2 powered cannon and use that instead?  What about putting some real challenges on the course, like a rotating green, or using balls that have little offcenter gyroes?

There's more to finding the right way to design a game for longevity than chasing the shiny.

--Dave

[Endie]

There's more to golf's success than that: it has really sticky guilds, albeit with high entry requirements for the catass ones ("the pros").

The game is rife with RMT-funded models for character improvement, though, especially for the best equipment.  Most of the top players have ongoing power-levelling aid.  I dabble, myself, but I'm not willing to throw too much effort into it seeing that those who happen to have started early and who are able to pour in huge amounts of time have a huge advantage over newbies.  Frankly, even ten or twenty n00b characters have little chance of beating someone who just happened to start playing twenty years ago.

In the main, the character models suck.  All I've been able to set up is a mundane, heavy-set mid-30s toon, which is not that visually stunning to be honest.  Extraordinarily, for once the female models are even worse than the male ones, with a very few exceptions.  At least there are no elf boobies.

That said, the graphical engine is stunning.  Seriously, quite often i play it and don't give a monkey for the game: I'm just wandering from one point of the gameworld to the next marveling, close-up, at the sand and water effects.

[Engels]

Heh heh, thanks for the chuckle, Endie.

[El Gallo]

[The catass] always just one step away from the next big thing, jumping to whatever new game promises new content and a new hill to push boulders up. Somewhere he dreams he'll leave the rest of the players in the dust and be king of the hill for a while.

The other player, the one who barely plays, actually sticks with the current game because she spends so little time actually playing that most of the old content is still new to her. More to the point, she sticks around because she's investing... all that matters are those time-sensitive cues and the fun that she has for an hour or so every few days. Being king of the hill isn't as important as smelling the flowers. Sometimes she even revisits old locations just because she remembers them fondly and heck, she hasn't been that way in a while.

I disagree with a lot of this.  The catass is less likely to leave because they have so much invested in the game.  Only a game that is a LOT better than the current game will lead the catass to abandon the hundreds of days they have invested in one game and start over.  The EQ uberguilders stuck with EQ when there was next-to-no uber content (original-kunark), when the uber content was shitty as hell (Luclin), when the uber content was inaccessible because it was unfinished (a long stretch of PoP), and when the uber content was really, really shitty (GoD).  They didn't go to any competing games until WoW, a game that (many believed) utterly blew EQ out of the water, quality-wise (though, to be fair, the fact that GoD was really, really awful for ubers probably helped, as did the fact that the most influential members of the uber community were beating the drums loudly for WoW).  

Aside from the years of shiny accumulation, your catass is also locked into your game by social bonds.  When you basically sacrifice your life to a MMOG, your guild mates are pretty much your entire social life.  It's very hard to leave that unless they all move with you.

On the other hand, Johnny Roxxor, your typical WoW casual, pops in once in a while to wtfpwn noobs in Hillsbrad and scream to his PUG that his shadow priest is dps only even though nobody else in the group has a heal spell and everyone is a faggot and he'll be gone the second WAR comes out because WAR won't be filled with faggots like you faggots, faggots.  He doesn't have a ton of accumulated loot to keep him in the game, and he doesn't have the social bonds keeping him trapped there either.

Now, not every casual is Johnny Roxxor, but a lot of them are.  Bored housewives and time-starved powergamers are less likely to jump ship, since the former is likely to develop sticky social bonds (and often puts in catass hours) while the latter is just like the uberguild catass, but in slow motion.  They don't want to lose their hundreds of hours of accumulated shiny, because it'll take them a long time to start over in another game.  Could you develop a game that only focuses on TSPs?  Maybe, but I'm not positive.  They might need the uber-shiny carrot to keep them plowing away for 8 hours a week or whatever.  Also, a lot of TSPs rely on bona fide catass guildmates.

[Akkori]

Thats true. I would have been considered as power-gamer during the first year and a half of SWG seeing as I played probably 20+ hours a week. But I never fought or participated in the meager excuse of a GCW. My shiny was resources and crafting, then running a player city and resources, then just resources, then I was gone.

It seems to depend on how invested in the game as a whole they are. I am sure there are lots of loot whores out there who would leave in a minute if there was a game where they could get shinier stuff. But there are probably those who wouldn't also. MMO's seem to be fighting a battle with themselves on whether to cater to those who *like* the multi-player, community game, and those who view an MMO as a single-player game "for me" that happens to have a bunch of losers who also play so that they can be dominated "by me". Its narcissism against communalism (that a word?). No one wins *that* battle, especially when the guys who write the damn game can't make up their mind.

[Venkman]

Retention is based on a number of concurrently-evolving factors. But at its core, retention is linked to the quality of the experience. It doesn't matter how strong a community a player has nor how much loot they've accumulated. If the game sucks and breaks a lot or they have a string of really bad CSR experiences, they're going to leave.

I only illustrate that because important factors can't be focused upon to the exclusion of other factors. It's more of a sliding scale of various specialties.

And I say that because the games with the best retention and success do not focus on just one player type. You need a balance of player types, everyone from the volunteer correspondents to the alliance leaders to guild leaders to temporary group leaders to solo players. From there you can expect emergent behavior and thriving trade (I won't say "economy" because that's a different sort of thing). I'm a big fan of Mike Rozak's illustration of this in The Player Pyramid.

People equate diku with Achievers. Yes, they're there. But there's also achievers, folks who like the virtual experience and do other things (weddings, parties, funerals, escorts, that emergent stuff). Even the most contrived and limiting experience like WoW is replete with these things simply because the creative players will not be denied their extra-curricular fun.