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Apparently gamers WANT to pay.

Activision says you should "expect" paid-for online models such as those in World of Warcraft to make the transition to other games, including Call of Duty.

Speaking during yesterday's BMO Capital Markets Conference (which sounds fun), Activision Blizzard CFO, Thomas Tippl said that while WoW's model is difficult to replicate, players should expect new monetization models for its other games soon.

"It's definitely an aspiration that we see potential in, particularly as we look at different business models to monetize the online gameplay," said Tippl. "There's good knowledge exchange happening between the Blizzard folks and our online guys."
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"We have great experience also on Call of Duty with the success we had on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. A lot of that knowledge is getting actually built into the Battle.Net platform and the design of that," he added.

"I think it's been mutually beneficial, and you should expect us to test and ultimately launch additional online monetization models of some of some of our biggest franchises like Call of Duty."

According to the Activision CFO, there is a demand from its core fanbase to pay for additional services.

"Our gamers are telling us there's lots of services and innovation they would like to see that they're not getting yet. From what we see so far, additional content, as well as all the services Blizzard is offering, is that there is demand from the core gamers to pay up for that," he said.

What.
The.
Fuck.

Someone was bound to try it eventually after the success of WoW. And the standardization of DLC...

... and the fact that games are increasingly obviously half finished...

...

What do you expect from a company that doesn't want titles it can "fully exploit" regularly?

Actiblizzard can't keep this up. They have to keep pumping out GOOD blockbuster titles like all the time to keep people wanting to pay for this kind of crap, and MW2 is already slipping in the quality department. It's a long time till MW3...

Is there another article on this, because I'm not sure how to interpret this one. Are we talking micro-transactions here or trying to charge people to play multiplayer on top of having to buy a Live membership? Because I really can't see Microsoft letting gaming companies charge extra for people to access the same networks as everyone else. I'm not sure about Sony though, cause Sony are even bigger dicks than MS.

Well, FFXI has a monthly subscription fee in addition to Xbox Live Gold membership, so it's not unheard of.

Losonti Tokash wrote:Well, FFXI has a monthly subscription fee in addition to Xbox Live Gold membership, so it's not unheard of.

Incorrect, you can play FFXI 360 with only a silver membership. I myself did for several months while I was saving to get my own Gaming PC.

I don't see a problem with them offering new payed-for online services, I do see a problem with them expecting to charge people for pretty much the same content they had before.

I think they are missing the reason people pay for WoW, there's a constant stream of content, good customer support, and the game model is built around online interactions, they really can't be as stupid as to think people will be ok paying a monthly fee for a 10-hour long game with a simplistic deathmatch multiplayer option.

And if they are thinking about microtransactions for extra content, that's pretty much what expansions were about already.

Commander 598 wrote:Actiblizzard can't keep this up. They have to keep pumping out GOOD blockbuster titles like all the time to keep people wanting to pay for this kind of crap, and MW2 is already slipping in the quality department. It's a long time till MW3...

Can't they though? It seems that the gaming masses don't really give a fudge about the quality of games, as long as they don't go the way of Haze or Daikatana.

The problem is that this is the FPS genre, there's actually plenty of viable competition that will cost the consumer less and be of equal or even better quality. The user base for MW2 might not even keep going for the next six months.

Activision isn't in any actual financial danger, but I almost guarantee they won't meet their expectations on this.

Someone was bound to try it eventually after the success of WoW. And the standardization of DLC...

... and the fact that games are increasingly obviously half finished...

Remember on the MW2 Thread about wanting the gaming industry to crash, so as to stop this trend, this guy seems to relish the prospect as he despised the entire HD gaming model, which he felt is directly responsible for shit like this, and felt this was inevitable thanks to current trends.

Rellish the Death of HD gaming

The WoW model works because you have a persistant world stuffed to the gills with content and competition, so gamers feel like they're actually paying for something in specific. For this to work for MW2 would require them to offer something really amazing to the player, because you really don't want to pay 50 bucks for the game, 20 bucks for the online access, and have minor DLC for a game you'll play off-and-on for 4 months.

If they're talking about adding stuff like company-monitored dedicated servers back in, for a fee to upkeep, then yes they're probably correct. Or if they mean things like 2 bucks to buy a new gun for your character, yeah, there's probably people who would do that too... but hardly the droves they're imagining. Any amount of tiny DLC earns the game company quite a bit of money overall, so it's really surprising that nobody has done much with it as yet. It's also possible they'd sell the game for 20 bucks and make it 10 bucks a month to play online--and hopefully recoup and make more money that way. But I'll believe that when I see it.

But a pay-to-play model for MW2 type games? Not a chance. I'm not going to pay extra money to the company on top of everything else just to play the thing online.

LordOskuro wrote:I think they are missing the reason people pay for WoW, there's a constant stream of content, good customer support, and the game model is built around online interactions, they really can't be as stupid as to think people will be ok paying a monthly fee for a 10-hour long game with a simplistic deathmatch multiplayer option.

And if they are thinking about microtransactions for extra content, that's pretty much what expansions were about already.

I don't think the Blizzard part of Activision is missing why people play WoW, and I'm not too sure Activision is, either. As you noted, there is a constant stream of content. In fact, most people don't ever access all the content in WoW, they just aren't on-line enough hours of the day. I've been playing for four years and it wasn't until two months ago that any of my characters got the "Explorer" title meaning they had explored every zone. Four years to explore the world, that's a hell of a time sink! (Of course it wasn't the only thing I was doing, but that's the point, there's a LOT to do in that virtual world) On a certain level this means there is always something new for you to do, or something you haven't done in awhile, so it's harder to get bored with the entire game world. Communities do form on-line. Problems do get fixed (even if not as quickly as many would like). Customer support...? Well, I'd call it adequate. There are times it becomes overloaded and you can wait days for response. On the other hand, handling a 12 million person subscriber base spread across several continents is no easy feat. That's more people than make up most nations.

A couple other reasons you missed: the game is flexible. While there is clearly support for end-game raiding and PvP you do not have to do those things to find enjoyable content. Some people go on WoW as much or more to hang out with others in a virtual world as to focus on the end-game. Spontaneous, player-originated and organized events occur as the virtual world allows non-scripted actions.

One perceived downside is the monthly subscription fee (or in some countries, the need to purchase hours in advance of game play). It is that steady stream of revenue, however, that allows for the constant development of content and the "world event" content that occurs every few weeks. For all its faults (and I could list a few) WoW does continually upgrade, fix, and generate content. You get something for that money you spend.

For a long time WoW has maintained its base subscription, and you can play that game for just the cost of "vanilla WoW" and that monthly fee (which hasn't gone up for years). Granted, you won't access everything, but for someone just starting and playing casually those first 60 levels can take a year to get through (or more if you play a lot of alts). You can stop playing, save your money, then resume where you left off because your characters don't just simply evaporate.

Want more? Buy the expansions.

Now, recently (this year) WoW has started to offer "microtransaction" items. At first this was things like a server change, name change, or gender change. Those really are above and beyond playing the game. You can access all in-game content without any of those three, they really are extra. And what Blizzard discovered is that a significant number of people will pay for it anyway. There were items from the Trading Card Game that could be redeemed in on-line WoW - again, entirely extra to the game itself (vanity pets, cosmetic but non-functional tabards, etc.) but people buy decks just to get those items. Now they're offering in-game vanity pets that you can purchase with money. They are darn cute, and one of them has some very nice animations and will interact with other players on a limited basis (If you bow to a Panderan Monk pet he will bow in return - this has led to a LOT of bowing in WoW lately) but again they are not part of the actual game play.

I think that the player base has a high tolerance for that sort of microtransaction, and Blizzard has stated several times that they want to keep the microtransactions at that level, the level of vanity pets and not-vital-to-game-play. The extras sure might be nice, but they're entirely non-essential to accessing content. Keep the base cost low to keep a large subscriber base. A large subscriber base means a microtransaction item that only 5% or 10% of players buy will still make a crapload of money. If you don't have a large subscriber base, though, you won't profit nearly as much.

And really, I don't see anything wrong with that model. I think games where you can buy gold with real money, have to purchase (or can purchase) items that really are connected to end-game or even mid-game play, and so forth that people start to feel they're being bled dry.

Regular DLC is pretty established this article calculated that $9 of DLC was sold for every copy of CoD:World at War. If you consider how much of the cost of a retail game is made up of manufacturing, distribution and the retailer's big cut then that $9 is a fairly big increase in the developer's income.

A lot of Western publishers seem to be looking at the number of Asian MMOs out there which are funded by microtransactions and seem to think they could tack on extensive microtransactions to their game and roll in the money. A lot of those Asian MMOs are free to play though. It's not a case of charge $50 for the game, then $10 a month in subscription and fleece them with microtransactions.

For all the bleating about how the PC version of MW2 was so shit and should be boycotted it's still the top-selling PC game at every site I've checked. I still find the day-one sales figures for MW2 utterly terrifying.

One other thing to consider is that there has been pay-for content already with EA. The booster packs for Battlefield 2, "Euro Forces" and "Armoured Fury" were downloadable content, and that was some time ago. However it never seemed to be hugely popular.

Jade Falcon wrote:One other thing to consider is that there has been pay-for content already with EA. The booster packs for Battlefield 2, "Euro Forces" and "Armoured Fury" were downloadable content, and that was some time ago. However it never seemed to be hugely popular.

Commenting on Euro Force and Armored Fury, I can't remember if they were integrated into the regular rotation of maps. I recall the special forces expansion having to be booted up separately as it seemed significantly different from the other expansions. If integration were in issue, ie not needing to load a separate program while in the game, I could see how that would affect those expansions popularity.

I remember the map pack for CoD4 was initially on a different playlist. They eventually patched it into the regular rotation, but I can only the guess the reasoning behind that.

Now that I think about it, Guild Wars also has microtransaction additional items. Again, not essential for game play (and GW is subscription free) but adding extra storage or character slots is appealing to some.

So really, it's not that new. I expect that microtransactions will become more common over time, whether we like it or not.

TheMuffinKing wrote:

Jade Falcon wrote:One other thing to consider is that there has been pay-for content already with EA. The booster packs for Battlefield 2, "Euro Forces" and "Armoured Fury" were downloadable content, and that was some time ago. However it never seemed to be hugely popular.

Commenting on Euro Force and Armored Fury, I can't remember if they were integrated into the regular rotation of maps. I recall the special forces expansion having to be booted up separately as it seemed significantly different from the other expansions. If integration were in issue, ie not needing to load a separate program while in the game, I could see how that would affect those expansions popularity.

I remember the map pack for CoD4 was initially on a different playlist. They eventually patched it into the regular rotation, but I can only the guess the reasoning behind that.

They weren't initially integrated, it's only with the newest BF2 patch that BF2, Special Forces, and the two boosters are all integrated together, which is a good thing, albeit long overdue.

Broomstick wrote:Now that I think about it, Guild Wars also has microtransaction additional items. Again, not essential for game play (and GW is subscription free) but adding extra storage or character slots is appealing to some.

So really, it's not that new. I expect that microtransactions will become more common over time, whether we like it or not.

Of course it isn't new; the idea that anyone is outraged in 2009 about paying for features in a game is ridiculous (but very popular with some people anyway). Like Zod, I don't really see what they're talking about. If they mean micro-DLC that's so standard and present in CoD4 I can't see them bothering to announce it; it almost sounds like pay-for-feature, but I'm not sure how that is going to work in the FPS framework. What can you sell access to in an FPS (outside of weapons, like in BF:Heroes)?

If it's just 'buy DLC for MW2' and people are angry about it, it's time the average angry internet nerd woke up and realised the state of the industry these days.

I can understand not being happy about a game that boils down to "he who spends the most real money on this wins", but if it's a matter of paying extra just to change the color of your armor with no other effect or have a cute set of pixels follow you around that is essentially useless for game purposes, well - if you don't like it don't buy it.

That's the thing, the statement 'we think people will pay for premium features' doesn't tell us what they're talking about. BF:H is openly a pay-for-feature game, and nobody cares, but until we know exactly what they'll offer to sell this just seems like 'MW2 will have paid content' which appears to be a giant no-brainer.

Games like Guild Wars show that people will certainly pay for useless shit, but BF:H shows that they'll pay for guns etc too.

Stark wrote:That's the thing, the statement 'we think people will pay for premium features' doesn't tell us what they're talking about. BF:H is openly a pay-for-feature game, and nobody cares, but until we know exactly what they'll offer to sell this just seems like 'MW2 will have paid content' which appears to be a giant no-brainer.

Games like Guild Wars show that people will certainly pay for useless shit, but BF:H shows that they'll pay for guns etc too.

Absolutely. It's not all bad, since BF:H doesn't even sell guns superior to the ones you earn in-game anyway. You can 'buy' those better weapons with points that you get for playing anyway, and these disappear over a few days, so you then pay your money back to buy more of them--so you only run into issues of currency if you had lots of characters and wanted to keep them all fully stocked. It's possible they're offering a new Elite tier of pay-for goods, but last I checked it was just clothes and stuff that required real money.

If COD games start offering, like... DLC that opens up those guns from Eraser that you cannot get access to any other way, yeah, that might be cause for alarm. Beyond that, what'll they possibly offer? They don't want to damage the competition-friendly nature of their games, which helps drive popularity. We may worry that they'll start dropping normal features just to sell them back to you in DLC format, but it's not like these games ship with tons of bells and whistles anyway.

If I were them, you're more likely to see them sell the specialized classes in a class-based game. Like, everyone who plays with the Basic Package can be medic or soldier, sure. But snipers, artillery spotters, and dick-waving pilots are special Competitor's Package options. Then give soldiers a normal looking camo, but offer lots of desert, snow, mud and urban maps... with sand, snow, mud and urban-style camo options, for mere fractions of a dollar! Get improved matchmaking, access to all the best games, only a dollar per pay period to get Clantags--and wearable in-game dogtags!

There's so much shit you can sell on DLC that the only thing holding them back is a lack of creativity for it. People who don't give a shit won't pay for shit--and that's fine. It's the competitive asshole who plays your game all the goddamn time who is most vulnerable to DLC, and since those are the people who buy expansions and who play your game for years instead of buying new games, they're sitting on spare cash and may think "Hey, buying the HD Colors of War Graphics Pack only costs 5 bucks, but it's like getting a next-gen version of my favorite game!"

It's actually good for the consumer, so long as the middle-consumer isn't penalized for not buying it. Dragon Age is bridging on what I was talking about, douche-level DLC, with quests in-game that want you to have DLC, characters who won't hang out with you unless you have it, etc. You could make it like in FO3, where the game ends entirely differently depending on if or if not you have the DLC. That kind of stuff will piss people off, but by and large, most people don't really care that much anyway, and would probably be more likely to buy games if they cost 30 bucks again.

Broomie is right about WoW having boatloads more content than anything else out there. I'm probably considered a 'hardcore' wow-player, and it's taken me over a year of heavy playing to hit 'Loremaster', 'Explorer', and 'Seeker', which means I have now officially been everywhere and done everything...

But there's STILL two or three of their end-level dungeons I've never been to. What's more, they're about to come out with 'Cataclysm', which will pretty much double the current amount of content and exploration that you can do. Plus, Blizzard's social interface makes it very easy to create friendly guilds and make friends with players, I am incredibly socially awkward and I still raid, talk, laugh, and joke with people twice a week. I can't imagine EVERY giving up my monthly subscription at this point in my life, though I'm sure I'll likely play it less as I grow old and have a family of my own, there's just too much THERE to walk away from.

Jade Falcon wrote: They weren't initially integrated, it's only with the newest BF2 patch that BF2, Special Forces, and the two boosters are all integrated together, which is a good thing, albeit long overdue.

I’m pretty darn sure the boosters could be integrated if you set the server to do so. Most servers did not because so few people had the packs that it didn’t make sense to cause confusion like that. It'd just screw over people and get them kicked every other change of map. Special Forces is still separate as it was a complete standalone game unless I am really really missing something playing this game every single day, and I’m one of the few people who did have all the expansions already. The scores have always all been linked though so you ranked up on all possible configurations though which was nice.

You might be right. I know the scores have always been integrated, but as you say, so few people seemed to bother with the boosters the servers were all dedicated towards them. It made finding Euro Forces servers a pain, Armoured Fury, at least for a little while was a bit more popular.