[MUD-Dev] Will players pay for public services?

[ceo]

Tom Hunter wrote:
> ceo at grexengine.com wrote:

>> $10/month seems to be a de facto automatic baseline for MMOGs -
>> even amongst those who just picked the number "because everyone
>> else does it" (even though that's no longer the case, the number
>> has stuck). $X/month also seems to be a common target amongst
>> people I run into who are hoping to start a small commercial MUD.

> Its worth noting that the $10 a month figure has moved up because
> some one (I don't remember who was first) priced their game higher
> and the rest of the industry discovered that the same people who
> were paying $10 a month were willing to pay $13 to $15.

Indeed. And I was predicting years ago that the $10 was going to
rise towards tens of dollars over the coming decade, not fall as
many seemed to think. (a naive thing to think IMHO; the last
thousand years of history suggest that complex tricky risky products
initially get more expensive over time, not less - not until they
become trivial to make/supply do the prices fall).

>> But I've seen online games (non RPG, non MMO) with a $5/year
>> pricing model - with several hundred thousand
>> subscribers. Obviously, this is a gross simplification, and
>> glosses over the cost of each customer, but a lot of people don't
>> seem to stop and think about the possibility that reducing
>> per-customer revenue by a factor of 20 could increase customer
>> numbers by a much greater ratio.

> This is a valid point but I think it deserves exploration because
> its just one piece of something more complex.  The question is one
> of value and how you offer it.

> The example above is an aguement that people will find it
> attractive if you offer them: The Same For Less.  Therefore more
> people will

It's at least as much about how a particular price reduces your
market for much less direct reasons (something that I've heard some
economists complain about endlessly - they wish people would simply
respond directly to the price). There are some irritating real-world
issues - like if the price is small enough then people with no
credit card can pay by other means less often - one of the great
advantages of the low monthly cost is that I've seen plenty of games
where people can and will pay by the year. Because it's infrequent,
they don't mind the hassle of the non-automated payment (both
consumer and provider).

For all the people without credit cards (or unwilling/unable to use
them for this kind of thing) this is a deal-maker.

> buy your product.  This does two things for you.  If your product
> is actually the same as a competitor it allows you to take market
> share from the more expensive competitor.  If two companies are
> selling the same apple but one is selling it for $1 and the other
> for $2 most people will buy the $1 apple.  If your product is
> unique (most

That is not a truism, although naively it looks like one. There is
plenty of evidence in the budget/shareware market in the 2000's that
doubling your price increases your sales. There are lots of
wishy-washy non-logical human factors involved (i.e. the stuff that
those theoretical economists resent because it wreaks havoc with
their neat models...).

> games fit here) then it enlarges your market by letting people
> with very little money buy your game.  In a country like the USA
> where the average income is over $30,000 a year your not adding
> that many people to your potential market at $5 because just about
> everyone can pay much more than that.  If you were selling the
> game in China where the average income is in the hundreds of
> dollars this strategy might make lots of sense.

> The Same For Less is just one of the potentail offers you can
> make.  There is also More For More.  Pay me $25 a month and you
> get access to unique content.  Or pay me $49.99 once and you get
> the latest

Incidentally, I've been guesstimating for years that $25-$35/month
was a likely long term average/target for the high dev-cost
subs-based online (RPG) games. It shouldn't take the publishers too
long to realise they can market these things as "a new game every
month". There is likely to be a discount compared to a standard
retail game simply because a new retail game is "more different" and
so the easiest way to market these "game per month" subscriptions is
as "almost a game per month - not so uniquely new, but with other
benefits instead (like persistent monotonic character/status
improvement)"

Adam M
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