Apr
19

What we use to value…

12 Comments

Yeah…another post about the horse. Tired of the discussion yet? ;)

While on Gamebreakr last night, we chatted that up quite a bit and I just wanted to expand my thoughts a bit more as I come to grips with this very puzzling reality. We’ll probably be talking about this on SUWT 62, so this article is more about me recording and evolving my thoughts than anything else.

Remember when $4.99 bought you this waaaaay back in 2005?:

“The Bloodline Chronicles adds some amazing new elements to EverQuest II that could only be done in a major content release, including some exciting new ways to interact with the environment,” said Scott Hartsman, senior producer of EverQuest II, Sony Online Entertainment. “With this Adventure Pack, players have the ability to unlock a whole new dynamic storyline in the game based on the alignment of their characters.”

In The Bloodline Chronicles, adventurers will journey underground, beneath the Nektulos Forest, to explore five new areas, including the Tombs of Night, the Crypt of T’Haen, and the D’Morte Burial Chambers. The areas are aimed at adventurers level 30 to 45. All EverQuest II players will have access to the Tombs of Night even if they don’t purchase the adventure pack. Gamers who preorder The Bloodline Chronicles will have access to D’Morte Burial Chambers as early as today.

Remember when we all went ape shit crazy, a mere 4 years ago, when they dared to charge $1.99 for horse armor?:

Speaking with 1UP, Hines elaborated on the decision to charge for the download. Although additional Morrowind content, which was developed in-house, was released for free, Hines maintains that Oblivion is a “different game,” and with that comes a “different approach to downloadable content and the size and scope of things we want to do, and what it takes to do them.” Bottom-line: the next-gen is gonna be expensive for all of us, and if Bethesda’s bold reaction to player criticism is any indication of the state of things to come, then don’t expect to be receiving handouts any longer. Crack open your wallet, or enjoy the game as is. Your decision.

So…we use to pay $5 for actual adventure packs with quests, items, new gameplay elements. We also use to bitch and rage over horse armor. We pay $49.99 for full expansions alone, i.e. Lich King. Now…we’re paying $25 for a horse with no content and no armor (lol…guess he has some armor…), and we’re happy to shell out the money.

So my question is what’s changed? Comments welcome. What’s your theory?

Is that horse really as valuable as half the content put into Lich King? Is it worth the entire offering of adventure packs put forth by SOE (…I think they made 5…)? Why do we no longer see this item as a “rip-off” as we did with Bethesda?

Seems that what we value in games has completely changed over the last 5 years. We see vanity items as content, where as before, we saw them as mods to the already existing game…and who wants to pay for a mod, right?

If all this is the way we want it to be, and it seems like the majority have little or no issue with this…then where do we go from here?
I’m thinking of a couple things:
1) Will there be a decreasing drive for developers to make content now that we’ve shown them where the money is?
2) How will this effect quality of games going forward? i.e. put little or no effort in the main game and sell more “horses” on the back end.
3) If we’ve now set the precedent for value within WoW…what does that mean for WoW in the future and other games? Do we like that future? What will be the price of WoW (..and other games…) items in 2 years? 4 years?

…anywho. Still thinking out loud about this ;)

D out.

Posted in Editorial
12 Comments Posted by Darren

12 Responses to "What we use to value…"

  • Jalann says:
    April 19, 2010 at 10:13 am

    The biggest issue is that people probably don’t know how to properly handle their money. Yes, that’s a mood killer. Also, we don’t know how many of these are teenagers that are working after school which don’t have a lot of budgetary concerns. I know when I had a job in High School, my dad only made me take care of my car. Everything else was mine.

  • Brian 'Psychochild' Green says:
    April 19, 2010 at 10:36 am

    I suspect the thing that’s changed is that WoW is a subscription-based game, whereas Oblivion was a traditional single-player (and in some cases, console) game. People playing WoW are used to forking over cash on a regular basis, so $25 is okay. Plus, you can show off to others in WoW, whereas the horse armor was just for your own gratification. So, I think people are more accepting.

    I don’t think this is going to lead to developers “put[ting] little or no effort in the main game and sell[ing] more “horses” on the back end.” I believe that WoW can get away with this because the core game is so popular. EQ2 has had similar types of microtransactions for a while, even back to the adventure packs. But, I doubt they’ve had a big run on items like the multi-hour queues to buy das sparklepony.

    I do think this means there will be more of a focus put on selling additional stuff, though. Unfortunately, it probably means a lot of companies will screw it up. But, hopefully, it means that a game with “only” 100k or so players will still be viable if it can support additional revenue sources.

  • JohnG228 says:
    April 19, 2010 at 10:43 am

    I don’t know what the big deal with the horse is. People “waste” money on silly things all the time. Blizzard and other companies are only providing what the consumer wants. They aren’t forcing anyone to buy it, and as of now it’s in no way game changing. I do find it funny that on the first day the mounts were out, they were all over the place. I all ready don’t see many of them, less then a week after it was released. I think this is just one of those impulse buy things.

    I do wonder how many people will jump on the next $25 mount though, since it’s not like you will be a unique snowflake with it, like say one of the mounts you get from boss drops.

    I don’t see this taking that much away from game development time though. I mean how many man hours do you really think it took to make this thing. And like I said above, you can’t make a ton of these or they will loose their value.

    As far as what $4.99 bought you 5 years ago, how far are going to go back. I mean I’m 49, want me tell you how much it cost me to play pinball back in the 60′s when I was kid :) It really isn’t doesn’t matter. That just turns into the video game version or I walked uphill both ways in the snow to school everyday.

    I guess what I’m saying is, don’t get mad at Blizzard for giving the consumer what they want. I have seen figures of over $2,000,000 thrown around for what they grossed on this horse, and I’m sure most of that is profit. So any extra income will help in game development.

    And no, I didn’t buy one of these. But that’s because I don’t think they look that good, if I did, I probably would have bought one.

  • br3ntbr0 says:
    April 19, 2010 at 11:17 am

    Darren I’m totally with you. However, I’ll pose that this out of whack value system is only for a very small part of the player base. Of a 10 million member subscriber base, only 5% might be interested in such an item. So I don’t think the player base at large values this item, but it only takes 5% or less to generate millions in extra revenue when the price is so high and the subscriber numbers are so insanely large.

    I’d guess that 5% is largely composed of people that the market expanded to over the years. They have no concept of the value of early EQ expansions and don’t understand the mmo genre the way long time gamers like us do. They are the kids and wives (yes I’m calling out all you men on sparkly mounts) of the guys that have been at it for years, the ones that got curious after hearing friends talk about it for months and decided to finally try, etc. All they know is that it looks cool, they want it, and they obviously have the disposable cash to spend on it.

    Personally I hate it, as I think it send the wrong message to the Bobby Koticks of the world. But it’s too late now and the flood gates are open, and the Blizzard store is going to continue to offer this stuff and push the limits of what is acceptable. The celestial breastplate texture upgrade is coming sooner or later…

  • scotth says:
    April 19, 2010 at 11:30 am

    I would argue that the horse is not content, and comparison to content is not relevant. In my mind the horse us a luxury, and represents Blizzard using price discrimination to maximize their revenue.

    Some people will pay for a horse and some will not. Since, as you pointed out, the horse costs very little to make the horse makes money for Blizzard.

    However, my guess is that the actual percentage of players that paid for the horse us fairly low. Probably less than ten per cent. A flat increase for all players would, unlike the horse, have a negative impact on subscription numbers and could reduce revenue.

  • World Of Warcraft: Beating A Dead Horse, And The Sparkly Breastplate Of Doom « Im Talkin Games says:
    April 19, 2010 at 12:28 pm

    [...] and the macro transaction label has begun to surface. $25.00 for a virtual item is alot more than most expansions have cost us over the years. So what will we see? More pets and mounts for sure, but I think the armor and weapon skins are [...]

  • Logo says:
    April 19, 2010 at 12:38 pm

    The weird thing about this mess is that it’s not new to WoW. WoW has been doing this indirectly for a long long time. Whether it’s the TCG, Blizzcon freebies, or promotional deals, Blizzard has been creating a real money market for items for a long time. Many of them going for significantly more than this $25 mount. The only difference is the money is now going to Blizzard instead of a 3rd party.

    I place blame on both Blizzard and players for this situation. I’m really disappointed that people are so willing to pay highly inflated prices for an item. This has been true about WoW for a long time, and is true about many other items in our society. Still it’s disappointing. Just to be clear I don’t think that players should be forced to abstain from making these types of purchases, I believe in the free market, but I’m disappointed that people think such a markup is a fair value.

    On Blizzard’s end my problem with the situation is that it shows a shift in their relationship with their players. Many MMOs treat the developer/player relationship as a mutual relationship. They need us, we need them, and respect goes both ways. Moves like this indicate to me that Blizzard is backing away from this type of relationship. They’re effectively saying that it’s a one way relationship now. We need them, and they control everything. The rules only apply to us and they can do whatever they want.

    In comparison, CCP runs a very mutual relationship. The CSM helps to guide the development process, which shows an active effort to include players into the relationship. Even more importantly, everything that CCP sells, players can also sell. Players can buy/sell game time on the game’s market, sell and transfer characters with the bazaar, and there are no items that are only available through CCP. This shows a tremendous amount of mutual respect by CCP and is something that players should really be more demanding of in their MMO experiences.

  • bcparfitt says:
    April 19, 2010 at 12:48 pm

    Obviously this $25 mount has some favorable numbers working for it. As br3ntbr0 mentions above, even if only 5% of the market jumps at this item, there is still a HUGE player base to draw that 5% from. Who woulnd’t take that kind of a cut?

    In response to Darren’s first and second points, let’s flip this around. Couldn’t this be treated as incentive for the devs to build a strong game from the get go? A crap game with 1000 subscribers doesn’t provide a broad marketing channel for any kind of RMT item sale. I could hardly envision any sane project team skimping on content to build fluff items with the hopes that they sell and retain subscriptions to their product over any long period of time. It’s in their own self interest to deliver something that the consumer feels good about paying for up front. So while we may see more games launch with subsequent ‘expansion packs’ that follow in just a few months (see Dragon Age), I don’t see developers downshifting on creating quality content. You still need the content and solid game experience to capture attention. And if a $25 mount comes out for their game somewhere down the line… whatever.

    Regarding the future of games, prices etc.

    Dunno on this one. I do think we will see more market placement and regular product ads showing up in some games. Apple is doing this with iAd and I think there is an untapped market here that companies would love to find a way to target… even though I hate this. American Idol hits 26 million viewers for two hours a week. Wow has 10 million subscribers 24×7. Market potential? I think so.

    I’m betting that we’ll start to see a shift from frilly items to items/services that have more in game value. The XP and AA potions are nice but… I don’t have time to grind 90 levels out on an assassin in EQ2. I’d happily pay $$$ for a level 80 assasin from the Marketplace though. Leave the last 10 levels of the latest expansion for me to grind through.

    It’s coming. Just a question of how soon til it gets here.

  • SmakenDahed says:
    April 19, 2010 at 12:53 pm

    Waste of money, IMO. At least it isn’t game breaking or imbalancing.

    I suspect in a short time when everywhere you look, someone has this mount, the novelty will wear off and people will wonder why they bothered spending 25$ on a mount the no longer use because they got some other thing.

  • Anjin says:
    April 19, 2010 at 1:12 pm

    Let’s talk purses.

    I would never find myself buying one, so all purses seem like a waste of money to me. But for the sake of argument, let’s say I need an purse. After a simple web search, I have a couple options.

    I can buy any old purse from Walmart, I would expect to pay anything from $20 to $200.

    If I tried Gucci, prices there range from $1000 to $2000.

    If all I wanted was an eight-slot bag, that seems like a crazy difference in prices. Why would anyone ever buy from Gucci if they could buy from Walmart?

  • Draekas says:
    April 20, 2010 at 12:57 am

    1) Will there be a decreasing drive for developers to make content now that we’ve shown them where the money is?

    Only if they’re stupid. As others have mentioned, its only a small percentage of players that are paying $25 for this thing. So for the revenue to be significant, then player base has to be fairly large in order to make significant money from selling an item like this.

    So by that token, if anything this should drive developers to make the core game as great as possible with a high retention rate in order to have as large a market as possible for these types of item sales.

    2) How will this effect quality of games going forward? i.e. put little or no effort in the main game and sell more “horses” on the back end.

    Same as 1. Folks won’t be buying very many horses in games that suck and aren’t work sticking around in.

    These are luxury items, like many other things in the real world. Different people see varying values in all sorts of things. I scoff at $50 or more for a round of golf. Yet others are willing to pay 30+ grand a year for memberships at nice clubs.

    3) If we’ve now set the precedent for value within WoW…what does that mean for WoW in the future and other games? Do we like that future? What will be the price of WoW (..and other games…) items in 2 years? 4 years?

    I expect affordable price points for MMOs into the future for the core game. However, I’m fairly sure we’ll see $50 items in 4 years and $99.95 vanity items offered to players at some point in the next 10 years. Some will scoff at it, and others will fork up the money for it.

    When you’re dealing with social environments where inter player competition is prevalent, there will always be people willing to pay out for things that will in their minds set them apart (or above, in some cases) others. On top of that, there will be those who must keep up with the Joneses. These same type of people are the ones that allow FTP games to exist and provide the companies who run them with the majority of their revenue.

    They will certainly keep pushing the boundaries of where the price ceiling is until people vote with their money and don’t buy what is offered. I hate to say it, but I also think that the $15 a month subscription ceiling will be falling by the wayside soon too. Inflation and all that ya know?

  • Bronte says:
    April 20, 2010 at 10:47 am

    Quit horsing around with this horse perpetuation!

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