More updates, this time from the Chief Chat on the 18th of May.
- Announcements regarding upcoming content:
- Monetization discussion
- General notes
Next week will be a break from demos
Art pass work continues
THMPR encounter work continues
Chapter 9 of the novel coming soon – will focus on the Tsi-Hu
Grummz would like to know the community’s interest in Em-8ER merch.
Suggestions invited on companies that make high-quality printed T-shirts.
- Announcements regarding upcoming content:
-Team doing a second pass on Gliders this week
-Infinite gliding is not intended, team trying to balance gliding with diving speed
-New build on Thursday, momentum being re-introduced during a dive state
-Additional work into lift and angle of attack of wings during glide
- Monetization discussion
-Tremendous amount of money to be made in after-sale monetization of the game.
-MMOs have huge ongoing costs for servers, bandwidths etc, as complexity of games increase, the cost increases.
-Em-8ER plans to sell the game at a high indie price, then have an optional subscription model for skins, cosmetic shop, with expansions and DLCs that will be crowdfunded.
-After-sale monetization helps keep the game competitive, create content, stay feature-competitive with other games.
-Bad Monetization: Level boosts in WoW. Grummz is of the opinion that they suck away the entire point of the game. It de-values the time and effort put into your character and personal growth in-game.
-Removing the time element creates a scenario where the game is reliant on new content all the time. Once players chew through the available content after being level boosted to an appropriate level, the onus falls on the developer to create more content quickly for consumption, which in turn requires a lot of investment.
- Casual vs. Hardcore market -There needs to be a trade-off between opting for the mass market – older players with lesser time but disposable income, and younger players with more free time and less disposable income.
-At times you need to decide whether you wish to create a higher quality gaming experience, but lesser revenue by choosing to avoid mass market.
-Blizzard sought initially to capture the hardcore and the casual-hardcore audience.
-Going for a mass market appeal with the more casual gamer audience may make more money upfront, but could increase production costs with the constant need to create new content.
-Having conveniences such as level boosts also renders a large chunk of content redundant.
- General notes
-Loot boxes and convenience items can effectively warp game design, often for the worse, around these concepts in order to drive players towards monetization.
-Cosmetics are Em-8ERs way of after-sales monetization.
-Em-8ER targets the hardcore niche MMO market and does not look to compete with the more casual mass market MMOs
-Subscription-only model suffers from high churn rate.
-Em-8ER doing a few things to keep overall costs down – virtual offices, dynamic content, emergent gameplay.
-Em-8ER is not about racing to the end-tech tier, it’s about living the sci-fi world, expanding, and changing it as you go.
-Grummz’s original plan for thumping was for it to be a minigame that changed the higher level it was, with more/new mechanics as it progreses higher.
New Info
-Mounts in Em-8ER will work with light frames, rather than just the pilot.
- Upcoming content -Glider Phase-2
-Acceleration during dive
-Addressing infinite glide
-Nosedip on stall
Next week will be a break from demos
Art pass work continues
THMPR encounter work continues
Chapter 9 of the novel coming soon – will focus on the Tsi-Hu
Grummz would like to know the community’s interest in Em-8ER merch.
Suggestions invited on companies that make high-quality printed T-shirts.
Likes:
Pandagnome and liandri
)
