Monetization/Funding Ideas

Jul 27, 2016
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#1
To start, I'm sorry it's this long, but it covers multiple facets of monetization. Also, if the thread exists already, I apologize for starting another. I know this discussion feels like double-edged haggling, but it's one we've got to have, and have properly.
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Nobody likes to pay money, but if we want Ember to succeed we have to pitch in. And, on top of that, there needs to be an incentive.

I've seen a wide variety of payment models on various different games. We know already that Ember will not be strictly Free to Play, because that places an uncomfortable restriction on the team and creates a rash that will continue to spread unless you constantly medicate it. And, bigger rashes require more medication; once it starts to spread, it's over.

Subscription models are valid, but when considering a player's choice to pay or not, price range is not the only thing we have to take into account. The psychology of spending money, of having something permanently or not, and foot in the door spending are just a few things to consider. There are people who won't spent more than $5-10 until they're emotionally invested. There are also people who will drop $60 on a game they're familiar with without a moment's hesitation.

Given the wide range of players, it might be a good idea to create a system that considers a breadth of personalities, and allows them to participate in every stage of funding. This isn't a launched game, a beta, early access, or even a compiled executable (or is it?). We need something new.
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Many games offer Founders Packs, and some require a minimum purchase to be able to play the game at all. Games like Archeage, free to play with packs priced into the hundreds, can appeal to many people, but run the problem of having a cash shop rash because it is still free to play. Alternatively, Black Desert online requires you to purchase the minimum pack to play, with pricier options and a cash shop to boot. These models are applied to playable games, however, and Ember is not playable yet.

As Ember will be released in stages, perhaps the funding should as well.
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Troves
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Each month, allow the founder to add an amount to their Trove. They can pledge $5, $10, $15, and perhaps even $20. This is a monthly option, and is totaled over time, accumulating as the game develops (hence Troves). As we draw closer to launch, Troves can be finalized and converted to the equivalent of Founder's Packs. This system essentially allows the founder to buy founders packs in increments during the game's incremental development. The payments aggregate at launch, or open beta, and goodies are distributed according to how much was invested. This has a number of effects, both beneficial and not.

Firstly, it gives the team semi-regular funding. With a low barrier of entry, and a moderate to high ceiling, it can encourage a range of budgets and personalities to participate in the growth of Ember. Monthly income can also reflect the quality of growth, and the playerbase's faith in the project's development. This can be an issue if faith or interest dwindles rapidly, but the release of playable milestones should do wonders for both.​

Secondly, it allows for the inclusion of founder's packs later, without alienating early contributors. People who have been contributing high amounts consistently will have totals much higher than any reasonably conceived founder's pack, and can expect tremendous rewards, potentially exclusive to a select few players. A model like this would allow for a traditional $20, $40, $50/60, $100 set of Founder's Packs to be tailor made for two groups: people with low-mid contribution, and people who've arrived late.
Anyone who'd only put $20-30 into their Trove before it was sealed could put in the difference and upgrade to a pack, and anyone who arrived late could choose whichever pack they're most comfortable with, be it $20 or $100+.
With a low barrier to entry and an extremely high overall ceiling, it could be a system that fosters rapid growth and expansion for Ember. It's much easier to spend $400 over the course of a year or two than it is all at once. Troves, however, would eventually be sealed, and that raises the question of sustainability. What model do we choose? Pay-once, or Subscription?
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Pilot's Licences
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Traditional subscription models run around $10-15 a month, with bulk discounts. In this case, I think Ember should consider subscription tiers, at $5, $10, and $15. It would be a monthly cost (with bulk renewal if need be), and if done manually each month, could be altered from month to month. Five dollars gets you an omniframe and a guarantee the accord/central government won't jail you for operating an illegal frame. Ten gets you a frame and, say, access to government transportation routes and crafting centers (printer slots), speeding up production and transportation. Fifteen could be something even more, maybe access to certain daily calldowns and field supplies. Maybe the Silver and Gold tiers could include some premium currency, Planetside 2 style.

Instead of starting at the traditional $15 and going up to insane prices, I'd argue for the low barrier of entry and a reasonable ceiling, so you reach the most people possible. A cosmetics shop can still be included, and a higher monthly subscription including premium currency also acts as a gateway to the cosmetics shop, encouraging willing players to browse more often and support the game more.

(As an addendum, a loyalty system could be included for subscriptions, with milestones and rewards along the way, similar to Troves).

(Edit 2: Subscription is a shaky place to be, and buy-to-play can fail in the long term. A premium subscription model with a low barrier of entry, and the inclusion of a free trial is an idea that could work. $0, 5, 10, 15 monthly and rewards corresponding).
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The Shop
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Since we're on the topic, can we please keep the shop limited to a few specific things:
  • Cosmetics
  • Utility included in higher tiers of subscription
  • Permanent unlocks (transportation, character slots, etc)
  • Account utility (character renaming and/or, again, character slots)
Under very few circumstances should a crate system be implemented. Few want to deal with the randomness of lockboxes. Additionally, there should be a way to earn premium currency ingame, maybe daily missions for the central governing body at endgame award a few. Players consistently at the $5 level should have a way to gain everything, except the ultra-exclusive stuff Alpha Founders got for pledging crazy amounts of money.
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Again, I know monetization is an icky topic, especially before it's been discussed at length by the team itself, but insight into what we're willing to do, and into any sort of system that enables everyone to contribute can help. We're all brainstorming right now to try and push as many polished ideas forward as possible. Why sift through rough ideas for the few good ones, when you can sift through a pile of polished ideas for the best ones?
 
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EvilKitten

Well-Known Member
Ark Liege
Jul 26, 2016
777
1,557
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#3
I personally feel that a quasi F2P game designed around fundraisers for content expansions and a shop to fund day to day costs of maintaining/running an MMO. Basically you can pay what you feel the game is worth to you, and you can choose exactly what your funds to go towards in a sort of voting system. Want a newfangled transport design? Donate money to that fundraiser. Want to support the next content update? Donate your money there. Sure many people would milk the system, but there would be a very visible show of what your money would be supporting which I think would encourage people to spend money more than forcing them to pay or not pay for expansion packs.

One thing I have been concerned about is content gating. If expansions come out and you have to pay to access them, then you might end up not being able to play with your friends if they can't afford (for whatever reason) to also buy the expansion with you. By making things into fundraisers the money is paid for before/during creation which means there is no need to lock the content down and thus everyone can benefit.
 

Ammara

Active Member
Jul 26, 2016
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#4
I am borrowing your star-plushie, one sure can lay back and type a lot with that

I recall asking Grummz whether including a service for changing names would a good thing to do for long-run sustainability of Ember, and he surprised me with the heaps of $ companies make from that service. He might really go for it :p

Might wanna edit-add that under "The Shop" section
 

Bl4ckhunter

Active Member
Jul 26, 2016
157
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#5
Subscription models are valid, but when considering a player's choice to pay or not, price range is not the only thing we have to take into account. The psychology of spending money, of having something permanently or not, and foot in the door spending are just a few things to consider. There are people who won't spent more than $5-10 until they're emotionally invested. There are also people who will drop $60 on a game they're familiar with without a moment's hesitation.
Subscriptions models of any kind are NOT valid anymore, period.

Besides the fact that they're extremely impopular, at this point in time they're a self fulfilling prophecy of failure.
No one will buy subscriptions becouse every single subscription based game that came out in the last decade (2005-2015) has gone f2p in a year or so and the game will fail and have to set up a rushed f2p model becouse no one will buy the subscriptions, that is becouse at this day and age players instinctively realize that a sub based game if no one buys subs will have to go f2p in a short time rather than simply shut down so they'd rather wait than shell money out.

People simply need to give up on them. They're doomed. Yes even WoW and eve online. You had a good time but now it's time to let them go, it's the same thing that's happening with mmorpg-esque games (see firefall duh), just becouse once upon a time something worked doesn't mean it's going to work now, look at wildstar, when they came out with their sub model what did people do? they pointed at them and laughed and it went f2p. SWTOR? it's down to +/- 2000 players, that's like 160.000$ in subscriptions every six months..... (26.000$ monthly, that's a very low amount of money for a game company.)

B2P with cosmetics/minor conveniences only is the way to go for post-release models, it's either that or F2P.
By making things into fundraisers the money is paid for before/during creation which means there is no need to lock the content down and thus everyone can benefit.
That sounds really good, there's also the financial benefit of having the money before you put out the content and the fact that if the expansion is a bust it's either already been paid or you already know that people dislike it becouse no one paid for it.
 
Likes: Blackfyre

EvilKitten

Well-Known Member
Ark Liege
Jul 26, 2016
777
1,557
93
#6
That sounds really good, there's also the financial benefit of having the money before you put out the content and the fact that if the expansion is a bust it's either already been paid or you already know that people dislike it becouse no one paid for it.
The other thing is that it forces accountability. If you say that a particular project needs 10,000 dollars and 3 months to design and the players cough it up, then 3 months pass and it doesn't show up, there better be a damn good reason. If you need another 5,000 dollars suddenly then players are going to be very hesitant about paying out more money down the road. This gives incentives for Mark/devs to be as accurate as possible with their needs as well as require at least some level of transparency about what is going on. It is the difference between selling a product and having investors in a product (that they will consume). You have to keep a good track record and keep them up to date on what they are paying for otherwise it's the axe.
 

Col. Kernel

Deepscanner
Jul 28, 2016
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#7
Incremental Indiegogo fund rasiers are planned to finance the initial development. Beyond that, I don't know.

I do like the idea of Troves, and was going to suggest that upon the completion of each Indiegogo the rewards could be posted on this Web site and people could continue to fund the development if they missed the Indiegogo.
 

EvilKitten

Well-Known Member
Ark Liege
Jul 26, 2016
777
1,557
93
#8
Incremental Indiegogo fund rasiers are planned to finance the initial development. Beyond that, I don't know.
Right, which is why I don't get why we wouldn't just continue using the method that (hopefully) will already to have proven to work. Why switch over from fundraising to sales, there really is no need.
 
Jul 27, 2016
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#9
If a monthly subscription model won't work, and in my heart I don't think it will, consider a yearly, perhaps? Sell the game for around $40, and $60 for Ember+, and require $10 annually. The cash shop is a sore, and I've seen some pretty tired and desperate integrations before. I would much rather pay a subscription, though not the industry standard $15 a month, over a poorly done cash shop.

If Ember does a cash shop, it'd need to be a damned good one. I don't want to see this project fail because of rushed monetization of all things. Remember, Firefall had financial backers. Unless Ember is contacted by investors willing to remove themselves from the creative process entirely, we're probably not getting any outside help. Cash shop alone won't be enough to sustain the project in the long run.

(Edit: How do you feel about a free to play model with a premium subscription? I completely overlooked that, but it's worked before).

Right, which is why I don't get why we wouldn't just continue using the method that (hopefully) will already to have proven to work. Why switch over from fundraising to sales, there really is no need.
Troves would be an integrated fundraising. Basically "keep funding us monthly, we'll count it up when founder's packs come out and you'll get rewards". Marketed fundraising with incentive is generally more effective than just fundraising.

We could take it a step further and implement monthly milestones. Financial goals every month placed a bit above what's required, and if we hit them we get something extra. I'm worried about transparency issues with this, but it'd be nice to see stretch goals. Humans are incentive driven creatures, and Ember's successive development is my incentive to support it every way I can.
 

Bl4ckhunter

Active Member
Jul 26, 2016
157
123
43
#10
A note on fundraiser sites in general, they usually take a perchentage as fee (5% in indiegogo's case) so for god's sake once there's a certain notoriety they should switch to in house fundings or offer separate packs as well, there's already a long list of entities taking a cut out of my purchases, i find the thought of having to add another very offputting
 

TankHunter678

Well-Known Member
Jul 26, 2016
369
311
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#11
If a monthly subscription model won't work, and in my heart I don't think it will, consider a yearly, perhaps? Sell the game for around $40, and $60 for Ember+, and require $10 annually. The cash shop is a sore, and I've seen some pretty tired and desperate integrations before. I would much rather pay a subscription, though not the industry standard $15 a month, over a poorly done cash shop.

If Ember does a cash shop, it'd need to be a damned good one. I don't want to see this project fail because of rushed monetization of all things. Remember, Firefall had financial backers. Unless Ember is contacted by investors willing to remove themselves from the creative process entirely, we're probably not getting any outside help. Cash shop alone won't be enough to sustain the project in the long run.

(Edit: How do you feel about a free to play model with a premium subscription? I completely overlooked that, but it's worked before).
You may go "I would not mind paying a subscription..." (actually a lot of people said that about Firefall, at the start of CBT were people begging them not to do F2P and go with subs) but the question becomes "and how many others would also do that?"

Its pretty much been shown that only industry giants who got a sizable fanbase already can get subscription MMOs to work. Ember does not have a sizable fanbase. A required subscription would do more harm to the game then good.

The problem with Firefall is that it had terrible financial backers who were trying to turn the game from something that would have been great into a WoW clone... when WoW clones were dying as fast as they were getting started.

The Cash Shop barely got updated, they spent more time remaking the game then doing what other F2P companies do: fill the cash shop with cosmetics the community wants.

Marketing died off, cause the money that would otherwise go to marketing went to remaking the game (multiple times) so the player growth died with it, which meant the income died with it.

Want an example of a good cash shop? Path of Exile. Gets regularly updated and they even throw regular sales on the things in the cash shop which helps encourage a lot of people to buy from the shop regularly.

The current plan is Buy to Play entry, cash shop supplementary. I would say perhaps throw in a supplementary monthly sub that grants 15$ of cash shop currency every month and automatic entry into expansion betas (for testing before they are integrated into the base game) with a research speed bonus, VIP glider, and VIP multi-seater vehicle.
 
Jul 27, 2016
76
86
18
#12
You may go "I would not mind paying a subscription..." (actually a lot of people said that about Firefall, at the start of CBT were people begging them not to do F2P and go with subs) but the question becomes "and how many others would also do that?"

Its pretty much been shown that only industry giants who got a sizable fanbase already can get subscription MMOs to work. Ember does not have a sizable fanbase. A required subscription would do more harm to the game then good.

The problem with Firefall is that it had terrible financial backers who were trying to turn the game from something that would have been great into a WoW clone... when WoW clones were dying as fast as they were getting started.

The Cash Shop barely got updated, they spent more time remaking the game then doing what other F2P companies do: fill the cash shop with cosmetics the community wants.

Marketing died off, cause the money that would otherwise go to marketing went to remaking the game (multiple times) so the player growth died with it, which meant the income died with it.

Want an example of a good cash shop? Path of Exile. Gets regularly updated and they even throw regular sales on the things in the cash shop which helps encourage a lot of people to buy from the shop regularly.

The current plan is Buy to Play entry, cash shop supplementary. I would say perhaps throw in a supplementary monthly sub that grants 15$ of cash shop currency every month and automatic entry into expansion betas (for testing before they are integrated into the base game) with a research speed bonus, VIP glider, and VIP multi-seater vehicle.
Tack on a Trove/patreon aggregate program until we get to that point and I think it'll work.
 
Jul 28, 2016
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#13
I think the best idea is to have many funding efforts during development of the game. Much better than a one time effort that will probably fail (most do). I will be more than happy to contribute over a period of time in order to have ONE decent MMO to play.
 
Likes: DeyjaVou

lykosfx

New Member
Jul 29, 2016
16
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#14
Oi!

Eu, geralmente, não entro nesse tipo de discursão por que sempre os dois lados estão corretos em seus pontos-de-vista. Só termina quando uma das partes volta atras.

Na verdade eu vou continuar Neutro nessa história e passar uma dica que pode ajuda-los a tomar uma decisão.

Eu quero apresentar para vocês um modelo de Monetização que agrada o jogador, o desenvolvedor e a empresa.

https://arkservers.net/

Assim como o sistema horizontal agrada o jogador, o desenvolvedor e a empresa, por que não unir esses dois modelos num único jogo?

ARK: Survival Evolved é um jogo que não precisa de CashShop, todos os itens são fabricados pelo jogador.

O aluguel de servidores foi uma grande idéia que ajuda no desenvolvimento do jogo. O jogador tem apenas que comprar o jogo uma vez por que as atualizações são de graça. Atualmente, empresas de informática fazem parcerias com youtubers e alugam um servidor para conquistar clientes (essa parceria se tornou uma rotina no youtube).

Pesquisem sobre esse assunto e tomem a melhor decisão possível que agrade a todos.

Obrigado por sua atenção.
Abraços.



Hi!

I usually do not go in that kind of discussion because whenever both sides are correct in their points of view. It ends only when one party back behind.

In fact I'm going to keep neutral in this story and pass a tip that can help them make a decision.

I want to introduce you to a model of monetization that pleases the player, the developer and the company.

https://arkservers.net/

Like the horizontal system like the player, the developer and the company, why not join these two models in a single game?

ARK: Survival Evolved is a game that does not need CashShop, all the items are made by the player.

The rental server was a great idea that helps in the development of the game. The player only has to buy the game once the updates are free. Currently, computer companies partner with youtubers and rent a server to win customers (this partnership became a routine on youtube).

Search on this matter and take the best possible decision that pleases everyone.

Thanks for your attention.
Hugs.
 

Gyrus

Emberite
Jul 29, 2016
11
8
3
#15
Subscription is a shaky place to be, and buy-to-play can fail in the long term. A premium subscription model with a low barrier of entry, and the inclusion of a free trial is an idea that could work. $0, 5, 10, 15 monthly and rewards corresponding).
What about a pay per session model? I wonder if it's been done before. For example: pay a dollar for the next 8-12 hours access with extra sessions awarded at certain spend levels. It might be a way to get people into the game who don't want to invest up front. Just throwing the idea out there. What do you guys think?
 

TankHunter678

Well-Known Member
Jul 26, 2016
369
311
63
#16
What about a pay per session model? I wonder if it's been done before. For example: pay a dollar for the next 8-12 hours access with extra sessions awarded at certain spend levels. It might be a way to get people into the game who don't want to invest up front. Just throwing the idea out there. What do you guys think?
That model is used extensively in China. In addition to pay per hour. It drums up the use of internet and gaming cafe's because they get deals where a person can get the same amount of hours for a lower price (and get a drink with some food while they game).
 
Jul 26, 2016
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#17
Cosmetics.
Cosmetics.
Cosmetics.
Cosmetics.

^ That right there is some stupid expensive stuff, totally a gamble too, that people do buy and they already payed full price for the game.