To F2P or P2P, that's the question!

Hello there fellow Mapcorians!

You may or may not know of me and my fellow gang's studio called Frogsong Studios yet unless you've seen the posts I wrote in the Game W.I.P thread. For the last seven months we have been developing a game called Spellsworn which is a player versus player, arena styled game where each player has a wizard cast spells and knock out opponents out of the arena into the hazard zone. Last man/team standing that is. (Some of you may have played the WarCraft 3 mod, Warlocks, this is pretty much the same thing.)

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/pCHp3PE.jpg]

For the latest five months we have had an ongoing discussion about whether the game should be free-to-play or not. Of course we are going to skip the Pay-2-win elements entirely but that's not the biggest point of interest here. The biggest one is, why would we make the game free-to-play and is it a good idea?

From all the discussions we had we realised a couple of things (or at least we thought this is how it goes):

• Our target audience expects free-to-play (read Moba players).
• We cannot be sure moba players actually are the audience, since we had no big scale testing yet.
• There is a lot of Data Analysis and Data Mining you have to do to get free-to-play working properly.
• There is a very high risk rate at releasing a free-to-play game due to possible misscalcuations in the Break Even Equation (read Pricing, Maintenance costs etc.)
• Releasing a free-to-play game without a buffert in your company's wallet is extremely risky if the game get's popular quickly. (If the break even equation is poorly done and scales negatively, you're in a lot of trouble.)
• All other bird's view arena styled games (yes there are more than MOBAs) use F2P.
• F2P will bring a lot of extra layers to the game and thus to the development.
• With a working break even equation the game's lifetime is 'infinitely' exandable.
• Decreases the threshold for players to actually try out the game, thus adding more opponents for players, facilitating matchmaking et cetera.
• Management costs will skyrocket.
• Developing a F2P game with a dedicated analyst or economist can reduce the risks to an extent.
• It will take an amount of time before players start buying things in the free-to-play shop, differentiating from weeks to months.

On the flipside of things, what about pay-to-play?

• No players eating up 'unpaid server time' (read our budget.) If they play it, the paid it.
• Finite 'paid server time' per player budget, unless we release DLCs or alike. That said, each player will have a sum of ours to player included in the price of the game.
• P2P business model is A LOT safer to scale.
• Does not tie us up into developing F2P-content (cosmetics and such) just for people to buy, but rather expand the game in a direction lead by gameplay.
• Is 'guaranteed' to bring us money.
• We can release the game and go on to the next project while only a part of the studio works on DLCs.
• If the visual profile of the game doesn't speak to players strongly + the fact that they have to pay before trying it, the entrance threshold for the game may be too big and leave us stranded with no players.

We have split opinions on this in the studio where mine is: I do believe we could do a very good F2P game out of Spellsworn, just not without money in our pockets before actual launch. I believe F2P development is very dependent on marigins.

Now what I would love to hear is your take on how to go with it? Why and why not?

Pretty please, give us more perspective!

Cheers, Stefan

Sorry for not responding just yet, haven't had the time. But I will! I'm very thankful for all the replies, will take time and reply asap.

Quote from 2d-chris

2d-chris, on 14 Nov 2014 - 3:12 PM, said:

Rift, which admittedly launched as pay to play.......

I did not know that a big game like Rift had a hybrid model up and working smoothly. Totally agree with you about how this is the future. We never thoroughly discussed a hybrid model, I will bring that up on our next meeting and see where it takes us.

This far it's been more about the models Dota and LoL is doing it alongside usual P2P with DLCs.

 

Quote from Sigma

Sigma, on 14 Nov 2014 - 3:23 PM, said:

This tells me that a supportable monetization strategy is in order, but furthermore it tells me that you need to separate the concepts of what you consider break even with what you consider the operating budget....

Secondly, your market analysis has informed you that nearly all other genre contenders operate under one type of monetization (F2P). Furthermore, the F2P mindset is heavily prevalent in consumer behaviors. This leads me to believe that F2P on its face should be your target monetization strategy, but as you stated scalability of such a strategy poses problems (can you elaborate here?)

Perhaps instead of going the free to play but pay for content route as the primary monetization driver (which I will throw in will have a large user conversion ratio (smaller number of players to capitalize on) based on other company data releases on industry websites) you can increase your monetization rate per player by incorporating an advertising network with a more passive advertising plan. This is fairly common and can be done in non-interferring ways and will create addional, more reliable revenues to plan with.

I totally see what you mean with operating budget vs break even. I guess I used the term 'break even' in the wrong context. Break even budget and the requisites for the operating budget to break even are not the same I guess! I'll make sure to split those up, thanks.

Frankly, our market analysis doesn't strech very longer than what we know of the market by talking with a lot of fellow MOBA gamers and other kinds of people. We do not have the tools to make an extensive market analysis and therefore we will only assume that what we think is our target audience may be entirely wrong.

When I mentioned scalability I was mainly referring to two things, scaling amount of players and over how long time. Let's say our shop pricing is very badly adjusted for our audience and noone is buying anything (no cosmetics or whatever F2P-incentive we are using), yet the amount of players keep on racing in over the passing months - then our operating costs will tower sky-high over our income and the company (due to a very low initial capital) will go bankrupt very quickly. This could not happen as quickly if we would go P2P as each player playing the game ensures income.

About the advertising method, there have already been a company contacting us about in-game advertisements and personally I totally distantiate from it. I believe games should be about entering another world and if there's a Coke sign there all of a sudden the immersion is broken. Now, if I silence the visionary in me and bring out the economist I totally see how this could help out with all those 'leech customers' who doesn't actually pay anything but play it anyway. You mention this is fairly common, I know that's the case in mobile games but I have never seen this done in a PC game. Could you give me examples?

 

Quote from jackophant

jackophant, on 14 Nov 2014 - 5:23 PM, said:

But don't do a Hi-Rez and release an F2P game and then a year in undercut everyone who spent money by offering a £30 "goty" edition which comes with everything...

The upcoming game TOXIKK by REAKKTOR studios are using quite a good pre-order model imo. Each pre-order package comes with increasing perks which could be attractive for early adopters, almost like their own kickstarter. They are P2P however, so I'm not entirely sure how it works.

 

Maybe I could suggest a slightly altered method in which you have a range of payment methods. Not dissimilar to faceit's payment plan, where you would offer a free (albeit slightly limited version) and then increasing levels of price to purchase AND perks you get in the game over the levels below you. This way the game is still free but there's encouragement to upgrade your "purchase level" and everyone can try it for free first if needed.

So you're saying, don't piss off all that F2P-paying players with a 'Get it all' offering later on? Have it in there from start, right?

And yes, early-bird incentives are probably a really good idea, which I think can be incorporated in both P2P and F2P.

Restrictions vs how much you pay is perfectly doable I think, though it is probably very hard to know how much you can actually restrict the players alongside the pricing. For our game my thoughts have been restricting the amount of spells a player can use, still give a very broad range of spells so you feel there is food on your plate, just that if you want the whole buffet you gotta pay.

 

Quote from Taylor

Taylor, on 14 Nov 2014 - 8:18 PM, said:

One important difference between F2P and P2P is in the former players have absolutely no investment in your game and will leave at the drop of a hat, whereas if they’ve sunk some money into already they will be prepared to carry on playing. This means you have to dedicate a lot more time to testing, retention and metrics to make sure these players are still around. This doesnt mean just have a good introduction, but usually some amount of coddling through an “onboarding experience.”

The other difference you’ve probably got covered. F2P doesn’t work if the game is 5 hours long and then uninstalled, but as a competitive multiplayer game you probably only need to chuck on daily log on bonuses or whatever.

SMITE entered the MOBA space with pretty much both models. The game is free to play and you can unlock characters with in-game currency, but there is a £30 character pack that just unlocks everyone. Another model you might want to consider is just to go DLC crazy like Magicka or Blah Simulator but it’s tricky to fit this into a competitive multiplayer game.

On your last point about F2P... it probably won’t. In a F2P economy you have some players who put a few months in and go “I quite like this game, I owe it £5 I’ll buy a skin” but most of the money you’ll make is rich people just buying everything they can. This is the whole whales/spenders thing.

I got the picture you have to do tons and tons of metrics for the F2P model and that's something we don't have resources for and even if we did I'm not sure that's the way we'd want to develop games.

Yeah, I appreciate the model Smite has as unlocking the champions actually doesn't take all that long, even though it is dangerously close to Pay-2-Win. In comparison the pricing Leauge of Legends do per champion (which I think is scandalous), I feel HiRez are giving the players a fair deal. About DLC-mania model, I like it but have to agree, I also think it's hard to fit into the competitive scene because of splitting the player base and getting new players into the "current meta" (read vanilla + all dlcs).

About the last F2P point, that was something a friend of mine noticed who launched a Day Z like MMO. Problem is: I think it's very case specific. Yes, I do believe you are right that F2P is all about whale-fishing, which brings my thoughts to the next layer of problematique - the ethical one.

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Thanks for replying everyone, really useful!

Quote from jackophant

How would restricting spells work? If it gives players a gameplay advantage then I'd say no as it's essentially an element of "pay2win". If however it's something like... how many spells you can remember then that could be OK. Not too dissimilar to how valve restrict backpack slots in tf2 if you play completely free.

I guess what I mean is if like MMORPGs where you have a hotbar of spells, both paid and free versions have the same number of spells to select from. For all intents and purposes I'm talking about a spell loadout like CoD I suppose; limit the number of pre-configured spell loadouts that they can use maybe? That way it's a problem with customisation, not a drawback in gameplay which is a slight hint of pay2win.

Or limit character customisation?

The way I see it with any game, is that if it gives a paying player even the slightest advantage it's pay2win. I personally would always make sure any paid option is purely aesthetic, makes their life easier (such as increased spell loadouts),

Just had a proper look at the website, I never played warlocks, but I did play and love magicka (like... a lot) and this game reminds me of that

How long may one have to wait in order to play said game?

_{Sorry for rambling nonsense, it looks like a good game and I'd hate to see another good title not succeed as it deserves because of a botched payment plan.}

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Don't say your sorry, I made the thread to hear that 'nonsense'! Jokes aside, we had different ideas for the spells.

• First one is directly copying the analogy League of Legends goes about it, which is simply: you can only use the spells you have purchad with the in-game resource or with money. No spell is meant to be stronger than others just as LoLs champions aren't meant to be stronger than others. For me this one is a bit problematique yet players seem to accept this way.
• Second one is, whenever a match starts all players will be able to pick from a pool of spells where all players' spells are gathered. That players who have bough spells will never have the upperhand from just buying spells but it will ensure that they are available.

When you say limit character customisation I guess you are talking about cosmetics? And yes that's something we are planning to do too, we just fear that only cosmetics wouldn't do the job. The players would always have the same amount of spells no matter which one of these two ways we pick, it would only be the arsenal that'd be affected.

At least until next year but it should totally be available to GDC in March.

Quote from Sigma

I did not realize this was a PC game, I thought it was a mobile one. As for advertising in that regards, I do not think you can do that in the PC realm because the consumers will not expect it and will not support it under that particular population segment (my mistake).

On your market analysis, I think you could probably do one that will have some credibility if you ask around other studios to see what their analyses turned up. You never know, they might be willing to share. Also, there are some fairly extensive yet cheap options for building metrics into games available. I would thoroughly investigate these and see if you cannot build market analysis as an on-going basis if necessary. I know I have seen a number of articles and blogs about companies over at Gamasutra, such as Ninja Metrics, Game Analytics, etc...

I see what you mean about your issue of scalability now. Under that particular constraint, you have to ask yourself 1) Do I have players pay up front and if so is that price going to be equivalent for the experience to them? 2) At what price point based on my cost and profit analysis do I set? AND IF NOT 1 & 2 then 3) How else do I recoup costs and earn revenue (preferably profit)?

You are operating under a highly competitive industry scenario, so your benefit must be equal to cost (in other words, don't sell yourselves short).

My thoughts on the matter -- Steam Greenlight has acted as a verification of the early access model and other AAA games (i.e. Battlefield and/or CoD) have acted as verification of the early bird incentives. Thus you know that incorporating these into your model will be well received typically.

I would not do restrictions based on the amount you pay, but rather restrictions with a pay option to release the restriction (might have just rephrased what you meant). In your context of an idea, I would provide the whole buffet free of charge OVER TIME, but allow early payment to unlock all of the spells. This is, again, acceptable so long as the extra spells are not overpowered in comparison, thus shifting the game from free to play or even pay to play to a pay to win situation.

As for whether there is an ethical dilemma in allowing for whale-fishing -- what is your ethical conundrum here? At the end of the day you have a business to run that requires time and money. So long as you are not engaging in the support of addicting behaviors, and if you recognize it as such and provide lawful legal notices as required by your jurisdiction, than there is no ethical dilemma. The vision of the game is not compromised by a payment plan that allows for whale-fishing except in those cases where the point of the game is to whale-fish, in which case it is still not an ethical dilemma if it is recognized by the creator(s). TL:DR Don't worry about this point except to CYA.

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That's my view on in-game adds too, I don't think it would work well at all in PC games unless it's 100% immersed into the world. Like soda machine with coke or something - not that I ever want it, I just think it would work. I have been trying to get in touch with companies that do games similar to ours but they are hard to get in touch with. As I mentioned in my reply to jackophant no spells are meant to be stronger than others, the first basic spell you have from start is to be just as viable when you unlock the last one.

The ethical dilemma is more about our values. I sat down with the team and we discussed for three hours straight about company values, what we envision to be the dream workplace and what we can do to reach that. What we established was that we do not want to become whale hunters, we don't want to develop games for the whales to spend more money, to find the sweetspot where they just pump in more coins - we want to target the fun-factor of the game and let the money come from that. I am not sure that is applicable at all on F2P just yet.

Quote from FrieChamp

Developing a game is hard. Developing a successful F2P game is very hard. If you operate on a shoe-string budget and don't have a Game Designer with F2P experience, a Product Manager and Data Analyst on your team, I'd advise against it. Instead of working on the core game you will soon be adding all these extra game layers, in-game shops, sales and events that are needed to HAVE A SHOT AT making the game financially viable. Factoring in that this is a PC game, I'd focus on making the core game an awesome experience, put it on Steam for a low price, work with the community and add some cosmetic items and such as IAP. To summarize: a hybrid-model is what I'd advise, too.

Good points you're making there. The extra layers is my worry too, afraid that we won't make it to the finish line and even if we do all those extra layers would make the general quality of the game to topple. About hybrid models, I haven't seen that a whole lot and my personal worry is that players would question "Why the heck am I enforced IAP to get all the content when I already paid for the game?" I may be entirely wrong though.

After reading all this so far my opinion of hybrid have gone up quite a bit.

Once again, thanks for all the replies, it's gold to me!

Sorry it's been taking so long for me to respond to your latest points, I read them pretty much the same day you posted them, then a couple of days later we had our meeting and decided to take on a F2P Hybrid Business Model, it was a really hard decision but we couldn't wait any longer. Things may change if we find a publisher or investor that doesn't want F2P, but for now our goal is set.

Now a new task is at hand, how do we define what things we should be selling and for what prize? Something I've come to learn is that the things that a developer values is most likely very different from what the players value. In example: the players want all content to be reachable without having to pay for anything to unlock content, but buying an XP boost which increases the rate in which progress is made could be all fine. I am not saying we are going to do exactly that thing, just the principle of it.

Thanks a lot for posting, all of you! It helped us out and brought light to things we didn't think of earlier or simply different perspectives.

Quote from jackophant

Look to valve... You cough up whatever the going rate for csgo is these days and have plenty of IAP options if you want to use them which is the real winner imo.

I find it hard to fathom how some spells aren't more/less powerful than others. That's what I loved about magicka (have you played it?) that it was the basic elemental spells in combination that made the game so crazy. There were some really OP combos you could use* but you were all on a level playing field. It was your wide knowledge of a variety of combinations and the speed you could cast them which set you apart from the rest.

Speaking of magicka, it's a fairly cheap game with some paid DLC: extra missions, multiplayer arenas and silly clothes you could use.

*

The impression I'm getting is a little similar to the hero picking screen in Dota2, but for spells?

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I totally agree with you, I think that options is the way to go and I think that is the key of the hybrid model. Just like 2d-chris said, I too believe options for each customer is the future of games. I'm not saying you should tend to every customer's need, just try to have more than just one method of payment.

Of course we will never be able to have a 100%-balanced game with perfect synergy between all spells, that's not the real world. I might have missed out on clarifying it but our intension is that no other spell is over-powered. That said a player won't be able to "buy the mega strong spell" and kick everyone elses' butt!

Quote from FrieChamp

I suspect you would be leaving out all mechanics that 99.9% of all F2P games rely on for monetization in hopes that you will create a game that is fun and monetizes well without facing objections for ethical reasons (remember that your own subjective set of ethics might differ from those of others). I'm not saying that is wrong, in fact, I would applaud you for it, if I didn't know how hard that is and how much you might regret going down this route when your game is out but nobody is willing to pay for it. It's tough out there. Don't try to chase the 5-legged unicorn. Get that game out there. Get the experience and feedback. See what works, what doesn't and make some money! Clock is ticking!

I think this is a very legit heads up. I have no clue where we will land but I think our bills and strive to stay alive as an indie studio is probably more important than not selling gameplay content as an IAP solely based on principles. Thanks!