Business Models

We have seen multiple business models emerge in the lifetime of video games. 
First we had an 'off-the-shelf' 'once-off' purchase for games. This made sense at the time and not only that, it had a certain majesty about it. You went in to your vendor and looked at every single game deciding where to spend your limited amount of pocket money. You had to make the right purchase, get the most bang for your buck. Or perhaps you might have played a game at your friends house and be blown away by it, so you had to get it too, not to have it because someone else had it, but to share in the journey to completion and to be excited about something, with someone. Or maybe you read a review in a magazine or got a little demo on a floppy disk on the front of it and been so impressed that you put your limited funds on the line and took the plunge with the full game. All of this was fun, an element of mystery and grandeur added to your purchase decisions. Once you had the game you would bring over to your friends house to play it together or they would call over to yours to get involved.  These times were great, but unfortunately they are not seen as much today as they used to be for a number of reasons, but that won't be delved into just yet.

Shortly after that, we had the influx of add-ons. Instead of new games, we were asked to purchase half a game to add on to our previous game. This was fine to begin with, as the price usually mirrored the content, and if the game had been good enough, we would most assuredly purchase the add-on. However. It did not take long for the business minds to take over the marketing of the game designers, and soon we were asked to buy add-ons that cost the same as the original game and that had very limited content. It was the first... disappointment consumers had when it came to the video game market, and it was soon to be followed by many, many more problems.

The era of the monthly payment is one that is still very much alive. While I am not a huge fan of this business model, I can understand when it is needed for a company/game and the reasoning behind it. That is not to say that every game/company that uses this model is correct to do so. In fact, most that do use this system have no right to demand this sort of payment from their customers. 
When you maintain a massive amount of servers, developers, designers, community websites and customer services it is of course vital that you have a steady income to support them. When a game's business model does not support it, there is a problem. One of the few games that can still legitimately run a subscription based business model is Blizzard's World of Warcraft. They continuously provide upkeep on their servers, maintain a steady stream of content and game patches as well as offering many services to their customers in addition to the game. The numbers playing the game are so huge, that no other business model would fit. This was one of the first games to require a monthly subscription and very few, if any, games since have had the right to demand this. They simply saw the success of 'WoW' and decided to copy their business model(and some cases their game). Of course, many of these games have very few servers, a small amount of designers, very few patches and added content and as such should not be using this kind of system. Yet they do, and of course the game dies. It would be nice if we could say that there is only a few who make this folly, but in all honesty, it would be too hard to calculate how many games have floundered at this very basic hurdle.
 Also to be found in this era is the 'buy our game in beta' model. The person who invented this is a genius but also a villain. Buying an unfinished product is just plain wrong. It is like making the consumer an investor without giving them any stock in the company. It only serves to make money for the developer at the cost of their target market. What happens a lot(and will continue to happen), is that the unfinished product will disappoint the consumer with its graphic look, its playability, its bugs and so once it comes to release, they are so fed up with it that they will not put any more time or money in to it. In these cases the whole thing feels just like a money making scheme, as if no game was really ever going to come out. They sold an idea without ever having the intention of following through with a quality product. Beta is for testing, if anything they should be giving money to the people that are playing it, not charging them. It's disgusting. When you link this in to a subscription based business model after paying for a terrible beta... well, it's just bad business.

In the short interim here, we saw and still see the digital download. It began at the same price as buying off the shelf, but thankfully it is now cheaper for obvious reasons. This is a good system and will remain to be as long as they manage the prices of the downloads. The influx of this style of sales has caused some issues with 'real shop' vendors, but it has been a long time coming, and if the shop took no actions to preserve it's profitability...well, you won't find any sympathy here.

Queue the entrance of the free-to-play, microstransaction based business model. A great model when done correctly. It works on a number of levels, but it has to be something that is incorporated in the game's design from it's concept. Here we see the need for balance again, in time Vs money. Real life money used within the game should only give advantages that real life time would be able to achieve. You do not want to alienate the players that will only spend a small amount of money(if any) from the game by giving people who spend no time but lots of money all of the best things in the game. If your game has no players, you have no game. It's simple when you think about it. Assigning monetary value to time is no easy task, but it's something that many designers don't bother with, and so it is left to the 'marketeers' to assign the value, which of course means squeezing the most money out of people in the shortest amount of time without any real concept of what will happen to the game in the future.


Too Lazy Didn't Read: Designers, please take the time to choose the right model for your game.