Free to Play*: what's all the fuss about? (Venn included)

Abstract, summary and conclusion all in one Venn for the impatient:

And, actually, I'm kind of impatient too. So here's some some shortform notes on what I was thinking about when the above popped into my head.

• We named it wrong -- it's not "free" at all. It's just another way of try before you buy
• This is not a post about shitty energy system time management games interactive experiences
• * I would write Free 2 Play... but I was reliably informed at GDC Online that the term is trademarked by K2 Network -- in a talk, by them, about the wonders of this "new" model 

We've a bunch of other terms to describe this stuff:

• Freemium: apparently it's different, though I hear it used interchangeably with free to play
• Freeware: stuff that is actually free
• Shareware: stuff that is feature or content limited until the user hands over some cash

Wait a minute, that definition of shareware sounds kind of familiar... in fact, isn't that a better description of what we're trying to describe here? Instead of copying floppy disks and installing from free CD-ROMs, we're pushing this stuff out digitally... but we're still targeting the maximum possible audience with the free stuff in order that the ones who really like it want to pay more to play more -- and can? Right?

Okay, "shareware" isn't a great name either... but it at least is a little more accurate. And it doesn't sound quite so manipulative. Have you thought about other words with "free" in them. There are more poor examples than great ones.

Anyway, back to that diagram. It's pretty self explanatory. This is nothing new... we're just finding new ways of getting the reach we need in order for people to reimburse us as and when they want to. In fact, it's a little better -- the green circle being inside the red circle means everyone paying us money has already played our game... the chances of them being satisfied with their purchase are much higher.

AS A COMPLETELY SEPARATE ISSUE, we have to remember that in parallel there's a bunch of other crap being pedalled under the "game" moniker -- if we continue to make high quality games and at the same time experiment with these new delivery and commercial mechanics, the distinctions will become clearer.

21 ways to monetize your game

This is not comprehensive, cohesive or in any particular order. However, it is full of juicy ideas on how to monetize your stuff. 

We’ve been discussing this recently in the context of a new project – you might also find our recent posts on the production/promotion balance and launch-marketing an iOS/iPad title useful.

1. Subscriptions – free to download, but pay for a subscription for so long as you want to play

2. Free trial versions – limited by features, limited by time, limited by expiry date

3. Sale of in-game objects or item for convenience sake (things that you could otherwise create, accumulate, find in-game but might not care to spend the time to do so)

League of Legends is free to play, but sells users a wide variety of playable champions, skins, boosts and other items

4. Selling ancillary stuff – e.g. ads, merchandising (and keeping the game free to play)

5. Pay for access to under-the-hood services (e.g. use of an API, access via 3^rd party services)

6. Hosting of private servers, lobbies for paying customers

7. Sale of cosmetic/aesthetic items or game objects

8. Subscriptions for different levels of access (e.g. free for a single character, paid for multiple characters)

9. Sponsorship of in-game items (advertising)

Burnout: Paradise serves up in-game advertisements as, well, advertisments

10. Pay for services, in-game tools that make it easier to manage/retain your character, world etc (pay not to play)

11. Mixed mode sale (e.g. one-off purchase of items, or fixed-rate subscription for unlimited use / access)

12. Upfront purchase – like how we used to do it

13. Pay for offline automation of persistent character (e.g. AI-like tactics, alerting services)

14. Highlighted/premium status in game-related sites or communities (e.g. forums, wikis etc)

15. Access to in-game, non-core services (e.g. whisper, party chat)

16. Pay for the services of other players (guides for hire)

17. Pay to fail – e.g. allow resurrection where it wouldn’t otherwise be possible

18. Sell in-game real estate

Second Life auctions off chunks of land directly as they’re made available (as well as letting users trade land)

19. Sell choice of spawn locations, other otherwise random new player variables

20. Sell vanity services – naming terrain, aesthetic improvements

21. Currency exchange – sell in-game currency for real-world Dollars/Bahts/whatever

Temple Run, the latest from @nattylux and @kshepherd, allows users to buy coins that can otherwise be accumulated through play

Gutenberg Neto (another #idevblogaday author) recently posted a great article on getting free-to-play right. That’s worth a look.

Honarary mention to Mike Berg (@weheartgames) who reminds us that “no connections, almost no marketing = very low sales. :)” – which pretty succinctly says exactly what I was going to in conclusion: it doesn’t matter how you monetize, if you don’t tell anyone everyone about what you’ve made you’re not going to get paid.

Doing what you (might) already know -- the fine balance of making and promoting your work

We’ve recently been ramping up the attention we pay to promoting ourselves, our work and our upcoming games titles for iOS and the web. In a few short steps (writing up a launch task list, attending Develop and preparing for a couple of conference speaking engagements in September) we’ve come to realize this: all we need to do is exactly what we already know.

To clarify: we know how to market ourselves and our games, we just need to get on with doing it. In order to remind ourselves (and yourselves) of a couple of those basics (because this stuff is basic) we’ve brought them together in this semi-glorified bullet-point list. 

General promotion

• Ensure you can balance sustainability (cash flow, sanity); development effort; profile promotion and title promotion. Without each of these playing its part (you can merge the latter two if  it’s absolutely necessary and done incredibly carefully) you’re not going to see any significant forward progress – and in fact, you’ll likely fall apart or end up going backwards.
• Pay attention to everything. This is targeted primarily at other indies, but relevant to all, because: you should pay attention to what everyone is doing. AAA marketing budgets don’t come easily, but neither does the inventiveness and passion seen in the marketing and promotional efforts of indies.
• Talk to everybody. Network. Targeting individuals is fine, but talking to everybody is better – you don’t know where the pivotal conversations will happen until after they happen.
• Tell people about what you are doing. This is the most important thing. If no one knows what you’ve done, it doesn’t matter how great it is. Your blog, other people’ s blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, forums, mailing lists, traditional media – anyone who’ll listen.
• Get involved. Enter your stuff into competitions. Participate in game jams. Not only do they bring exposure to your work, but they also help you refine your processes around specific points in time and force you to show what you do best: create stuff.

Operational stuff

• Plan what you plan to do. If nothing else it holds you to account and gives you some method by which to assess your progress. Make sure you set yourself lists of forward moving actions – and make sure you review them to make sure they stay relevant and reflect the iteration of your plans as you progress through specific tasks.
• Do everything as cheaply as possible, but no cheaper. It’s astonishing what you can get for little or no money – whether it’s products and services or the time and commitment of others. Just because other people are paying through the nose for something, doesn’t mean it’s the only way.
• Invest in tools. Yes, yes – as per above – but it’s a worth remembering that great tools can make several orders of magnitude’s difference in your most valuable resource: your time.
• Get your commercial and legal bits in order. Legal incorporation and shareholding, banking, insurance, payroll, taxes, copyrights and trademarks. All of these can and will screw you if you don’t get them sorted early on.

Getting better

• Get stuff out there. Putting something out there is better than putting nothing out there. Especially in games development. Getting anything to the point of distribution is hard – regardless of the complexity of the title itself. Once you’ve done this, you can concentrate of improving the core product.
• Sunk costs. Understand the core principle of sunk costs. Make decisions based on what happens next, not what went before. Costs to date should not sway the balance of an otherwise clear decision.
• Analytics and metrics. For your promotional activities as well as for the games themselves. There are a wealth of services out there to help you with this (e.g. Google Analytics, Flurry). It’s amazing what you find out when you start measuring stuff. There’s no better way to challenge and improve your assumptions than with data.
• Take a look at the services others are using. See what they can do for you (can they meet needs you don’t know you have). We’ve seen value beyond solving our initial problems from Skype, Google Docs, Dropbox, BitBucket/Github, Bitly etc.
• Do all of this, then do it again. There is always scope for doing more.

Specifics on – conferences

• Do not dismiss conferences. There’s a reason why pretty much everybody in the industry (AAA, indie and otherwise) treat them as pivotal points in the year.
• It’s surprising what you can learn from others. Whether it’s an introduction to a new topic or reinforcing an existing one, giving yourself the opportunity to absorb information and reflect on your work is incredibly valuable.
• It’s very hard not to network. People want to talk to other people.  Talk to them about their stuff; tell them about yours. It’s the whole fucking point.
• Present your stuff. There’s a wealth of interesting material in what we do – and for sure someone will be interested in what you’ve done. If you’ve ambitions on presenting at GDC you’re going to have to start somewhere.

Specifics on – funding

• Always think about getting paid. No one else is going to do this for you, but no one minds if you make this the most important thing – 9 times out of 10 they’re thinking about the same thing.
• Funding means everything that gets  you paid. Everything from revenue based on past successes, self funding (subsidizing) and borrowing through to angel and VC investment falls into the same category.
• Learn from the pros. VCs and angel investors generally look at you & your team, your competition, their (and your) exit strategy, user acquisition, results to date and transformational potential – you should too.
• Look at yourself from the perspective of others. Regardless of whether you’re seeking funding or not, viewing your work (and more specifically your actions) from the perspective of an outsider can highlight stuff you might not otherwise have seen. If you wouldn’t invest in yourself (or your idea, current plan etc), why would anybody else?

Thank you EA: concentrating on what you want to play isn’t enough as an indie developer

Between moving house, Christmas and a bunch of other activities, I did get a little time play some games… some EA games to be precise.

One particular game is relevant to this post: Reckless Racing.

A couple of times in 2010 we spent some development time on a top-down, drift physics racer. Originally titled Retro Racer, then later some part of our Unga Bunga project and most recently Dwarf Dash.

The time we spent on each form of the project was useful – in its first instance it was a case of getting a prototype working, with physics written from scratch. It took about 3 days and was fun and effective-for-a-prototype playable.

In its second form, we did little (no) work on the game code itself, but a lot on the design and concept – this ended up forming the grounding of a completely unrelated god/sim game: Unga Bunga.

In its third, most recent and final form (as final as it’ll get) it was titled Dwarf Dash (which we started as part of the Ludum Dare Challenge). This involved a re-think of the concept, related art and general game design issues, as well as a re-implementation of the original prototype in our new component architecture. What we learnt here from a technical point of view was invaluable and fed directly into how we used that architecture in the two titles we now have in active development.

Where does EA come in?

As it turns out (and we could’ve figured this out in advance, but didn’t) there’s not a huge amount of original design, iterative design change or innovative implementation involved in something that is quite squarely another crack at a well established genre and game type.

We were doing this because I very much enjoy top-down drift physics racers. And this is where there’s an important (and not often explored) message:

Creating games that you (the indie dev) want to play isn’t enough.

As indie developers with no external constraints, we should be be mindful of the required development and design implementation: we should be working on things that are interesting and exciting to develop as well as play. This is how we bring real value.

Producing video games is a vast and varied undertaking. I’m insisting that we select titles based on their innovative design value, as well as their desirability as a game player. Let’s leave the implementation of well-trodden game types to EA (and those like them) and enjoy the fruits of their constraints. Reckless Racing, aside from minor criticisms of the AI and a few other bits, is a pretty damn good implementation of a top-down drift physics racer for iOS.

To conclude

Thank you EA for sating my need to drift rigid bodies around finely-tuned curves. And thank you EA for getting me to this point and letting me get on with innovating and creating.

This is important: reflections on the Mac App Store from a (iOS) developer perspective

What does the Mac App Store mean for (iOS) developers? Simple: I have no idea.

Nobody could have predicted the creative and commercial innovation spawned by the (then) iPhone App Store. The same applies here.

My original #idevblogaday post for this week was going to be about game controller design patterns, and was going to be suffixed "...iPad not yet welcome". That suffix was a lead in to an enthusiastic, but still frustrated, mini-rant about how the iPad has really yet to shine as a gaming platform. The majority of its titles either use (or abuse) their iPhone ancestory when it comes to control mechanisms. That will change as the platform evolves, and I'm very excited to developing a title that I see being a part of that.

But, everything just changed. Again. The Mac App Store doesn't just open up new design patterns, it opens up new commercial models, a massivley expanded marketplace and another solid charge of creative enthusiasm.

So, what do we know?

Discovery

The App Store opens up access to millions of customers that you couldn't get to before. Suck up the 30% because the expanded market more than balences that out.

Things like paid upgrades and grandfathering in existing licenses will need to be sorted out for some of the significant studios currently doing OSX development. Apple responded to feedback on the iOS App Store, why wouldn't they with the Mac equivilent? Remember it's in their interests to do so.

The most important thing to point out (and it would seem that many miss this), is that people love to buy stuff if shown how. Even more, they love to buy quality stuff. This is where we, as app developers come in. It was possible to purchase software for your smartphone long before the iPhone and the App Store - but it only became significant when Apple guided users down the path to purchase.

Feasibility

The stream-lined route to market makes a million niche apps feasible all of a sudden. And there are _lot_ of niches when you consider the evolved (sans a real cloud strategy) desktop experience we're looking at.

Standalone App Store app, not part of iTunes

A minor detail to some, but a telling sign for many -- if this had been based around iTunes I'd have had significant reservations about Apple's commitment. They understand how important this is, and we now know that they also understand that iTunes is a burden to iOS and the App Store in general.

Technology

This almost certainly means new technology (at least in the install/update and encryption space), but most likely also in a form of UIKit. Although developer.apple.com is sparse on detail right now, I'm sure someone will shout when we see more on what's coming down the API/SDK pipeline.

For iOS game devs there are a couple of technology treats waiting for you already - cocos2d already supports Mac OSX targets for example. How far behind do you think Epic and Unity are? 

The many ways of multi-touch

As I said in the introduction to this post, even the iPad is yet to catch up to its multi-touch potential. Given the prevelance of multi-touch interfaces made available to us by Apple - particularly the MBP-style touchpad, the magic trackpad and the iOS devices (I'm not one for the Magic Mouse) - there's so much more scope for innovation here.

I'm particularly excited about touchpad-based multi-touch applications on a desktop interfaces - yes, the precision is not quite the same as on a touch screen, but there are no more thumbs in the way (and no more thumb prints).

Installation and updates

Ever try to explain mounting a .dmg, installing and unmounting to a non techie?

I've been a full-on Mac user for 2 years, and I'm still constantly frustrated (and often confused) by application updates. No two applications manage it the same way, and very few get close to acceptable user experience. I don't care why it's that way, I don't care that it's in part due to my impatience. I'm not an idiot and it frustrates me. I want it to be better - and the App Store update system makes it better.

Miscellany

Full screen apps - I've not seen many apps get this right on OSX. Blizzard's WOW and Starcraft share a CMD+M keyboard shortcut. That's about as good as it gets at the minute.

90 days - enough time to think, not too little to panic.

--

This is a positive thing. Yes, there are scary bits for existing Mac devs -- but I don't believe there are many who haven't envied the willing market the App Store provides. You've got a choice, get on with it and reap the rewards or don't. As @mattgemmell pointed out earlier, "Devs who are relieved the Mac App Store is optional haven’t yet realised that that’s an irrelevant point." And, just as importantly @chockenberry's "Remember how much the iOS App Store has changed over time (with our feedback) — the same thing will happen on the Mac."

Oh, and in other news, Chillingo was just aquired by EA for $20 million. It wasn't their Windows Mobile or RIM legacy that got them there.