Micropayment The future of Gaming

[Asfand]

There seems to be an overall opinion within the gaming industry that the current pricing model for games cannot continue as development costs have increased dramatically this generation of consoles as gamers demand a visual food from their HIGH DEFINITION games.

Even the big boys of the industry are beginning struggle, EA lost $82 million last one fourth and have terminated many games and has stated their purpose to concentrate on core franchises, which means less perceived risk which experts claim means less innovation and new experiences for the game lover.

The gaming industry needs to find a way to pay for the experience that gamers are demanding and the current financial model isn't working in most of developers and publishers. The has seen the exploding market of casual gaming and the huge financial rewards that this has taken and want to adapt that financial model into the more serious gaming experience.

Of course, there are other financial models already out there than that of the industry standard single fixed price, perhaps the most popular is the pay monthly plan. It's usually stationed by MMORPG's (massively multiplayer online role playing games) such as Wow whereby consumers usually pay an initially lower fee for the game but then pay a monthly fee for continued access to the game and its content. This monthly fee entitles the user to continued access, bug updates and usually content updates as well (though big content updates are sometimes sold separately). This model allows developers to be more adventurous and try new things as they can release new content as and when its finished and gain instant feedback on it from the consumer whereas the more traditional predetermined fee yearly pick the developer needs to play it safer in order to make sure that they get the sales they need to gain profits.

Another model that gets trotted out a lot as the potential saviour of the gaming industry is the tiny transaction gaming model, whereby the initial and base experience may be free but then the user is required to pay small fee's in order to access more content or additional features.

A popular example of this is the numerous games on the social network Facebook, with the prime example being The farmville game. The game is entirely free to play, if you can 'enhance' your experience by buying in game items for real cash.

I'm not quite so sure however how the gaming industry expects to be able to transfer this model from such a casual game market into the more serious market that the Xbox and PLAYSTATION 3 250GB provides. 

상품권 현금화 The would suggest that gamers would look favourably upon paying less in advance for the game and using the core experience and deciding if they like it or not before shouldering extra cash for additional access to content or features. However as a game lover I will either know before I buy the game either by playing the demonstration (or playing previous years if its a franchise) or following the press' coverage of the game as to whether I would like to purchase and play the game. Do i as a game lover really want to have to feel I have to spend an extra $5 for a particular feature or item in game in order to feel competitive against other people as they all contain it and I don't?

The argues that some people will be able to experience games for cheaper than they can currently due to the flexible pricing that tiny transactions offers and whilst this might be true for the very casual game lover, for the serious game lover that has been supporting the game industry for years paying hundreds of dollars a years for games it will surely cost them a lot more to experience the same experience that they are currently receiving for their $60.

I believe that this tiny transaction model also has a lot of risks for the developers and publishers, if the consumer is paying less in advance then it requires the user to spend tremendously in game to enhance their experience, this means that they must be having a compelling experience already to assure spending more. Currently shovelware still makes big money as the consumer has no choice but to pay the full fee in advance, if however a user buys it for cheap and then realises how crap it really is then the developer has lost on money that it would have otherwise already got. This also works the same for more innovative and risky games, the isn't guaranteed a certain cash in on each copy sold which means that they must be more conservative in the games that they create in order to make sure they make the money back that the shelled on creating it.

The has been testing the waters with going towards a more tiny transactional system this generation with the addition of DLC (downloadable content), whilst some of the content is clearly extra than that which the developer had originally planned for the game, some content for games has been by choice taken off the core package and repackaged as DLC in order to pennie and dime the consumer for every cent they have.

In conclusion I find myself that the industry must change something in how that they either make games or the way that they price games in order to survive. Either we as gamers must accept smaller lower visual quality games to keep costs low or if we continue to want a movie like experience we must accept that i will be asked to pay more for the experience. It will be hard for the industry to try and persuade the game lover that its in their best interest to move away from the current pricing model as it is currently very good quality to the consumer, however i'm uncertain that tiny transactions are the future of gaming.