What would you consider a *real* reasonable cost for an online game?

as for the price of an online game, i play mostly fps games (though i would like to try an MMO but there aren't any worthy of play, i don't want to just click "kill that thing" and watch my person kill it... i don't want a video game of basically a tamagotchi). that said, depending on the content of the game, 15 bucks is a chunk of change for online play. the game better had be constantly updated, and if servers go down i wouldn't like that at all. i'd rather you pay for the amount of usage at the end of each month. you don't pay utilities based on a flat rate. if you did, prices would be insanely high. they should count how many minutes you play and put a price on that.

a price like $0.0029 per minute gives an semi-just cost on gameplay. 3 hours a day for a month would cost $14.62. this would keep down the cost for people like me, because granted if you cannot play a game for one day, so about 10 hours a week would cost about $7 which is fine for me. this would also help kids stop playing video games so much because parents aren't going to want a bill for $40 bucks a month for a video game.

people do migrate to cheaper things. in college, you'll find a lot of natty light just because it's cheap as dirt. no one is going to buy real expensive beer, only to have other people drink it up. so what i'm saying is, if the company had initially done pricing at a fair point to all customers, it might have a larger crowd.

 

online games should be free

 

I think some people have brought it some good points and some interesting business models. It would be nice if say, WoW had a model for those casual users. Either a pay by hour or locked content kind of thing. But it's even harder to balance a game with locked content...

It would be nice if people had the option to run their own servers. But with MMO's, it's just not fun playing on a server with only 50 or 100 people...

But to boypogi and others, why should it be free? If a company is administering hundreds of servers for millions of players it costs a lot of money... how would you suggest offsetting that cost? Some of the MMO's that charge do update and make changes to the game fairly constantly too... so would you prefer to see people having to pay for each minor update or what?

Just curious...

 

lol, casual WoW user. That's like saying casual crack smoker. Once you're in, you're in.

Edit: /joke. Do not respond to my stupid jokes with actual thought-out answers. It's a waste of your time.

 

Nah... that would be Substance D.

But there are many, many casual WoW players. It is in some ways much more friendly for casual players now.

For instance, me and almost all my friends who play don't put more than 20 hours in a month. I go in spurts... sometimes I'll put in 20 hours in a week, but not play for a while.

 

I don't see a problem with 15/month pricing model. People balk at having to pay a monthly fee for a game, but then a coffee costs 4 bucks and movie is what? Almost 10 bucks now?

Value for your dollar is really good for a MMO. I played WoW for a while and it was really fun. The problem is that it's also very addicting so I had to stop. It's hard for me to play casually.

 

WoW keeps being referenced because its very successful and uses the discussed business model.

And Warloque please....PLEASE fix your capitalization issue.

 

I think pay-to-play is not a bad idea. However, would you bill at the start of the month or before the time is used (like a cell phone) or after the use (like utilities)? The first model I think makes more sense for this application, as it means less risk to the company (no delinquent accounts) and better control on how much time people are playing for (of course, people would probably not like being kicked out of the game in the middle of something because thier time ran out).

 

My wife and I recently did some math on what we could and should cut out of our budget as we wanted to save for a trip to ireland.

Honestly, If you rent a DVD to watch once for two people and then complain about spending $15/month for an MMORPG, you are being rediculous.

Here's why:

How much do you pay for a movie with your date?

$14-16 for two tickets (not counting popcorn) for two hours?
$3.25/hour each for (maybe)two hours of entertainment.

In this case you are paying the theatre to buy the license to show the movie, maintain the screen and electronics, keep the place clean, and man the equipment for you. This is a LOT of cost and the price shows it.


Let's ramp it down and wait for DVD...
$4.25 for a rental

$1.06/hour each for (maybe) two hours of entertainment.

In this case you are paying the rental place to keep up a selection of DVDs for you to browse. Pretty low-upkeep and the price shows it.


MMORPG costing $15/month... say you are REALLY casual and only get 5 hours of play/week

20 hours at $15/month = $0.75/hour

In this case you are paying to maintain server uptime and hardware, maintain bandwidth and availability, licensing rights if any, (warhammer, conan, D&D, etc), support people, GMs, furthur development (most of which is not paid for), cheat prevention and dynamic content along with a community. The price doesn't show it at all.

On top of this my wife and I have met many RL friends through games like Lineage2 and still keep them long after we quit the game... some of them from europe, france, and russia as well as all over the US.
Similar social activities cost considerably more.
(A couple hours at a pub cost us $30 or more depending on how "thirsty" we are. Even buying our own bottles and entertainign at home costs more than the MMO!)


Sure you can buy a single-player game and get many hours out of it... but then its done and you have made no real friends out of it... this is all fine and good, but MMORPGs are about social activities.

You pay for exactly that... a stable meeting place with changing content to meet friends at...

It is worth every penny IMHO.

 

KernalPanic -

Just because you pay more for other entertainment doesn't mean that $15/month isn't too much. I agree that paying to play is fine, but for those that get 100 hours in per month, it's a bargain. But for us that can't/don't play that much, maybe a couple dozen hours per month at most, it doesn't make sense.

WoW is successful, but that doesn't mean they can't improve. I can imagine that they would probably get even a lot more players if they did a tiered hour system. Even if it were something simple like less than 40 hours = $9.95 more than 50 hours = $14.95, just as an example.

Using your idea of saying 20 hours at $15/month = $0.75/hour isn't the same as a movie. You spend a lot of down time in WoW, or doing frivolous things for a lot of it.

 

You might as well be complaining about spending $4.25 to rent a 2hr movie... you are being even more of a cheapskate by complaining about $15/month for someone who plays 20 hours/month even. (I used a 5 hours/week or 20 hours/month comparison)

You are spending more than 4 times more/hour going out to a movie at the theatre...

You spend 10-15 minutes of some of these 90-minute runtime movies watching advertisements and a blank screen... thats a lot of downtime as well. Not to mention boring moments in the movie...

The cost is fine unless you don't use it.
If you don't use it, don't pay for it.
There are free MMORPGs out there and ones with different billing structures as well.

As for WoW... I don't know why anyone would pay to play that one longer than a few months. I think those over 18 should get paid to play that one for babysitting.

 

Well, to be fair, you can't come close to all the content in WoW in a few months. A rough estimate of the time for someone to get to 70 is about 8 days play time, and for those who aren't power leveling, I think thats being conservative. So... by your 20hours a month thats almost 10 months just to get to 70. And at 70, there is a TON of content.
Now... if you want to experience something different, you can go level another 70 on the opposite side (horde or alliance). Now you are up to basically 2 years of play time at 20 hours a week...

While you mention boring parts of movies, there are also boring parts of MMO's (grinding).

 

Problem is that I tend to play several games at a time. If every game you wanted to play you had to pay and manage your accounts for online, you could lose track, and you could spend hundreds every month. I have a library of hundreds and hundreds of games I've collected over the years (all legitimate purchases, yes I have been a junkie).

If all those online games I played I had to spend $15/month on, I'd constantly be juggling turning some on and off and still spending probably $100/month or so when I paid $30-$50 once for these games and played endless hours if I wanted to!!!

 

Keep in mind, most of my issues with WoW have little to do with the game design or content. The reason for my changrin over that game is the overall community.

Wow is the ONLY MMORPG I have ever felt entitled to ask for babysitting compensation for playing.