Smedley on PS2 Monetization

http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/2rggfj/lets_talk_about_monetization/


Just in case the forumside is interested...

There is always a problem when art (yes, videogames are a form of art) meets money. The two seem to create real problems around one another. The quality and value of art is an extremely subjective thing, and any currency value you attempt to attach to it, will be slippery at best. This is even more dfficult when you start creating art which provides an experience rather than a tangible object.

Theatre, immersive performance, live-art, videogames... These things are much harder to apply a monetary value to than a painting or a sculpture, despite the fact they arguably have a greater use-value.

In the end, the only people who can legitimately a value to those artforms, are the artists themselves. it's then up to the consumer to decide whether or not they wish to buy. The interesting thing about F2P games, is that a large portion of the art is given away for free, and thus rendered value-less in the eyes of many consumers who choose to pay for it. redressing that balance may well be a necessary thing for the wallets of the artist and the satisfaction of the paying consumer.

I work in theatre, and the whole money thing is a really thorny issue that I try not to get involved in... It just makes the whole process really messy and begins to compromise the purity of creating something. I have a lot of understanding for those who're trying to navigate those issues like SOE are. I'm also extremely appreciative of how straightforward and communicative they've been about the whole nasty money thing.

This needs to be archived here as well simply b/c I hear that Reddit just purges stuff too quickly:

Happy New Year everyone!
First off, sorry for not doing this over the break. To put it simply I was on twitter but slacked off on reddit and other longer form places because I was relaxing with my family. Matt's on break too, and the communication wasn't as good as it should have been.

I wanted to clearly explain the drop rate change. It was step one in a longer term plan to balance the cert economy better so we can make the money we actually had planned on.


Planetside 2 only recently has turned profitable on an operating basis. When I say recently, I'm talking about a few months here. Anyone that thinks we're swimming in cash is plain wrong. Don't get me wrong, the plan for any game is to make money.. and we believe in the long term future of the game.. which is why you're seeing the PS4 version going into beta very soon (we'll officially announce it in the next couple of days).
If your'e in the online game business, unless your game is LoL or Wow the truth is it's all about the long term and you better be in it with that in mind. We are.


Specifically - our plan has always been to offer ALMOST anything that you can buy with Station Cash to be purchased with Certs.
And the majority of people have a ton of certs. Why? Because we didn't balance it perfectly. In every case we erred on the side of giving away too many or making things cost too little so we don't make you grind too hard.
When I said this change isn't a money grab I was telling the truth. It's making us about $200 extra a day TOTAL. Did we think it would make an extra $20k a day and we were just wrong? No. What we thought is we need to rebalance the cert economy so you have to make logical choices about what and when to spend money on. Right now, for the vast majority of things you don't even need to think about it.

So all the rhetoric about what money grubbing a-holes we are for doing this is unfounded IMO. It was in the patch notes for sure. But I will accept that it needs to be called out better. Anyone that thinks that we just tried to slide it in there is wrong.. I suspect it was just too close to the holidays and people had break on the brain and we'll do better next time on that.
I feel like we've done our best to be transparent when we're doing things to make more money. I think we need to do a better job at it though and we will. I don't see a lot of other companies talking so openly about monetization... but we need to do better.
Hope this explains it better
Smed

Apart from Reddit what are these other Longer form places he uses ? I know which it isn't , curious as to which it is

I have to admit, I'm mildly surprised that a copy of that hasn't been posted by smed on this forum...

That is complete ********. Never in my life have I found a game company that made it so damn hard to give them more of your money. On THREE separate occasions I have tried and tried to get support to let me BUY the Lancer AE from them. I offered to pay the full price of the first anniversary package for that one gun (Yeah, I've got more money than time, Wanna fight about it?). I wanted to GIVE THEM MONEY for ONE SINGLE GUN. They would not do it. Said they could not do it. Instead of offering to find someone who COULD do it, They simply said it couldn't be done and closed the ticket. Now I will never be able to 100% my directives, But hey.. I guess thats less money towards the profit margins right? Thats alright, I can always take my money to someone else who will take it.

If you want to give people something to use their certs on, fine, but don't make it something that new players can't possibly afford. Even a new player who buys a sub won't be able to afford the chargers needed to keep an implant on all the time, not even a T1 implant. Meanwhile you have BR100s who have been playing for years and literally have a stockpile of certs with nothing they want to spend them on. Those people aren't even going to buy a sub or XP boosts, but they are going to have the advantage here.

In order for this to be reasonable, you'd have to make the drop rate for chargers and implants significantly higher for people with subscriptions. Then you'd get more subs from new players, but also have the cert sink you want for veterans. It's bull and still P2W, but at least it's better than the current model.

I think the more damaging quote is this gem.

"Commenting on accusations of promoting a pay-to-win environment with these changes, CM Tony Jones responded on Reddit, "Depends on how you define P2W. If implants are P2W, then yes, you may not like everything in the future."

After the anniversary bundle and double station cash + "unintentional" cyber monday fiasco I have to wonder if SOE has any PR sense in their collective minds.

What would be the point in putting out any sort of anniversary type anything if some random a year later could buy it?

Money!

:'(
They're just directives, man. We all want to release the Kraken, but there's always a next year.

That is very disheartening. Implants are most definitely P2W, but being the only P2W hing in the game, I can look past it enough to keep playing. But that post makes it sound like more of the same is around the corner. If that's what they meant, then the future definitely doesn't look so good.

From the Reddit post, it sounds like this game started to turn a profit before the implant drop rates were adjusted. I don't believe that this is the only way for the game to survive, not with the PS4 launch coming up on top of that.

To be honest, the respect I have towards the devs has increased by this message. They need to make MONEY. And if it means not getting some more ES things by the end of the year, then so be it. As time goes by, things have to get better. Keep it up, devs. I trust that you will remain committed to making this game better than ever!

No, there isn't always next year. It is highly doubtful they will ever do the ESRL anniversary editions because of how vastly unpopular they were to begin with. This is especially true for the Lancer AE.

Its a trade off here.. SOE wants money, And I want to give them money to save me the grind.

This is what happens when you listen to your players. "Certs impossible to grind! Way too hard to buy things!! ;_;!"

I don't want to play for five days to earn 200 certs.
I don't need to play for a single hour to make around 50 certs, either.

There should be a maximum, but there should also be a minimum as well.

Well, it does confuse me as to why they wouldn't accept money for a virtual weapon that can only be bought USING money...
Then again, it's only a virtual weapon that can only be bought USING money...

It really did seem like they were just too busy going on vacation. No sense of loyalty or even appreciation for the community. "You didn't get holiday emails? Sucks to be you!" What kind of system is that other than like Comcast?

I wouldn't be surprised if SOE tried to roll out their own (even crappier) version of Ubisoft's UPlay system. I hate to think of a future where all the publishers are racing to create their own Steam system. - It took me two days to download Far Cry 4 from UPlay, because it kept disconnecting me, and visiting their support forum was page after page of either "I can't download the game I bought" or, "I can't play my saved games".

That all being said, at least Smedley addressed the issue. At least he's felt enough heat (some well known YouTubers loudly leaving) or read enough posts to know they've made some big mistakes over the past month and he needed to say something, because lord knows Higby isn't in a position to know what the hell is going on. Kinda sad that the CEO of SOE has to handle the grunt work. So either Highy's lost faith in him, or he's lost faith in Highby.

"the cert economy" is an unfortunate choice of words IMHO as something they intend to roll forward with. Mainly because I don't think they've actually studied the politics on it. They're using "the economy" specifically because that word is polling well right now but they're a bit out of touch with the underlying problems that are still felt about "the economy". Namely that hard work and long hours of effort aren't rewarded anymore. 35 straight years of something called "Stagflation" will do that to any mass demographic and their opinions on the economic system that they're just barely holding up. I say it's unfortunate because the change they have planned will penalize exactly those players who toil long hours. And that's going to be a P.R. disaster in the coming year as there's a house of cards set to fall. If I were them I'd change that "economy" part of it to something else, ANYTHING else ... even Nanites or DonAlfredos. ...either one will poll a bit higher in the coming year than the word they're using now.

exactly