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Nearly half of MMO gamers bought virtual stuff
ThomasN7
87.18.7.148Member CommonPosts: 6,690
One of the interesting things we at Massively find about statistics and surveys is how people react to surveys and research results about games, virtual environments and MMOGs. Unexpected results automatically attract criticism of every aspect of the report and data no matter how the results were obtained, from the political leanings of the researchers, to the way the charts are drawn. On the other hand, when the results of surveys or research agree with our expectations, people rarely question the results, again, no matter how they were obtained.
Therefore, we wonder what you all might make of this report, that 12% of Americans have purchased at least one virtual item in the last item within the last 12 months, and almost half (46%) of MMO gamers/virtual world users have done so within the same period. Obviously, that would include assorted free-to-play games, so-called 'freemium' games and environments, Facebook and all-sorts.
The survey was commissioned by global payment solutions provider, PlaySpan. The results are only available in summary, but we're interested in your reaction. Are the results what you expect, or not? And either way, do you dispute or accept the data?
Source: www.massively.com/2009/07/30/survey-says-nearly-half-of-mmo-gamers-bought-virtual-stuff/
Part 2 Survey Statistics
gigaom.com/2009/07/30/12-of-americans-bought-virtual-goods-in-past-12-months-survey/
Comments
Well, different conclusions can be drawn from those numbers.
Players in Asia are probably playing more free to play games the American players, hence their much higher numbers of virtual purchases.
Game makers that are pushing for the RMT setup in game may want to look at the Americans low numbers and think about how that may affect their numbers in the NA and Euro markets.
Am I the only one that wonders about the credibility of a survey done about game payments by a company that specializes in game payments? Isn't that kinda like a tabacco company doing a health survey on cigs??
Not saying I agree or disagree just making a point.
Hmm .. read carefully. The survey is COMMISSIONED by playpan .. but carried out by the analyst firm Frank N. Magid Associates.
There is a slight difference. Also while these analyst firms may tweak their conclusions, and interpretation, to reflect what you want to hear, usually they do NOT fake data, and the description of what they have done.
I think it is reasonable to question whether they did their sampling right, or if they wrote their questions well, but if the survey says 12%, then 12% of the respondents indeed have purchased virtual items.
I and I am not alone in this, see the trend in MMO,s to justify going to cash for items and game currancy model, with various reasons given, such as...
1/ Stops international money laundring of drug money.
2/ stops international fraud.
3/ saves little children from working in game grinding workshops
and etc etc, while there are elements of truth in all of the above reasons, the best lies contain an element of truth, asks policticians they live by that maxim.
The most obvious reason for companies to convert games to a cash transaction model with freeplay and in some cases still a monthly fee, yeah SOE im looking at you for one (SOE more guilty than most in sneaking in and then justifing with B/S), is we want to make a huge slice of that sweet asian sweatshop style cash pie.
However this in fact causes the above listed reasons to be made worse....WHY ?....Well you just tried to start a price war with a sweatshop mentality industry, how the F##K are you going to win that price war, in short you cant, the only way is to attempt to stop the outside transactions, HMMM and thats WORKED SO WELL so far hasnt it !
Having a game with legit cash transaction, WILL not make the 3rd party ones go away, in fact you will be constantly undercut, the monthly fee model while having flaws and a lack of ability to stop 3rd party transactions is still fairer, it just costs to much for them to police their servers to the degree that is required, CCP comes the closets to policing their servers and yet it can never be close to 100% not even 50%.
Also justifying any transcatons as 'I dont have time to grind out money to play this game' is a flawed excuse because part of it is true, but you lying to yourself, and the best lies contain an element of truth as stated before, a more accurate statement would be, ' I dont have the time to play the genre of MMO,s in the currant format anymore'...there you go, all of the problems of 3rd party transactions, the drug trade, the working little kiddies to death in sweatshops is all your fault because MMO,s require alot of time, and once you stop being a child and living with mom and dad most people stop having the time to invest to the degree required in MMO's.....
Well thats a cop out to isnt it, the real culprits are the people who create the market in the first place by putting the huge timesinks in for cash/items, some have attempted to solve this with various methods like bind on equip, no trade items but its something that needs to be wanted to be fixed and resolved from the core upwards, not a patched in afterthought..
I dont think this is ever going away, the markets have been created, Pandora is sooo out of the box, she is doing pride marches, but giving in and saying ok as a company we will do the transaction isnt the solution either, your forcing a model down everyones throat and in most cases results in if you dont use it, you will be on a lesser playing field than the others, giving in and saying 'lets make some money as well' sends a very wrong message.
I have no solutions to this, this is just how I feel, its my view....I just hate being given B/S reasons to justify certain behaviour so my list of hate contains MMO,s management , policticans and any famous person that goes off to another country to get children....(I dont mean the recently XXXMicheal Jackson) wrong type of get.
Wall of text crits??
It's sligthly misleading to post this in a MMORPG forum
Because while the survey seems to be about any virtual item (game, MP3, MMORPG item mall, or $0.25 Facebook app item,) people in this forum are likely to assume it's just MMORPG item mall stuff.
At first I was like "Hmm, but I've never bought virtual stuff." before realizing that I've bought an awful lot of Steam games.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Well, its either 100% or 0%.
0% if you consider anything inside a MMO the property of the MMO company. As any agreement will say it can be shutdown and therefor taken away from you at any moment. So you are just renting access and havent bought anything.
Or 100% if you consider the items you start out with when buying the game, which every player has. Your toon, the world, its one big virtual item that you are playing with and bought.
Those surveys show one interesting thing though. People apparently pay to play a game that in itself isnt interesting enough without paying extra for services from a 3rd party. Services that werent intended by the devs by design. I think thats as shallow as you can get as customer. Somehow the devs can get away with a shallow and boring gameplay, that gets saved by other companies that provide services to make gameplay less boring.
But then Im also not that surprised. Some players even pay for a game that doesnt offers much, but has 'potential'. Paying to wait for better times lol.
BAH Logangregor, your to bleeding fast in responding lol, I posted and then remembered to I hadnt gone over it and edited with (coughcough) some spacing and in between times you slipped in there...You rshould rename yourself Snakehips...
Did they include SL people in their survey i wonder?
F2P/P2P excellent thread.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/282517/F2P-An-Engineers-perspective.html
I wonder how many people responded to the polls. Was it just people who are very much tuned into these "games", as in powergamers and that sort? In other words, was Joe Average participating on an equal basis?
Once upon a time....
It was an online poll of like 1900 people.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
It was an online poll of like 1900 people.
Yes, but how did they contact these people to participate in the poll.
I'd also be curious to know exactly what their definition of "virtual goods" is and examples of things that fall on either side of the boundaries of that definition. Is paying for a song download "buying virtual goods"? What about buying WoW cards that give in-game rewards?
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im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good