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Pay per hour business model?
adam_nox
Member UncommonPosts: 2,148
For a truely sandbox mmo, where the world is seamless, completely non-instanced, with limited phasing in instances where more than a hundred players stand in the same spot, there's no cash shop or any other way of spending money on the game...
Instancing, phasing, zones, are good ways to limit the amount of traffic and data processing that bulks up the costs of maintaining an mmo, and the longer hours people play, the higher those costs go up.
At the same time, people who play longer hours, get more out of the game, while some people only have an hour or two a week to log in, both get charged the same flat rate. I think it would be interesting to take on an approach that addresses these dynamics, that approach being pay per hour. At first I thought a flat rate of 10 cents an hour might be best, and then I thought perhaps a progressive rate, going up the more you've logged in the last 24 hours. Then I thought that's backwards and people wouldn't stay logged in much and defeat the purpose, so I went the other way, a regressive rate, going down the longer logged in.
Now I'm on a regressive -> progressive rate. Starts at 20 cents for the first hour, goes down 4 cents every hour afterwards, 8 cents for the 4th hour, then starts going back up, capping at 20. It's possible that these rates could be expanded to a 5 day moving average, to prevent punishing people who play only on certain days for long hours.
In a way, this is a different way of letting casual gamers pay less and powergamers pay more, which is sort of what people interpret cash shops as attempting, but I think this does so in a more direct manner.
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Many Eastern/Asian MMOs use a pay by the hour model, including(i think) WoW in China.
Not sure exactly how the model works, but Ive always thought it pretty fair, HOWEVER having to constantly keep an eye on how many hours you have played to make sure you can afford it would get annoying to me. A flat rate of $15 per month means that you can play for as long as you want without having to worry.
Also, what happens if you accidentally left the game logged on while you are away for a weekend or something. Eep!
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Because $15 a month is too much for people?An intreresting idea...however, I think the problem with it is, is that its based on the assumption that gaming companies really care about the casual player and how much they pay.
While obviously I have no way of proving this, and it's just my opinion, I'm guessing many, many people have active subscriptions to games they rarely play or only casually play. This is big cash for the companies. Also the thing with cash shops is you get the impulse buyers..I'm guilty of this spending money to get the deal of the day or the bonus cash shop money.
I guess what I'm getting at is I think there is more money to be made with both or either the traditional sub based mmo's and cash shops then by charing hourly.
Those of us around for a few too many years have already played under such a model. The first wave of online games required that you pay an hourly rate.
It sucked.
MMOs by their nature are meant to be social. Such a system would incentivize people to log in and out as quickly as possible and limit social interaction. You think folks are rude now? HA, try thinking about getting someone to help you in a system where you pay for time...
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This is true. It would absolutly make people want to get on, get business done, and log out. No socializing, no just messing around with guildies...
Kinda what I was thinking.
To be honost I aint playing any MMO at the moment, but the many I have played it really never borthered me to pay 15€ and I truly have limited time. Atleast I am 100% sure to squize atleast a minimum of 4 hours a month to play (often somewhat more then that) And if I have a crapload of real life (job/family/friends) things to do I just cancel my sub if I see no room to play in a month and pick it up the next month or so.
So sorry OP but I am not sure what type of people would be in favor of that, though I do know in certain countries it's the norm to pay by the hour. But thankfully I don't have to go back to how internet was way back.
10 cent is outrageous. that's 24h*30d*0,10=72$
1cent per hour is ok, but first you need to show me the game that's worth a penny!
China actually uses a pay per minute system. You buy time crystals which slowly depleat for every minute your online. I played China Aion for a month and only payed 11 bucks. I prefer that system compared to the pay per month system. It's only a bad system to hardcore gamers that never stop playing.
As a businessperson, I'd have to ask, for whom are you targeting this idea?
Many players are retired and have lots of time but little money for games, so they won't want to pay by time. And other players who have money but not much time will avoid any model where they pay more than someone who spends 60 hours a week in the game.
If you are going to present a time:revenue model, you need to consider your target audience. Right now, it seems like it would be pretty limited.
Your going to play 24 hours a day for 30 days in a row? I think you need to get a life then.
The only way I see this working is if you pay by the hr and at say $15.00, it just caps. Then you get to save for not using a lot of time if you don't log in, but this doesn't benefit the company.
I don't see that happening.
That's not the question. just a calculation. still 24$ if you play 8h a day.
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8 hours a day for 30 days in a row is still unrealistic. 5 hours a day for 30 days equals out to 15 a month. Most people actually have jobs, families and other hobbies that take them away from the game where 5 hours every day is still a high amount to do.
fine pay it then. good deal for blizzard.
I've played Aion in China for over a month, and I liked that system. So if it ever happened for a game I'd play then I would but considering that B2Ps and F2Ps are coming out more and more now then any P2P system wont work for very long. Especially when people are so against any form of change to a system that rips people off.
I guess most people lack the math ability or something to tell that this still comes to about 15 bucks a month, probably for over 90% of all players, and probably less than 10 bucks a month for 75% of those.
Who is this targetted at? Gamers who want a better experience. I think that money is a problem when it comes to scale, scope, and content of an mmo. Devs need more of it. WoW obviously contradicts this, but I'm assuming such an mmo with this model would be built from the ground up to be a much grander project than a themepark.
Secondly, players who play less than 20 hours a week on average. They cost the least to serve, they get the least, and I think a model that allowed them to pay less would be attractive, without attracting a bunch of freeloader freebie gamers who tend to make communities painful.
There's also a virtue to the flexibility of hourly pay, where you don't want to plop down 15 bucks if you aren't sure if you would even play more than a week. I can't tell you how many times I have been unwilling to commit to a full month subscription, but would have for a week. You could say, well charge by the week, but there's logistical issues to that, and whether or not such a model is viable is just another topic for another time.
Well if you are unsure whether to sub to a game for a month, you could take the wife out to Starbucks for a hazelnut latte each and have a think about whether it's worth the cash outlay.The subscription model came about in order to make the cost of playing cheaper and constant for players. Back in the days of AOL's NWN and TSN's TSOY, we were paying per hour. IIRC, it was $6.00 per hour.
What this is about is being cheap and lowering the $15.00 per month cost which is a bargain. Any adult with any kind of life should understand how cheap that is compared to other entertainment costs. What's the cost per viewing hour at a movie? How about the costs for a round of golf? Night clubs? Date and Dinner? Hookers? weekend in Vegas? Concert tickets? I date you to take the amount of time you spend per month playing your game and spend it the same amount of time doing the above activities.
It reminds me of people with a pay per day "idea". Take $15.00 / 30 days for 50 cents per day. Well, that isn't even an interesting choice. If you want to make your idea interesting rather than cheapskate, how about $4.00/hour? Or even $1.50/hour.
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I encourage a reasonable PPH business model entirely, in the hopes that if people actually have to pay for the time they play, they will expect that that time be of a higher quality than the subscription model we have now.