Kickstarter VS Free-to-Play- A problematic comparison.

I now make free to play games. Nearly every day I read or listen to pundits deride and malign the validity of what I do. I personally share the same skepticisms of the critics, specifically those concerned about moral implications of the model. I left my previous career for very similar reasons. Recently a number of established game developers have entered the (indie space?) kickstarter arena. These projects ask for increasingly high targets with increasingly high premium donation options. The success of these projects is in large part reliant on these premium donations.

Am I crazy? Is there a double standard? Am I even upset?

In true Peter Molyneux fashion the choice is yours; wind me up or calm me down.

The cases.

The sustainable Free-to-Play model

90-95% of players never directly pay a cent.

Many contribute to revenue by clicking on ads or using offer walls such as Tap Joy. These users typically generate between $0.03 and $0.25 each. This makes up 40-60% of revenue.

Around 5-10% use in app purchases to by premium content or currency. Most spend between $1-10. A small percentage (sub 0.5%) pays more then $25+. In extreme cases they spend over $100. These users are often (unfortunately) referred to as whales and killer whales respectively. This small sub set of the users makes up the majority of non-add/offer wall revenue.

With all the cards on the table the average user in a sustainable free-to-play game is worth between $0.30-1.00.

It’s been my observation that much of the morale debate surrounding the free-to-play model stems from the fact that a few players pay over $25 while most pay nothing. Primarily, the Skinner box argument is levied against successful games, suggesting that they employ unethical systems that take advantage of people with compulsive or addictive personalities. While, I share many of these concerns, the validly of this argument is not the focus of my comparison rather I’m interested in the simple fact that any morale objection arises.

I’d like us to consider the question. Should the current batch of Kickstarter project elicit similar concerns over an extremely inequitable distribution of funding?

The AAA? Kickstarter Model

Peter Molyneux is someone who I admire and have incredible esteem for I do not mean to malign his work, Godus is just a current example.

I want to lay out the economic breakdown of the Godus Kickstarter project.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...

Bellow is the breakdown for High tier (whales) donations.

5 people for 5000 pounds
6 people for 999+ pounds
200 people for 622+ pounds
1000 people for 322+ pounds

The total whale allotment is over 760 000 USD.

At the time I’m writing--

3% of backers are providing 30% of the total. These are kickstarter whales.

0.3% of the backers are providing around 18% of the total. These are kickstarter killer whales.

This is for an iOS game that doesn’t exist.

In what ways is this different then the free-to-play model? Why does one bring about concerns of morality and the other is simply a matter of personal choice?

Is 22cans on different moral ground taking thousands of dollars from people for something that many do not see similar value in?

Different groups of people, different games. Some people pay a bunch of money on a game, some people pay a bunch of money on drink that will pass through their bladder a few hours later, some people pay to make their home look pretty, some people pay for sex, some people pay for 'the experience' of watching something in a theatre. I'd say it's almost impossible to make comparisons here.

I'm finding it hard to say what's morally right or wrong about how a game gets it's income, it's about making a deal that works for both sides. Just as with what people do with their money for leisure activities, I don't see it as any skin off my nose how people pay for video games, and that one is right and the other wrong.

To put the 'traditional' game funding model in there, that seems reliant upon whales too, the publishers, and they get their pound of flesh later on when the project (hopefully) profits.

Well, I think a lot of people are uptight about the 'pay to win' type models -- that was, for instance, what put me off the recent, very successful, Star Citizen Kickstarter. What I want, at least, and I think this is true of at least a fair number of FtP detractors, is to know what my expense in a game is going to be, up front. And I also want to know that everyone is more or less playing with the same stuff.

I'm just too old and slow to be competitive anymore in online games, but I retain many of the instincts from competitive play. Knowing that if I lost (or won) it was because of the choices I made, rather than the gear I was using or the amount I spent on the game, is important to me. And this is true even though I've become so distressingly awful at most competitive games.

If it's a multiplayer Kickstarter, and the whales and killer whales are just getting cosmetic stuff, I'm okay with it. Using an example from WoW, I don't really mind that some player got a glowing golden dragon to ride, in exchange for spending $25, as long as the dragon is no faster than my transportation method. Even if all I can ride is a burlap sack, or a splintery broom with two straws left, as long as it's just as functional as the dragon, I'm okay with it. I would never spend that $25, but overall I'm pretty okay with cosmetic monetization. (although, Blizzard doing this is more than a little appalling, considering how much goddamn money they were already making. Charging for cosmetic stuff PLUS charging monthly is just pure greed.)

But when the items are actually useful, like in TF2, that ruins it for me. Yes, you can theoretically get everything without spending money, but realistically, that's just not going to happen, and so you end up with players who spend more money having more strategic options in game. This is the thing about FtP that I won't tolerate. I know they need their whales, but if the whales can buy actual gameplay options or advantages, that's bullsh*t, and I'm unwilling to participate.

For single player games, I'm much less worried about it. Giving you some cool stuff probably won't make the game materially better, just easier. But I think content DLC at launch is exploitative, and I do try to avoid it when I reasonably can. Mass Effect 3 was highly abusive in that way; people who didn't pony up for the expensive version didn't get the full game, and that was a pile of sh*t. (between that and the ending, Bioware is decisively off my Day Zero list.)

Basically, I want the complete game for a reasonable price, without hidden surcharges. I like to know what I'm paying for every other good in my life, and games are no different. And if it's competitive multiplayer, I want everyone to have the same stuff available to them. Otherwise, it's not truly competitive; I want neither advantages nor disadvantages based on how much I spent.

But, even so, I think I still have a prejudice against FTP games. As you sort of allude to, they're very often just Skinner boxes, so I'm much more likely to back a Kickstarter that looks good than to play an FtP game, even if the FtP game is out right now, and I won't see the Kickstarted game for two years.

Malor wrote:

Basically, I want the complete game for a reasonable price, without hidden surcharges.

That's where I think it gets stick with regards free to play. If you ignore the possibilities of the five finger discount, or that a developer makes a nice game and just gives it away, and make the reasonably safe assumption that they want to make money, then they have to do something to differentiate between paying and non-paying players. Cosmetics will only go so far, and really in a game the most attractive thing will be 'game things' that modify the gameplay in some way such as boosts or early unlocks (trade money for accelerated progress).

Regarding Star Citizen, I know what you're talking about, but I don't think they've actually laid out their plans in detail yet, and it's years from release, so it might not be the best example. How would you compare it against any other MMO (F2P or otherwise) where eventually someone will get a more powerful item. It's not as though we're playing Quake here where rounds are started without any bias. For an ongoing persistent game it's silly to talk about day-one advantage, as it's very quickly irrelevant if it's anything like EVE in progression.

Nearly every day I read or listen to pundits deride and malign the validity of what I do.

Stop doing that. No one paid attention to a pundit that didn't polarize a topic in their mad pursuit for page hits / click revenue.

Should the current batch of Kickstarter project elicit similar concerns over an extremely inequitable distribution of funding?

No, because ultimately it's the customer that chooses what they do with their money. "A fool and his money are soon parted."

In my view monetizing comes down to just one decision; What are the customers willing to pay for it. FtP developers can't scuttle their player base trying to over-monetize every piece, they can't ruin the experience for the "freeloaders". What they need to do is carefully nurture that community to make it grow and convert free players into playing players. Also, more importantly, they need an actual product that provides value to the customer.

Devs taking the Kickstarter route have a different set of challenges. They need to prove to the customer that they are providing something that otherwise would not exist. This past year there were two Kickstarters for Shadowrun products that I thought was really interesting. Shadowrun Returns was a huge hit back in April asking for $400K in funding with a video talking about that game as a rough proposal. It ended up earning 1.8 million from 36K backers. I gladly contributed to it because I love the Shadowrun universe and there hadn't been a single player video game for it in quite some time. Then in July, Shadowrun Online was announced asking for $500k in funding. A second Shadowrun game based on multiplayer? Okay, I was interested, until I saw the pitch video. It showed game footage, art assets, a real working build that looked quite far along. I had zero interest in backing it because it looked like they didn't actually need funding. And I don't think I was the only one with that opinion as it barely squeaked by with $558k of funding from 6K backers.

I'm also a big fan of the idea of "caveat emptor", aka "Let the buyer beware".

Scratched wrote:

I'm finding it hard to say what's morally right or wrong about how a game gets it's income, it's about making a deal that works for both sides. Just as with what people do with their money for leisure activities, I don't see it as any skin off my nose how people pay for video games, and that one is right and the other wrong.

I agree.

Where I'm lost is why Free-to-Play is a lightning rod for people concerned about how other people spend money? Why does the public revel in the failure of Zynga? Presumably because those people believe Zynga deserves to fail. Do those people believe Zynga extorts money from players, whereas a $5000+ kickstarter contribution is perfectly reasonable request? Is it easier to believe someone will get $5000 of value from a yet to be made product over time spent in Cityville or CSR: Racing?

Well, for me at least, it's pretty obvious that the $5K donation level for a project is completely stupid, totally silly in any kind of economic sense. But, like it or not, we have an extremely wide distribution of wealth in this country; people in the financial sector make insane, insane, insane amounts of money, and people making real things, usually, don't. The upper 1% has more wealth than the bottom 90%. These $5K kickstarter pledge levels are aimed more at that middle 10%, ways that they can help bring a game into being. The dotcom millionaires love gaming and hardly even notice $5K, so why the hell not, you know?

I think of it as offering ways to give back, for old fans to tell old developers 'your old games were very important to me, here's a bunch of money, because I have tons now, and I didn't back then'.

It's totally up front, and most of the versions I've seen have not offered an in-game advantage... rather, they've allowed you to name a figure, or invent a quest, or insert a major NPC, that sort of thing. In exchange for giving a completely ridiculous wad of cash, you get to actually permanently change the game itself a little bit.

I dunno, I think that's pretty cool, myself.

Oh, and as to why FtP is unpopular -- it's because it feels deceptive. Either they have to hook you and sell you stuff, or else advertise at you. Both are unappealing; I would rather just buy the game. But then games can have a hard time developing critical multiplayer mass.

I dunno. A lot of it is Zynga; they poisoned the well. There are few companies more scummy, at least in gaming. Not even Activision is that evil.

Malor wrote:

The dotcom millionaires love gaming and hardly even notice $5K, so why the hell not, you know?

I think of it as offering ways to give back, for old fans to tell old developers 'your old games were very important to me, here's a bunch of money, because I have tons now, and I didn't back then'.

Malor wrote:

I dunno. A lot of it is Zynga; they poisoned the well. There are few companies more scummy, at least in gaming. Not even Activision is that evil.

Malor illustrates my point beautifully. In the Kickstarter case the $5000 comes from a mysterious dot com benefactor, FtP, the product of a scummy evil empire.

Where does this narrative come from? Zynga doesn't make games you like, but [insert AAA kickstarter] did. Is there anything other then an arbitrary preference that separates these cases?

Right now, I think both are a little shady for different reasons. Unfortunately selling a product for reasonable price just isn't working these days. I guess I just don't really see why either is particularly more or less admirable.

Zynga steals other people's ideas, sometimes even their actual graphics. They got their start with some seriously scammy sh*t, and they've never lost that willingness to scam someone as soon as look at them.

They are a reprehensible company. If you don't think so, then perhaps you haven't really been paying attention to their history and business practices. Or, if you have, and you still don't think they're terrible, then you probably don't have a set of mainstream ethics.

With Kickstarter, you have a bunch of different companies with a bunch of different approaches. A lot of these games simply would not get made any other way; the large companies are not willing to fund the stuff that we core gamers love. We don't yet know what the success rate is for Kickstarted projects, but we've already gotten FTL out of it, which was freaking awesome. And people who paid more got their names in the game, or even actual questlines.

That's cool, not exploitative. It's fun having a crewmember named Notch, even for me. I suspect, were I Notch, seeing random crewpeople be 'me' would be super cool.

Zip_Zap_Rap wrote:

In what ways is this different then the free-to-play model? Why does one bring about concerns of morality and the other is simply a matter of personal choice?

Is 22cans on different moral ground taking thousands of dollars from people for something that many do not see similar value in?

My guess is that Kickstarter has associated itself with the idea of patronage. If I pledge some crazy amount of money, it's easy to think of that as not just some simple commercial transaction, but rather, helping somebody bring their dream to fruition, etc.

As far as effects on the games, I think there is a significant distinction in that F2P games are designed around the ongoing availability of buyable things, while Kickstarter campaigns are time-limited.

Whatever works do to level the playing field in an F2P game can't work in a game with in-game Kickstarter rewards, because you'll have a population who contributed early and got in-game things for real-world money which people who buy the game normally can only get through in-game means.

Exactly, that's something I've talked about, in other threads. It's patronage, giving money to art to bring what you want to see into the world. It's like rich people giving wads of cash to local theaters, or kings sponsoring composers, but done $50 at a time instead.

Sometimes it's like a store, where you're just preordering something so that the item has enough volume to come into existence, but often, it's giving money to developers you like to create something you want to play.

Malor wrote:

Sometimes it's like a store, where you're just preordering something so that the item has enough volume to come into existence, but often, it's giving money to developers you like to create something you want to play.

I get the sense that there are a lot of issues that you and I basically agree on, but I'm generally more willing to accept compromises (or less willing to stand up for principle, depending on how one looks at it). Would you say that patronage is fine, and preorders are fine, but mixing the two opens up potential problem areas?

Because that's what I currently think I think. But my mind could change.

Taking Star Citizen again as the example, the reward for patronage should be the game itself, as Chris Roberts and his team envision it; but Cloud Imperium Games incentivized patronage by adding rewards that a straight-up preorder wouldn't include. The "Founder" options for Mechwarrior Online seem like the obvious thing to compare to Star Citizen's crowdsourcing rewards, but I wasn't really paying attention to that discussion, so I honestly don't know how well that went over or why.

Well, as long as you don't think of it as a sure thing, I don't see a problem. Usually, it's not a finished good, and there's always the risk that the game or whatever will never actually be completed, or that it may really suck, just like the theater you bought the box seat for may put on a bad play (or a whole string of them).

Kickstarter's not quite like anything else, and it's definitely not the same as FtP.

but Cloud Imperium Games incentivized patronage by adding rewards that a straight-up preorder wouldn't include

Yeah, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm really uncomfortable with the structure for Star Citizen. Really uncomfortable. It was within the rules, and obviously a lot of people went for it, but it smells real bad to me, and I didn't personally get involved. Willing to change my mind if it proves to be awesome, as I'm not mortally offended by what I've seen, but it really feels like maybe another Hellgate:London, where most of the focus is in the funding model, and not the game itself.

Cliffski wrote a blog post recently that touches on some of these issues.

Kickstarter is the absolute poster-child for inequality amongst gamers, based on income. Now I am definitely not a raging socialist, but I know a lot of gamers are, and I find it a bit weird that it doesn’t bug them that when these kickstarter games ship, not only will gamers with more money that them be swanning around with better outfits and weapons, (This already happens in F2P games), but some of the NPC’s will have the names of the ‘wealthy’ backers. Some will even have their digitized faces in the game. Elite is actually naming PLANETS after people who back the game with a lot of money.

Gamers say they hate in-game product placement and advertising. It compromises the game design for the sake of money. I agree. So why are we deciding that the best way to name our planets or design the appearance of our NPC’s is to put that part of game design up for auction? Why should gamers who are wealthy get more influence over a game that those who flip burgers for a living? The cold hard economic reality of the real world is bad enough without shoehorning it into games too.

I'm seeing a whole lot of complaints about wealth in this thread. I'm not seeing much about the other factor: time. Over the last couple years, I have seen my gaming time dwindle. I never had the time to grind before, and even less so now. I gave up on wow PvP because it required X amount of time to be competitive, due to the HK grind.

I do agree that pay2win is over the top, but these days I will gladly pay money for games that will allow me to maximize progress during the time I can spend in a game through boosts, etc.

I think the 'moral' difference between F2P and Kickstarter is the impression that microtransactions prey on people with low impulse control.

If I build a game designed to make people who can't seem to help themselves press a tiny button for a quarter a pop, I'm actively and aggressively targeting a weakness. If I offer people the opportunity to pay $5k to have an in-game cape named after them, I'm rewarding people for contributing.

Why what other people do with their money/time is of any concern to anyone is a mystery to me.

Actually, what I find an even more interesting topic is the tendency (rumor?) for kickstarter projects to receive significant donations from other game developers. Kickstarter may end up doing what God Games could not.

For me, the difference is in how the games are monetized.

F2P relies on a revenue stream, and so the games tend to continually advertise. In the worst cases (mostly Zynga stuff, but others too) the games continually hit you over the head with transaction requests and advertising. Basically, it's like playing a game with commercials and embedded ads. This is tolerable up to a point, but for the 90% that isn't spending money, it's just a distraction and a reminder of the inequalities between the free and paid player-bases.

Most KickStarter games tend to ask for payment up-front, much like the traditional retail model. The play experience is then divorced from the funding process.

Of course, the biggest problem with this entire discussion is the very idea that we're using funding models instead of gameplay to categorize games.

Of course, the biggest problem with this entire discussion is the very idea that we're using funding models instead of gameplay to categorize games.

When it's a FtP game, the game is the funding model, basically. You can't really categorize it any other way.

A Kickstarted game can be anything, so the fact that something was on Kickstarter is just an interesting factoid about the title, but when it's FtP, that matters very much. Also matters when it's subscription-based, like WoW.

Malor wrote:
Of course, the biggest problem with this entire discussion is the very idea that we're using funding models instead of gameplay to categorize games.

When it's a FtP game, the game is the funding model, basically. You can't really categorize it any other way.

A Kickstarted game can be anything, so the fact that something was on Kickstarter is just an interesting factoid about the title, but when it's FtP, that matters very much. Also matters when it's subscription-based, like WoW.

That's odd.. you have some weird inability to see that there is no difference if I design a game where I take $60 from a consumer on a product that is largely purchased site unseen (demos still occur now and then I admit) vs a Free to Play product where I might take the same $50 from a consumer over a 3 year period.

Both games require the Developer/Publisher some "trickery" to convince a consumer to part with his/her cash.

I've put more thought in to this...

Both FtP and the Kickstarter business models require some players to pay far more then most.

With the FtP model the players who pay more and the developer benefit.

With the Kickstarter business model all players and the developer benefit.

On a base level everyone who benefits from a system is motivated to champion that system.

On a personal level I want JS. Joust. I don't think it's worth $1000+, but if the Kickstarter succeeds I'll get what I want. I'm perfectly willing to let an independently wealthy person donated $1000+ so I can benefit. However, if that $1000 came at the expense of someone feeding their children healthy food, I would be conflicted. So, perhaps naively, I will not delve any further into the matter an assume the first case and hope enough people donate $1000+.

I this relationship doesn't hold true with FtP. Regardless of the source of the $1000 I see no benefit. My game is left unchanged and likely unrewarding. I'm going to go play Baulder's Gate.

I admit, I rarely give FtP's a second glance these days. To me, Free-to-Play means, "we balanced this game poorly on purpose, click on any of these ubiquitous ads to give us money and we'll fix it (for a while)."

When I'm playing a game, I want to immerse myself in the experience. Whenever the game asks me to think about real money, it ruins that.

Certainly not meaning to bring up the whole Piracy debate.. but I found this article interesting.

http://penny-arcade.com/report/edito...

Several times in the last couple years we have seen Dev's come out with some staggering numbers regarding pirate vs legitimate players/copies. Here is another case where the Pirate copies are outnumbering the legitimate 10 to 1. Whats odd though is that in general gamers themselves are highly skeptical when Publishers release the same types of "outrageous" claims.

I can't find anything about the above game that is unique that would warrant it susceptible to piracy. So while its all fine and dandy to say that Pirates wouldnt have purchased your game to begin with I can't blame the industry when AAA is failing and heavily DLC/RMT based games are becoming the norm.

In the end much like last time.. the real blame lies with us the gamers... not the Publishers/Developers.

I'm with others that the difference is in the model. Kickstarter is raising funding to help a project come to fruition. You are, in theory, not generating revenue but raising capital to cover development/production. It's only after a Kickstarter project is done that it will start to make money. People are willing to pay a lot of money not just to gain some bonus but to help fund a project they strongly believe in, which is why a large percentage of a project comes from a small number of users. I chipped in a fair amount on the Tim Schafer project, not because I wanted a bunch of extras but because I believe in the work he does and wanted to see it become a reality.

While that may certainly be true of much of the early money going into a F2P game, as a consumer it feels like all of the money going in is purely for revenue generation. In reality the game may not actually be generating revenue yet.

I do have one problem with Kickstarter: I really don't think you should be able to raise more money than what you ask for at the outset. You should be going in with a business plan and raising the required capital (with a built in buffer, of course). Once a project hits its limit it should not be able to raise any more money. Get the money you need and bring your product to market. While I'm not entirely against it essentially turning into a preorder tool, it'd be nice if that was done via some other mechanism outside of the initial Kickstarter pipeline.

Dreaded Gazebo wrote:

I'm with others that the difference is in the model. Kickstarter is raising funding to help a project come to fruition. You are, in theory, not generating revenue but raising capital to cover development/production. It's only after a Kickstarter project is done that it will start to make money. People are willing to pay a lot of money not just to gain some bonus but to help fund a project they strongly believe in, which is why a large percentage of a project comes from a small number of users. I chipped in a fair amount on the Tim Schafer project, not because I wanted a bunch of extras but because I believe in the work he does and wanted to see it become a reality.

While that may certainly be true of much of the early money going into a F2P game, as a consumer it feels like all of the money going in is purely for revenue generation. In reality the game may not actually be generating revenue yet.

I do have one problem with Kickstarter: I really don't think you should be able to raise more money than what you ask for at the outset. You should be going in with a business plan and raising the required capital (with a built in buffer, of course). Once a project hits its limit it should not be able to raise any more money. Get the money you need and bring your product to market. While I'm not entirely against it essentially turning into a preorder tool, it'd be nice if that was done via some other mechanism outside of the initial Kickstarter pipeline.

I could see experiments being done with that, where the 'pre-order' is essentially putting your money in escrow, or a pledge to charge you for the finished product at a set price if you commit before a certain date.

Where this probably hits a limit is that the production for (product) versus some (product + stretch goals A+B+C) is probably different. It's not simply the same thing and then a bit more, but changes the production of the base product.

Scratched wrote:

Where this probably hits a limit is that the production for (product) versus some (product + stretch goals A+B+C) is probably different. It's not simply the same thing and then a bit more, but changes the production of the base product.

I'm not a fan of stretch goals. Design the product you want to make and raise the money you need to make it happen. I'm not convinced that most of the stretch goals we see will result in better products. If you think feature X is something you need for the product to meet your vision, then make that your target. If it's not, scale back and focus. Stretch goals start to fall into the territory of "Am I really confident they will properly manage the money they raised?" It also leads to problems for someone like Double Fine where they had plans for this small game and all of a sudden it blew up on them. They've committed to spending all the money to improving the project, and I'm sure they want to stay honest to that. But how do you balance that versus keeping the timelines laid out in your business plan?

At minimum maybe projects need an option to be able to shut down when they hit their funding goal. Which maybe it already does and nobody ever uses it? I would guess that's not in Kickstarters best interest though, because they want projects to raise as much money as possible so they can make more off of then. It's an interesting problem for sure.

I don't have a problem with *some* F2P games. TF2 is, in my opinion, done pretty well. I think I've bought one thing from the store, and that was mostly because, well, I've gotten 600+ hours out of TF2, I wanted to throw them a bit of extra money.

The thing is, I've never really been shy on what I wanted in TF2. I could either craft it, trade for it, etc. And it's all well-balanced enough that I _still_ use the default stuff more than half the time. (Or stuff that achievements give you, like the Axtinguisher).

There are some that are a bit more shaky (Tribes:Ascend comes to mind. Threw a bit of money at them awhile ago, mostly as a show of support, but their in-game/real money equation needs some work.). It's very much one that the F2P model really screwed with the game design, though. I'd be a lot happier with it if it was a full retail game. (Though, if they carry through on their simplification of classes they've been talking up, I'll be okay with it).

Really though, there's also the question of the XP/Gameplay unlocks in retail games. It's still a time inequality. Player X has way more time to kill than you do, and thus has all the unlocks, it's *still* gamebreakingly annoying. But doesn't catch hell.

I've not got a problem with F2P games. I've got a problem with imbalanced multiplayer design. Maybe the furor over F2P and working out the issues there will help make multiplayer games better overall.