Online Game Debate #1 out a series of debates.

[etan 0]

Ok well I love to debate and i have a topic for debate today.

Do you think online games should be pay?

My opinion is cut down the middle really. Like I understand that to have an online game you have to pay money for server and site costs. Me, being once trying to make my own game online, know this first hand. It costs a good 300 USD to get a decent server for the game and site. Now as for the programs you need add about 200 USD there and you got a big bill on your hand. Now I don't know about you but that dosn't fit my budget.

Now for the other side. I understand people out there can't go and pay for a monthley subscription. Its hard for a lot of people to do this and thats why a lot of people go for free games that cost nothing.

It's going to cost industries about 1$ to just produce an online game disk

Now this is a reason why games like WOW and City of Heroes have subscriptions to pay off the disk and make a profit.

A COMPRAMISEIn my opinion the ideal online game would have a free and pay side. Free up to a certain amount of users and pay for unlimited. ALSO maybe have features just for the pay people and none some cut for the free. Perfect example goes to RS.

Thanks for reading and im interested in finding out your stance in the debate.

[iGuest 3]

I think that games should pay to play if its necessary only. Not every game should do it, but the ones that really need the fundings to keep up the servers should. I enjoy playing Final Fantasy XI and love how they keep the servers up most of the time. There are few occasions where the servers need maintenance or down time, but for good reasons at least! Who wouldn't wind a server update in the middle of the night when you're probably a sleep, and have a brand new quest to do the following day? If that money goes to things like that, I'm certainly fine with it. The only other problem I would have is if they charge the monthly pay to an excessive amount. No way am I paying 25 bucks just to play it monthly, and had already spent 50 bucks to buy the game itself! That's just wrong of them to do so if I say so myself. Anyways, it just depends on the game how they should do it, and hopefully make use of our monthly pays.

[Moody 0]

Quite an interresting subject.The most people shout loud that you shouldn't pay for an online game, but that's not true.I'm playing WoW. It costed me €44,95 for the game. And now i'm paying €64,95 half a year. I know it's pretty much and it could be less. But what you get in return is good.You get almost 100% uptime. There's 1 maintaince a week (i'm at school then). And when there's a restart they tell you 15 minutes before. You get gamemastes 24/7. And you get free expansions. They already added the honorsystem and battleground and much more. Sometimes there's a little lagg, but when there has been much lagg ore the servers were offline for a longer time, you most of the time get free days play in return.My opinion is, that montly pay is good, but it shouldn't be too much.

[Sarah81 0]

I realize that it costs quite a bit of money to maintain a gaming server. And not just because the host wants money every month/year/however often.

I can agree with the idea of splitting pay versus free play (i.e. giving advanced features to people who cough up money for them). It would give gamers like me (read: perpetually broke people) the opportunity to at least play the basic game sometimes, while people who have money to invest in the advanced side of things could take advantage of the extra features.

I've really been into Gang-Wars lately. One thing that I like about it is that I can get free "turns" every so often (every few minutes or so) ... so that I can still do things within the game. But, if I had money, I could buy turns, which of course a lot of players do because they can build up their characters' strengths and sic their armies on other gangs and all that great stuff.

So ... there are plenty of ways to do it, really. I just hope that there will always be free or low-cost gaming around, at least in a limited capacity, so more people can enjoy it. And when we get out of college and actually get good jobs, you know that we'll invest some actual cash into the gaming networks *grins*

[smyke 0]

well... i think that online games are expensive for a lot of us, but i also think that the money they get is a correct price... because they have a lot of extra work to do, comparing to other games... and add to that the costs of maintaing a pretty big number of servers... and you will see that the couldn't afford to spare you the monthly costs !that is my opinion..smyke !

[Vyoma 0]

Here are my views on paying for online games:Being in a similar industry, I understand that it requires resources to maintain servers and systems running. Any game can be considered as a system and it would be running on a server that requires maintainance. And resources (hardware, software, man-power) cost anyone. Hence I think it is fair enough to pay for online games unless those games are very simple ones (text based or minor graphics based games). For simple games, which are usually browser based, they can be hosted and payment may not be required (as is the case of the buisness model of Xisto).Assuming we are talking about complex multiplayer games, we can come to a conclusion that it requires to be funded. Now the question arises as to what approach is used to provide the funds to get the resources. A lot of different approaches have been followed by many different companies.One of them being, keeping the basic game free, but charging for advanced or premium players. This is a pretty good approach but if it were a strategy game or a rpg (that is persistant), one has to think about the impact that would have on the ingame economy. Ingame economy may not make the game, but if gone bad, can really ruin a game.Another option is to charge for the game and then provide with free servers. The Blizzard has been using this option for Diablo, Diablo II and, Starcraft. Here, the gaming company banks on the sales of the games to maintain the servers. Though, I do not understand the working of such a buisness model. A gaming company may choose to additionaly chagre a monthly fee; the system is called a pay-to-play system. Such an approach heavily relies on the tailoring of the plans the company provides for popularity of the system.A different approach I have seen recently, is when the game companies tie up with the ISPs. The game servers are provided free for users those who access the servers using the services of the particular internet service providers. The revenue generated is then shared between the two of them. I belive this is what is happening here in India, where the company is marketting the RPG called A3 in collaboration with a internet service provider called Sify. When I feel like playing A3, I got to the Sify Internet Cafes and play. I pay for only the online internet time.

[Caine 0]

Yeah, I'd have to say that you would have to pay some kind of monthly fee. MMORPGs have to pay for the manhours that go into maintaining the servers and updating the content. I believe that the latter is most important to me though. Because, unless they bought all their servers from the local pawn shop or thrift store, they will probably be reliable. Its the content I want to pay for. So, if I am paying a monthly fee, but nothing is ever updated, as in, there are no new quests, equipment, areas, etc.; I will be upset. However, seeing that the game publishers are in the business of making profits, so the question is, what is the % of markup? My personal opinion is that many of current MMORPGs (with the exception of Guild Wars, because online play is free) probably charge more money than they really need to. I would like to say that $10/month is plenty enough, though I would really like to see somewhere around $5/month for games like EQ, WoW, or SWG, especially if I have to shell out $50 for the original game as well as money for any expansions.There are other options though, I like the idea of different levels of accounts: free and premium. I also like the idea of letting people running their own servers with custom content, and they could charge whatever they like. That of course would bring up the nasty lisence issue, but perhaps they could sell an optional developers package for a couple of hundred dollars.

[GameUltra 0]

(Note the bellow may discourage you from running an online game, if this is something you'd like to do given the bellow statistics it still is possible without spending anything, I will explain later when I have time)
Bar line is that you
A.) Must pay (these are usually in comercial projects and not open source or private projects though)
B.) Must set up a private server system, kind of like Halo (well you just ruled out MMORPG's, and possibly some of the game security)
C.) Package spyware or adware with the game to cover the costs.
D.) Rely on donations, and advertisements often seen on websites and your own income. (you will need a low-grade server, and probably at best a DSL connection and probably have patchy consistancy of the game servers being up and down because of the ability and innability to pay.)


Let's look at the ecenomics behind running an online game server...
First off, you will need a server, a decent one... Let's look into buying a pre-fabricated machine from Dell...
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/
Already this could cost us anywhere from $449 to $1,349, now assuming this is a relatively low budget project, and we'll go with the cheaper one, so now we're $449 in the red before we have even launched the game.

Ok, now we need to look into finding a ISP that will give us a decent amount of speed, but also allow us to run a server off them, here is what I found from numerous searching, digging, and 'Googling':
Alltel, BellSouth, Cavalier Telephone, Covad, DSL Extreme, Earthlink, RoadRunner (Tampa Bay), SBC Yahoo, Speakeasy, Sprint, Time Warner Broadband, Visi
Now, I'm going to narrow it down to SBC Yahoo, Srpint, and Time Warner Broadband.
But I'm going to talk to you about SBC Yahoo because I have that (not to run a server though)

First we will need a small buissiness plan, we will also need a static IP adress to run a server.
Here is the best plan priced at $94.99
Downstream Speed: 1.5 Mbps to 6.0 Mbps
Upstream Speed: 384 Kbps to 608 kbps
IP Address: 5 Static IPs

Then we need a website, and to take the load off the server running the game, and keep from buying another server we will find ourselves a paid host.

We will look at Xisto - Web Hosting... We're going to say that the game's site will be pretty active and contain a decent amount of images and of course a game download, so we will go with Plan E from the basic set of plans, this plan offers a good amount of space and bandwith for a very affordable price, it costs $29.95 a year, for 250 MB of space, and 5 MB of monthly bandwith.

449+(95*12)+30= $1619

So now in our first year we will be paying 1,619 to run a game server and website, however that's before we hire people to maintain the servers if we can't always do that ourselves, we may also need to rent out space to store them.

I'm running out of time to write this, so I'm gonna let you know that you'll need to look into some career outlook manuals (search on google) and look into the salary of network technicians and related jobs, then multiply that by 2-3 assuming you will have that many employees, then look into the prices of renting out office space for a year, and add those two numbers to our first, then you might need to consider things like employee benefits, and taxes. Then divide that by roughly how many people you think will be playing the game... maybe... 1,500 or so, and then divide by 12, and we have how much will be needed from each player on a monthly bases to fund this game, post some of your results so others can see...

[jharn 0]

Well, I think that you guys covered the topic quite nicely, but I wanted to add my opinion.I think that the pricing for online gaming is good as it is for most servers that I have notice, but I do think that haveing a free server is a good idea. But I will not stick to one game for all that long, maybe for 6 months or so buy then I would get bored and look for something else to play. So I don't mind the pay to play servers right now. But I also joined a private server which I really enjoyed. I hope that in the future the game makers would enter into contracts with private people or groups to host the free servers. This would allow the game makers to make a little money off of the free servers and it would give the gaming communities a way to make money, while providing free services to the rest of us.This is just my opinion.