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View Full Version : My Suggestions to FunZio. Chip in everyone!



m.a.g.n.u.s
05-02-2012, 03:32 AM
Hello,

I have a few suggestions to FunZio and hope I hear back from their representatives but I also want to hear the thoughts of the good people of this forum as well.

Suggestion #1: Revise In-Game Monetization Strategy

Late at night, when I'm in bed and I don't want to fall asleep yet, even though I have to get up early for work, I'd have no problems dropping a few bucks every now and then, but instead, FunZio wants to give me nightmares by trying to get me to fork over my gas money. A few bucks in this day and age is impulse buying that I'm more than happy to justify as a necessity the next day. $50 or $100 purchase for an in-game iphone app game is something I'm going to be doing some serious calculus in my head about. So pick and choose--do you want your customers to drop a few bucks on impulse or think about the crazy potential of spending $50-$100 on nothing then you ending up making nothing when you could've made something?

I belong to the ideal consumer category, especially for this game (18-30 male w/ plenty of discretionary income). I've made plenty of in-game purchases on apps for the hell of it. But unlike any other apps, FunZio has this notion that their players will spend up to a $100 USD for literally ZERO value-add. As someone who studied marketing and business and is now in the financing industry, this makes no sense to me for what seems like a terrific game.

Would it not make more sense if you dropped your in-game packs to $1, $5, $10, and even $15 intervals in order to reach the affordability and discretionary income levels for an iphone in-game purchase of your players instead of pricing things at an ultra-premium when in reality, there's literally ZERO-value add for that price? I mean, for $100 real life money I earned, I expect something like 100 million in-game credits or 10,000 gold pieces at the way the game has set everything, not a single piece of unit or a single upgrade! Whoever came up with that strategy needs to be spanked with an Economics 101 textbook.

Ask yourself this -- did Angry Birds make MILLIONS of real life dollars by trying to charge everyone hundreds of dollars, or by charging everyone a mere-nothing $0.99 cents and then giving free upgrades, literally for life? There's a lesson to be learnt here.

So the choice is make a lot by getting everyone to spend a little or make next-to-nothing by HOPING some poor soul decides to fork over the big bucks.

Tell me I'm wrong guys ....

mickymacirl
05-02-2012, 03:41 AM
Just that Funzio won't read this or take on board any of your points.

m.a.g.n.u.s
05-02-2012, 03:43 AM
Isn't this board run by actual FunZio staff members?

mickymacirl
05-02-2012, 03:47 AM
Isn't this board run by actual FunZio staff members?

Nod it is, but I do not think they would take on board any of your suggestions :(

Populouspapa
05-02-2012, 03:53 AM
I agree that they should lower it, half is high enough..

m.a.g.n.u.s
05-02-2012, 03:54 AM
Well okay. Fine. But I would like to hear any rational as to why not? Or at least I was hoping to.

This thought was lingering in the back of my mind and I decided to spend the 5 minutes of my real-life minutes on this forum with the hopes of satisfying my intellectual and business-curiosity.

Is it really feasible for them to price things at that level? Are they making so much money at a high-pricing point with relatively low-value-add that they're holding strong on their premium niche markets? I don't know. I don't personally care if they do follow my suggestions or not. The only benefit to me is that if they made a real option where I can spend a few bucks and receive big bang in-game, I'd do it because it's nothing. But I will never spend $50-$100 for ANY iphone applications, much less an in-game purchase of said iphone app.

I can't possibly be alone in thinking this and I can't possibly imagine that a group of developers who come up with a good platform with a wide userbase like this didn't think of the things I'm saying already, so that intrigues me even more.

mickymacirl
05-02-2012, 04:12 AM
I like your points, hey, cheaper is better for the amount of gold that's spent. I've spent a lot myself.

Their model clearly works for them as people are still buying gold at a huge rate.

Let's hope they take on-board your suggestions.

And for the record, other online games I've played require a far higher rate of spend than Gold on Funzio.

One MUD I play requires at LEAST an out lay of 1k dollars to get setup with year donations of at least half that to even stay in contention, and I've been playing this for the last 15 years.

m.a.g.n.u.s
05-02-2012, 04:24 AM
I like your points, hey, cheaper is better for the amount of gold that's spent. I've spent a lot myself.

Their model clearly works for them as people are still buying gold at a huge rate.

You bring up an interesting thought. A brief glance on this forum and I can tell there are some people here that are evidently spending enough to put the app developer's kids through college, but I can't imagine they're representative of the general target market and player base of this game.

It's craziness! I mean, $4.99 in game gets 50 gold. For that, you can buy nothing. Ok, I'll bite. There's an up-sale here and they must want me to spend $9.99 instead because maybe that's where all the value is. Well, at 110 gold, that gets me maybe 1 or 2 small units. But wait ... that's nothing, especially considering I can get units as strong as the one's I'm paying $5 - $10 for through free events.

I just see zero value for the amount of money they want me to spend. For god's sake, even APPLE and GOOGLE works harder to add value than FunZio and I can compare because apparently people are spending hundreds?



Let's hope they take on-board your suggestions.

And for the record, other online games I've played require a far higher rate of spend than Gold on Funzio.

One MUD I play requires at LEAST an out lay of 1k dollars to get setup with year donations of at least half that to even stay in contention, and I've been playing this for the last 15 years.

I'm not a hard-core gamer like some of you good folks here. But even then, I am the ideal consumer they would want to target because chances are there are more folks like me than there are of you playing modern war.

I'm not sure how many players this game has, but with about 24k reviews in app store and with any multiplier, we can sort of guesstimate their total user base from at least that 24k to upwards of 100k, hell even go up to 200k. But the fact that games like temple run has over 1 million in-store reviews and they charge very little for in-game purchases should say something about how games make money and how games don't. Same for Angry birds and all the other great apps that defied belief by making MILLIONS by charging little and delivering a hell of a lot of value and free upgrades for life from that single dollar purchase.

Aidan
05-02-2012, 05:06 AM
I think they will eventually lower down the price but not now. You asked whether they are making lots of money now that make them holding their high premium price scheme. And the answer is i think they do based on below facts:

1) Up to date, there is more than 20 millions download for all Funzio's games.
2) Funzio games regularly feature in weekly top grossing apps.
2) Few months back they managed to pull $20 million from funding.
3) Just few days ago, GREE has bought funzio for a total of $210 million.

I do agree with you however, if they lower it down a little bit more, they will make more evenmore money. With over 20 millions downloads, impulse buying will generate a greater crazy tons of money as compared to now. Majority players buy gold during sales. This shows that they want to buy gold but they prefer to buy at a discounted price.

Funzio's pricing itself actually is pretty much the same with other games; EA Games, Glu mobile etc - €3.99, €7.99, €39.99. It's just that the price of gold units/buildings n everything else is too high that buying 50 gold will get you nowhere. For €79.99 worth of gold, you can only buy 2-3 Limited Edition Units. If you are not a regular spender, this amount of spending will hardly give you any advantage especially if you are high level.

Eg; Say your defence stat is 40,000 and you bought all limited edition with a vault of gold-€79.99. Assuming you are not replacing any unit, your stat will only rise by 365 defense point. Hardly a game changer. Some free player with 38k attack and lots of attack skills point can easily run you down. Now if you are a first time buyer and that happened to you, will you be buying anymore gold in the future? I dont think so.

With current strategy they are relying too much on heavy and regular gold spender. This type of customer wont be spending their money forever and they are a minority. At some point they will stop spending for various reason; already have 2000 gold unit, already at L200 n etc. They are spending now because the game is still new. Will they still spend heavily in say 2 or 3 years from now? I dont think so. They might not even be playing anymore.

Marc
05-02-2012, 05:18 AM
Looking at these money post here I seeing the same "AUSTRALIAN" bs tax in currency disparity. Still not going to stop me but....

50 gold - $5.49 AUD
110 gold - $10.49 AUD
240 gold - $20.99 AUD
650 gold - $51.99 AUD
1500 gold - $109.99 AUD -> $113.58 USD

I remember somewhere that American pay $99 USD for 1500 gold bar?

mickymacirl
05-02-2012, 05:44 AM
its like 79.99 euro for 1500 here so with the exchange rates its more expensive than the 99 dollar option :P

Agent Orange
05-02-2012, 05:46 AM
Well okay. Fine. But I would like to hear any rational as to why not? Or at least I was hoping to.

This thought was lingering in the back of my mind and I decided to spend the 5 minutes of my real-life minutes on this forum with the hopes of satisfying my intellectual and business-curiosity.

Is it really feasible for them to price things at that level? Are they making so much money at a high-pricing point with relatively low-value-add that they're holding strong on their premium niche markets? I don't know. I don't personally care if they do follow my suggestions or not. The only benefit to me is that if they made a real option where I can spend a few bucks and receive big bang in-game, I'd do it because it's nothing. But I will never spend $50-$100 for ANY iphone applications, much less an in-game purchase of said iphone app.

I can't possibly be alone in thinking this and I can't possibly imagine that a group of developers who come up with a good platform with a wide userbase like this didn't think of the things I'm saying already, so that intrigues me even more.

As long as folks pay the current prices forget it. Also people have been suggesting pretty much what you posted since day 1.

rrnj6890
05-02-2012, 06:05 AM
As long as folks pay the current prices forget it. Also people have been suggesting pretty much what you posted since day 1.

I think they would make more money if they lowered the prices.

Warfiend
05-02-2012, 08:59 AM
I think the best reason for NOT lowering the prices is the potential impact it could have on game balance. Right now, at the highest levels according to those who are there, if you don't have gold, you're basically a whipping boy.

At the lower and mid levels, that's not really the case. Free players can not only compete, but can have a good degree of dominance for their levels.

The danger is, make gold too cheap, and it becomes a gold players game at all levels. At first glance, this sounds like it would make funzio a lot of money, and in the short term, it probably would. But the long term effect would be, the game at all levels would be for those willing to spend money. Free players would give up even trying to be strong and move on to another game that won't be a frustration festival that requires money spent in order to not be beat on all the time. This, in turn, would damage the game for most gold players, as without active free players in the game, who are you going to feel stronger than in exchange for your purchase?

If everyone else in the game is now buying cheap gold, then the investment required to get an advantage could actually go up higher than it is now, as instead of being able to buy an advantage over powerful free players, you have to buy an advantage over other gold players because no free player is going to stay in a game they can't have a degree of success in playing free.

This would throw off the whole purpose of economy building and carefully building your forces around the notion of casualty rates. Basically, what would be the point if everyone is just buying their way to power with cheap gold anyway?

As it is now, the game encourages economy building and strategic planning of your forces, even for light and moderate gold players. That's a critical part of it, at least at the lower and mid levels. Those things absolutely matter. If those things stop mattering, this game will become little more than a mindless fight game where you buy gladiator units to compete against other people.

JohnnyR
05-02-2012, 09:17 AM
Amazing, and well thought out post Warfiend. Short term actions without thought to their long term impact would have destroyed this game long ago, I think Funzio knows what they're doing in just about every aspect of the game, including many of the things that irritate us players.

keijishun88
05-02-2012, 09:34 AM
Buying gold is to have some value unit you wanted. why not create a trading session that we could trade out unit amount allies?

Aidan
05-02-2012, 09:57 AM
I agree with warfiend that lowering the price will make the game too unbalanced thus making it unplayable for free players. However, one can also argue that if the price is low enough that maybe there wont be any "free players". They will either be light or heavy spender. Or if the free players still exist, they will be on the minority.

Honestly, i dont think Funzio was expecting that people will actually buy 2000 gold units and how fast these players reached top levels. From what i heard it's pretty much boring up there with nothing to do except building base and upgrading buildings. At L93, i hv already came across a number of empty bases or base that hv unrepaired raided buildings for days!. Even my LLP at L38 have seen plenty of this. Free and light gold spender are already feeling the heat of an unbalanced game.

manbeast
05-02-2012, 11:19 AM
allow us to upgrade more than one building at a time!!! or at least shorten the lvl8-10 upgrade times. a week? really? it really discourages me from playing now that i'm at a high lvl

m.a.g.n.u.s
05-02-2012, 01:42 PM
Majority players buy gold during sales. This shows that they want to buy gold but they prefer to buy at a discounted price.

I'm just not convinced anywhere near a 'majority' of the total users buy anything on this game. I would interpret the high gross to mean that a small number of extremely passionate heavy users purchase exorbitant amounts of gold in-game instead of everyone buying in-game, which I seriously doubt based on economic principles.

But the fact that FunZio just got bought for $210 million says something. Unlike traditional business valuations that's based solely on revenue stream and purchase orders, the FunZio's valuation and draw was based also on its 20 million 'downloads' and the extreme success its had in being able to get their existing userbase to buy into something new, i.e Kingdom Age's huge download rate because they incentivized downloads in crime city and modern war with limited edition units. I'm sure they have a strong revenue stream to justify a $210 million purchase, but that says nothing about my point of what portion of users become customers as opposed to remaining prospects forever.

m.a.g.n.u.s
05-02-2012, 02:03 PM
I think the best reason for NOT lowering the prices is the potential impact it could have on game balance. Right now, at the highest levels according to those who are there, if you don't have gold, you're basically a whipping boy.

The danger is, make gold too cheap, and it becomes a gold players game at all levels. At first glance, this sounds like it would make funzio a lot of money, and in the short term, it probably would. But the long term effect would be, the game at all levels would be for those willing to spend money. Free players would give up even trying to be strong and move on to another game that won't be a frustration festival that requires money spent in order to not be beat on all the time. This, in turn, would damage the game for most gold players, as without active free players in the game, who are you going to feel stronger than in exchange for your purchase?

You make an excellent point about the connection between gold purchases and potential game balancing issues. I would like to offer a few counters, if I may.

The issue here isn't that gold being cheaper will necessasrily cause balance issues, but that the existence of gold and gold items itself already caused that issue. What you're talking about is containment of who gets it and who doesn't.

After reading your post, I can't help but compare gold in this game to nuclear weapons. The comparison is apt because of the huge disparity in stats between non-gold vs. gold items just like nuclear vs. conventional bombs as well as the capital barriers to entry that puts off most people from getting gold and countries from nuclear weapons.

Just like with nuclear weapons, when the non-nuclear powers get nuclear weapons, the big guys just out-build them 100 to 1 and increase their stockpile to be able to take out every other nuclear power 10x over. I think if gold prices were cheaper, a gold-based-unit arms race is more likely to happen in game which would make it more exciting, not less. Because gold in this hypothetical is cheap, existing advanced gold players can simply purchase more gold because it's affordable and maintain their positions, or get knocked over by new gold players.

I don't believe cheap gold will throw off the game's economy because the individual economy as it is now is not interdependent on other players but instead is separate and isolated. There's no trade systems so everyone is building in their own environments. Those already producing huge cash output will continue to do so at higher levels with or without gold and those that are stupid will remain stupid, even with gold.

This wont change with cheaper gold. What will change is that the small number of advanced gold players will be met with a new paradigm of advanced free players who are now using gold to catch up. The large majority of users who are free will get in an arms race with one another and purchase gold to compete at their levels, forcing other free users to purchase. I don't believe it will make free players quit, especially when there will be a portion of free players to compete against no matter how cheap gold gets. And if players quit, these are same players that would've quit regardless because if you have a game worth playing, people tend to play it, period.

So from the standpoint of FunZio's pockets, cheaper gold in the short term gets way more money in their piggy banks. In the long term, the game becomes more exciting because it forces the advanced players at the top to face new challenges which would otherwise not exist and gives the majority of the users a chance to get into the gold race at a cheap level.

Of course there's always the simple solution of retroactively increasing the stats of existing gold-based units before making gold cheaper for all if you want to artificially keep existing advanced gold players on top. In short, the solutions to balancing is easy because numbers can be fixed quickly and thoughtfully. I think cheap gold creating balancing issues is little more than a minor speed bump, not a 60-miles per hour crash without seat belts. And with all the new money they'll make, FunZio can afford to do some re-balancing.

LeBarticus
05-02-2012, 02:27 PM
Looking at these money post here I seeing the same "AUSTRALIAN" bs tax in currency disparity. Still not going to stop me but....

50 gold - $5.49 AUD
110 gold - $10.49 AUD
240 gold - $20.99 AUD
650 gold - $51.99 AUD
1500 gold - $109.99 AUD -> $113.58 USD

I remember somewhere that American pay $99 USD for 1500 gold bar?


Yeah, but people in Australia make a hell of a lot more $ per hour, for example, what is minimum wage? Cost of living is higher therefore Australians get paid more.

m.a.g.n.u.s
05-02-2012, 03:15 PM
Yeah, but people in Australia make a hell of a lot more $ per hour, for example, what is minimum wage? Cost of living is higher therefore Australians get paid more.

Pretty sure that's not the case.

LeBarticus
05-02-2012, 05:00 PM
Pretty sure that's not the case.

Okay well Australia's minimum wage has been 15 an hr as of 2010, and the US is what, 7.50? Are you trying to say the cost of gold is more than the value for Australians?

MaverickMunkey
05-02-2012, 05:13 PM
As it is a suggestion thread - I might as well throw this one in!

For one of the next events, how about an engineering unit that either permanently or for a set time limit would allow you to upgrade more than one building at a time?

el_gringo
05-02-2012, 05:25 PM
I think that the game needs a turret operator of some kind, and that I should get a free one coz it was my idea.

MaverickMunkey
05-02-2012, 05:31 PM
I think that the game needs a turret operator of some kind, and that I should get a free one coz it was my idea.

And the battle lines have been drawn!

m.a.g.n.u.s
05-02-2012, 05:43 PM
Okay well Australia's minimum wage has been 15 an hr as of 2010, and the US is what, 7.50? Are you trying to say the cost of gold is more than the value for Australians?

Getting way off topic here, but what the hell.

Your claim was people in Australia make a hell of a lot more, with dollars per hour as an example. But I said it's not because minimum wage is not a standard or acceptable metric for measuring wealth of nations.

If you use the standard and accepted measurement of GDP per capita and PPP, US ranks higher than AUS.
Let's just hug it out and go back to topic? :)

Warfiend
05-02-2012, 05:59 PM
@m.a.g.n.u.s

I agree with your comparison to nuclear weapons. It is a very good one IMO. However, I do very respectfully disagree with one of your points.

When it comes to economy, there is an interconnectedness. It is not directly interconnected in the way our real world economy works between nations, but our individual economies are tied into other players in that the primary reason to build economy is to afford more and better cash units in order to defend against and to attack other players. This includes replacing lost units that occur both during attacks and defending. If the game turns into the gold unit war you seem to be envisioning, that will most certainly impact the importance of economy. Gold units can be purchased irrespective of a players current economy and are indestructible and do not ever need replacing.

The only purpose economy would eventually serve in the scenario you describe, *assuming* I'm understanding it correctly, is to pay for building upgrades to unlock new gold units. And that can be circumvented with gold as well, either through buying money, or simply building your military out of crates or limited editions for the more powerful units.

Right now, the struggle to build up a force and maintain it with units that, like in real war, are lost in conflicts, adds a huge amount to the game. The very frustrations people have with casualty rates(myself included, believe me), adds realism to the game and forces people to think and take into account the types of things that a real military has to take into account when they enter conflicts. If it became a gold war, I honestly can't see how that wouldn't be lost.

But, I could well be wrong. It's been known to happen more than I care to admit.

Warfiend
05-02-2012, 06:00 PM
I think that the game needs a turret operator of some kind, and that I should get a free one coz it was my idea.

What!? That was totally MY idea.

Tctiger
05-02-2012, 06:31 PM
Ridiculous unjust prices and anyone who pays them is crazy if you ask me but each to their own.

Agent Orange
05-02-2012, 07:28 PM
You make an excellent point about the connection between gold purchases and potential game balancing issues. I would like to offer a few counters, if I may.

The issue here isn't that gold being cheaper will necessasrily cause balance issues, but that the existence of gold and gold items itself already caused that issue. What you're talking about is containment of who gets it and who doesn't.

After reading your post, I can't help but compare gold in this game to nuclear weapons. The comparison is apt because of the huge disparity in stats between non-gold vs. gold items just like nuclear vs. conventional bombs as well as the capital barriers to entry that puts off most people from getting gold and countries from nuclear weapons.

Just like with nuclear weapons, when the non-nuclear powers get nuclear weapons, the big guys just out-build them 100 to 1 and increase their stockpile to be able to take out every other nuclear power 10x over. I think if gold prices were cheaper, a gold-based-unit arms race is more likely to happen in game which would make it more exciting, not less. Because gold in this hypothetical is cheap, existing advanced gold players can simply purchase more gold because it's affordable and maintain their positions, or get knocked over by new gold players.

I don't believe cheap gold will throw off the game's economy because the individual economy as it is now is not interdependent on other players but instead is separate and isolated. There's no trade systems so everyone is building in their own environments. Those already producing huge cash output will continue to do so at higher levels with or without gold and those that are stupid will remain stupid, even with gold.

This wont change with cheaper gold. What will change is that the small number of advanced gold players will be met with a new paradigm of advanced free players who are now using gold to catch up. The large majority of users who are free will get in an arms race with one another and purchase gold to compete at their levels, forcing other free users to purchase. I don't believe it will make free players quit, especially when there will be a portion of free players to compete against no matter how cheap gold gets. And if players quit, these are same players that would've quit regardless because if you have a game worth playing, people tend to play it, period.

So from the standpoint of FunZio's pockets, cheaper gold in the short term gets way more money in their piggy banks. In the long term, the game becomes more exciting because it forces the advanced players at the top to face new challenges which would otherwise not exist and gives the majority of the users a chance to get into the gold race at a cheap level.

Of course there's always the simple solution of retroactively increasing the stats of existing gold-based units before making gold cheaper for all if you want to artificially keep existing advanced gold players on top. In short, the solutions to balancing is easy because numbers can be fixed quickly and thoughtfully. I think cheap gold creating balancing issues is little more than a minor speed bump, not a 60-miles per hour crash without seat belts. And with all the new money they'll make, FunZio can afford to do some re-balancing.

I understand why you are saying this but the reality of the situation is that those with the deepest pockets regardless of the cost of gold will always be more powerful. Same in real life, the US has/had deep pockets so it is able to fund a massive armed force.

Spinning back to free players, honestly knowing what I know at the moment having lived through all of this in the high levels I personally would not buy gold in an effort to 'catch up' as that is extremely foolish. Even if gold were reduced 50% in value 50% of $10,000 to $20,000 which is the estimate that was passed about in terms of what the most powerful players have spent is still $5000 to $10000. Though I might be able to justify this, my cheapskate side says no. Plus I can buy a lot of toy(s) with that much cash.

Those that spend high amounts of cash do so because they can and for them they are enjoying doing so, well other than the fact that the rivals list for them is totally screwed up and even though they are sending in tickets daily it seems it is not being addressed or I believe not being responded to. Considering that these guys/gals spending is in the thousands of real dollars they are getting rather ticked off and if they pull out their financial support who knows what might happen.

In terms of all gold based armies, I have to say that I can't see fighting each other with indestructible armies can be fun I guess you would see a statistic but nobody looses any units so the fight is rather irrelevant. I suppose you could argue that getting valour is the goal however loss rates are so totally out of whack up here that you will never get ahead since you loose 2 - 3 Super Hornets to every one you can win.

My personal feeling is that the devs have pretty much painted themselves into a corner, why they came out with a new game called Kingdom Age instead of trying to fix/create new goals above L100.

War Priest
05-02-2012, 07:30 PM
AGAIN..?

Funzio was just sold for 210 million. I am sure they are doing just fine at the prices they have now. :)

John Snow
05-02-2012, 07:45 PM
Personally, I like the fact that the price of gold is high. As Magnus points out, it becomes a considered purchase rather than an impulse one. This means that there are far fewer gem players and free players are neither marginalized nor placed at a significant disadvantage.

Agent Orange
05-02-2012, 07:50 PM
All I can say is, it is your choice to play, not get any sleep or not to play and get sleep.....

LeBarticus
05-02-2012, 08:08 PM
Getting way off topic here, but what the hell.

Your claim was people in Australia make a hell of a lot more, with dollars per hour as an example. But I said it's not because minimum wage is not a standard or acceptable metric for measuring wealth of nations.

If you use the standard and accepted measurement of GDP per capita and PPP, US ranks higher than AUS.
Let's just hug it out and go back to topic? :)

Sure, I was just trying to figure out what you were saying there buddy

War Priest
05-02-2012, 08:11 PM
All I can say is, it is your choice to play, not get any sleep or not to play and get sleep.....

Haha, yep. :)

There was a thread like 2 days ago about this...

Funzio is making millions, they will never lower the prices...

John Snow
05-02-2012, 08:15 PM
You make an excellent point about the connection between gold purchases and potential game balancing issues. I would like to offer a few counters, if I may.

The issue here isn't that gold being cheaper will necessasrily cause balance issues, but that the existence of gold and gold items itself already caused that issue. What you're talking about is containment of who gets it and who doesn't.

After reading your post, I can't help but compare gold in this game to nuclear weapons. The comparison is apt because of the huge disparity in stats between non-gold vs. gold items just like nuclear vs. conventional bombs as well as the capital barriers to entry that puts off most people from getting gold and countries from nuclear weapons.

Just like with nuclear weapons, when the non-nuclear powers get nuclear weapons, the big guys just out-build them 100 to 1 and increase their stockpile to be able to take out every other nuclear power 10x over. I think if gold prices were cheaper, a gold-based-unit arms race is more likely to happen in game which would make it more exciting, not less. Because gold in this hypothetical is cheap, existing advanced gold players can simply purchase more gold because it's affordable and maintain their positions, or get knocked over by new gold players.

I don't believe cheap gold will throw off the game's economy because the individual economy as it is now is not interdependent on other players but instead is separate and isolated. There's no trade systems so everyone is building in their own environments. Those already producing huge cash output will continue to do so at higher levels with or without gold and those that are stupid will remain stupid, even with gold.

This wont change with cheaper gold. What will change is that the small number of advanced gold players will be met with a new paradigm of advanced free players who are now using gold to catch up. The large majority of users who are free will get in an arms race with one another and purchase gold to compete at their levels, forcing other free users to purchase. I don't believe it will make free players quit, especially when there will be a portion of free players to compete against no matter how cheap gold gets. And if players quit, these are same players that would've quit regardless because if you have a game worth playing, people tend to play it, period.

So from the standpoint of FunZio's pockets, cheaper gold in the short term gets way more money in their piggy banks. In the long term, the game becomes more exciting because it forces the advanced players at the top to face new challenges which would otherwise not exist and gives the majority of the users a chance to get into the gold race at a cheap level.

Of course there's always the simple solution of retroactively increasing the stats of existing gold-based units before making gold cheaper for all if you want to artificially keep existing advanced gold players on top. In short, the solutions to balancing is easy because numbers can be fixed quickly and thoughtfully. I think cheap gold creating balancing issues is little more than a minor speed bump, not a 60-miles per hour crash without seat belts. And with all the new money they'll make, FunZio can afford to do some re-balancing.

I think you might be right about the short term impact of cheaper gold on Funzio's bottom line. In the early going I'd bet that a higher majority of players might pony up a couple of dollars to buy gold to realize a competitive advantage. However, in the medium and long run, these players will realize that they will need to keep spending in order to maintain any advantage that their gold initially achieved. And instead of having to avoid the relatively rare gem players one encounters currently, a player would have to constantly be aware of the masses of cheap gold players.

Being "taxed" every time you play just so you can maintain some level of competitiveness would drive players out of the game much quicker. I don't know when the "average" players loses interest in a Funzio game, let's say level 20 to put a stake in the ground. I suspect that the "average" player in a cheap gold game would lose interest much quicker when he realizes how often he'd have to spend to maintain his game experience.

Funzio obviously has a core group of hardcore spenders now. This group has enabled the company to be valued at $210 million. I doubt that Gree/Funzio will want to do anything drastic to change their relationship with these core customers. Changing the gold formula would have a significant impact on gameplay and this might alienate some of their best customers.

m.a.g.n.u.s
05-03-2012, 03:54 AM
Thanks for all the thoughtful feedback on my intrigue and curiosity. I don't want to debate this infinitum so let me do one final rebuttal (unless some other fantastic point comes up in your replies). At this point, I think I can sort the common and overlapping arguments of why gold should remain high priced into categories. So instead of individual replies, for the sake of brevity, let me do this consolidated rebuttal. Feel free to have your last words as well.

---------FunZio just got bought for $210 million, so they should stay the course--------------

It's a huge accomplishment, but to put it in context, $210mil is great but not ideal. FunZio was valued at $350 million so the $210mil is actually a discounted price. In comparison, Draw Something App was just bought up by Zynga for $180 mil + $30 mil in earnouts. To give you an idea, Gree, the guys who purchased FunZio, is a multi-billion dollar corporation with a huge war chest that makes Zynga's look like a piggy bank and they only paid pennies on the dollar for FunZio's 3 games.

Be that as it may, the objective of Gree, the new owners, is to reach 1 billion user base in all their portfolios combined. FunZio is their first venture into free-to-play mobile software arena in the western markets. So my guess is they want FunZio to increase userbase by astronomical figures and increase revenue stream in both gross profits as well as diversifying the sources that it comes from. Because let's face it, to keep relying on a small subset of players in your entire user base for the majority of your revenues is business suicide in the long term. What happens to FunZio's bottom line when these big spenders run out or decide not to spend hundreds or thousands? It's never a good idea to have all your eggs in one basket, or in this case, only in the hands of a small group of spenders.

No business is immune to business practices and principles of economics. FunZio made its mark and presumably more than made up all the development costs of the game. So there's every incentive for them to be able to bring the price levels down so a majority of their players will start to spend. Look at Apple for example. Their original Iphones were priced at $700 USD, then $400, then $199. Every mass-consumer product and service follows this logic of dropping from premium pricing down to economy pricing once R&D has been recovered and early adopters are out of the picture. It's suicide when you don't.

---------Rich players will always remain comparatively powerful, regardless of any price drops, so change is irrelevant?------------

Even assuming that the premise is true, I cannot agree with the conclusion. Even if rich players buy more gold at cheaper prices and remain comparatively more powerful to the rest, it gives all the players who otherwise don't have gold the ability to play with new units, buildings and speed up their economies and make it more interesting for them. So who cares if rich players remain more powerful than the rest? The majority of people who don't spend hundreds will instead spend tens of dollars that they otherwise wouldn't and compete amongst themselves in new ways. Plus, with everyone spending more in this hypothetical, FunZio should be jumping for joy and players too, since they'll be able to put more into game in terms of additional content, events, etc.

---------Negative repercussion of cheap gold #1: armies full of indestructible units will make game less fun and strategic. it will take away from economy building and erode existing balances---------

I don't believe that cheaper gold has to necessarily lead to armies full of indestructible units. I think supply and demand will ensure that's not the case. Presumably, FunZio is not going to offer 50x or 100x more for the dollar so I don't imagine there being armies of only indestructible units. Instead, FunZio could make something along the lines of $1 = one instant upgrade and units priced accordingly, but with far more value. The way I imagine it, players would be supplementing their armies with gold units, not counting only on them.

Far from eroding existing balance or taking away from economy building/ strategy, I think it'll do the opposite. For every dollar new gold players spend into building their economy or armies, it's like a small investment that makes them want to build even more, using gold periodically and relying instead, on traditional methods of economy building and strategy. There would still be casualties and strategy because economy building and normal unit productions would increase since new gold players would have a new vested interest in the game now that they've put real life money into it. And when someone has skin in the game, they're more likely to learn the game, strategize and try to do well. This is especially true for new players since they'll be able to overcome initial barriers to entry and level-up pretty fast, but meeting heavy resistance with every new level as everyone else is also leveling up faster with cheap gold.

---------Negative repercussion of cheap gold #2: free players might be more likely to quit as they become overpowered with more and more encounters of gold players or from seeing how competitive the game is---------

Since this is a premium price model, I see the player demographics breaking up like this. There are two primary groups -- those that are spending and will continue to spend (the smallest percentage) and those that are not spending (the rest/ overwhelming majority). FunZio should be interested in the subset of the second group -- the people that are not spending at premium pricing levels, but could be converted if prices drop down to economy levels.

Far from free players quitting with increased encounter of gold players, I think it'll have the opposite effect. If gold was cheap, then there will be a domino effect of non-gold players converting with small purchases. With every encounter, non-gold players will be incentivized to become competitive by either spending more time in game or use gold themselves to become competitive to gold players. And with more gold players in the mix, existing gold players will have to step up their game and so on.

Let's go meta and think of Iphone as an example. When it was $700, only rich early adopters bought it. When it was $400, wealthy individuals purchased. But when it dropped to $200, the entire world literally gobbled it up. This didn't make pre-existing iphone users stop using iphones or new iphone users stop using it on account of everyone around them having it. instead, they customize, get different backplates and accessorize. And ask yourself how did Apple become the richest company in the world with $100 billion in cash reserves -- by sticking to their guns at $700 or dropping down to $200 and reaching the mass market?