After reading the thread were we got onto impulse purchases. I am kind of wondering out loud.

What do games (like mine) do where an impulse purchase isnt possible?

My game is an online space combat game, based around a community aspect.

My development and roll-out model is something like a tale in the desert.

But is there another approach to actually charging other than the subscription? what is the most attractive method for paying for an online game?

.Zoom.

We run a MMOG and are producing a multiplayer hybrid. Both are using different systems.

Our MMOG is using a subscription system.

Our hybrid is going the way of Blizzard and going with a one time fee and concentrating on add-on sales.

Buying is never non-impulse related, but you are correct that impulse buying is less effective with a subscription model.

The trick to subscription models is to create a sense of ownership about what they are subscribing to. If they, at impulse, purchase your product and by the end of that month feel attached to their character or the game they will continue to subscribe.

Therein lies the key. If you want to develop a new method of sales, such as what we are doing, it takes a lot more thought and playing with ideas. Addon is a very general term, but I know at least one other product that is going to try it. I call their idea micro-addons, where each addon is very cheap (and with their nice payment method have eliminated the credit card barrier, where you dont have to use a credit card for each sale.)

I dont know if this helps ya Zoomy, I think you have to give a lot of background on your project and what opportunities for sales within that product exist.

Joseph Lieberman

Originally posted by zoombapup
But is there another approach to actually charging other than the subscription? what is the most attractive method for paying for an online game?

.Zoom.

I dont know of any alternatives, but if you go the subscription route it makes more business sense to have the users pay quarterley or even at a larger interval. Because if you do it on a monthly basis then you will incur processing charges from whoever you are using.

This does have a downside though, the single amount payable by the subscriber is going to be relatively large compared with a monthly payment. It may not be so bad if you give them the first 3 months free, with some limited functions to incentivise them into becoming full subscribers.


Alfie

True, it has to be a good balance between a reasonable payment, and the processing charges involved.

As someone mentioned before, it makes more sense to charge a lot at once, but offer a discount for doing so.

So for instance, 3 months payment might be 20 dollars. But you could do a years subs for say 60 dollars, because the processing fee charges would be proportionately less.

But its interesting because not all of our games are falling into the casual gamer trial download and impulse purchase category, so we need some alternatives there.

I do favour subscription, mainly because it means you can guage your expected revenue in order to target the updates possible. For an online game I think its pretty vital to keep it alive and updated.

For us at least here is how it works out:

The difference between 12 payments and 4 payments over a single yearly payment

12 payments costs us an extra 5.40 in charges.

4 payments costs us 1.80 in charges.

So lets say your product is going to be 5 dollars a month.

So you are telling me it makes that much more sense that you charge 5 dollars a month, 18 dollars for 3 months or 55 dollars a year.

Tell me which of those numbers looks like the better deal.

If your CC processing fees are that high you should do something about it. It costs us .45 + 3.75% per transaction.

Zoom, I suspect you will run into a lot more trouble from finding new users than from getting your users to pay for whatever you peddle them.

In fact, I would bet my reptuation on it.

What does that mean? It means you are looking at the wrong side of the problem, this one is pretty easy to solve.

Joseph Lieberman