It's not about spending money smart, to save investments or cover your losses. It's all about the chance of pure winning, that's how they get people with Pay2Win. So what you are suggesting won't work.
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The idea is that you aren't given the chance to even think about losing. If you noticed, those deals are always popping up after a failed mission, usually a limited/timed offer too. They want the player to act on impulse, not rational thought.
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Follow the example of KLF
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Quid
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The real question is... Robin Wood is a villain or a hero?
If you think he is a hero, you're right and this will work. If you think he is a villain, you're wrong and this will fail.
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If you wrap it in enough layers of psychological manipulation, as a dev/publisher, you might even get away with paying the loser in BS in-game items/currency instead of real cash. It's all about how you deliver the message.
The real trick would be to still retain a playerbase in the process, kinda hard to have the players coming back when you purposefully subvert the Skinner box model, you would need to make a game where losing is actually a compelling thing.
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Well, those would have to fit in already existing (and struggling very hard in general) Real Cash Economy games genre (also called real-money trading games).
So far, AFAIK, the only successful RCE games are Entropia Universe and Second Life, actually the first and only (both came out in the first half of 2003). Early on an F2P player could actually make some money by playing EU (Planet Calypso then), but very shortly (in my opinion) it turned into a high price gamble with quite high entry fee. For all I know, it's also much harder to earn any money playing Second Life now.
The most interesting attempt so far to create the environment, which would permanently make it possibly to earn some money for F2P players, at the cost of P2W players, has been AfterWorld Alpha, created by some disgruntled members of Entropia Universe community. Unfortunately the project has failed.
Initially, you could also make some serious money selling stuff gained in game to other players in Diablo 3, but this option has been revoked pretty fast. Some other MMO games have tried to create real money markets, but usually those experiments were very short-lived (EverQuest II for example).
You would think, that 17 years after the creation of the first 2 really successful RCE games, there should many more of them on market. Unfortunately, it's not the case. Why? I think, it's in large part caused by many problems with adhering to banking and gambling regulations (depending on a country it could come under banking or gambling category) of every country in which the game would be available.
Just because of this single element those games require a lot of capital investment. Indie is not possible here. AfterWorld has mostly failed, because being a fine alpha/beta game, it was not able to find such investor. With the market so far quite limited and unproven for those games, large investors are not likely to take the risk of creating a purely RCE games from scratch, and for existing games like Diablo 3 and EverQuest including RCE elements turns out to be too much hassle for too little profit, especially that those games are a strongest magnet for bots, and as we all know, bot control alongside AI is still a weakest point of gaming industry.
It's my guess, that unfortunately we will not see much change in this area until at least new and much more efficient bot control mechanics are implemented.
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The whole P2W business model works on the illusion that every player thinks they can win if they invest just a little more. Having players who rather get paid instead of putting money into the game kinda ruins that illusion. And why would the devs share their profits anyway?
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Having players who rather get paid instead of putting money into the game kinda ruins that illusion.
Not necessarily if:
The game economy is a closed loop system (like most games) where people can't directly cash out their winnings
Payments to losers are diluted enough that losers can't earn as much as the vast majority of people who P2W but enough to give them a taste of the luxury of P2W
And why would the devs share their profits anyway?
Because if you can convert people who spend little to nothing on P2W into people who spend more, then:
Player engagement / user counts are higher
Spending per player is higher and more evenly distributed across player base
Creates a happy medium for people who don't like to grind to get better loot & stuff
Somewhat tangential, why would Bethesda (and previously Valve) have ever pushed markets to sell mods, such as Bethesda Creation Club?
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The game economy is a closed loop system (like most games) where people can't directly cash out their winnings
That's exactly what OP suggested, though: getting paid directly for playing and losing.
All incentives for higher player engagement or getting more players aside, that would the direct opposite on how p2w works. So what you're describing are extra incentives which can be built into p2w, which may or may not work depending on the game, paying players for losing would not - and it's unnecessary, as there's usually enough people playing (and losing) without any payment.
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That illusion is shattered much worse by first paying to win and then still losing. My model removes all of this. And devs share profit to make even more of it obviously, because there will be far more people paying when they can be sure that they win because of it.
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That illusion is shattered much worse by first paying to win and then still losing.
Nah, that business model works on players assuming they simply didn't pay enough. It's like an addiction, they always think, they'd just need to invest a little more.. They're addicted, it usually takes a long time before their illusion is shattered.
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But then they can still lose to someone who has paid even more. If they paid to win a single time, they would always get what they paid for and continue winning and paying with no setbacks ever.
Old model only allows the richest whales to win, my model allows everyone with a bit of money to win.
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This is not how it works, though. Even in a pure p2w game you can't just sell winning at a fixed price. Nobody would pay for it, it's boring. You sell hope and expectations in form of small advantages (which eventually add up to big ones). Ideally you obscure it enough that players get addicted and keep on paying more. In the end, the one who paid the most is most likely to win, but the system is fueled by everyone thinking they could be the one. It's not a charity and there is no reason for developers to share the profit by paying players for losing.
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That's how it would work in my much better model. No need for obscurity and not getting what you paid for. I haven't ever won more because I spent some money which has made me stop spending money on that. The whole idea of P2W is paying and winning, not having random obscure dreams of maybe one day winning and losing until then.
It's not any kind of charity either any more than marketing etc are. You pay some money to earn more money.
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...only if you literally pay to win.
What OP is saying is that if you do NOT pay to win, then you and the "losers" could be given some of that money that the winners paid.
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Because if it was get paid to lose, I'd get all the money.
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I think it's not that simple.
First of all, for these types of free P2W games (I'm thinking along the lines of those Chinese mobile/browser games), there are already enough people who would lose... for free. So, there's really no need to pay people to lose. Instead, by adding in an incentive system to lose, the devs would be setting themselves up for a whole host of trouble that they don't even need to deal with had they not implement said incentive system and just let players lose naturally like most players (will) do.
I also think in your proposed P2W system, you assume that spenders will spend money in games just to win regardless of the circumstances but that's usually not the case.
If winning is so "easy" as in you pay (more than your opponent, I assume, in the case where both players are spenders) = you win; then the appeal of winning is no longer there. These P2W are usually designed to not feel like you're directly paying to win; they usually design the game so that you'll be getting "advantages" rather than just an "outright win". Some competent skills and resource management are still needed even if you've spent money in a game just to make it to the very top.
Your win will then feel more "well-deserved" that way which will in turn drive you to play and potentially spend more to maintain your "hard-won" win. It's easier to get someone who already "opened" their wallets to spend more than getting someone who has yet to do so to spend even a dime - This is not in verbatim but I'm sure I've read this somewhere before... back when I was interested in learning more about microtransactions in free-to-play games. To put it simply, these spenders may end up spending even more if they lose some games or fights but not too frequently though or they will feel like they are being stubbed despite already spending some money.
Like SlackAndHash mentioned as well, you'll just get tons of players (or bots) who will just throw matches to get paid. This becomes a lose-lose situation now since players can just bot tons of accounts just to throw matches (or lose with little to no effort) and the spenders who won will feel like they dissatisfied with their "win" and will not spend anymore.
I've also noticed a trend shift among those types of P2W games where F2Pers can actually have a chance of getting into the top 20 or 30 on a server if they are willing to put in a ton of time and effort every day without fail. For those F2Pers who did all that just to get to (almost) the top, they are more susceptible to the temptation to spend real money in the game if say... the game suddenly has an influx of spenders who then pushed the top-ranking F2Pers down several notches on the leaderboard or if they want to get the extra advantage afforded to spenders just so they could climb the remaining steps on the rank ladder to the very top.
In your proposed P2W model, all the F2Pers would have absolutely no reason to better their character or their skill if they are being paid to lose. The incentive; the focus here has shifted to losing - and get free money - vs spending your hard-earned cash to win... and everyone, even the spenders, love free money :)
In your P2W model, instead of getting more people to spend, there may even be fewer spenders since you'll have an overwhelming number of people who are willing to lose and not enough people who are willing to spend money to win (There are plenty of research on this where companies have proven that a very high percentage of players who play F2P games don't and won't spend money in the games they play).
Assuming that you won't be matching non-spenders against non-spenders in a match (since you'll lose money that way if you still pay out to the losers or if you don't pay the loser anything since both players are non-spenders), most players won't be paid when they lose when they expect to and they will leave your game/ label your game studio as running a scam. Game without players = dead. You'll need to have a good enough balance of spenders and losers/F2Pers for your system to work and that's just not the case for many F2P games.
Plus, if the losers can cash out the money they get from losing into a bank account, then there's another big issue here - think bots.... lots of 'em - just farming the hell out of your game and, for the spenders... well, winning against bots that throw matches isn't particularly fun I'd say :) In this case, the devs should just develop their own bots and take 100%, rather than 50%, of the money they make since it's their game.
P/S: I hope I've put my thoughts in a coherent way. I rearranged the paragraphs a few times and might have messed up a little >.< Interesting topic to discuss though. Thanks for the thread!
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I'm not talking about crappy mobile games, which are more likely to be Finnish and just bought by Chinese companies, but actual games.
In my superior model the F2P players would become GP2L players who could then put their won money back into the game to win some too. In the old model they are just an unnecessary burden to the game to fool people into believing that you can win without paying. In my model none of this is needed so they are unnecessary as well.
In the current model you can pay and still lose, so obviously it's not any kind of paying to win is it? My superior system actually is Pay2Win and assuming people would rather pay to randomly get what they paid for or not is just silly. If you Pay2Eat in a restaurant, would you be happy if you randomly got nothing or what you ordered? No? Why would you be happy in a game for that either? And why does everyone keep assuming that model works better than always getting what you paid for? You already had the challenge of earning more money than the poor losers so just enjoy what it can bring you.
And just ban bots, job done.
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I'm not talking about crappy mobile games, which are more likely to be Finnish and just bought by Chinese companies, but actual games.
In that case, what sort of P2W games do you have in mind? It might be nice to clarify that in your OP. When I think of truly P2W games, the first games that come to mind are typical Chinese browser games (it doesn't even have to be a mobile game) like say... League of Angels and Wartune where they rather openly promote "paying to win". I'm very certain those games were developed and published by Chinese companies.
GP2L players who could then put their won money back into the game to win some too.
Yes, but would they want to though? Since winning has lost all meaning and isn't as fun, especially in a system that rewards losing with cash?
Plus, taking Valve as an example, they realized that they shouldn't reward people who spend steam wallet during sales since technically, Valve already "earned" the money. They only reward people who spend money using Paypal or credit card instead.
Similarly, GP2L players who "spend" their won money back into game is basically just recycling money that 1. the devs have already earned and could have 100% of in the first place, and 2. now, the devs will never get close to 100% of the profits since 50% of any amount will never end with 0. There will be a lot of money that will just end up "stuck in circulation" (in a lot of players' accounts) and will be there when the game is finally shuttered.
Look at it this way, assuming that by some miracle, your game is able to have an evenly-split (50:50) spender:non-spender ratio which has never happen in F2P gaming history. In reality, it's more likely that the ratio of spender-vs-F2Pers would be in the tens or hundreds of thousands, as in 1 spender per 100,000 or more F2Pers.
GP2L system
Spender A - $100 > Dev - $50; Loser A - $50
---------------------------------------------------------> Loser A - $100 > Dev - $50; Loser D - $50
Spender B - $100 > Dev - $50; Loser A - $50
Spender C - $100 > Dev - $50; Loser B - $50
Spender D - $100 > Dev - $50; Loser C - $50
If the game gets shuttered at this point, Loser B, C and D will have $50 each in their accounts, which they will definitely want to withdraw since they earned the cash. So, devs will only get $250 out of the $400 spent in their game, and you mustn't forget that the devs are the ones who have costs and bills to pay, running a game and a games company aren't free nor cheap and I'm sure 62.5% profit (it's not even net profits) isn't enough to cover costs let alone let the devs expand their company or invest in a new project, while the Losers will basically get free money by doing nothing (again, losing requires little to no effort).
Of course, this is assuming that the losers weren't able to withdraw the money they earn. If they do, I daresay none of them will ever spend the money they earned in the game - they will cash out all the money, and on the devs' side, they will instead have to shell out a fortune to implement a secure system (casino level I'd say) to ensure that none of the cash-out players cheat them or that their servers are hacked.
FYI, your GP2L game will also be flooded by people in countries where the $ holds a lot more value since they can basically earn a year's or more salary just by doing nothing (losing) in your game. It's easy money, even more so than investing in bitcoin during cryptocurrency's heyday, minus all the risks and the small amount of effort a bitcoin investor may need to spend to understand what they are actually investing in. Plus, with bots and a cyber cafe-full of available computers, these "losers" will basically have a money-printing machine thanks to your game, and can laugh all the way to the bank.
Typical P2W system
Spender A - $100 > Dev - $100
Spender B - $100 > Dev - $100
Spender C - $100 > Dev - $100
Spender D - $100 > Dev - $100
The devs get the full $400 and they will get the cash instantly, and it's a win-win for both spenders and the devs. The F2Pers will still benefit because they can play a game for free, thanks to all the spenders.
Ultimately, as long as there isn't a steady in-flow of cash from spenders, your P2W system wouldn't work, and from the points I've mentioned in my previous post, it isn't at all attractive for spenders to spend money to win in your version of P2W/GP2L.
Think of it this way, if you can spend a flat price of $100 to win a Hearthstone match... guaranteed, and the random person who was matched against you will get $50 by losing. The losers will just throw the match and make an super easy $50 within seconds, while the winner who just spent $100 to win an unsatisfactory match would very likely not spend anything again.
But let's put it this way instead.... you spend $100 to get pack of special super OP cards that will help you bulldoze most of your F2P opponents to victory, except when you are matched with, for instance, another spender who spent $200 or in the very rare instances, when you're matched against a F2P professional-level player. The win will feel more genuine; more well-deserved as the win isn't 100% guaranteed (even though, obviously, you have a massive advantage over your opponents) and the rush of winning may end up being more addictive. That's what most P2W devs are banking on.
That's what I'm trying to drive home here. Winning just for the sake of winning isn't fun. That win has to matter for it to be worth the cost, and for something to matter, you have to first be really invested in it.
In the current model you can pay and still lose, so obviously it's not any kind of paying to win is it?
Yes, because there might be someone who spend more than you and hence, may likely be winning a lot more than you. Don't you think people who spend more should generally be "winning more" in a P2W system?
However, if you look at the bigger picture, it's not false advertising or anything like that - you are still "winning" over the majority of the player base, which include every F2Pers plus maybe a few spenders, in said game. Every spender in a P2W game would likely be able to bulldoze over any F2Pers after all. The losing part only comes if the spender is matched against other spender, and if the said spender wants to be the best among everyone, both spenders and non-spenders, then he/she will have to generally spend the most in the game.
If you Pay2Eat in a restaurant, would you be happy if you randomly got nothing or what you ordered? No? Why would you be happy in a game for that either?
I'm pretty sure these two cannot be compared on the same level. It's like comparing apples with oranges.
And why does everyone keep assuming that model works better than always getting what you paid for? You already had the challenge of earning more money than the poor losers so just enjoy what it can bring you.
No, in fact, the model isn't better for the players but, like I said, it IS better for the developers since they can earn more that way. Since they are the ones who are running a business and the game is theirs, they would want to implement a system that can earn them the most money.
From the devs' POV, the GP2L only benefits the F2Pers; doesn't guarantee that those F2Pers will ever spend their own money and not the winnings they have gained (plus the whole "winning has no meaning anymore while losing will earn you free money"); and they will lose a substantial percentage of their profits for nothing.
And just ban bots, job done.
I'm sure you know that banning bots is easier said than done. Just take SG as an example, or any MMO, especially those where there are players who are willing to pay real money to buy in-game currency or items. It's an endless game of whack-a-mole and if real money is thrown into the mix, you can bet your ass that people with armies of bots will exploit your system until there is nothing left... for you, that is.
And that's not even including game hackers and such.
I think I should also point out that "microtransaction" is probably one of the most extensively researched topics when it comes to F2P games. It's the "money maker" of the game and hence, very important to everyone (who has skin in the game) involved.
I'm sure the brightest minds in the industry have tried approaching the issue in a variety of ways and what we have now are basically the stuff that manage to stick around = proven to work very well. However, it's still nice to be able to discuss about new ideas and such.
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Like I said, actual games and not crappy browser games people play on Facebook. Rest was TL;DR, sorry.
But here's an actual pay billions to win a silly simple mobile game for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clash_of_Clans
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Clash of Clans is a mobile game though, and in your earlier comment, you said you're not referring to a crappy mobile game?
And by browser games, I mean games that you can play on your browser which does include Facebook games but there are plenty more that are included. Even the games on Armor games are considered browser games, so is Agar.io. Maybe you should go and google the game titles I've given as examples, maybe play the games for a bit, and you might get an idea of what I'm referring to.
But here's an actual pay billions to win a silly simple mobile game for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clash_of_Clans
All of my points still hold true if we're taking Clash of Clans as an example F2P, P2W game :)
And yeah, it's long mainly because I added a bunch of examples - I was worried that I might not be expressing myself well enough for you to understand the points I'm making :P No worries though!~
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Since we're talking about P2W again, I'd like to pick your brain on this - Don't you think that SG runs on a system that's eerily similar to a typical P2W?
Spenders = Givers
F2Pers = The masses at level 0 :P
The P2W system = The more you "spend" (give), the higher level you go (which can be equated to "VIP level" in typical P2W browser MMO) and you'll get access to and have a higher chance of "wining" higher level GAs (due to much lower entries)
Trust me on this when I say that the current P2W system works insanely well - well enough for your example of a P2W game, Clash of Clans, to earn billions in revenue :) That is why many games use variations of the similar P2W model.
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Yes, you pay couple bucks for dollar bundles, level up to 10 and win lots of free GTA Vs.
That's only because they haven't tried anything better yet. People always think the current model is the best possible and blindly copy it until someone comes up with a better one and that becomes the new best one, just like they keep making clones of those survival battle royale games instead of something original. It could have earned trillions instead!
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Pay2Win games have the problem that someone else can pay even more and get a win from you. But why not combine that with a GP2L model where people with no money can play against rich people and get 50% share of the money they paid to win if they lose. If for example someone pays $100 to win a game, the devs get $50, loser gets $50 and everyone wins in some way or other.
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