Value of a Thing

Sorry for the few months of no blog posting. I was away on vacation in July for 3 weeks enjoying some much needed R and R. After I got back, demos for TGB, TSE and GameFest took over my life.

This is the 'value' blog that I promised I was going to write in one of my previous blogs. I wanted to get this one out of the way first, and it was very hard to write. I hate addressing issues that are amorphous, that I cannot fully wrap my head around. The 'value' of a thing, and in particular, games, is a tough nut to crack. Most of the time the idea of the 'value' of a game is an educated guess. I suppose that this is why it is important for me to write this, as all too often I see people starting off making their game with no thought as to the end value of the project to the consumer, or even clarifying in their heads the 'guess' they are making. This blog may read like a stream of conciouness ramble, so apologies in advance if it lacks coherence.

I am going to warn everyone reading this that I will ask a lot of questions, and not give many answers. The goal of this blog is to get everyone thinking more deeply about the value of anything they consume, hopefully become a little more introspective about their own value system, understand what you will pay for, and apply this knowledge to the production of your own games.

So, first off, I am going to talk about the perceived value of things we purchase and consume everyday. I am going to lay it on the table and say that the perceived value of some 'thing' has no relation to the actual value or the item in question, and has a lot to do with the social conditioning of what we expect to pay for items.

For a movie in a theater, you can expect to pay $8 for a ticket ($16+ if you bring a date and buy popcorn). Most movies run about 90-100 minutes, so you are paying at least $5/hr for the entertainment. For DVDs, renting one is about $3 a pop (and given the noraml viewing habits of most families, this is about the cost of NetFlix).. a little better, but still about $2/hr.

Broadway plays and rock concerts can be even more expensive, often running as much as $25/hr for the cost of the experience. People can attach a high dollar amount (value) to these one time, non repeatable life experiences.

People will pay for things of high quality. What sort of quality attaches to a 'thing' is hard to ascertain. Again, social conditioning has a part to play. We pay high prices for electronic components (TVs, Computers) and things that are large (appliances like refrigerators and dryers). We expect that a better car will be of a higher price. We have associated brands with quality of and item, and become loyal to brands that have, in the past, provided good value at a good price to us.

The way people pay for things and understand how to 'acquire' that which they like is changing. iTunes now enables the end user to pay $1 for an individual song. No longer do you have to shell out $17 for a full CD and gamble that the rest of the songs are as good as the one you heard on the radio (usually they are not). The idea of paying for only exactly what you want is catching on.

The iPod is also a pretty godo example to look at. mp3 players had been around for a while before the iPod came out. What apple did with the iPod and iTunes was to streamline the experience. Purchase, plugin, and play music in less than 15 minutes. The 'no hassle' experience of buying an iPod is what set it apart from other players and gained it market share (and in fact made it synonymous with mp3 player). The quality of the item is not related to the item itself, it is the whole system, and what it provides for me, which is hassle free setup and operation.

In one of the books I read on business, FedEx was used as an example of how people attach value to something. FedEx realized at one point, that they were not selling shipping services. They realized they were selling an idea of security. You use FedEx when it 'absolutely, positiviely needs to be there overnight'. They recongnized something that people attach high value to, delivered it for them (at a pretty high premium), and caputalized on it.

Netflix allows you to get DVDs without ever heading to the video store. Why is netflix so successful? I am sure that everyone reading this has been to the video store to get the latest DVD release they have been dying to see, only to get there to see that the DVD in question is all rented out, and that the mountain of 'other' possible stuff to rent is hard to parse and search. I know I head home dejected, often with no movie in hand, when the one thing I went to the store for is not available, and after having spent an extra half an hour looking for 'something else' to fill the evening I had planned to spend watching a movie. Netflix saves me time. I can search online. I don't have to go to 'them'.. the movie comes to 'me'. I am not placed in indentured servitude to the video store to drive the damn disc back. Netflix gives me power over my life and my time. It puts me in the driver seat.

XBox Live Arcade enables users to purchase games for about $10, without ever heading to the store. It allows me to try games before I buy them, and not experience the dejection of paying $60 for something that I was SO excited about for months (buying into the hype) and then come home to realize that it is not the experience I wanted. Again, this puts me in the driver seat of buying what I want, and only what I want, and not parting with my money unless I have decided the value of the item is high enough for me to pay for it.

In Dan MacDonalds blog, he wrote:

customers don't care how much time and energy you put into coding the game, they are only interested in two things. The games design and it's production values. This is what customers will be willing to pay money for,

When I see a lot of new developers come here and talk about their games, I sometimes cringe that their design docs measure quality by the pound. 40 races with 20 unique classes, 80 levels, 25 game types.. my opinon is that this often happens because of the assumption that people measure things numerically. More is better, right? Well, yes and no. All things being equal, an item with 'more' for the same price is probably going to be more desireable. But 80 levels of something that sucks does not necessarily make it something that inspires people to purchase it.

So, does more matter? yes.. but only if the thing that people want 'more' of is of sufficiently high quality.

Determining value of a game by the poundage is not a very sophisticated way to think about the problem, and while more is ususally better, it is more likley that you will sell a small great game then a very large mediocre one. Designing by the pound is a dangerous road to travel for development as well. If you proceed with blinders on to the quality of the game, and march on creating 80 levles of crap-tasticness, you will sink a lot of time into something that will not pay off and few will ever see.

How much should one add and how big should it be? the answer is 'just enough'. Too little means that the end user will not place value on it, and 'too much' means you spent too much time and too much resource on the game.

As a testement to the sell-a-bility of the small, ThinkTanks has 3 vehicles, 12 levles, and 2 game types. It still keeps on selling. More is not always better.

So, how does all this apply to how one goes about creating games?

That part is up to you. The value of a thing is based on the perception of quality. Is the game high quality? does it provide an experience that is worth the money and time that one is willing to pay? That question is hard to answer, but there are a few things that can be done.

The first thing is the production quality. All things being equal, your product must be of the highest quality that you can muster (as in, the highest quality you can afford to spend given the expected return on the investment). Production quality is a subjective issue, and good screenshots and demo videos can go a long way toward creating a perception of quality. It can also be the downfall of the product. Poor presentation will lose a lot of customers before they even download.

I would suggest to everyone that they look inside themselves, to think of screenshots, movie trailers, game trailers, and ads that got them hyped. Ask yourself, what about this got me hyped? What buttons did it push in me? Why am I responding to this so strongly and so positively?

Look to ways to positviely present your project as high in production quality, and attempt to do so in as low cost a way as is possible.

The second thing one must do is provide a compelling experience. The game must be really good to get people to purchase it.

Much of what you might pay for can be gotten online, often for free on the gaming portals. If an hour of an experience is enough for you, for any one game, you can go from demo, to demo, to demo without ever buying it. You have to provide something that the person wants, and is willing to pay for.

And what are people willing to pay for?

With ThinkTanks, we did some things that we think helped. First, in the demo, we appended [demo] to your name. This lets you, and everyone else know that you are a demo player. We also did not allow saving of your name in demo mode. In the demo version, you are a nobody, and everyone, yourself included, knows it. We leveraged this even further by kicking the demo players from MP matches after five minutes. Kicking them out of the game effectively zeros out your score, so the demo players can never win (well, they can, but they have to be good). This reinforces the notion that you are a nobody and you cannot win. Lastly, we made the meduim tank (the default one, and the only one you can access in the demo version) less desirable looking and less desirable in performance than the light and heavy tanks. You crave what you cannot have. You are a nobody, you cannot win, and you cannot get the coolest tanks.

We made the gameplay fun, which was the first step, but then we set it up so that the player would be presented with a choice that gave them value. If they purchased, they could win, they could have a name, and they could get the cool vehicles. We provided value with the game, but we set up a system in the game that had players perceiving additional value to the purchased version.

This seems like a no brainer, but a lot of good games I have played did little or nothing to let me know what I was missing out on when the demo expired. I left the game thinking.. well, that was satisfying, next.

And this is the million dollar questions. What value does a game need to provide? first and foremost, it has to be fun. If it is not fun, if it does not compel the player to play it, then you will not get any sales. After that, it is a guess. What else can you do to convince the player that your game is worth paying for? what do they get for their $$$?

the simplistic answer is.. a game. The more complex answer is best demonstrated by the FedEx example above. What people pay for (shipping in this case) is not always what they are buying (the reassurance that the 'stuff' will be there tomorrow). This is something to ponder as you work on your game, as it can make the difference between a great game and a great game that sells.

so, not many answers, lots of questions. Questions you should be asking yourself constantly, thinking about, and answering for yourself as you make the decisions that decide the course of your development. When I am working on a game, I am constantly asking myself, would I pay $20 for this? If I cannot answer yes, then I know I have more work to do.

whew.. hopefully after this one, the rest of my planned blogs will be easy, and I can get back onto my planned blogging schedule.