Games industry legend Peter Molyenux was talking about monetization at BAFTA last night and revealed plenty of stuff about 22 Cans; he also talked a lot about monetization and keeping it ethical. Here’s a whole bunch of his money-making quotes from the event.
“A lot of the time games monetize against cheating, in multiplayer. There’s this whole thing about getting people addicted and demanding money from them. There are very few checks in there. A lot of the ‘whales’ out there (what the gambling industry calls the high spenders) are kids using their parent’s phones. I know my son’s done that. I logged onto Draw Something and found I had 19,000 coins. I thought ‘how much is *that* going to cost me but it’s about £5 for 100.”
“It’s all stuff we’re experimenting with; sometimes we get it right, sometimes we’re being too greedy, sometimes we’re getting people overly addicted. I wish there was a mechanism that let people feel like they’re investing rather than having to break some monetization war.”
“I feel like we’re only just inventing all this stuff. We’re only just realizing that we’ve got a digital relationship with a customer. You’re not just trying to get as much money as you possibly can in the shortest space of time. You’re trying to build a ‘lovely relationship’. Which results in lots of money afterwards.”
“If proper monetization is integrated into a game from the ground up, not squeezed in later on, then amazing things can happen. We as, human beings, love hobbies. Fighting fantasy, gardening, cooking… we love spending money on hobbies and showing people the results. Why can’t we have that thought about the games experience? So that people want to invest money, not feel compelled to?
[Precision ed:Actually, Mr M, 400 coins are about £1.49, and 10,000 coins are £17.49. It’s likely the debt you’ve run up is only in the region of £50 then.]