Facebook PBEM Games

[herteljt]

Thank you Robert for the response,

Thank you for opening up the conversation. I appreciate the dialogue as I am sure a lot of other players do. I posted on the other thread to let you know that some of us from facebook did indeed support you monetarily even though the game was free. And as someone who bought your product I wanted to let you know what it would take to keep me buying.

I think that the benefit of facebook is the audience it brings in. New users discover you site via facebook, try out the games and share with their friends. I am confused as to how the new system will take advantage of this benefit as it immediately charges new users. Further, the new system does not offer current users, who want to keep playing new games by email, any real options other than pay as you go.

I think a better model than charging per game would be to offer levels of membership for players. Maybe $X a year gets you y number of games per month. If you want to play more games then you have two options buy into the next level or pay as you go. Along with this would be a few free games for new users so they could give the game a try.

I am not complaining about price points. I see value in the work you do and the game is fun to play even with a a few bugs. However, pay as you go is a limited model and one that I believe will hurt you more than help.

Just my two cents.

[rem400]

After some reflection, I compared the cost of entertainment provided by GTO to other available forms of entertainment.

GTO live game - $0
GTO save game - $0.45 (or possibly $0.27)

DVD rental at Blockbuster - close to $5 each.
Video "on demand" from cable company - $4
Subscription to HBO, etc - $15/month
1st run movie - about $10 for admission only (and have to take the wife so it's $20)
Minor league baseball game - $8 (wife again?)
Museum admission - $12 (wife!)

I am disappointed with the way this was rolled-out and I empathize with those that prefer getting something for nothing; however, I've come to the conclusion that, for me, GTO save games are an excellent value.

[tootall72]

I have played for about a month. I have participated in 50 pbem games. 8 of those games crashed. So 16% of my games were not completed - I assume GTO would refund people for games that crashed, although I don't know if that is true. If not a 16% fail rate seems high to me for a product that I am expected to pay for.

I don't know anything about gto's policies - does anyone know if they will refund your money if the game crashes?

[CaptainColeslaw]

There is an internal mechanism to refund coins in the event of a game crash (sometimes a 12 hr delay) in the regular sit&go tournament games. Considering the PBEM system is under the same umbrella my assumption is yes, coins would be refunded in the event of a crash, but would need confirmation from one of the admins. If the game crashed and no coins were refunded a simple message via private message to an admin or an email to support@gametableonline.com is all that is needed to remedy the situation.

[Devereau]

I'm happy to hear that the folks at GTO are working on ways to make it more affordable for players who play PBEM/Facebook games exclusively. Still, even at 3 GTO coins per game, that comes to about $40 US a year for me (150 games per year), a high price to pay in my opinion, but still cheaper than the average MMORPG. And I've seen some players play over 30 games in one month on Facebook. Surely there must be a way for us diehards to pay a yearly rate that allows for 0 GTO coin games. I think I'd be willing to go as high as $25 US per year for an A&A subscription. Other games aren't really a problem, since they can easily be played in one sitting in the Game Lobby, but the 3+ hours it takes to play Axis & Allies without a save feature means that PBEM/Facebook is the venue of choice for many players.

[RobEng]

I will acknowledge that we could have publicized this before taking action. Our primary concern has always been the development of the GTO game portal and that Facebook was considered an outside project to test our game system being launched through this social network site. Our efforts to monetize the GTO game portal have been moving in the right direction, but we felt Facebook was beginning to undermine our efforts. Simply put it was taking extra work to maintain the Facebook games and they were generating less money for us.

[Devereau]

First off, the only reason I joined Facebook was because I wanted to play Axis & Allies, joining last October. And while I wouldn't be against the removal of GTO games from Facebook since we can't play for free anymore, I suspect that Facebook is still a decent way to spread awareness of GTO's games. Since I joined, I managed to introduce Axis & Allies to several friends, and I doubt that would have been possible without Facebook.

[JasonV]

I think you really need to think hard about the Facebook page as a recruiting tool for your main GTO website, not a drain!

Offer Facebook games for free and you build a community of members and a strong fanbase that can support your commercial effort. They help you Beta playtest the game until it is really worth paying money for (it isn't quite yet), so you are getting something from valuable from the Facebook players.

After you have a solid stable bug-free product then you offer the basic game for Free on Facebook to continue to build a fanbase and drive traffic to your mainsite at GTO by offering a premium value-added content that the basic game doesn't have. But the game isn't at the stage to do that yet and charging for it on Facebook just plain isn't going to work out for you, Facebook apps are free to play that's the way the community works, the power of Facebook isn't in the revenue you get but the fanbase you can build if you work with your fans.

Look at Facebook as a marketing tool to bring people to your money game, it's a loss leader that will ensure your success (or failure) in the long-term work with it not against it.

P.S. Also if you may want to look at things from the programming side: the games shouldn't be taking up much space, you don't have a history in the game of all turns that the players can access just a static state board with units, tech, and income fixed at the end of a turn, that shouldn't take much server space, either you've got tons of games and they don't take up much space each (which is what you want, a huge fanbase, just suck up the investment for long-term success) or you've got less games taking up more space in which case you need to reexamine how the program is saving the files, hard drive space is insanely cheap these days I find it hard to believe that storing the games is a problem if you're doing it right.

[RGC2005]

The way things feel around here I think they got ahead of themselves and overextended.
Nothing feels finished or refined. Not good for a pay site.
But hey you got my money before I figured out you had bargain basement RNG.
With Triplea in trouble I thought this would be better. Oops.
Out.

[griz12]

If you look at most successful startup internet games, there are free options, and there are pay options for the games. To play the basic game, it is free, but if you want to have any upgrades, you are going to have to pay. Something similar to that could work here. Like offer x number of games for pbem free per month, and then you have to pay x number of coins for every game after that. Or a certain number of free games a month, and if you want unlimited access you pay a subscription fee. I believe many people would be willing to pay a one time or yearly fee, but the pay for each play option is going to turn people off. Not too mention, it will be harder to get new players into the system. That is why it would be good to have a tiered system like I mentioned above. People will try something for free, but if they are not likely to try something for money. Especially when there are free alternatives to your system. As it stands right now, I will not be paying for the current setup. If you were to switch to a one time fee, I would strongly consider coming back.

[spacebug]

Suggestion - perhaps also offer people a yearly subscription option which would give them unlimited 3-coin games for the year.

[aagamer_kc03]

There are still some significant bugs yet fixed


1- If brits unload a trn into Kar and do combat they can not then unload remaining trn into arch....again a big bug. Often I want to wait to see if and hoew big I take karelia before making that decision

2- In the pacific, USA can commit 3 ftrs to 1 ac and if all 3 live it bugs the game out

3- I am in a game where I will win (vs. Todd Parker....hopefully he sees this!) as soon as USA goes but it locked up in my purchase phase....with the merge I have no way to contact him. Where this a coin game that would be a real problem. The game still locks up on occasion.


There may be more....wouldn't this still make the game in Beta? Someone noted the bugginess of the cd rom...yet those bugs were 95% fixed by a programmer, with an edit feature it makes it 100% fixed

I also agree with Devereau's comment as I have recruited a lot of people via facebook. I also encourage people who are not aware of facebook's own threads to check them out

http://apps.facebook.com/gametableonline/wall.php

It's amazing the amount of response's there. And a good chunk said they would pay a yearly fee...despite the bugs. If you had 50 or more people paying $20/year I would bet that would be more revenue that you gain from charging coins that no one buys

[rem400]

The most annoying "bug" is that people can just stop playing the game and there is nothing I can do. I have a couple of "sit & go" PBEM games and regular FB games in this state - been sitting there for weeks now with no resolution. It's really annoying because 2 of these are coin games.

[PanzerGeneral]

FB coin games for the last 2 weeks?

Thought GTO just implemented the coins on the last update...

[JasonV]

Trying to finish my last Free game on FB and it disconnected me and now is saying bad data from server. This is the sort of stability issues that need to be fixed before you can in good conscience charge money for the app.