Facebook PBEM Games

[RobEng]

The term "play-by-email" is kind of misleading. Play is not conducted through email but on our online game interface. A better, but less attractive, description would be "asynchronous" play where opponents need not be on our game system at the same time for the game to be played out. We chose the term play-by-email because the effect/experience is similar to play-by-email game: you take your turn when you can, your opponent does the same, and then you get notified of your turn.

[mmd1]

i think that gto is thinking too small, but you're not alone. hasbro is even worse. there is enormous potential in the A&A and wider board gaming community for people to make a decent living out of it by providing what people want. and most people want the style of A&A gaming provided by your facebook site, minus the bugs and downtime. if it is good enough people will pay for it too. the future isn't gaming with little plastic pieces, i suspect. think about it:

- no set up or mistakes/opportunities to cheat during play. no storage of huge boxes of multiple variants. no lost pieces. no groans of despair when jimmy has to go home early. no taking the game down because you need the table for breakfast. the ability to play people around the world or to play live with your mates on a large screen so you can have a chat and a few beers and watch the telly.

the ability to play live or to save games as required is very, very valuable. i think you would be surprised what people would be prepared to pay for such a gaming opportunity - you have to make it sensible though and go for high traffic, moderate cost, because a lot of people want to be part of a thriving community of gamers too.

you guys have the inside running because you were smart enough to get a license from hasbro. but there are numerous communities of A&A gamers where people have put enormous amounts of time into developing new game variants - tripleA etc. revised is fun but it is already outdated and probably many serious A&A gamers prefer to play more recent styles. if you can somehow get together with hasbro and some of these other communities and develop a product where several variants of A&A are available to be played with an interface like you had with facebook (minus the bugs) then i would think that was a gold mine. traditional pbem is quite slow and clunky - that is not what people really want, but it is providing gaming opportunities that aren't available elsewhere and so it survives. more and more serious A&A gamers were turning up at your facebook site all the time, as well as those people that are looking for another new game.

i know that gto is not all about A&A, but i'd be surprised if it wasn't your most popular game. i just think you're wasting an opportunity. none of the above is going to happen overnight, but i think it could happen.

insert WOTC if appropriate for hasbro.

[Shrews]

[quote="RobEng"][quote="Kanino"]No one cares about playing against the AI. I could see a 5 maybe 10 dollar per year membership fee but a pay per play game option is absolutely ridiculous.[/quote]
I see your point of view but $5-10 per year? That comes to 1 or 2 value meals at a fast food joint. Is how much you value the entertainment of a year's worth of AA online?[/quote]

Honestly Rob you may want to check out Strategygamenetwork and look at how the have it set up. Granted they are strickly a Risk based game. But they allow people to play upto 3 free games at a time. Then they have a premium fee that allows you play unlimited games. So there is ways you can do it and still allow free games. In addition to that you could possibly have different premium levels such as copper that would allow a max of 6 games at a time, silver would allow a max of 12 games, gold would allow a max of 25 games, and of course the Platnium level would allow unlimited games. Now the price tag for the different levels would have to be trial and error to see what people are willing to pay.

Just my 2 cents LOL

[tootall72]

I got the sense from all of the comments that the people at GTO were considering alternatives to the recent pay-to-play changes.

I was just curious when we might expect some actual decision on that, or have I totally misread GTO's thinking?

[Kandelon]

Tough to say. We have a meeting today where we plan to discuss this and a few other things, but that doesn't necessarily mean we'll have an answer. And of course, we might end up keeping things as is in the end; Until we have a decision I don't want to give any false impressions, but I will say that we are definitely talking about it.

[tootall72]

I appreciate the update.

[aagamer_kc03]

Any updates from your meeting? I see maybe 1 game a day for PBEM in terms of open challenges

When Kandelon said:

"I always think of the games live as the basic content and then PBE as the premium extra, but to users coming from facebook or dedicated A&A players who are short on time PBE seems like the basic content, which might be the crux of the issue. We'll certainly be discussing ideas, like a limited number of PBE games for free or something like a subscription for "bulk" gaming, internally and welcome your input."

That is very true and I thought it was great that was acknowledged....but yesterday he said:

"And of course, we might end up keeping things as is in the end"

Boy I hope not...surely you guys have the capability of tracking coin purchase and games? If so, that has to be far less than you imagined. I don't think "sticking to your guns" will create more people buying coins....

[RobEng]

As a first step we are setting up a 3 Coin PBE table without the Sit-n-Go format and making plans to advance a tournament/league offerings which will offer a package rate for a series of PBE games.

[rem400]

That's a wonderful compromise, Rob. Everyone should embrace the gesture on GTO's part!!!

PBEM "save" games are worth a small premium vs. 5 hrs of my time. The league concept and a game package are great additions. Keep up the good work. Keep communications open.

[mmd1]

As a first step we are setting up a 3 Coin PBE table without the Sit-n-Go format

what does this mean exactly? you still need to have coins to play? sorry, i haven't played pbm or sit-and-go. rem400's response suggests it is good news, but i don't follow.

[Kanino]

Still sounds like a pay per play....which is a bad idea.

[Jimbeamerziggy]

[quote="Kandelon"]
I'll add the idea of a "no options" version as the free version to the idea list as that one could be promising.

[/quote]


I'm assuming this was brought up and shot down in favor of a three coin p2p system?

I'd like to hear the argument for this... I think that lowering the price by two coins (and removing sit n go benefits in the process) really doesn't get to the heart of the issue, which as I stated earlier is that the casual gamers you need keep your traffic growing aren't willing to pay for basic OR premium content.

No options PBE, or even taken further a no options/no in game chat/3-5 simultaneous or monthly/weekly game limit... would be sufficient to keep your casual base happy. The game limit for non paying customers could be effective for keeping your server load tolerable while still maintaning a growth in traffic. A majority of the people who are paying now would likely be willing to pay for the upgrade... Especially if you eventually code a full placement bid system, or better yet a full edit system as premium content... This would help players or admin easily fix bugged games via the editing system instead of canceling the games, refunding coins, and having to go in and code every time theres a problem.. which could save you guys money and work in the long run.

There could be alot of ways to make this work, either admin only will have access to the edit sytem, or both players would have to click to approve of any changes made etc...

Strip it down to the bare essentials necessary to play and offer that for free... charge coins or a flat monthly/annual fee for the upgrades... you could even stagger it, as others have mentioned, (silver/gold/platinum) and different prices would include different features/PBE game limits etc...

[Devereau]

3 GTO coins comes to $0.27 US. A pretty good option for players who play 1 to 6 games per month. However, for players who average 12 games every month, that comes close to $40 US per year. $80 per year for those who play 25 games a month. As far as I'm concerned, this problem needs to be addressed. Does GTO really wish to alienate its most diehard A&A players by offering a solution to players who only play half a dozen games a month?

[Kandelon]

We talked about the various different options and their pros and cons and the issues we were trying to address. In the end we came up with three additions that we think will help. The first is the 3 coin, no prize option for those who aren't interested in playing sit-n-go for points. The second is a "free trial" kind of solution to let users play each game once for free, mainly to let new players give things a try. The last one, which is a bit more work so it won't show up right away, is to add a link that will dump you straight into a solo game so you can try the games out further in a "live" setting. I've been working on the first two and might have them for Wednesday. It's in QA's hands now.

As for the pay-per-play versus other options, this is one of the biggest things we went back and forth on. One nice thing about pay-for-play is that less frequent users pay less, so you don't need to say "$X for a membership? But I only play Y games a year!". You also don't have to worry that if you pay X much for a membership you might end up not making a full use of it; You pay only for the amount you use. It does mean that playing more means paying more, but that would be the case anyways; Whatever membership tiers we make, the higher tiers would cost more. With the 3 coins per game, even at 25 games a month that's only $6.75. And given that each game lasts longer than any movie I know of for about a quarter each instead of $8 (your movie theater prices may vary)...that seems like a pretty good deal. Plus we end up paying bandwidth and the like for each game, so more games means more cost to us as well. I was on the fence going into the meeting, but I'm feeling better about it now; It really is a quite inexpensive form of entertainment.

[tank_mechanik1]

12x6.75=$81 thats 81 dollars a yr if we play 25 games a month i dont know about some here but alot here play 25 a week at $81 i can pay for my xbox live for a full year ans still
have 31.01 left to spend and on xbox i can play over 1000 games here i can play 1


seems like a rip off to me even at 3 coins a game but hey if you think the hardcore players will pay that keep dreaming i have only seen 2 aa games start thru sit n go since you started it

and now we pay 3 coins we get no points wow make it even less attractive