I see thar are posts popping up around the place about payment models. I had hoped some more imaginative payment models would have been designed by now. To my mind they all reek of being copied from selling other things. Cars with naked women draped on the bonnet, buy one get one free groceries, rented motel rooms, cable contracts – new, improved, soap-powder – traces of all of these are in our current f2p scattergun approach. Not one payment model actually starts from the customer’s point of view, and none that I can see starts from their own running costs – both of which are standard starting places for marketing and costing a product respectively and not very original but a bit more solid than half-naked women because it worked for cars, or endless on-screen nagging because games are toys – right?
Deary me. Let alone anyone figuring out that games are a completely different animal to anything else and just *might* require something a bit later than the 1960′s when it comes to marketing. Induced need….., nickle and dime, hype’n'cherrypick, double-dip, rent, lockdown, gamble… nagfests….alllll ancient and none suitable.
So… what does it cost to run the thing then? And what part of it do people see lasting value in? Would it be…. the things they can keep, build on, be proud of, accrue to, customise and use for self-actualisation in other ways?
Just a wild guess.
Soz rant
I think I’m stressing some.
