Initially I thought it would be a good idea to charge for nightmare and hell difficulty. Charging 150 crystals, approximately $1.50, to unlock nightmare, which is only available after playing for about 6 hours, seemed like a reasonable monetization to me. And, honestly, it wasn’t a bad idea. After reading a forum post by Occlo, I reconsidered the wisdom of locking nightmare and hell difficulty behind a paywall. Here are the top four reasons why I changed my mind:
1. Most players are going to pay $0 to play your game
Even if you are literally John Romero, most people will still only pay $0 to play your game. Especially if it’s a browser game. Neverworks Games is cool and all, but we’re definitely not AAA, we’re not John Carmack, and we’re not Hideo Kojima. We’re a small indie dev company, so we have to fight even harder to earn our fans. We can’t leverage the power of massive media conglomerates or a publisher to get attention. The only lure we have is the game itself. So why lock 66% of the game behind a paywall?
Many of your players may not actually fall in love with your game until they’re deep into hell difficulty. Players in our forums have stated that they think that the game gets much more fun as you proceed into harder nightmare and hell, which makes sense. The challenge is tougher and the items are more powerful. The best analogy I can think of is imagine playing Diablo 2 only on normal difficulty. It’s a cool game, but progressing through all three difficulties was definitely a key part of its enjoyment.
2. Paying customers need to compete with someone
If you lock out nightmare and hell, that means that only paying customers are competing at the top of the leaderboard, and that’s just not as fun. You want them to compete against everyone! Remember that most players simply aren’t going to drop a dime on a game for one reason or another. I also believe that by increasing the amount of competition at the top of the leaderboard, this will also create more interest in the game. People love to compete, and the leaderboard is the only real means of competing in Nevergrind, which is a single-player RPG. Maximizing the number of players competing is imperative to generate interest.
3. Placing game content behind a paywall creates chafing
In Nevergrind’s case, character slots and bank slots have been very popular and have elicited no chafing whatsoever. When you create an account you start with zero crystals, two character slots, and nine bank slots. Players that want more than that simply unlock additional slots by paying 150 crystals for additional character slots or 70 crystals for 9 extra bank slots. In fact, many players are practically begging me to increase the bank slot limit since storing items in the bank is a very popular feature. Currently the maximum is 126 slots, but this will probably be expanded to a tabbed interface that allows for 900 slots! Of course, most players will not want to store 900 items, but it’s quite possibly that a small percentage of players will actually want that much bank space.
Players that enjoy the game will probably want to experiment with the 14 other classes as well, so it’s probably that they will buckle at some point and purchase additional character slots.
I currently only monetize character slots and bank slots, though I plan to monetize other features like mailboxes, a trading or auction house system, and possibly even timesavers like resurrection potions. Consider monetizations such as these for your own browser games. Don’t block the game itself!
4. Friends can’t pay for friends
What if two people want to enjoy your game and progress through it in a computer lab in college or a similar situation like that? And what if one doesn’t mind paying and the other does. Well, now you have a problem because you may have just lost two customers. Perhaps they wanted to progress through the game at the same time and comment on their progress, even if it’s just single-player! In this scenario only one of the players can enjoy nightmare or hell difficulty. And that’s no good. Just avoid this scenario altogether by monetizing via other means.
Summary
I think it’s plain to see why you should offer your browser games’ content for free. Most players simply aren’t going to pay, yet your paying players need a fanbase to compete with. Your non-paying customers are providing a service by competing against your paying customers, which is a value within itself. Not to mention all of the free advertising they will provide to people that may possibly pay as well. I also plan to add a chat feature to Nevergrind, so non-paying players will also help foster a social environment.
It’s much easier to monetize features that create convenience, utility, or save time. Additional bank space, character slots, resurrection potions, and other time-savers are great examples. Each game is quite different, so your monetized features will vary, but one thing is certain: blocking game content is a big no-no.
