We see developers and players alike say that content is important but it seems games are always short of what the players would want. Content is of course not free and the developers deserve to make a profit off their games. I fear that Pantheon will likely struggle just like most other MMO’s on finding a good balance between reinvesting vs return on investment. That and in an MMO players can burn though content.
Even if Pantheon has all the content I would want on release, I plan on playing Pantheon for years and the more content the better.
I would like them to offer an option to pay extra on top of your monthly subscription. The extra amount paid would be guaranteed by the developers to be spent exclusively on developing new content.
Example
Standard monthly subscription $14.99 a month
Extra dedicated new content monthly addition to your subscription $1.00, $5.00, $10.00, Enter any amount
For me personally all I would need as a reward would be some sort of reporting on how much extra revenue they are making from these extra payments and how it is being spent. It might be neat to have some sort list of development ideas or expansions that once the funds reached certain milestones the idea goes into development. I am sure a goods sales person could come up with an excellent way of mixing tracking with incentives to continue to invest.
It would be important to me that at no point would the extra payment give any in game advantage of any kind. I also think it would be best not to have it count towards expansions cost. But you might be able to offer other things like a in Game title? Access to developers round table maybe? My idea kina fizzles out around here but with more thought I am sure one could come up with some cool ideas.
What are others thoughts? Would you pay extra? Do you think it would work?
So, I am going to be "That Guy" and say, this won't work / happen.
Not because people won’t pay extra, I am sure many people would. The issue comes in the form of legality and how this money would be collected.
VR could not collect this money and state that it MUST be used for creating content. If they did, they would be legally obligated to do just that. If they were unable to do so, say they needed the money for something else, because reasons, to keep the company going and it wasn't DIRECTLY tied to content then they would be in breach of their agreement. The only way I could see this working is if they worded the legalese to state that this extra money was a donation, and they had no obligation to deliver on any promises and that the money was not part of a purchase or service fee. Doing this would defeat the entire purpose.
They cannot lock themselves into anything such as this because it would legally tie their hands and open them up to lawsuit if they didn't deliver. This is not something any company in their right mind would do. This is exactly why those pledges we all paid for are considered non-refundable donations and not a pre-purchase. If VR called it quits tomorrow and killed the game, we would all be **** out of luck.
Idea is nice in principle, but it'd never fly.
@Kellindil I see your point and it makes sense and so I suggest a slight modification to my proposal. Let them put in safe guards to there guarantee to make sure they have a legal way out. As a subscriber/donator I could live with good reporting and track record of them spending the money on content. Essentially trust them in good faith.
I do not think it would be all the different than what we are doing now. I am donating my pledge in the idea that they will make Patheon. But legally I have no standing to guarantee they will. To make this social agreement work well I still think it would be best to be very transparent on what they have received and how they plan on spending it.
For reporting I am not thinking exact amounts but maybe by the 1,000 or 10,000 increments. For tracking spending, I am thinking things like zones, classes, expansions.
They aren't going to tell you how much they bring in off this or how much they spend. That is basically announcing salaries and such. A report card on what they are woring on and it's progress sure, but they are not going to tell you dollar amounts.
If they could word it so they aren't legally locked in and could avoid any chance of legal action arising from the donation, and the players were good with that, then I could maybe see it working, maybe.
I just don't really see how they could do it and cover themselves.
Many crowed funded games give total amount donated not sure how this is really any different. I am just suggesting that optional pledges never end. They would still have all the revenu from normal subscriptions that they would be able to keep to themselves. Because of this we would never get enough detail to know things like salary and such.
It is obvious by how easy it is for you to point out issues with the idea that I have not thought out everything. But I still think the ideas main premise is a good one and it could work. As you can see by my responses, I am also not rigid at all on how this works as long as the key components are still functional.
Let players donate money so the devs can have the resources to build more content. I really think all the devs would need to do to get people to donate is convince them the money will be spent to expand the game. They have convinced us all they are going to build it or at least most of us so how hard would it be to convince us they will continue to do so?
So, what are you expecting to get back from the devs in relation to money spent then?
Content costs are the salaries of the employees working on the content. That is 100% of the cost of content creation. If they tell you what money has been spent making content, they are telling you salary information. If they have 3 people making content, and the content made cost $300k, then those three people's salaries make up that $300k. There are not physical goods costs or materials costs for digital content.
They could report how much has been raised, I really don't see a huge deal with that, though no company will be releasing that info publicly unless they are publicly traded. Which VR is not.
As far as convincing us that they will continue working on the game, it is one thing for them to say they are working on the game and another entirely to make an agreement as to what specific dollar amounts will be spent solely on content. What good would this revenue do them if they legally have to use it to pay designers and artists for content creation if they need to upgrade infrastructure to keep the current game running and can't due to lack of funds for this expansion? This is obviously just a silly example, but there are a lot of costs associated with running the game. If, god forbid, things get tight in the wallet for VR and their money is tied up in some legal agreement....
Pledges as a long-term option for revenue streams is fine and all. They could for sure do something. Maybe have the same tier type pledge system to fund expansions and such things. But the result would be the same as we see now. They would for sure keep us up to date on what development is working on, but they will never report on how much money they have or what exactly it was spent on.
If that is acceptable by the player base, then maybe this could be a thing long term. But if the players expect reports on financials and any type of guarantee on what the money was used for, this would never fly.
I really could see this as being a thing, but we as players would need to understand that VR has no obligation, and CANNOT be obligated, to report financials to us and that the money we give will be used at their discretion. There is just no other way this would work. Which I would be fine with. I trust they know what needs to be done to keep the game moving forward. If I didn’t I wouldn’t have pledged when I did.
You seem to be laser focused on the reporting income which I have to say seems really odd to me as it is not uncommon at all in many different situations for a company to report income. In my suggestion they would only need to report a likely small piece of there over all income as a company so it is even stranger to me this would be an issue.
But it is not all that important really as long as the underlining principle still stands. We donate money they build more content. The real question is how to frame this structure in a way that both people donating and the developers get what they want.
You have also said you could see this being a thing. How would you structure it? I am not saying your critique is not useful but I feel this might be a good time for some positive input.
I recently saw this in another game, can't remember which(might have been New World), an extra subscription with no real benefits to the player.
Steam has many games that have patron packs, most include virtually nothing.
Interesting you think you might have seen something like this in New World. Can you even sign up for a subscription to New World yet?
I have seen options like this on Steam, but never for a game I would consider participating in. I guess that is the point though it might make a game with a smaller audience still have the funds for a first-class development.
If I were VR and this was me doing something like this:
I would keep the pledge system. I would redo the packs for the first Expansion. So when you pledge you get the expansion and some random in-game things. Standard fare, titles, cosmetics, etc. You would pledge "to fund the future of the game". Not any specific amount of content. Pledges would remain as "donation" and carry no gaurentee of content or completion. I would comit to a schedule for development updates. Monthly or bi-weekly as they do now with updates on what we were working on. There would be no timeline for release until everything was hammered out internally. No financial data would be shared. Not how much had been raised nor how much was spent and/or where.
Like they have now, I would include a "forum subscription" that was a seperate sub from the game subscription. This would get you access to the development area of the forums. Only pledges and forum subs get access. A normal game sub does not include this access. This would be something small like $5/mo.
If I were VR, releasing financial data would scare me. It might scare off people from pledging or hurt intester relations. I am not learned in the ways of business, but I would not want any of my company's ledgers to be public knowledge. Same way as I don't want my personal finances to be public knowledge.
Now me as a player, personally i'd be fine with this, but then I wouldn't do any big pledges either. I would never give large sums of money to any company without some guarantee on return. When I pledged for Pantheon it was a relatively small amount, IMO at least, and I was fine with losing this amount. I would NEVER give a company a grand for a "wink and a nod" agreement to deliver "something" at some vague point in the future. For a pledge on an expansion, I would do no more than what I would pay for the expansion at release. I definately would not subscribe or make a big one time pledge like I did for the initial development. $50 would be a max limit for me, and even that is kinda pushing it. $30 would be more realistic.
I like the reporting idea, but I also get that while not uncommon there are good reasons for a company to not want to share that level of detail of their finances. Overall, your outline would work for me, as in I would donate. The less open about the process they are the more real results I would need to see before I made much of a donation. I see possible advantages to being open as much as they can and I would hope they agreed.
I 100% agree the money given this way should be considered a donation with no liability to the company if they have no results. I would consider the recourse of the players would be to stop paying extra if they did not like what they were receiving in return.
I am concerned that if a pledge got you the expansion for free it might mess up the companies finances? I am also no expert at running a company like there’s so not sure if my fears are warranted or not.
Including a forums subscription with access to the development team I think is a good idea. I would wonder if some would feel this might grant them an unfair advantage? I am not sure this would be much different than having access to an Alpha server though?
I think back on past games and the game I would have for sure donated too was Vanguard. Loved that game but it lacked so much and it was obvious the were not making enough to keep the game going. I am not sure the option to pay more would have helped or not but I would have tried.
When considering how much I think it depends a lot on the game, the timing and mt own life. For this reason, it is hard to know for sure. Easy answers for me would be in the 1-5 a month range but in the right situation and the right game I could see doing 20-50 extra a month. Maybe even more depending.
As far as getting the expansion for "free" and messing up their revenue stream, they would just have to plan for this. Some bean counter could easily run the numbers and decide on an amount to start the pledge tiers at that would make sense. Maybe if they retail the expansion at $30 the pledges would start at $50 or $75 or some such to offset that. Honestly not sure, but I could see them finding a baseline for how much they'd need to charge based on current active subs at the time. Plus good content will pay for itself over time in continued or expanding subs.
I don't think a sub to a dev forum would really give people a huge leg up. VR would just need to keep fine details out of the reports. Things like changes to item drop rates or such that could impact the game economy could be kept under wraps until release. I would expect that there would be plenty to talk about without getting too detailed. If things like that were kept hush then there really wouldn't be much impact. And you're right, any testing done, which I am sure would be under NDA, would give them the same leg up basically. So once any testing begins anything kept hush will be public.
If I had known then what I know now, I probably would have stayed with Vanguard. The game was so terribly buggy that I gave up early and ended up being suckered into WoW full time. Biggest mistake I ever made. I missed a lot of Vanguard when it was good. I would have pledged or donated as well. Though the game only lasted 8 years, it would have been a fun 8 years, and maybe if there was a fund raising option it would have lasted longer.
The way I would do it VR build a backlog of requested fetures that they have internally costed , with a 'vote' goal that is proportional to the effort to build (plus a big profit / other support overhead!)
Each subscriber for $15 gets one vote per month, and for each extra $5 you get an extra vote.
You can split your votes as you want and the votes add up over the months.
Once a feature reaches its goal, it enters into pre-production starting the next quater - monthly updates until delivery.
As features reach thier goal , or if they have not reached target in 6 months they are replaced by new ones on the list.
Some example features:
- A new 48 man raid added to the UnderGround_01 zone around the Mega Worm with new loot 100,000 votes
- New trade skill quest and recipies in a repeatable randomised quest based in Town_02 50,000 votes
- A new perception quest at level 50 following the teachings of Madmage_07 and resultung in a unique item. 55,000 votes.
- A new mini dungeon filled with cute but deadly vampire rabbit people 250,000 votes
If there was an option to pay a little extra for development:
VR would need to roughly be able to approximate how much a certain development would cost.
any extra "contributed" funds would help expedite the roll out of said development and by extension allow the next development to begin, sooner.
If VR had a few development projects in mind and wanted to engage the community, they could say: we have development A, B and C. The community that is contributing extra, please vote which you would like to see. Whichever comes out on top, the entirety of the extra contributed funds would go to that voted project. OR, VR can engage the entire community, even those that are not contributing extra and whatever comes out on top, all the extra contributed funds would go to expediting that development. That would allow a voice to the players and offer a little quiet noblesse oblige or altruism for those contributing extra.
This would allow those exercising a practical budget to participate in a quality game and stay subscribing in a quality game for a long time while at the same time allowing those that want to see and encourage forward thinking development realized in MMO's the opportunity and venue with which to do so- financially and realistically.
How would VR guaratee me that the additional fee each month would only go towards content development and not, say, salaries or overhead or the office electric bill, etc? We had a problem back during the in-house VR kickstarter for this very game where someone decided to pocket a good portion of our pledge money. If I pay money for a specific purpose, I want guarantees it goes to that exact purpose and then penalties if we find out that money went elsewhere.
Vandraad said:How would VR guaratee me that the additional fee each month would only go towards content development and not, say, salaries or overhead or the office electric bill, etc?
Are you suggesting that the cost of content development for an MMO does NOT include salaries for the Developers who are developing said content? Or the rent and utilities (overhead) of the office where said Developers are developing the content?
Vandraad said:How would VR guaratee me that the additional fee each month would only go towards content development and not, say, salaries or overhead or the office electric bill, etc? We had a problem back during the in-house VR kickstarter for this very game where someone decided to pocket a good portion of our pledge money. If I pay money for a specific purpose, I want guarantees it goes to that exact purpose and then penalties if we find out that money went elsewhere.
As much as I agree with you, I also agree with kellindil in that it is unlikely that Visionary Realms would implement a system that put such limiting restriction and risk to the company. The more accountability in the system would give me more confidence right away allowing me to justify larger donations.
In time though as long as, Visionary Realms was able to show a good track record and communicate well I feel my donations would end up being about the same. In short I feel it could work ether way in time.
Jothany said:Vandraad said:How would VR guaratee me that the additional fee each month would only go towards content development and not, say, salaries or overhead or the office electric bill, etc?
Are you suggesting that the cost of content development for an MMO does NOT include salaries for the Developers who are developing said content? Or the rent and utilities (overhead) of the office where said Developers are developing the content?
That's exactly my point. VR couldn't implement an extra monthly fee and say it goes only towards content development because, as you say, everything related to the operation of the company could technically be considered as part of developing content. Heck, they could spend the money on office parties and say that is part of content development..happy employees and all that.
If VR believes the game is going to amazing, ground breaking, that "it's gonna rock" then it could easily support a higher monthly subscription which then helps hire more people and develop content faster, etc.
How about an in-game casino somewhere in kingsreach where you gamble cryptocurrency?
We could have a gladiator ring and bet on scar and ogers in slap fights, should be easy to animate.
Or Halfling tossing competition.
What about contract hits? You know a group that is camping a spot you want? Pay and the admins can boot them to an island off the coast where they have to swim back.
The money is there, people just gotta have the guts to take it.
(This whole post reply is a joke and a lark, I'm feeling silly, I think it was the mushrooms I ate.)
Vandraad said:How would VR guaratee me that the additional fee each month would only go towards content development and not, say, salaries or overhead or the office electric bill, etc?
Good point. However I think operating costs are part of the cost of development:salaries, rent, lighting bill. An exact accounting may be hard to produce. Its also hard to define where the "line" is, what im trying to define is where it goes from utilizing with the heart right to utilizing with the head right- sort of like the Lord of the Rings trilogy? vs the Hobbit. Lord of the rings Peter Jackson struggled to get the extra money he needed to finish,however once done, the studios then threw- I think it was - twice as much money at him up front to do the Hobbit, where some lousy stuff was added and money was spent making hobbiton sustainable in New Zealand. Personally I think that sustainability should have been liscenced out to a private organization (Disney? or the native NZ equivalent of) and the costs absorbed by them but movie funds were spent on that and that strange water town and its characters, instead of sticking to the ONE book. I mean, He could have thrown in "Smith, of Wooton major, and Farmer Giles, of Ham"
Vandraad said:If VR believes the game is going to amazing, ground breaking, that "it's gonna rock" then it could easily support a higher monthly subscription which then helps hire more people and develop content faster, etc.
I totally agree with you.
I consider myself fairly low income, but if Pantheon is half as good as I hope it will be I wouldn't blink at twice the sub rate that I paid in the last game I played.
I'm also open to other ideas that might help.
I am not sure of this in the slightest; VR should be able to price into subscription and/or new content releases to cover the running costs, provide profit and fund future development without the need to complicate things. The simplest systems are the best. Subscription to play the game (including bug fixes and small releases, events and the like), which should cover running costs and payments to investors. Large new content releases require one off payments would bring in cash for the next development phase. This way, we are buying something to use and providing a future for the game.
I am happy to pay a subscription with added costs for large new content release. I wouldnt be happy paying specifically for future development (above my pledge that is).
One thing I do agree with is that it is an interesting idea to put new content goals to polls (where applicable), but I cannot see an optional pay to develop model working at all.
This option is meant to augment the regular subscription not replace it. Visionary Realms should still be reinvesting the same percentage of people’s subscriptions into new content. With the optional payments just adding to that.
It really is as simple. Players would love more content in games like Vanguard and many other MMO’s. I am willing to contribute cash so we get more content and I would hope others would as well.
The complicated part is how Visionary Realms can successfully structure a system that would meet this simple goal while still protecting everyone’s interests. If done right it is a win win for everyone. People that don’t donate get more content, people that do donate get more content, and Visionary Realms gets more money to make more content. Not liking the implementation, I get. Disliking the idea would confuse me.
I like the idea for VR asking for the funding they need upfront.
I don't want them to get cute and try to charge $5 for a cosmetic hat. Because everytime I see that Hat on another player in game, I will be discourage to continue playing.
Yes, be straight up. 14.99 a mouth. 19.99 a month VIP subscription. Prorated discount on major expansion price based on how long you been a VIP.
@ Caine Not sure how this is related to the main topic.
An optional donation would have no impact on the normally monthly subscription. As stated above people that donate extra on top of their normal subscription should get no in game advantage this would include no cosmetic items. The only rewards I am ok with at this point would be access to a developers forums and maybe a in game title. I do not like the idea but I could see getting expansions for free or discounted as well.
Did I miss something in your post?