🚀 go-pugleaf

Antonio Huerta <ahuerta@inbox.com> wrote in
news:6583905.144.1331994992553.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@pbcwe9: 

> So far, the first-person shooter developers used the following pricing
> scheme: they charged a set amount of money for each sold copy. 
> 
> Now, I am playing Team Fortress 2, a multiplayer FPS. It has now
> evolved into the scheme when it is offered for free to play, and the
> players are sold the highly coveted items such as new weapons and
> accessories (hats). 
> 
> I got a pricing idea for a single-player game. The game is given away
> for free to play. But each time the player's character dies and need a
> new "life", the new "life" is sold for a sum of money, say, 10 cents.
> Say, the character dies once every minute of the gameplay, on average.
> Thus, the player would need to pay $60 over the course of 10 hours of
> gameplay. That's the price of a 10-hour game. 
> 
> The advantages are obvious. If the gamer started to play the game and
> did not like it after several minutes of playing, then he is out of
> pocket for under a dollar. The player can switch to another game. If
> the player has good skills, then he is rewarded for that, as he would
> be more rarely dieing, and thus, the game would cost him cheaper. 
> 
> The game developers would be motivated to develop the better games, so
> that the players would be interested to press on with playing the
> game. 
> 
> Obviously, the computer needs to be connected to the Internet during
> the gameplay, so that the seller's server counted the new lives needed
> and charged the player. If the player uses the "easy" difficulty
> setting, then he dies rarely, and would be charged at a higher rate,
> say, $0.20 per life. At the "hard" difficulty setting, the player
> would pay only 5 cents per life. And at "normal" setting, the price
> per life would be the said 10 cents. 
> 
> What do you guys think about the pricing scheme ? Does it have a merit
> ? If it does, then I dare suggest this is the future of single-player
> FPS. 
> 

Congrats - you've reinvented the arcade.

Dan