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essay
Games are businesses. It's in the interest of both producer and player to find a fair accord to sustain the game long-term. What options exist to make money with a game without disrupting the player experience?
Sandro Maglione
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2344 words
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16 hours ago
Sandro Maglione
Games
Games are created for the players. The objective of a game should be for the player to enjoy spending time and effort on it, a valuable and fun experience.
But game producers need to make money to sustain the production and expansion of a game. What options exist to generate revenue from a game without impacting the experience of a user?
Turns out there are indeed many options, but each comes with tradeoffs. Both for player and producer.
Games are a business
The key of the discussion anchors on this: Games are businesses.
Regardless of the individual incentives for making a game, creating a game costs money and effort. Generating revenue it's in the interest of both the producer and the players:
- The producer wants the players to enjoy the game long-term. As such, the game must generate revenue that is then invested (in part) in making the game better
- The players want to keep playing the game, bug fixes, new content. This requires effort and costs from the producer, that the players sustain by paying the service they receive
Keep aside the discussion about maximising personal revenue. We assume "fair" business invectives: the producer aims to sustain itself and the business (game) long-term. Same as any other enterprise.
Players exploitation is not a good strategy for such objective.
In summary: there must be a way for the game to make real money.
The question is not "why should a game make money" but "how should a game make money".
Offline-only is cheap
The most obvious strategy is buying the game. A single initial purchase, and the game is yours to enjoy playing forever. Just like the old days.
Single time purchases are viable with two assumptions:
- The game is single player, self-contained, and offline by design
- No new content is added or expected by the player
This model allows the producer to create the game, start to end, and sell a finished product.
It's no different from a book: it may take ages to make, but then the creator gains revenue from multiple people buying the same final product.
The requirements are designed for the producer to build the game once and not occur in any more effort or spending after completion. An offline game has no server or maintenance costs. No more content doesn’t require any more time or investments.
It's fair to sell something finished in this case. No in-app purchases, no hidden mechanics. The player has the full control and can complete the game 100% without any more spending.
That being said: some games may not have this privilege.
Expansions or DLCs
The one-time purchase model can be combined with paid expansions. This may ease the requirements: the producer can work and sell new content, and the players can decide to buy it while enjoying the same game and continue their progress.
In a way DLCs are not much different from selling another product. In the book analogy, it's like writing a series of books with the same characters and story.
In a sense, the producer could also just create another game and sell it again.
How can a game make money
We are about to enter dangerous territory. How to gain money aside from (or without) making the player paying for the game itself?
The objective is to design a fair system. Payments should not become required for the player to progress, enjoy or speed up the game.
Advertisement
Ads are the easiest choice, but most of the time they make the player experience worst.
There are countless dark design patterns around ads. They also require scale: a lot of players wasting their precious time watching ads designed to distract them and make them buy. Definitely at the edge of what you would consider fair.
Ads can be fair if implemented with transparency: ads that are not part of the game but just an optional feature added to support the game and earn points (Pirate Software model).
Merchandise and sponsorship
Not really an option for most games. This does require large scale, many players, a huge budget. Consider this for completeness, but not much discussion beside that.
Donations
Possibly the most fair strategy, but uncertain and not guaranteed. While the game is guaranteed to cost money and effort to maintain and expand, donations are mostly one-time and irregular.
It's hard to sustain a business from donations, without falling back to threatening players with "either someone donates or we need to shut down" (aka you lose the game and all your effort on it).
Subscriptions
Since adding features and patches to a game sounds just like SaaS products, why not using a similar pricing model? Some games (mostly MMORPGs) offer a recurring subscription model for playing the game.
Players have access to all content, features, updates, and multiplayer aspects as long as they are subscribed.
This model rules out the necessity of ads, in-app purchase, or other extra payments. The game is all yours to enjoy (as long as you keep paying).
Subscriptions share some of the same concerns of SaaS products. The game is not really yours, and your account and progress is in practice locked behind a rent.
When you stop paying, your game freezes, waiting for you to start paying again.
Subscriptions may be hard to justify for most games. They require constant updates, events, and huge amount of content for years of engagement. Not many games meet this strict terms (mostly only MMORPGs as mentioned).
In-app purchases
Everything else falls in the category of in-app purchases. The question becomes what to sell.
As mentioned, we want to keep the game fair for all players. Players should not be required to pay to progress in the game, or waiting days to unlock content. They should be allowed to complete the game 100% without paying money or waiting years.
What this video for a clear overview of the current status of in-app purchases, and why you don't want that (like this)
As a player, I also don’t like when someone can out-compete me by paying real money. Imagine spending months to unlock something that someone got in an instant by paying money. It crushes the excitement and value of the experience.
Therefore, no player should be allowed to overwhelm other players just by spending more.
These considerations place some strict requirements on the options for in-app purchases.
Making payments fair for the player
The requirements from a player perspective are strict:
- I want to play the game for free by default
- I must be allowed to complete the game for free, including unlocking all (or most) items and quests
- I must enjoy the game without distractions like ads or waiting for days to unlock content
- Other players should not be allowed to outspend me (especially for multiplayer games)
And, on top of this, I want constant updates, new features, patch fixes. It's a tough market! What options are left really?
With these requirements, in-app purchase are only allowed to unlock extra content, faster.
This extra content should extend the game with more interesting characters or items, but not allow the player to speed through the game.
Players should never have the sense of "If only I could obtain that item I would be able to progress". Even the mere thought can crush the excitement and appeal of the experience.
If an item can only be purchased with real money, players that don’t intend to spend perceive it as unfair and unreachable, even distracting.
Those items should be within the reach of all players. Therefore, the currency used to obtain them should be tight to your progress in the game.
Or you can also pay if you want to collect the same currency, but faster and all at once.
Furthermore, paying should not guarantee rare items. That would spoil the meaning and appeal of "rare".
Something that you can pay to obtain is not "rare", and all players perceive that. It's also unsatisfying for player who do pay. There is no sense of reward in just obtaining something without effort, it's not rare anymore, it crushes the excitement.
In summary:
- A game currency gives players the chance (not guarantee) of unlocking rare items
- Rare items are mostly extensions, slightly stronger but nothing that tilts the game mechanics. They are not necessary to progress in the game in any meaningful way
- The game currency can be obtained by progressing in the game, or faster by paying real money
There is indeed something that fits these requirements: Gacha.
Gacha game mechanic
The term "Gacha" comes from Japan and derives from the word Gachapon (ガチャポン): toy vending machine capsules. When you toss a coin into this vending machine, you don’t know what you will win. Each machine contains toys, some rarer than others.
Go in Japan and see. They are everywhere. Like, everywhere!
Stores full of Gachapon machines are everywhere in Japan. You will quickly spot them from the moment you land in the airport
The same mechanic can be implemented in games.
All players collect a game currency as they progress in the game. This currency can be spent to "toss a coin" into a virtual gacha machine. The reward is new game items. If you are "lucky", you may drop rare items as well.
Or you can also pay to obtain the game currency to get more chances with the gacha machine.
Example of gacha in the game Genshin (原神). Each item and character has stars: the more stars, the rarer, the lower the chances of getting it
This system unlocks the following:
- Rare items are indeed perceived as "rare": it's not possible for anyone to obtain them just by paying, the chances are slim for everyone, higher if you pay. Imagine the satisfaction of obtaining a rare item with such system
- The game can remain completely free, without distractions for the player, and with an incentive for the producer to add more and more content, quest, items, and events
- Players who don’t intend to pay can still enjoy the game, while also getting a chance to obtain rare items, they are rewarded by their effort in the game
High-rarity items often have extremely low probabilities (0.6% or less)
Since the drop of the Gacha is optional to progress in the game, it's all more about "excitement", which may be a good proxy for spending money (as long as you can disciple yourself in not over-spending, but that's the same for everything, there is always something you can spend your money on).
The problem is human biology: this system triggers the same reward loop of gambling and addiction (anticipation, challenge, reward). There are some practices that would make gacha more "fair":
- Every time players roll the gacha, their chances of winning a rare item increase (Step-up Gacha)
- Every time players pull an item from a machine, fewer items remain in it. Therefore, the chances of winning a rare item increase with every pull (Box or Package Gacha)
- Players have better chances of getting rare rewards if they spend in-game currency in bulk: multiple rolls at once make higher rewards more likely by design (Consecutive Gacha)
- Rare rewards are "guaranteed" after a certain number of unsuccessful pulls (Pity System)
- Clear disclosure of pull rates and probabilities
Other types are:
- Collect a set of gacha items; a complete set unlocks a rare item (Kompu, illegal to use in Japan)
- Move a "character" a random number of steps across a board. Each tile in the board brings a prize. The further the tile, the better the prize (Sugoroku Gacha)
Difference with Loot Boxes
Differently from "Loot Boxes", in a Gacha Game there is no other way to get the same reward (no way to pay to get it directly).
The system can’t be gamed, no other player can pour money to get ahead of you. It's a matter of "luck", but luck for everyone "impartially".
Other practices
- Exclusive rewards and items only available during time-limited events
- Allow players to try (試し) some rare characters, the same characters that you can get in the Gacha drop
- Starting the game in an advanced power-up state (with rare items and characters) and shortly stripping the player of those advancements and having to rebuild up to that state
- Multiple Gacha "machines": different machines contain different rewards (with different prices and currencies), giving the user the choice of what rewards to aim for
- Make currency harder to obtain as you progress in the game: incentivize spending the more you become invested in the game
Gacha and game design considerations
- Offer rare, valuable rewards to motivate players to keep rolling gacha. If players don’t win something rare in the gacha, they should still find some value in them
- The gacha system incentivizes the producer to continuously add new content
- Diverse gacha content: abilities, perks, weapons, cosmetics, and other items as gacha rewards (some player may want to upgrade their current characters, and not get new ones, so the drop should include also other items)
- Add new gacha content or machines every time players reach a certain level or achieve a milestone
- Making duplicates a progress tool: players can fuse duplicates with the items they already own and upgrade these items (makes duplicates a desirable win). Another option is turning duplicates in another form of "game currency", used to get other items that the player can choose as part of the game
- If content quantity is limited, you need to create some limits. For example, you can tie gacha rolls to passing levels and winning currency (The more the players roll the gacha, the faster they will speed through the game’s content. If you cannot afford this to happen, slow things down)
Gacha and addiction
- Randomness: Players have no control over what they receive, relying on probability
- Real money stakes: In-game currency can often only be obtained (or meaningfully boosted) through real-money purchases
- Variable reward schedules: Intermittent rewards create a sense of unpredictability that sustains interest
- Illusion of control: Small interactions (e.g. pressing the button to pull) give a false sense of agency, increasing engagement