Game addiction, freemium marketing strategies and psycology
When I was younger I played this game obsessively and didn't understand why I couldn't stop. Knowledge is important for creating a solution to a problem.
Freemium is a concept that should be understood by youth and even adults in our societies. Freemium is the word used to represent the marketing strategy behind "F2P games" - free access to most content but a fee for the contained content i.e cubes/cosmetics/dungeons/servers. For a humorous and detailed breakdown, this SouthPark episode demonstrates how the psychology behind the marketing works http://www.free-tv-video-online.me/internet/southpark/season_18.html.
Most of you probably already understand the relationship between dopamine release, addiction and gaming. If you don't you really should watch that SouthPark episode or do some reading. With that being said I'm skipping the scientific breakdown and going to share my small ball of knowledge that hopefully addresses the problems like the ones I faced when I was 12-16. An important tidbit to understanding the mentality of a person with mmo-gaming compulsions is understanding the RPG CYCLE - Explore, Collect, Spend, Improve. When you first start a game you begin with exploration of the fantasy world, collecting and spending is a quick process in the early stages, than you gradually improve your numbers, granting further exploration. Then certain aspects become payment exclusive, where to continue your cycle payment is required, it won't cost much, but it will be asked for in many different ways, many different times (known as micro-transactions).
Artistic exploration is what makes a game unique, but it's the improvement stage that keeps a player coming back for more and more of the repetitive collection and spending stages. It seems effortless and timeless but gradually becomes very time (and even $) consuming to continue making progress. But there is always an incentive to keep a person playing through a slow grind, it is easy to get caught up in virtual goals when they are so effortless. Combine the dopamine release from the RPG cycle with the basic human instinct to complete a started project can become difficult to 'just forget about the game'. My advice to curbing those desires is to determine where in the RPG cycle you lie at this moment and to avoid starting an exploration stage, but not to try and drop the habit at the very instance you turn off your computer. Leaving the game in the midst of a collection or spending stage is the hardest way to forget about the game - you haven't even finished your 'current' task. From my personal experiences the more exploration I did with people the more the game had an emotional tie on me, and the stronger the bond the more frequent the thoughts will pop up. Took me a while to figure this one out, but to stop a compulsion you must rid all thoughts related to it. If you want to stop playing the game you have to stop thinking about the game. You can't forget the game, but you can filter out useless thoughts related to it. Explore something different.
Maplestory has been using freemium marketing before freemium was even a word. The birth of Maplestory played a significant role in the birth of North American freemium marketing, NeoPets, Runescape and Maplestory being the 3 earliest advocates. I can say with certainty excessive gaming haltered my individual development, and a lot of it has to do with mind manipulation due to gaming cycles that were not understood at the time. The gaming industry knows driving profits is easier done if you can manipulate players (mostly childrens) minds, and gaming companies have jumped all over this ploy, a ploy that deserves to be understood by all, especially the youth.
18 Comments • Newest first
@Avatar: The point is, the game's playerbase didn't start decreasing until AFTER they changed their marketing focus from a quality game with micro-transactions to a profit-driven cash machine with player satisfaction as a minor inconvenience.
Facebook games are only emulating the success of the huge MMORPGs in the world which are based on micro-transaction cash flow.
It's not a "Facebook game model", it's the millions of players Maplestory model.
And it was working so well other companies were dropping major game development projects to jump on micro-transactions instead.
And then they killed it by pushing profits over quality, and the players went elsewhere.
@SoulBlade: use, abuse, context/perspective I suppose. But yeah, I don't disagree.
[quote=justaperson]Aren't you the guy who just posted a fallacy using ad hominem?
What he did in the past is irrelevant to the topic at hand. (*spoiler* the answer is yes)[/quote]
The actual term is a Red Herring. It a fallacy by using an irrelevant abusive ad hominem.
[quote=BobR]@Avatar Each separate division (GMS, JMS, KMS, CMS, etc) is run as a separate....[/quote]
I am well aware of how subdivision in a company work but I only mentioned the different versions of maplestory to highlight that the enterprise is experiencing growth. You said maplestory does what every company does world wide but is that really true? A typical company sells a product and makes a profit. Maplestory offers a service on a pay-if-you-want basis. That is unlike any profit driven company that I have ever heard of. The player base of maplestory is either stagnant or decreasing, but certainty not increasing. I can't see how maplestory could have functioned without changing their marketing. Micro-transaction is for those small facebook games that are made by a few people or maybe even one programmer and they serve as a single sell item with the added benefit of added revenue from in-game transactions. Maplestory is not like that and it can't survive like a common facebook game.
Freemium games are disgusting.
@Avatar Each separate division (GMS, JMS, KMS, CMS, etc) is run as a separate company, with separate payroll, expenses and balance sheet.
Adding a new division doesn't take anything away from the company at large, in theory it increases the chances of profitability by expanding the market and the number of potential customers. Every company does it in a world-wide economy.
Nexon helped design the micro-transaction model of online payments to provide for a constant cashflow by appealing to a broad base of players who could afford a small payment on a more regular basis than the typical $69 cost of a video game which was found to provide a much higher profitability margin on a long-term basis.
In other words, they found lower prices more often was better than higher prices only once in a while (the "Walmart" method).
This worked so well it was the reason most of the online game companies went to this type of payment model and the main reason a lot of the games online now even exist.
The problem is, the company wasn't satisfied with the profit level provided by the micro-transactions and changed it's attitude toward the game at around the time of the "Big Bang" revamps. At that point, most of the new additions to the game, including such additions as Potentials (with the cash cow "Miracle Cubes" ) became oriented toward increasing profits, and not toward improving the game.
Previously changes and content additions had expanded and improved the game. Since then almost all the changes have been aimed at simplifying the game to increase the playerbase (which failed miserably), flooding the game with whiz-bang effects to appeal to console video gamers (another failed attempt to expand the playerbase and which had the unforeseen effect of adding to the lag), and events and content tied in to Cash Shop items (collect 100 of these and then buy something in the Cash Shop to get a lottery ticket for a chance to win some overpowered item). That plus ever increasing prices in the Cash Shop point toward nothing other than profit greed.
They had a goose that laid golden eggs and they thought if they squeezed it really hard it would lay even more golden eggs.
Instead they squeezed the life out of it.
They made the fatal mistake of overly depending on the addictive qualities of the game, as detailed in the OP's message.
Yes the game is addictive, but there comes a point where the addict can't afford any more drugs or bad service from the dealer and goes elsewhere to find a fix.
I agree there's desperation, but not because the original game model wasn't working. It's because they broke something that was working quite well.
[quote=BobR]@TheseWalls Nexon was a pioneer in the "micro-transaction" model of marketing online games, way back when.
It's just sad they lost track of the original concept and went for the "big bucks", letting greed for profits dictate their corporate decision making.
Unfortunately too many players don't realize the game doesn't exist for their own playing experience, it's a money-making venture intended to separate them from their Ca$h.
@joblessjim If you use Firefox, get an addon called "Lazarus".
It copies everything you type into a text box like on Basil and if you lose it like that you can recover everything you typed by right-clicking.
It's saved me a billion times here on Basilmarket.[/quote]
Instead of greed do you think it could be desperation? Look at how much maple has expanded, there is EMS, JMS, MSEA, GMS, and maybe a few others. Consider just how many people work as GMs, graphic designers, program designers, writers,corporate, technical staff (ticket responders), marketing, and miscellaneous expenditures such as voice actors contest prizes. Do you think everyone's salary could be payed to maintain the same level of quality if the only revenue was due to micro-transactions like changing hair colour or buying equipment covers? I don't believe so.
lmao go back to school
@TheseWalls Nexon was a pioneer in the "micro-transaction" model of marketing online games, way back when.
It's just sad they lost track of the original concept and went for the "big bucks", letting greed for profits dictate their corporate decision making.
Unfortunately too many players don't realize the game doesn't exist for their own playing experience, it's a money-making venture intended to separate them from their Ca$h.
@joblessjim If you use Firefox, get an addon called "Lazarus".
It copies everything you type into a text box like on Basil and if you lose it like that you can recover everything you typed by right-clicking.
It's saved me a billion times here on Basilmarket.
Literally just wrote a mile long thing to contribute to the conversation and got logged out somehow while doing it. Lost it all.
I hate you basil. Not even gonna bother redoing it.
[quote=TheseWalls] The birth of Maplestory played a significant role in the birth of North American freemium marketing[/quote]
That's a strongly worded statement for something I've only heard you say. Care to back that up?
[quote=TheseWalls]...and a lot of it has to do with mind manipulation due to gaming cycles that were not understood at the time[/quote]
The process was understood, but it was known as something more general than a "gaming cycle".
[quote=TheseWalls]The gaming industry knows driving profits is easier done if you can manipulate players (mostly childrens) minds, and gaming companies have jumped all over this ploy...[/quote]
People have been subconsciously manipulated for profit long before the video game industry existed. Companies (including Nexon) hire psychologists, people who understand how the subconscious mind works, to get people to buy more things.
For a classic example, look up the psychology behind grocery stores.
[quote=MonkeyCraters]What does it matter if he's making a valid point[/quote]
I didn't read through all of it, but what is the point he's trying to make? Stop playing maplestory? Stop spending cash on maplestory? Or is this just a bunch of factoids, and there is no point.
Its just the Canadian Devil's doing.
[quote=AntiSenpai]Aren't you that guy who tried to sell his account on here and no one wanted it cause, well it was bad?[/quote]
What does it matter if he's making a valid point
[quote=GunPowder]That moment when you use South Park to make a point [/quote]
nice avatar!
[quote=AntiSenpai]Aren't you that guy who tried to sell his account on here and no one wanted it cause, well it was bad?[/quote]
Aren't you the guy who just posted a fallacy using ad hominem?
What he did in the past is irrelevant to the topic at hand. (*spoiler* the answer is yes)
Aren't you that guy who tried to sell his account on here and no one wanted it cause, well it was bad?
That moment when you use South Park to make a point