Age of Empires: Pay to Play

Original Post: August 26, 2011 (GameSpy)

Free-to-play, social, online -- these three terms have, for me, defined a slew of insipid, frustrating experiences that resemble reinstalling Windows or downloading a series of patches as much as anything I'd call a "game." The core mechanic is of setting a series of timers, then waiting. And waiting. The end result of waiting is the ability to set yet more timers. For me, not only were the wait times interminable, but the payoff never came. I began to wonder, though, about what the play experience would be like if I actually paid some money for these games. I realized that comparing the experience of a game I've paid for upfront to one I was playing for free was a terribly unfair contest.

Within a couple days of this realization, Age of Empires Online was due to be released. I decided that I would use Age of Empires Online as my test case for a pair of reasons: firstly, I had a benchmark to measure the "game" aspect of Age of Empires against its previous installments. Would the symptoms of some free-to-play, online, and social disease transform this real-time strategy war game into a collection of egg timers? Secondly, in my entirely unscientific way, I had a generally optimistic view of Age of Empires, I had reason to believe I would have a good time with it. So I gave this free-to-play thing its best chance of succeeding by stacking the deck a little, and started my little experiment. I decided to budget for this game, rather than just spending willy-nilly. I aimed for about $40 (in Australian dollars, but we're still close enough to parity), since that was what Tropico 4 was going to cost me. A mid-sized game, not a blockbuster, but one whose predecessor I've had a tremendous amount of fun with.

I went into this Age of Empires Online experiment largely ignorant. For example, I didn't even realize it wasn't a browser game. Well, I thought to myself as I installed the client, I wasn't sure how the real-time aspect of the game was going to work in the browser, so maybe this is a good thing. It was.

As I went through the download and installation process, I reflected on what I expected of this game. To sidestep my major frustrations with other free-to-play games, Age of Empires Online would have to provide an actual real-time game, with units moving around on a battlefield, not a series of progress bars. It should provide playable content anytime I wanted to play; I was not looking forward to paying money to sit around waiting. The game should also let me continue to play inside the free area for as long as I want, rather than interrupt what I was doing to offer paid content. Even if that free area was limited, it should be self-sufficient.

So I started on my journey.

On founding my capital city, I was immediately greeted by the FarmVille-like interface and a Dreamworks Studios aesthetic. I became apprehensive. There was very little in the way of interaction available in my capital city, and I could sense the underlying structure of slowly acquiring different buildings and vanity features. Clicking on the floating yellow exclamation point quickly altered my perception. I accepted my first quest, and genuinely embarked on a mission. I left my slow-moving capital city and found myself in command of a real-time outpost, instantly recognizable as an Age of Empires battle. I could point-and-click, select soldiers, build houses, and watch my small army of villagers scurry about. I led my troops into the fog of war and did battle. In short, I was playing a real-time strategy game, online and for free, with a social chat window in the lower left-hand corner.

So Age of Empires Online had already somewhat flummoxed my original intentions by being fun even before I paid any money! I kept having fun for a good six or seven hours before I really started to think about paying for the pleasure. I mentioned earlier that the capital city screen reminded me of the FarmVille-like games I was seeking to escape, and it still does. Although certain resource-producing buildings that tick over slowly in real-world time do make an appearance, this is not the sole game experience. As should now be clear, Age of Empires Online has two very distinct, complementary game modes. The Empire view is one, and the real-time quest mode is the other. Where clicking timers in other games serve only to unlock more timers to click, in Age of Empires Online the tending to one's capital city enables better units and technologies on the battlefield. Performing well on the battlefield, meanwhile, furnishes one's capital city with resources, currency, and upgrades.

The paid content is geared toward improving one's capital city directly, but this has the repercussions of creating a stronger army on the real-time map. Age of Empires Online utilizes a massively multiplayer online role-playing game-like architecture based around quests, rewards, and loot -- even breaking that loot into familiar grey, green, blue, and purple tiers. These rewards are used to improve the buildings in the capital city. While playing prior to paying, I received a couple of blue rewards which would bolster my infantry and villagers' abilities. But alas, only by upgrading to the premium content could I actually equip these rare rewards! Subtle, if insidious, incentive to upgrade. I respect the subtlety, though, as I was never offered a brigade of spearman for a mere 500 Microsoft points that would turn the tide of a real-time battle. The money-spinning seems limited to the Empire screen, allowing an unencumbered concentration on tactics during real-time warfare. When I finally cracked and bought the launch offer pack (Greece and Egypt civilizations with the Defense of Crete booster pack), I spent $49.50AU so I could equip the blue shinies sitting in my inventory.

So far, I have thoroughly enjoyed Age of Empires Online. The most telling factor is that I actually want to go back and play more. Its novel combination of MMO architecture with RTS action is a much-needed antidote to the frustrations I had with other free-to-play games. The free content is generous, and does not feel like half a game. Age of Empires Online clearly demonstrates that free-to-play does not immediately require a FarmVille-like experience, and that an MMO can end with "RTS" just as comfortably as "RPG." I feel that my eyes have been opened somewhat, my jaded assumptions challenged, and a little faith restored. "Going free-to-play" or "online" or "social" doesn't necessarily spell disaster for a video game, even by the offline, paid, single-player focused standards I hold.

Sustaining Content Providers, redux

Original Post: August 10 2011

I wrote an article over a year ago in response to Ars Technica openly discussing their dilemma regarding generating cashflow. Theirs is the same problem faced by many, if not all, commercial websites providing media content. I am inspired to bump that article again here, as the problems have come to a head today. The Escapist have, up to now, hosted a remarkably successful video series Extra Credits. A very nasty disagreement has erupted quite publicly between the two.  From Extra Credits, there are accusations of non-payment and breach of contract, along with unreasonable claims made on charitable donations to cover medical expenses. From the Escapist, various explanations, mitigation, and an admission that they simply didn't have the money to pay their content providers, such as Extra Credits. (Here's a post that seems to be tracking and updating the situation.)

Siding with the perceived 'little guy' in this situation is all too easy, especially since I really like the content Extra Credits produce. Yet I feel for the Escapist in this situation too, as a representative of a huge slew of online publishers that I'm learning a bit more about lately. Paying creative producers like the EC team is an absolute necessity, I have no doubt about this. But where does that money come from? The standard set all those years ago is that content on the internet should be free, so the money doesn't come directly from the consumers, that's for sure. The alternative, up to now, has been to rely on advertising revenue. Is it working? Well I'm not privy to the accounts of enough websites to know for sure, but from what I do know, online games sites aren't all rolling in cash.

So I ask again, all the same questions that are in the article, one of the first I wrote for this blog. Where to now? 

Ads, AdBlocker, and Sustaining Content Providers

Recently Ars Technica presented 'their side' of the story regarding free websites and ads. Of course, we all know that creating and hosting a website costs money, and most of us know that money doesn't grow on trees. Advertising on the website can generate a significant amount of revenue for a high-traffic site like Ars, but when those ads are not viewed, they won't.

There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won't hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis.

I must admit, I was one of those people who thought something along those lines, if I really thought about it at all. The problem is almost as old as the internet itself: how do we get people to exchange money for content in an environment where end users have been trained to expect everything for free? Andrew Zolli over at Newsweek has some ideas on the matter and some speculation.

What I see is not so much a lack of willingness to pay for things, as Zolli points out. We--people like myself who are the second wave of the early adopters--are coming of age. We are online almost constantly. We may never have purchased a newspaper for ourselves (and if we have it was probably for a plane flight where we can't be online). But the important bit is that we're growing up and we actually are starting to have the money to buy things. Back when I first started surfing, I didn't, so I couldn't have paid for things I wanted, now I can.

What is holding us back, I think, from paying for online content is just how fiddly it would be. Imagine having to register your credit card with every news site or blog you visit. Firstly, many people wouldn't want to do that for safety's sake. But forget that for a moment, think instead of having to go through the form that would have to pop up between the link on your friend's Facebook page, and the content of the article you want to read. Wouldn't happen. But would you kick in $0.05 to read the article if it just ticked over in an account you maintained with your PayPal information? I think some people would.

If we can add a widget to Firefox that allows us to add links to Facebook, Digg or whatever else we use, surely there is a way to click one button to authorize a tiny exchange of cash directly to the publisher. The key is to create trusted links between the content provider and the plugin we use for our browser, which enables us to authorise the transaction without having to type long numbers, fill in forms, or really break the flow of link-to-story at all.

I name PayPal because its the one transaction system I know of that's large and trusted enough to support this kind of thing, but there could be others. The service should allocate a set amount of funds for this kind of thing, and warn you when you are approaching your 'cap' so you don't suddenly realise that you have spent $500 browsing through Gamasutra and didn't realise you were paying for every pageview. Alternative options would be a few dollars for unlimited access a month (pretty standard subscription). Pop $5 into your account, surf away at some reasonably small fee per story, and keep an eye on your balance in the plug-in's toolbar. Think of it like the E-tag systems modern toll roads use. Get a tag, drive through and it debits your account. Top up the account every so often, and off you go.

Overall, the system has to be EASY. iTunes and Steam prove that people are willing to pay (in significant numbers) for content that is available to be pirated illegally, why not for other kinds of content? The trick is, as especially iTunes demonstrates, make it easy.

Questions for further thought: How much would one user's read of the story be worth? How much are sites pulling in via the ads? Would the paid version eliminate the ads (keeping in mind there are ads on cable TV)? What about printing, or re-reading the same article?