Virtual Security, Pretators and Solicitors

The economy of a virtual world is one of the most important aspects of its community. Normally, a robust economy is tied closely to the success of the site.

The down-side of an economy focused game with a free-to-play component is that there tends to be a lot more have-nots than haves, and in many cases the have-nots do not have the means to upgrade, even if they truly love the game. When they do love the game, they can get desperate. Enter predators and the solicitors.

Predators convince other players to give them their Login Information (Email and Password for ourWorld), usually in exchange for the promise of something, normally currency or membership. Other reasons player ask for Login Info include players offering to trade accounts for 'fun' and more recently as a membership condition for social groups within the game. Not sure if that last one is ever legit. I've only just noticed that in the last couple of days.

ourWorld's automated report system caught and reported me making this image! Also, nobody gave me their info. Better luck next time (KIDDING!)

Solicitors run around giving their Login information away willingly to anyone that will listen, often just announcing the info to whomever might be in the room with them. They hope that somebody will take over their account and load it up with free goodies. Its sounds crazy but it happens all the time. Normally by younger players, but not always.

Ramifications of these actions are still relatively limited in ourWorld. It's not possible to give or trade your items away directly, and the ourWorld Marketplace (that allows sales to other players) is still limited. Basically this means there is no easy way to profit from taking another player's account in ourWorld. For the most part, the worst a person can do is vandalize the account, spend the account's currency, sell the accounts items, and lock the owner out.

It is likely we'll add more robust transactions. Trading, maybe, and other ways for players to interact with each other in ways that may benefit one player more than the other. When that happens, suddently stealing accounts can result in a direct benefit to the thief's account. If you can dump items or currency into your account, its becomes very tempting to try and gain access to others. When players are running around announcing their passwords to strangers around them, it becomes pretty easy as well.

If more robust player transactions happen, people illicitly collecting Login Info will become a huge problem (not that it isn't now) and we need to be very strict about how we deal with it (not that we aren't now.) What we really need to get across is this one simple rule:

Never give your password to anyone for any reason, EVER.

Everyone follows that rule, and the problem simply vanishes. I am baffled about what more we can do to spread this simple concept.

-Adam!!!

Linear Progression - Two Versions

This is a revisit of a very old series of posts I wrote back when I was focused on card games, rather than virtual worlds. For the most part, the theories are the same, though I've split and clarified them a bit. My original post from 2007 described what I here call Consumer Progression. The second group, which I'll call Engagement Progression, borrow from the original, but describe a different sort of behaviors. In both cases, people move through the progressions until they stall, reach the end, or abandon the game. Making it easy as possible for players to progress is one way to ensure a game's success.

Consumer Progression - Three broad categories that describe the spending habits of consumers. The categories form a linear progression with each consumer starting at Tourist when they first experience the game. A purchase elevates them to Customer. A habit of regular purchases may then elevate them further to Whale.

Tourist - a person who has experienced the game without paying for it. In the case of games with a freemium model, these players often make up the largest portion of the games players. Other examples of Tourists could include free trial players, player who have borrowed or
played a friend's copy, and even players of pirated copies (depending on how you look at it, and the nature of the game.)
Customer - Anyone who has made any sort of purchase, no matter how small, becomes a customer. They are a radically different animal than the Tourist for a number of reasons. The most obvious is their value. The average customer's likelihood of making a second purchase is an
order of magnitude higher than the likelihood of the average Tourist making a first purchase. Because they make up the most profitable group of players, overall, it is essential that the needs of the Customers are kept as the highest priority.
Whale - A customer that makes either extremely large purchases, or extremely regular purchases, becomes a Whale (originally a casino term for extremely rich and profitable high rollers.) A customer that keeps their subscription active, but makes no additional purchases is a
great customer, but not a Whale. If I had to pin a number on it, a Whale is a customer that purchases at least triple that of the average Customer.

Engagement Progression - Categories designed to measure how much a player cares about the game, and to some extent, how emotionally involved they are with it.

Noob - Players that have just started. They have already decided to stick around long enough to give the game a chance, so its up to the game to impress them, entertain them, and not confuse or frustrate them. Noobs typically have no emotional connection to the game, and in the case of social networking games, they are a often a source of much anti-social behavior.
Player - Most of the people playing a game are players. They like it, they come back, they may even pay (if not required to.) They don't have any use for the crutches Noobs so often require, so its the game's job to either hide them or make them clever enough to not get in the way. If a player has an emotional attachment to the game, it is either weak or directed more towards the other players in the game.
Fan - When a player becomes emotionally involved in a game, that player becomes a fan. Fans are willing to take action beyond simple purchases. Fans write blogs and manage online forums. Fans volunteer. Fans are players who have formed an emotional bond with the game.
Elite (Super Fan) - Similar to a fan, but truly, truly dedicated. The 1%'ers, though in truth, they represent less than 1% of the players. These are players who get more out of a game than the designers could have ever intended, and they typically want to contribute back to the thing that gives so much to them.

Its always dicey categorizing people, but I believe looking at these categories, it is possible to make reasonable choices about new features, costs, and services. Combine these notions with information specific to your game, spending habits Whales vs. Customers, for example, or number of players showing Fan-like behaviour vs. simple Player behavior, and decisions become easier to make, with more chance of success.

-Adam!!!
GameGuts Blog

Noob Tools

Buy-in levels: Tourist, Customer, Fan

Experience levels: Noob, Player, Elite

Levels match each other roughly (but not always)

Noob needs are more distinct than the other two. In fact, many games allow the experience between players and elite result from a gradual progression, rather than a distinct shift in the game's focus when the gamer's status shifts.

Noobs, on the other hand, often require special attention in order to progress their status to the more rewarding Player status. Typically, Players find the attention Noobs require distasteful, so those features must be hidden as soon as they are no longer needed.

This means a game requires a robust 'Noob experience' that is clever enough to conceal itself as soon as it is no longer needed. The more complex the game, the more robust the Noob tools must be.

-Adam!!!

This Isn't How It Was Supposed To Be

Despite what I do for a living, I don't actually buy that many PC games. Tonight's lesson explains why.

One of the first non-board games I ever played was the paper-and-dice Champions RPG. It's a cornerstone of my youth, and I still keep the books, though it's unlikely I'll every use them again. When I heard about Champions Online, I was sold.

Last weekend, I went to a BBQ with a bunch of my old gaming buddies, and they were all planning on getting Champions Online. I got excited, and when that happens, I act stupidly.

I talked my wife into letting me drop the $50 on the game and headed out to pick it up tonight. I haven't been this excited about a game since Spore (the last PC game I purchased.)

After two hours of frustration, I've come believe my laptop's video card isn't up to running Champions Online. I'm really, really upset. I've spent $50 that I don't think I'm getting back on a game I may never get to play. Buying a new computer is not an option. As I use a laptop I don't think getting a new video card is an option. It didn't occur to me the game wouldn't run AT ALL. I'm used to running with the graphics turned down, and that doesn't bother me.

Does. Not. Run. At. All.

$50.


This happened when I purchased the Orange Box for my old desktop machine a few years ago, but a $30 video card solved that problem. For the Orange Box it was worth it, but I don't have that option this time. I mad at myself for being so stupid about buying a game I can't play and I'm mad at Cryptic for building a game that I can't play.

This isn't how I was supposed to be feeling right now. I was supposed to be fighting crime right now. I guess the forces of evil will win this round.

-Adam!!!

Ground Up in the Rumor Mill

This week there are ourWorld rumors regarding Gem Coupon Codes. To be clear:

There are no valid ourWorld Gem Coupon Codes being distributed right now!

For those not in the know, a Gem Coupon Code is a 16 digit, alpha-numeric code that, when valid, adds something like Coins, Gems, etc. to an ourWorld account.

Coupons Codes are activated on the ourWorld SETTINGS page.

We use Gem Coupon Codes for the following reasons:

• Rewards for surveys and similar offers. (usually for 20 Gems.)
• A special bonus for Newsletter readers. (always 10 Gems)
  

Both of these codes are designed to work once per account for a limited time. 20 Gem codes usually last about a week, 10 Gems codes usually last about two. After that, they just quit.

There is a second type of Gem Code Code that we don't use too often. The single use code. These codes don't expire with time, but they only work once, ever. Once HotZexyGrl12 uses the code, it's spent and her friends can't get those Gems.

Clearly a culture of Coupon Code swapping has cropped up in ourWorld. I wonder what the ratio of players who read the newsletter/did the survey is compared to the number who are swapping codes and getting them off of sites like this. There's nothing wrong with the swapping, but when we start getting angry letters from parents because the bogus code their kid got doesn't work, that's a problem. Yes, this is actually happening.

What's this all mean? It means our messaging about Coupon Codes has been lost or at least muddled. In a sense, they don't cost us anything (not counting my time.) That said, if the norm for collecting these codes no longer includes their designed purpose, we may need to change our Gem Coupon Code strategy. That might be very good news, or very bad news, for the players who rely on these codes for their Gems.

-Adam!!!
GameGuts Blog

Free at Last

I've just finished the free audio-book version of Chris Anderson's Free: The Future of a Radical Price. While there is a fair amount of controversy regarding the book, free is the baseline price for most Web-based games, like ourWorld, Yoville, Club Penguin, and pretty much everything else in our category. In other words, we're neck deep in free, and living with the necessities, benefits, as well as the pitfalls of it.

Because free is the default base price for all of our games, the gaming public takes it for granted that the games will be free. In fact, we use the 'freemium' model, where the minority of players that do pay are supporting the vast majority who are playing for free.

The book relied most heavily on Maplestory for its gaming examples. In Maplestory's case, everything in the game could be achieved with effort. The non-free items save players time, but do not provide access to anything that the non-paying players can't achieve given time.

In ourWorld, we certainly sell items that save player time (subscribers level up 2x faster, and an assortment of non-free items can increase that multiplier even further.) In addition, there are items that the highest level players can earn with out paying, but players who don't mind paying can get whenever they choose. Unlike Maplestory, however, we have hundreds of items that only paying players have access to. These items don't do anything but impact how the avatar and living spaces look, but as looks and image is what ourWorld is all about, it's socially rewarding to have these "Gem-Only" premium items.

With free as the default price of online games like ourWorld, the challenge is really how to balance the free version of the game with the premium version. What should be free? What should cost money? When we started last year, almost everything was free. As the site matured, the ratio of free to non-free has shifted steadily toward the latter. As the players gaining benefits from this shift are supporting the site, this is not a problem at all. In addition, while growth is slower, the non-paying players still have more features than they did this time last year, even if glass-half-empty users only see the ever increasing number of features they 'unfairly' don't have access to.

I expect more and more aspects of ourWorld to become free as new non-free items are released. As non-free features age, the cost of giving them away gives way to the benefits. This happened with Condos (ourWorld living spaces) a few months ago, and the result has been totally positive for both the players as well as the bottom line of the site.

Free at last!

Adam!!!
Gameguts Blog

Too Much love

I don't use my main ourWorld character, Wylde, very often any longer. This is why:

Can I just Reply All?

Each of those '!' is somebody who wants to chat with me. I just can't keep up! Don't worry, I still play ourWorld all the time, I just use less well known characters.

-Adam!!!

Geat Idea, or Greatest Idea?

Plans under way for memorial to gaming icon in Lake Geneva

There are about as many opinions about Gary Gygax as there are numbers in the average bag of D&D dice, but there is little doubt that his influence upon hobby gaming was massive. It can be argued that in regards to gaming, he was the single most influential person, ever. If you narrow that statement down to 'hobby gaming', I don't even think there's an argument.

I'd love to see that statue. Of course, there's some concern that it'd come alive to defend treasure hidden somewhere nearby. We'll deal with that issue when the time comes.

-Adam!!!

The Amazing VooDoo Economics of Farmtown

My obsession of the month has been Facebook's Farmtown. I am particularly impressed with the way the Farmtown designers have bent economics to match the goals of the game, leaving real-world economics behind.

It's Pumpkin Season!

Like most virtual world-type games, the value of Farmtown money isn't based on supply and demand. The supply of both money and goods is, of course, limitless, so the prices are arbitrary. The demand has no impact on price, so the goal is to maximize demand (i.e. players) as much as possible by increasing the size of the player-base. Attracting more players is the baseline goal of all games, and Farmtown uses all of the Facebook viral tricks to achieve that goal. In addition, they use a novel approach to employment economics, which, while simple, is new to me.

If you are a Farmtown farmer, these are your costs to grow crops:

• Plow
  
• Buy seeds
  

Once the seeds are grown, you harvest and get paid:

• Harvest and sell immediately OR
  
• Harvest and store, selling at the Market for +10% price*

Here's paradigm shift. The Market is full of people who want to work for you, and getting that bonus 10% is how you find those players in the first place. Players who work for you get paid BUT:

Unlike in the real world, instead of the farmer giving the workers a cut of the farms income, the farmer gets paid MORE when using a worker and the worker gets paid by the game, NOT by the farmer. That means the farmer's choices are:

• Harvest and sell immediately for the least money OR
  
• Harvest and store, selling at the Market for +10% price OR
  
• Hire somebody else to harvest, selling at the Market for +20% price, plus the worker gets 20% value of the harvest. Note: Harvesting becomes a bit of a chore, so you're saving time and effort as well as making more $
  

Hiring somebody to Plow your fields also is 25% to 50% cheaper than doing it yourself in addition to the worker getting paid. Again, it's a chore you get to avoid while saving money and the worker is thanking you for the 'free' money.

The game simply doles out more money for the cooperative behavior they choose to encourage. Unlike the real world, there's an infinite supply of cash, so this works with no side effects. I've always thought of virtual economies as trying to replicate supply and demand of scarcity based real-world economies, but Farm Town has proved that there are other options, depending on the goals of your game.

* note: I'm totally estimating the % benefits, but the gist remains valid.

-Adam!!!

It would be amazing...

If I could blog from my iPhone.

Yes!

The End of Online

Most online games are played on a computer or video game system. The rise of these systems as a source of entertainment has supplanted TV, toys, sports, and traditional play as the primary source of entertainment for a lot of kids. The conventional wisdom, from the President on down, is that kids need to get off the couch and go play outside. I don't have a problem with that, at all.

My prediction: As being online gets cheaper and easier, smart toys will start appearing that making playing outside as cool or cooler than sitting on the couch. Off the top of my head:

• Bats, balls, gloves, and sporting goods we haven't thought of that automatically record your stats and measure your records against your friends, and the world at large.
• Action figures that allow kids to take part in grand adventures, shared by other kids all over the world.
• Geo-cache style park games, played by individuals, small groups, or as part of a larger world-wide campaign.

These ideas are mostly 'old-toys-only-better', which means I'm certainly off the mark. The idea that people need to be sitting on the couch to get play benefits from the online world is just old fashioned thinking. Once smart toys are priced competitively with dumb ones, a new brand of old fashioned play will return in a big way.

Who wants to sit in from of that stupid screen all day, anyway? It doesn't *do* anything!

-Adam!!!

NeoPets Scam

Just read this and it looks legit:

"If you have children that play on the popular virtual world game Neopets, you might want to warn them of a social engineering scam gleefully targeting 12-year-old kids. Neopets users looking for rare items are sent private messages from the scammers, who direct them to sites hosting keyloggers & trojans. They then use the infected PC as a means to get to data the parents might have stored there, be it credit card details, Paypal accounts or online banking. Seeing the screenshots of some of these people talking about putting these children into botnets is just unbelievable — if ever you wanted proof that people up to no good online will go to any lengths to get their hands on some money (or even just feel good about outsmarting a 12-year-old), here it is."

There is no question that ourWorld players would fall for this sort of scam. I don't think I need to panic and change anything, as our filters and policies already do what's possible to prevent this sort of thing. I guess I just needed one more thing to worry about.

-Adam!!!

Member's Only

That's some cooooool water.

We added our first public Member's Only area to ourWorld yesterday. The players have been asking for a swimming pool since pretty much always, and we finally released a swimming area called the Beach.

Only Resident Subscribers can go there*.

As expected, there is a vocal chorus of "not fair!" from the free-play community. While I understand their reaction, it's hard to muster a great deal of sympathy from my personal perspective. Most of ourWorld is free, but new features more and more are for paying players. You know, the people who keep the site running with their dollars.

It's unfortunate how weak the free-player's position is, really. When they threaten to leave the site and never come back, the net loss to the site is usually close to zero. I wish it was a bigger deal. I wish the free-players could contribute more to the site so they could be given more in exchange.

If wishes were subscriptions, we'd all swim.

-Adam!!!

* Free players can go to the Beach if Grouped with a Resident subscriber, so it's not totally off-limits.

A World Record For OFF TOPIC!!!

Drum roll...

Here 'goes...




-Adam!!!

Now they've got it...

Penny Arcade has hit the virtual nail upon the virtual head, again.

It's Really Quite Simple

OurWorld's payment options.

Credit Card
5.99 for 1 month subscription, automatic billing (150 Gems/month)
49.99 for 1 year subscriptions (150 Gems/month)
5.99 for 100 Gems
20.00 for 600 Gems

Mobile Phone
7.99 for 110 Gems (mobile phone)

Pay by Mail
10.00 for 1 month subscription (300 Gems)
49.99 for 1 year subscriptions (150 Gems/month)
5.99 for 100 Gems
20.00 for 600 Gems

PayPal
49.99 for 1 year subscriptions (150 Gems/month)
5.99 for 100 Gems
20.00 for 600 Gems

What could be simpler?

-Adam!!!

ourWorld - Lookin' Good!

Welcome to the crowd!

No stormy skies in ‘ourWorld’ as virtual world maker raises cash
by John Cook

“OurWorld” has already attracted a whopping 1.3 million registered users. Many of those have signed up in the past two months following a crucial marketing partnership with the online gaming portal, Miniclip.

That’s the same distributor that helped Club Penguin, the wildly popular virtual world for kids that was sold to Disney for up to $700 million in 2007. Morton says that Miniclip has on the order of 57 million unique visitors each month, a tremendous base of traffic from which to draw.

In the next two months, Morton estimates that registered users for “ourWorld” will surpass two million. Much of that growth is being driven by Miniclip deal, which features an embedded version of “ourWorld” on its Web site.

Yep, that's about it.

-Adam!!!

Lions and Tigers and SPIDERS! Oh My!

WOW!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Stan!

What Does It Mean To Be An Industry Leader?

by Stan!

When WotC bought TSR in 1997, one of the first things Peter Adkison impressed upon us all was that he believed Wizards could be BOTH a supremely successful company AND a leader in the hobby games industry. That WotC could make a strong and growing profit and AT THE SAME TIME help grow the other companies and teach them how to make more money for themselves. He saw WotC as an evangelist for gaming as a hobby and leisure-time entertainment ... and was HAPPY when our actions helped other companies to grow stronger. He was close friends with the CEOs (not to mentions designers, artists, editors, and general staff) of MANY other hobby game companies and was HAPPY to help them both professionally and personally. Peter was, and remains, and Industry Leader ... and, as a result, under his management, WotC was a leader, too.

I recommend reading the whole thing.

-Adam!!!

Majority Report

We added a "Report" button to ourWorld this week. Players may now report naughty-doers directly to me and I can evaluate the report and take whatever action I deem appropriate. Usually I do nothing, sometimes I add an extra filter to the person's chat (and send an Email explaining this), and a few require full account deactivation. Of course, there's a catch.

Prior to the Report buttong we got 5-10 'reports' via Email per week.

Since yesterday I have received about 3000 reports with the new button. 90% are useless. Most are too petty to bother with. If we muted everyone in ourWorld who was marginally rude, we'd not have any members at all! Many are completely incoherent. There's room for improvement in the system. The funniest are personal attacks meant for the target of the report, sent to me by mistake. One such report was so profane that I had to take action against the reporter. It included in it the threat of being reported. Oops.

That's not to say it's not working. I've found and taken action again several players who were clearly violating the Code of Conduct. Really bad actors, trust me. The Report button provides info the players don't see which allows me to take action without taking anyone's word for it.

The system just needs refinement. We launched the Report button with too little friction (it's too easy to do) and with too little explanation about what it is and isn't for. No biggie. We'll refine it into an even more useful tool, and then I'll really be the man with the ban...hammer.

-Adam!!!

The Registration Email from Legends of Zork.

Good stuff. Enjoy.

Hail Adventurer!

Are you ready to embark on a life of excitement, fame, wealth, and coconuts?
Yes, we thought you might be. Obviously, the fact that you’ve just registered with us was a bit of a give away...

Speaking of registration, here are the details you’ve registered with us:

Username: XXXXXXXX
Password: XXXXXXXX

Unless of course you haven’t registered with us? Perhaps some vagrant on the internet is running around creating Legends of Zork accounts for random people? Maybe he’s also giving out free candy and puppies, because frankly, if you haven’t just registered with us, that guy has done you a HUGE favour!

Nevertheless, congratulations on registering (or being registered) with one of the fast growing casual adventure games on the internet! This is without a doubt the smartest thing that you’ve done since you bought all that washing detergent at bargain prices, and it will be almost as rewarding. Don’t get me wrong, at Jolt Online Games we know that the work we do is top quality, but no one can argue against the joys of having your shirts whiter than white.

Happy Adventuring,

-The LoZ Team