Gabe Newell returns to issue of charging players based on how likeable they are
Valve will pursue its experiment with the free-to-play games model with a new plan to release its upcoming game DOTA 2 for free, the company’s managing director has said.
Gabe Newell claimed Valve is not applying a wholly conventional freemium model for the online action strategy game.
Usually, freemium games are made available to everyone and later monetised by selling optional in-game items.
But in an upcoming interview with Seven Day Cooldown, Newell said the game would be “free-to-play [but] it'll have some twists”.
"The issue that we're struggling with quite a bit is something I've kind of talked about before, which is how do you properly value people's contributions to a community?” he said, reflecting on a discussion he had with Develop last year.
Last year Newell told Develop that “the games industry has this broken model, which is one price for everyone. That’s actually a bug, and it’s something that we want to solve through our philosophy of how we create entertainment products".
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He continued: “What you really want to do is create the optimal pricing service for each customer and see what’s best for them. We need to give customers, all of them, a robust set of options regarding how they pay for their content.
“An example is – and this is something as an industry we should be doing better – is charging customers based on how much fun they are to play with.
“So, in practice, a really likable person in our community should get Dota 2 for free, because of past behaviour in Team Fortress 2. Now, a real jerk that annoys everyone, they can still play, but a game is full price and they have to pay an extra hundred dollars if they want voice.”
It appears Valve is putting this plan, or a similar initiative, into action.
He told Seven Day Cooldown: “We're trying to figure out ways so that people who are more valuable to everybody else [are] recognized and accommodated. We all know people where if they're playing we want to play, and there are other people where if they're playing we would [rather] be on the other side of the planet.
"It's just a question of coming up with mechanisms that recognize and reward people who are doing things that are valuable to other groups of people."
[The Seven Day Cooldown interview was serialised to The Verge]
...but what's to stop you having an alternate account with no history of bad behaviour and getting Dota 2 on the cheap? And how exactly do you put a price on different people's behaviour?
So if you are a jerk you may not be able to play because it is expensive, but if you are a rich jerk than you can still play, no problem and Valve will profit.... great idea.... because we need more rich jerks ....
I would take a guess for behavior its through other people's actions. Like somebody who gets a lot of kick votes called on them or who how many people put that guy on mute. Give us more options to deal with other people and they could data mine it to spot if a person is a problem.
The rich jerks will be there anyway, at least this way you can filter out bulk of them.
Wow. No thanks. Why would we want to introduce a version of a credit rating to determine the price of a game? While you do not grief ppl, you do not do enough unpaid volunteer work for the game maker. So.. no cake for you!!!
I foresee a significant increase in players (trolls) giving bad rep so players will have to pay.
I can see so many things wrong with this idea. Not everyone who is unliked is bad. Some people have radical viewpoints that make them unpopular. They'll be punished for being different. Here's my judgement on Gabe: jerk.
This idea will only cause more trolls as Casey mentioned, or worse, if someone gives negative rep to a troll, that troll and however many accounts he created would mass downrate that one person.
Good idea. Hard to implement. Valve can do it right. Let's give them a chance. Griefing in MOBAs is a huge problem that someone needs to think about.
Gabe you make great games let's just leave it at that ok? Don't turn personality types against you.
yahhhh yahhhh get a dota account for 100 Dollars after you click you pay another dollar. wth
-clear
If any company can do this properly, it's VALVe. Go for it!
There's a very good chance that Valve could land themselves in hot water for violating UCC law. Charging one price to one consumer and another consumer a different price (especially one that could be considered as price gouging, which raises RICO implications) is illegal. Plain and simple. They can hide it under "discounts" for favorable reviews, but it doesn't change their potential liability, especially after this and many other articles.
I personally believe this is a very bad idea. Are new players going to end up paying noticeably more than their more experienced friends? This is going to give those players the impression that they're being punished, and then they're not going to even try the game. What happens when griefers start down-rating otherwise good players?
Anyone who has been on the Internet for more than ten seconds knows what's wrong with assuming "troll" and "popular" are mutually exclusive.
Of course the developers know nothing you are talking about. Because the only thing they do is swim in money and make games. They don't, you know, think about everything you guys have mentioned beforehand and spend more than one year figuring out how to solve this issue.
Jerks will be able to make you pay more for a game. Great idea guys.
I think its an interesting idea that deserves a try, I'm intrigued on how this would work out. They haven't really elaborated on exactly how it would work, so a lot of the negative commenters should just cool it until they see it in action. I'm guessing that its really just a reward - in the form of a discount - for being good, the game would still be affordable even if you have bad rep. I've been in so many star battle games where some immature person sits there and insults his whole team for sucking while simultaneously not contributing anything to the team, if this practice results in less of this crap, I'm all for it.
The idea is interesting but they need to realize it's censorship. You don't get charged just because you're an asshole in real life. You might mouth off to the wrong person and get your ass kicked but it will be free.
Yeah I hate trolls in games just as much as everyone else does. Still a lot of the time they do add excitement from the random factor.
PVP is nice in all games but the PK factor is a must. I've never quit a game just because a player killed me then talked shit.
Like some kid is going to really get me fired up lol. I'm too old to worry about arguing with some moron in a game. Troll = Ignore plus blacklist so I can pk them. It's fun to hunt them ;)
Its flawed logic. There is no way you can play judge to morals. The Internet is quite diverse and full of cultures that have different sets of ideologies and morals. When you start deciding who is good and who is bad, it will only skew the community into a "teachers pet" or blatant "bootlickers". In the end they will forge a community that will never be honest about their likes or dislikes and eventually cost the business financially.
The whole idea may be good on paper with a narrowed vision approach but in the long run, its only going to limit business by adding an element of uncertainty with costs.
perhaps he meant a person that is just trolling(jerk) wont get any benefit. While a person that contributes to the game lets say, becomes a mentor or Game Master(have a role that gives something to the game) will get the discounts. So its not about personality but about contributing to the game. Which I think its a very good idea.
I thought I was the world leader in the creation of dynamic monetization models, which is what I consider this as, but this is something very innovative. I have to say I think it won't work the way they are implementing it, but I still think it is great the way they are trying to think outside the box. I actually detailed what characteristics of players are desirable and undesirable in my first 35 page analysis of IM monetization models in 2009, my Sustainable Virtual Economies and Business Models paper. Quantifying these qualities as I did in that paper took me four and a half years and is actually much more complex than I think Valve is realizing with this. I could be wrong, and if they are on the same path as me I think that is wonderful. I do absolutely agree with them that customers should be charged different amounts depending on their play habits and this is core to all of my advanced monetization designs.
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