Monthly Archives: December

A very happy Christmas to everybody from the Coobico-team, and a happy new year. While development of Coobico will still go on during the holidays, there will probably no blog-post before new year.

Sad news shortly before christmas for Metaplace-employees and -fans alike, Metaplace will be shut down on January 1st. Metaplace enabled users to create virtual worlds, an idea that seemingly did not gain enough traction, as VentureBeat reports:

“The company told its users today, ‘Unfortunately, over the last few months it has become apparent that Metaplace as a consumer user-generated content service is not gaining enough traction to be a viable product, requiring a strategic shift for our company’”

Raph Koster has promised to write more about the closure of Metaplace soon. He also announced a website where Metaplace friends can stay in touch. Best of success, Raph, for your next steps.

The way capitalization of web-startups works does not seem to leave enough time to gain financial success. In my opinion this is fatal for social start-ups in particular.

Free-to-play and micro-transactions are trends migrating from Asia to western MMOs in the past years—even being picked up by major players like Sony and EA. Still, it has not yet been proven if gamers’ acceptance of microtransactions matches the Asian level of market penetration and if thusly generated revenue can sustain western MMOs. 

Gamasutra recently ran an article called “What Gamers Think About Microtransactions” about the findings of Daniel Kromand who asked hardcore-gamers, who “were all experienced gamers and ranged from early twenties to mid-thirties”, about their angle on MT:

“Some games have premium items for sale, but the interviewed players were largely skeptical towards these transactions. The reason is that they threaten to tilt the perceived fairness of the game, because established players fear that newcomers can buy their way to success: ‘I don’t think they would like [expensive, powerful items] very much. Because then it means that you can be better than me, [just] because you have a bigger wallet.‘ (Peter)“

Even if taken with a grain of salt, this indicates that there are differences in acceptance of personally buying MT-items or approving fellow players using micro-transactions.

Link this to EA and SOE, who are currently changing their free-to-play-formula, probably due to a lack of revenue: EA’s DICE has raised the in-game costs of items in Battlefield Heroes while reducing real-money costs, as Eurogamer reports:

“EA’s DICE has changed the item pricing structure for its free-to-player shooter Battlefield Heroes, reducing the real-money cost of items while making their cost to rent or buy with in-game currency dramatically more expensive…
One player, quoted by Ars Technica, calculated that they would have to play 50 matches a day just to afford to keep a powerful weapon using VP. In effect, the choice for players who want to be competitive is now between spending money or submitting to serious grind. Needless to say, it’s been a very unpopular move.“

Likewise, according to an interview with Sony Online Entertainment’s Creative Director for Free Realms, Laralyn McWilliams, SOE will implement a pay-wall in their popular F2P-title “Free Realms” with the upcoming update, where all in-game jobs will become free of charge, but only up to a level 4. Higher levels will be restricted to premium members (except for players who have already achieved higher levels so far). “Freemium” comes to mind, a business model which relies on offering basic services for free, while charging a premium for advanced or special features (and which is not so different from your typical World of Warcraft 10 days test-drive).