Ekim's Gamer View: Time's Worth
Ekim, 2003-10-18

It occurred to me the very first time I tried an mmorpg that the time I spent playing an mmorpg had some worth to it. Whether I spent 5 minutes online in a whole month, or 60hours all told, I still had to pay the same amount every time. Although that seems to make no sense at all, I guess the alternative would be to pay according to the time you really spend online, sort of like what they do with cellular phones and calling cards. But is that really a solution, or is there a catch to that?

Money for playing

It really depends on which side of the fence you find yourself sitting. On the one side you have the casual players, those who spend 10 hours or less a week playing any given game. On the other side we have our proverbial power-gamers, who spend over 40hours online, if not more, every single week. There are, of course, those who sit right on the fence too, people who are what I like to call regular players (I'd hate to use the word "normal" here) who spend around 20hours online on a weekly average.

These three groups have a very different definition of how much an mmorpg costs them. If we agree that a casual player plays 10 hours on a weekly basis, a game that costs him $10 a month means that he will be spending 25 cents for every hour that he spends online. A regular player, with an average of 20hours weekly, will spend about 13 cents, while a power-gamer with a weekly average of 40hours will be spending as little as 6 cents per hour. That's not a whole lot when you think about it, even for the casual player.

But consider this: a casual player logs on one night, one of the only 2 nights (including weekends) he can play for a few hours on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, he bumps his nose against a locked server because, for some reason, the developer needed to do some maintenance. That just blew off one of his only available playing times, and brings much frustration. While the power-gamer will still probably average over 40 hours for the whole week even when taking that downtime into account, the casual player won't be able to get back that time at all, it's lost forever, and suddenly his hourly gaming cost just jumped dramatically.

Now, what if there could be a way for someone to pay on an hourly basis, much like calling cards allow to pre-pay phone usage? For power-gamers, and even regular players, this solution doesn't make much sense at all. At 13 and 6 cents an hour for playing, they are better off just buying a monthly subscription and forget about it. But for the casual player who is unsure of what his schedule will allow him to play, time-based access could potentially make some people happier. You could buy a card for $10 which would give you 15 hours of playing time on a game, usable within the next 3 months or so before you lose it. Sure, that means that the price of his subscription just went up to a 67 cents per hour, but he can use that hour whenever he can, and never pay for the times that he can't. That $10 could then potentially afford him 2 months worth of play instead of only 1.

Less is more, more is less

Casual players, who log on the least time, are probably those who cost the most for publishers because they are the ones who will call customer service when something doesn't seem to be going right, and that is the more costly aspect of any mmorpg. A time-based access fee would make more sense in their case than anything else, in my opinion. When I hear someone complain about server down-time on message boards, asking to be refunded for the couple of hours they couldn't play, I can't help but laugh. Sure, here's your 50cents! But no, what they want is to be refunded the whole month's fee for 2 hours worth of downtime, which makes no sense at all, whether you're a casual or a power-gamer.

But if publishers at least made it possible for players to pay strictly for the time that they play, then we probably wouldn't here such complaints, not from casual players at least. No, it's not the cheapest solution for some of the less casual players out there, but at least it's an option. And the key for offering the best service in any market that deals with the public is to offer options. Let the player choose what he thinks is best for himself, given his own situation. Right now, players don't have that luxury. Offering 1, 3 and 6 months subscription plans are not options, they are special offers, bundle prices at best. I'm talking about offering different methods of payment as options, which we really don't have. If players have more options, they'll have less reasons to complain.