泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Good BM and bad BM

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]

 

Good BM and bad BM

 

People in the gaming industry have heard about "good BM (Business Model)" at least once somewhere. It means that the video game business model with balanced in-app purchases that prompt users to spend adequate money on a game. In other words, a game which won't cost users more money is good.

 

On the contrary to this, there is a word of "devil‘s BM". After an initial free trial, users unwittingly spend small sums very often to level up, win, or advance, which quickly add up and players eventually expend lots of money in the app through pesky in-app purchases. Accordingly, it is universally accepted as the bad business model like the temptation of the devil.

 

Given the fact that the term is generally used in the gaming industry, it seems that we probably recognize that users have a problem with the current gaming business model which make excessive demands on in-app purchases. We have played a game with the in-app purchase model for only ten years. One-time purchase video games had become mainstream before then. If users pay for a game title once, they could enjoy the satisfaction without paying extra money. Also, users used to play monthly paid PC games. But in-app purchase model became the general form in the gaming market at some point.

 

Similarly, let's try to put this into film market; a free audience moves where he/she wants to sit during the movie if he/she pays for it, goes back to a specific scene or does it 2 times faster making others uncomfortable, and orders multiple dishes, which would probably make many viewers feel awkward. Nonetheless, people in the gaming industry have accepted this similar situation as naturally at some point. This is the circumstance where a theater owner doesn't care about free audiences whether they experience inconvenience due to charged ones who hurt their feelings and make them uncomfortable with their undignified behaviors.

 

Recently many mobile games create profit through ad revenue than in-app purchases. It helps non-spenders to reduce their stress more or less since they can easily catch up a minuscule percent of users, who spend lots of money to buy in-game items and points, in the early stages of the game watching rewarded ads—view-to-play. These are games with a good BM.

 

Of course, game developers are commercial companies which seek profit. If they take characteristics of the products as content into consideration, they should not deliberately discriminate against non-spenders although sales revenue is the money that is spent by consumers. Therefore, the view-to-play business model is more meaningful. Developers are satisfied with ads revenue where non-spenders can enjoy the game by spending more time than spenders. This may not be the answer. However, I hope that I can see the optimized game business model someday undergoing many trials and errors.

 

 

※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.

(http://www.khgames.co.kr)

 

Translation by Kim Ki-hui