泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌
[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]
The economics of video game
Recently I watched the movie Spotlight. I like the film for its own sake, however, I am a big fan of Rachel McAdams, the heroine of the movie. She is well known for her role in the film About Time. She participated in an animated feature film as a voice actress at the end of last year. That was The Little Prince. I loved its beautiful images and her unforgettable voice acting as well.
I don't want to evaluate the animated film or talk about my favorite actress. I'd like to discuss the famous saying “Tame me!" by the fox in the great novel by french writer Saint-Exupéry.
The line from the novel has a couple of different meanings. One of the most-talked-about connotations is about cognition. Being tamed by someone means that one becomes one of a kind for him or her. Since the little prince tamed the fox, the fox became the only fox in the world for the prince not like a hundred thousand other foxes. The experience teaches the little prince that unique rose living in the Asteroid B 612—the name of the asteroid that is the home of the little prince—is the one for him not like five thousand roses in one garden.
The other meaning of the line is about scarcity. Our perception makes differences and scarcity is built around the differences. Thousands of ordinary roses in the garden, which haven't been tamed by the little prince, don't have something special for him. The easy accessibility to the roses depreciates their value. People who live near world-famous tourist attractions would not thrill watching the magnificent sceneries.
On the contrary, the limited accessibility makes people forgive to get closer to something. It's not easy for someone to make him/her mind to go to Antarctica to see penguins although he/she loves the short-legged flightless birds so much. Likewise, most average people usually give up easily to buy an unaffordable 20-carat diamond ring.
Recently, I played some newly released video games with a lack of accessibility. Balanced in-game virtual goods including items, characters, etc. are very critical for the accessibility to the game by users. The users would feel that a high-powered item or character, despite their advantages, are of no value to them due to their easy accessibility. But by comparison, they would easily forgive to have an extremely rare item or character. The balance of in-game virtual goods is closely bound up with paying user rate (PUR), retention, and average revenue per user (ARPU), etc. in most newly-released in-app purchase games. Now, game developers need to study economics for the virtual-world economy, if they want their items and characters, which themselves have made, to be tamed by users.
※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.
(http://www.khgames.co.kr)
Translation by Kim Ki-hui
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