Distributed Monetization

[JinM]

If I have the choice between a free but commonly designed ship, and a paid beautiful / optimized ship, I'll always choose the first one. Why ?
Because I don't like - even hate - to be forced to pay for a game content (even DLCs can be annoying sometimes). Be it useful or not.

I am on your side here and I see an additional reason: If creators build for gaining money or popularity the content quality generally declines, as they try to mass produce ships in a certain way. Can't really point out why: If someone builds to satisfy others and his own needs, or to generate downloads - booth are just different approaches when it comes to designing and marketing the builds.

Builder A builds for building cool and does the bridge as it appeals to himself, and invests alot of time into all parts of the ship equally. Builder B tries to generate download and invests alot of time into a cool bridge, but other parts of the ship lack that small details in the crew quarters or the little rail-action-feature in the machine room. But builder B gets more downloads because unexperienced players upvote the ship for its shiny bridge, not seeing the bigger picture of quality builds.

What I try to say: The majority conceives quality on their medium level, whereas experienced builders have different standards. But not the experienced and artistic detail loving builders will get more money, instead the builders that put in that shiny stupid bridge only because the majority rates this higher instead of seeing everything that can be done.

I am not saying ratings should be different, I am just despising the idea of establishing a market where medium quality builds flod the market and generate more money than actual high quality buildings that leave out the bombastic bridge.

 

[Nauvran]

Both yes and no ! A donation system to donate either to devs or good community builders.

why the fuck would I get money for freely using my freetime to build a ship

 

[MeRobo]

Both yes and no ! A donation system to donate either to devs or good community builders.

I think builders who really think they are deserving of donations should just go ahead and set up something (preferably optional) where people can donate to them and see what happens. Not something I'd do, just saying that the possibility already exists, the question then would be whether anyone would pay for that (I doubt it tbh).
As for supporting the devs, in theory you can just buy the game multiple times

 

[Alphajim]

I think builders who really think they are deserving of donations should just go ahead and set up something (preferably optional) where people can donate to them and see what happens. Not something I'd do, just saying that the possibility already exists, the question then would be whether anyone would pay for that (I doubt it tbh).
As for supporting the devs, in theory you can just buy the game multiple times

why the fuck would I get money for freely using my freetime to build a ship

It was to find a compromise instead of just saying no.
I think the same than you.

 

[Nauvran]

I think builders who really think they are deserving of donations should just go ahead and set up something (preferably optional) where people can donate to them and see what happens. Not something I'd do, just saying that the possibility already exists, the question then would be whether anyone would pay for that (I doubt it tbh).
As for supporting the devs, in theory you can just buy the game multiple times

Better yet
Donate to Schine and TheCakeNetwork.
That way we keep having an awesome stupid spaceship builder and a great creative server

 

[MacThule]

Well I'll give you my user thoughts on it.

If I have the choice between a free but commonly designed ship, and a paid beautiful / optimized ship, I'll always choose the first one. Why ?
Because I don't like - even hate - to be forced to pay for a game content (even DLCs can be annoying sometimes). Be it useful or not.

As an example I never ever paid for any content on any MMO game, except some premium tanks in WoT when I was younger. And that's the exact reason I quit H&G (that and the evident p2w too).

So I'll say it again, I consider that I shouldn't pay for a player-made standard content. Ships are free to make and anyway one don't have the right to ask money for simply playing the game. Maybe for a DLC, but it's still not compatible with the kind of game SM is.

To conclude I can't see any valid reason to pay anything else than the game (except for a server). It would add nothing, and each paid content will be ignored for sure, if it's not something really worth it. There's not that much people playing, and will never be - so it's not a real cash flow potential.

PS : arguing here with mobile MMO games isn't a good idea, I tend to consider their players as easy cash-cows.


Instead of a forced pay, adding a simple "donate" system would be better. Or a reward for the most-dowloaded / best-rated community contents, when there will be an in-game access to it.

Who said "FORCE" pay? I think you're not personally familiar with the kind of player-developer systems I've referenced. Developers are welcome to offer their creations free. Or charge for them. And - to re-iterate.... - I'm not suggesting ditching the existing library of free player content. Only offering the opportunity for player-developers to offer premium builds at cost.

Painting this as "forced" pay is grossly distorting the suggestion. I'm sorry you misunderstood.

 

[MacThule]

I understand the idea that you are trying to explain here but, for this type of game it will backfire

Remember this type of thing has been tried many times over many different genres, remember the horse armor from Skyrim and the Creation club from bethesda, monetizing community content or "mods" has never gone well and will never go well. adding a paywall as such to the one most popular and currently only Starmade related thing to do which is building will outright kill the game properly. i have spoken to my faction on this and we all agree that we would not spend a penny on any creation on this game no matter how good the creation, as well as this we would not be interested in receiving money from our creations, its a game not a job.
furthermore you have the problem of server BPs, where someone could just pay for the creation upload a BP of it to a sever to spawn it and its already in the admin and public catalogs, as well as this the ship could be un-faction and copy are distributed through the server or worse the ship is raided and re uploaded for free garnering more attention than the real creators one. this idea is an incredibly bad one and will kill starmade if added into the game, its pointless greedy and brings this work of art of a game down to the same level as every other title around right now that utilities DLC.

for the love of god Schema do not do it whatever you do its not worth it, this game is a work of art so far and i love that you can just buy the game and have access to everything in it with no paywalls limitations or attached community "pay for DLC".

Monetisation in this game is not needed nor desired.

You offer Bethesda as an example of failure to effectively implement micro-transactions, then conclude that such efforts have "NEVER" gone well.

I don't agree that this is correct. I think a quick survey of the gamesphere will support that some games allowing player monetization are very successful.

Based on your response, I can only conclude that you simply aren't familiar with the actual games where such systems have been successfully implemented. Giving an example of one game that poorly adapted microtransactions to its game content doesn't demonstrate that such models "never" work. And if you simply look at the daily player numbers on Roblox (another voxel game, BTW - much more comparable to Starmade than Bethesda game models) you'll see an example of a popular voxel-based game where player monetization is integrated. Roblox is vastly inferior to Starmade, BTW, which you will notice immediately. Yet every day tens of thousands log on. Player devs push it relentlessly on their RL and online networks - giving players the opportunity to turn their hard work and expertise into real money has been a brilliant strategy for them.

It can be done wrong. It can be done right. To say it "never" works is not correct though.

 

[JinM]

It can be done right.

Mate it can not be done right, because the whole idea of microtransactions is based on advertising them ingame.

Every piece of ingame UI that tries to "provoke" me to buy a certain good just tells me one thing: This game is not complete and it will never be because to have a complete game you need to spend around 5.000 Euro of microtransactions.

And this is the basic concept of microtransactions: Tell the player the game is even better if he only spends money on this or that small item. I don't want to feel incomplete when I entertain myself. I want to entertain myself on a certain object and know: Okay this is -The Game-.

And if I like the game I can do the addtional challenges of reaching 100% and finding the secret levels. And then I recommend it to my friends. The thought should not be: if I like the game I should spend more money on it, as the game tells me with this ingame UI element.

Concerning your assumption that players don't hate game that have microtransactions in them: Try to ask yourself, if the game would be as popular, if there would exist the same game without microtransactions but with a one time payment after each 100 hours of playing. We assume that all microtransaction features would be unlocked or only be hidden by finishing challenges. I would assume you would buy the second game, or wouldn't you?

 

[Wazubaba]

Words cannot convey how hard I am trying to keep this post clean and inoffensive.

Microtransactions are the most anti-gamer thing ever implemented second only to the DRM insanity that only punishes legitimate players. Please, for the sake of this game that is already on life support, no. No. NO.

About the only way that they can even work for Starmade is some kind of goofy forum-side nonsense that maybe 3 people would ever use. Other than that, there's only really two things you can do:

SHIPS​

You have to implement a form of DRM for ships now, which takes time from developing the actual game just for the absolute ego of some people who have decided that they should be payed for playing a bloody video game. This one is the second least damaging but also just plain disgusting imho. A donation system would either serve only to benefit the person releasing the ship or require Shine to go through and implement some kind of store and probably hire a lawyer to deal with the legal stuff if they don't have one already. All of this takes more time and money away from developing the actual game for a negligible gain.

Decorative Blocks​

Oh boy.. Now you just splintered the already split community (see also the pvp vs creative builders divide) AGAIN.

* This time it's tons of ships that may actually be reliant upon certain decorative blocks which means now either you need to maintain a separate version of your ship for those who don't have the blocks, completely ignore large chunks of the playerbase (most people do not buy microtransactions in any of these games that use them. This is why so many f2p games fail), or if Shine themselves do something you'll have ugly placeholder blocks (probably just straight grey hull or even worse missing blocks) where the decorative ones are, thus rendering the ship different than what you made.

* If they don't do anything to stop it (which again will take time away from development of the actual game, so they might not) people will just start sharing dupes with all the deco blocks. Also, block modding would have to go since people could probably bypass the store with it.

* Bear in mind - these blocks will be taking up disk space on a player's computer. Sure each model is.. I think obj? and probably only takes 100-300 kb of space, but when you look at how a microtransaction store works via quantity over quality this will quickly become megabytes of disk space that players won't be able to use. This adds up FAST.

* A minor but still problematic thing about this is that unless these are straight textured cubes, they will most likely have a different collision model, which might be somehow usable for some kind of meta somehow, and if they do make them textured cubes you suddenly have to get rid of texture packs because otherwise someone could just make random blocks that are almost never used (think like the Minecraft ones that use glazed terracotta or colored wool for various things) to bypass it all.

I cannot begin to convey how critical it is to never. ever. EVER go down this route. Here be dragons. Space engineers is already suffering for it.

=======​

I'm sure there's even repercussions I didn't think of that would arise from deco blocks. Seriously - microtransactions are a terrible, greedy move and would kill this game.

I apologize in advance if this came off as offensive though I definitely intend it to be a fair bit aggressive because what you are proposing is a terrible idea and it will ruin Starmade, whether by turning it into yet another game that only ever has new store items added instead of actual content or by completely chasing away the ghost of a playerbase that still remains. Seriously, just buy more copies of the game if you want to contribute, or maybe get a hold of someone from Schine and work with them to send a donation to them.

 

[The_Owl]

"Man wishes to deal finishing blow to game, More at 11"

 

[Terramex]

How to make stupid sums of money from a popular video game.

Just watch this guy play Mario Maker 2 for two hours it is rediculous the amount they throw at him.

YouTube, Twitch etc thats the 2020 way. Do not be a parasite.

As for making people pay for your builds. NO!

Server owners sometimes sell server perks Brierie does this. Mods can be created and sold for money if placed behind a paywall. Plenty of options without having to hijack StarMade it self.

 

[Alphajim]

Who said "FORCE" pay? I think you're not personally familiar with the kind of player-developer systems I've referenced. Developers are welcome to offer their creations free. Or charge for them. And - to re-iterate.... - I'm not suggesting ditching the existing library of free player content. Only offering the opportunity for player-developers to offer premium builds at cost.

Painting this as "forced" pay is grossly distorting the suggestion. I'm sorry you misunderstood.

I know, that's why I talked about having the choice between a free and a paid ship. Still, playing a creative game isn't a valid reason to charge your creation (yeah making great designs is playing the game as intended, as much as being a great faction leader).

Even things requiring much more work - like a lot of the Steam workshop content, if not all - is free for the players.

The only microtransactions which work in this game are the ones servers can use to help paying the bill. And that stops here.

 

[JinM]

I apologize in advance if this came off as offensive though I definitely intend it to be a fair bit aggressive

I liked your post especially the explanation about DRM and about disc space bloating.

If you like to have your post less offensive you can just take away the first sentence and put it at some later part. As long as you start with something neutral or even postive instead of negative ("Words cannot convey how hard I am trying to keep this post clean and inoffensive." ) you come around less harsh. I know you want to pick on him but maybe its more important that people read your post, and if the first sentence is as it is then alot of people will skip your post as another "hate post".

And never say sorry for something that you will do again. - This doesnt apply always but in your post it does.

 

[Zekester81]

I could never accept money for something I created in someone's video game. Even if I could make something good enough that someone would buy. Creations in game-play should never be marketed(for real money) IMO.

 

[MacThule]

Mate it can not be done right, because the whole idea of microtransactions is based on advertising them ingame.

Every piece of ingame UI that tries to "provoke" me to buy a certain good just tells me one thing: This game is not complete and it will never be because to have a complete game you need to spend around 5.000 Euro of microtransactions.

And this is the basic concept of microtransactions: Tell the player the game is even better if he only spends money on this or that small item. I don't want to feel incomplete when I entertain myself. I want to entertain myself on a certain object and know: Okay this is -The Game-.

And if I like the game I can do the addtional challenges of reaching 100% and finding the secret levels. And then I recommend it to my friends. The thought should not be: if I like the game I should spend more money on it, as the game tells me with this ingame UI element.

Concerning your assumption that players don't hate game that have microtransactions in them: Try to ask yourself, if the game would be as popular, if there would exist the same game without microtransactions but with a one time payment after each 100 hours of playing. We assume that all microtransaction features would be unlocked or only be hidden by finishing challenges. I would assume you would buy the second game, or wouldn't you?

You're talking about something totally different than what I proposed though.

I'm not talking about microtransactions where Schine charges for content the way Paradox does with CK2 or Stellaris. Not at all. That's garbage and I don't touch it.

I'm talking about distributed monetization whereby players can earn money from other players for their ships; not top-down, extra charges for basic stuff. The kind of charge structures you're referring to don't even include the kind of user-centric monetization I'm suggesting.

Go check out Roblox. Which I mentioned in the OP. There are about 1/2 million people online there as I copy this link.

Look at the way that game is monetized.

 

[MacThule]

Server owners sometimes sell server perks Brierie does this. Mods can be created and sold for money if placed behind a paywall. Plenty of options without having to hijack StarMade it self.

Exactly.

Empowering players and servads to monetize their creations and content with a formalized pay structure was my exact OP suggestion.

If you're OK with people selling mods, server perks, and their own ship creations then you're OK with my suggestion.

 

[JinM]

You're talking about something totally different than what I proposed though.

I'm not talking about microtransactions where Schine charges for content the way Paradox does with CK2 or Stellaris. Not at all. That's garbage and I don't touch it.

I'm talking about distributed monetization whereby players can earn money from other players for their ships; not top-down, extra charges for basic stuff. The kind of charge structures you're referring to don't even include the kind of user-centric monetization I'm suggesting.

Go check out Roblox. Which I mentioned in the OP. There are about 1/2 million people online there as I copy this link.

Look at the way that game is monetized.

This is not comparable as the scope of the individual games is way smaller than Starmade. Please stick to games instead of companies when you try to give precise examples.

 

[MacThule]

This is not comparable as the scope of the individual games is way smaller than Starmade. Please stick to games instead of companies when you try to give precise examples.

I think that may be impossible, since my suggestion was regarding Starmade/Schine in general - not about one server or one mode of play.

Now we're getting to the real discussion though.

So yes, the scale is different. A lot is different. Each Starmade server is sort of it's own game though, and the more Schine opens up the code the more divergent they can potentially become. Which certainly broadens Starmade's potential scope.

The only comparison that wouldn't be substantially different would be comparing Starmade to... Starmade. The difference in scale may not very be concrete though - Starmade and Roblox do very similar things, but Roblox is pretty crappy. Yet the company is very ambitious and scaled their operation through excellent strategy (including their approach to monetization), while Schine deliberately keeps itself to a small niche. Roblox is shallow and broad (and really rather ugly, IMO, a few games/mods aside), while Starmade is deeper and narrower in focus.

Part of the reason for my suggestion is that I've recently been dragged into playing a hundred or so hours on various Roblox games because one of my son's friends makes & sells stuff there, so he constantly pushes everyone to play it and then my son wants me to play with him (see how the monetization method works to get people playing?). After being stuck playing Roblox for a while - and tinkering with their development tools a little recently - I started finding myself frequently thinking "Starmade does this, but does it way better." I found myself thinking that a lot.

Roblox is ugly. Their building interface is kind of shitty, though it's more of a development platform than a building interface and it has some good points. Starmade is way more visually attractive, and basic building is way easier and better (though deeper development modification has only just opened up with opening the code). Very different though, but it's much easier to build beautiful things in Starmade than in Roblox (in Roblox really the only option is to upload non-voxel art, because their base voxel building engine is garbage).

Starmade has a lot of broken features. Actually, so does Roblox. But Roblox presents itself as some kind of masterpiece, not a pre-alpha science experiment. They market their game to teachers to use in classrooms as a "learning tool" ... ... yeah. It's wildly successful and yet clumsy, ugly, and buggy as hell. The success is due to intelligent marketing, and a huge cornerstone of that is allowing fans and player-devs to profit from the game because every time they market themselves they market Roblox.

I don't think that Starmade could or should ever operate the way Roblox does, but I do think it gives some very relevant insights into potentials and strategies for a well-made voxel building game. And I think some of the core elements of their monetization strategy could not only work with Starmade but bring a lot of vitality to Starmade if it ever goes Beta (this being really the 800lb gorilla in the room and pretty serious caveat).

 

[JinM]

I think that may be impossible, since my suggestion was regarding Starmade/Schine in general - not about one server or one mode of play.

If you have no real world examples then maybe because your suggestion was not used before in a similar kind of game with equal or bigger scope.

Is that the case?

 

[MacThule]

If you have no real world examples then maybe because your suggestion was not used before in a similar kind of game with equal or bigger scope.

Is that the case?

What is your standard for "similarity?"

Because as far as I know there is no game 'extremely' similar to Starmade in both format & scope. Demanding an apples-to-apples comparison of 1) game format, 2) game scope, and 3) approach to monetization seems... unrealistic.

Particularly when the game I referenced was meant to show an effective implementation of a marketplace approach to distributed monetization that demonstrates the principle is not a game similar enough (by an unknown standard) to Starmade.

It was never my intent to demonstrate an exact model to emulate here by directing you to Roblox. Only to show the general concept because people started criticizing DLCs and paywalls in response to my suggestion - clearly not understanding even the basic concept behind my suggestion.

I don't think I need to give an exact replica in example to demonstrate the general concept and clarify that I'm not talking about DLC drips and paywalls.

I also don't feel like the lack of an extremely similar example stands up well as a "proof" that the concept is not sound. Voxel-based engines have been developed to successfully develop games that are very little like the first successful voxel platforms (Minecraft, etc) in both scope and style. By the logic of "it hasn't been done exactly like this before so it cannot be done like this ever" Schema should never have attempted to develop Starmade in the first place.

Different form and scope simply demand adaptation, they don't somehow indicate incompatibility.

The suggestion is to incentivize player-led development in Starmade by opening up a real-world, free market system based on user-generated content.

Market systems are fairly well proven. Currency incentives are extremely well proven.

It's fine to emphasize that Starmade is a bit of a "special snowflake," but to insist that user-generated content could "never" effectively be incentivized through market rewards seems to be taking the "specialness" a bit far, IMO.

Every platform, product & service is unique in some way. Every successful one, anyway. Being generaly unique doesn't make Starmade unmarketable. Anything can be incentivized, it's merely a matter of finding the right path. Money is usually an extremely good bet in terms of what might be an effective incentive.

The proposed goal is incentivizing user-development and user-generated-content.

Is more development and content not something people want for Starmade? Is a larger, more engaged player base not something people want?

There's a way to accomplish any goal.

The proposed means of achieving the goal is a free-market system offering the potential for real world currency rewards to the best designers and developers that play this game. What's the meta? Let the market decide...

Are we to believe that market systems and currency rewards simply "don't work?" Or is it that Starmade is just so insanely special that it's the one thing in the human experience that simply cannot be monetized?

And if it's your opinion that Starmade can never benefit from monetization of player development and player content, that's fine, but personally I don't think Starmade defies gravity or shits roses. I think it's a game, and one that relies in large part on user-generated mods and assets. It's a game with a massive potential if ever released in a stable condition (hell, the power 1.0 version could have been a pretty big hit itself had it ever been made fully stable even with no new features added). I think that the user assets can be monetized to the benefit of each individual contributor in a way that trickles-up to Schine as well, and I think that effective monetization would drive content creation, growth of player base, and further development at the top (i.e. Schine).

That's my opinion.