This article is also up on my Gamasutra blog here.
Free to play games have made a fortune by selling features and advantages to their player base. Where can they go from here? Selling features to people who are not in their player base.
Let’s say you’re annoyed at one of your friends because they won’t shut up about Farmville. What can you do? Nothing except blocking their messages and maybe kicking their dog a few times.
Now picture a world where Zynga sells digital toxic goo! You log onto Zynga’s digital store, purchase a couple barrels of the stuff for a few bucks and pour it on your annoying friend’s farm. Satisfaction gained and Zynga has made money off of someone who doesn’t even play their games.
But the chain of monetization doesn’t end there! For a few more dollars than the cost of the toxic goo, your friend can rent a cleanup crew to fix up the mess you’ve created. Of course, after this is done, you get a message informing you and a link to purchase even more toxic goo for retaliation.
And let’s not stop there! After this cycle has occurred a few times, we’ll send you a message about our new game, FactoryVille! By managing your factory wisely, you can create a neverending stream of toxic goo to pour on the farms of friends and foes alike! Of course, to have the best factory, you’ll want to purchase a few of our virtual goods…
Although we’ve only mentioned toxic goo, this method could be expanded to cover all sorts of griefing. Plant snatchers to steal crops and add them to your own farm. Salt to taint the ground. Dangerous pesticides. Mutant hordes of locusts.
And of course, the mother of all griefing, the tactical nuclear strike which wipes someone’s farm and account clean off the map. Of course, to go along with this, players will be able to purchase SDI systems to protect themselves as a preemptive measure.
It’s time to take the next step. It’s time to monetize everyone. The future awaits.
Its like a reality show about people turning off their tv service over disgust about how stupid the programs have become. If you want to look inside someone’s house, hear about how Hitler influenced the Mayan Apocalypse, or watch Megasnake Vs. Dinosnake Vs. Men-With-Hats, you deserve what you get.
Before you get too worried, take a look at the titles of the games we’ve published so far.
Please, please, please tell me that you’re not thinking of moving to this model. This model is no better than those fake anti-virus programs (you have to pay to get rid of the annoyance). I simply cannot condone any company that makes these types of games.
There must be games that essentially play like this. The key element described above is that Everyone has access to the preventative measures, and All damage is reversible (except the Nuke – which the threat of would probably reduce the appeal of the game), for the right price. And naturally as with all the best FB money spinners you could earn enough in game to reverse the damage, but it’d take much longer than paying just 1 FB credit to do (until next time…).
If you wanted to get double-devious if a player plays the game too much within a 24 hour period you could have the game automatically allocate goo in small amounts to his friends. This would either appear on their land (toxic waste caused by over working) or in their inventory (next door spill contained – lets give it them back) and would promote the paid options and could be used as incentive to modify player behaviour.
I say we start a National Propaganda campiegn for these features cause this just sounds great! But we need the ability to hire some graverobbers to dig up some old graves and bury bodies on a Friends farm and then tip off the police just to harass them and make em pay legal fees to Evil German Lawyers!