Dungeons & Dragons Online: Play for free

How do you turn a free product into a profitable enterprise? That’s normally the challenging issue to be faced in today’s increasingly competitive online market. Internet giant Google continues to have issues attempting to monetise its expensively acquired YouTube daughter. Yet game developer Turbine is looking to do exactly the opposite, converting their current business model into a subscription-supported free product. But does ‘free’ pay?

It certainly appears that Turbine’s decision to offer their MMO Dungeons & Dragons Online for free has paid off. Hundreds of thousands of new players have signed up to take advantage of the new offer, and despite the ‘free’ price tag, subscriptions are up 40%. In addition, many players are taking advantage of an in-game payment mechanism to buy additional items and open up new sections of the game. Previously the game had required players to pay a one off purchase price, followed by a monthly subscription fee. Now just about anyone can download the game and be playing within half an hour, paying or otherwise. Turbine also maintain that some players are paying even more per month than the previous subscription fee alone, removing an important cap on how much individual players could pay into the game. Rather than seeing players who play without paying as freeloaders, Turbine are confident that such players bring their own benefit to the company, generating interest, advertising via word-of-mouth, and thereby generating new subscriptions and one-off payments.

Just how successful this move will prove to be in the long-run is difficult to estimate. It’s clear that the business model has worked to some extent, generating plenty of fresh interest in a game that is already over three years old. But will the benefits dry up once the hype is over? What is clear is that this move represents yet another step away from traditional methods of sale, and is another example of a trend away from that classic method of promoting games—the demo.

Indeed, it would appear that there is plenty of evidence that offering games for free, if only for short periods, acts as one of the best methods of advertisement. Figures produced earlier this year by Valve boss Gabe Newell suggest that offering their action zombie-fest Left 4 Dead at a discount price over a free test weekend boosted sales figures to such an extent that they beat launch figures. The same source reveals that the release of new content for their other key title Team Fortress 2 also boosted Valve’s sales significantly.

Of course, in the case of games sold via Steam the main impulse for the impressive sales figures lies in the buyer’s perception of the short-term heavy discounts being offered. But the principle of no cost gaming models isn’t limited to only short-term probation periods, nor is Turbine unique in pursuing their policy of a combined free and subscription service. Gaming giant EA recently entered the market with Battlefield Heroes, a comical extension to their successful Battlefield series, this time free to play via browser, and supported by player micro-payments for upgrades and vanity items. Certainly an experimental move on EA’s part, recent figures do suggest that there has been some success, with players who make use of the game’s extra features paying an average of $20, and the total number of players recently tipping the 2 million mark.

And it’s not just the big players who are experimenting with new sales tactics. 2D Boy are taking a leaf out of Radiohead’s books, and offering their award-winning World of Goo title for a limited time at whatever price the buyer wishes. Whilst I can’t see such a risk being taken by any of the larger games producers any time soon, regardless of how successful 2D Boy’s trial proves, it does represent yet another departure from the traditional sales models.

As ever, however, failure remains an important component of every experiment. Whilst systems of in-game micro-payments are providing some evidence of success for EA and Turbine, it appears other alternatives to direct subscription gaming aren’t bringing home the bacon. id Software’s Quake Live was to be a free browser-based game funded via in-game advertising, however earlier this year John Carmack revealed that a premium subscription service would be have to be offered in addition, an honest admission that their advertising model alone won’t foot the bill.

Nevertheless, it is clear that games companies are becoming increasingly willing to try new tactics when it comes to funding their productions. Direct payment and subscription methods are being gradually supplemented in part with micro-payments, and attempts are being made to integrate in-game advertising, although to date it seems with little relatively success. Valve’s Steam content delivery system is proving to be an able testing ground for offering short-term probation periods for gamers, and the different levels of discounts and their positive effect on games sales will provide plenty of food for thought for games publishers and psychologists alike. Whilst we are still some way from seeing such methods commonly applied to mainstream games, it will be interesting too see whether these current examples remain profitable, and if they will inspire others to do the same. It seems even a free product can turn a profit.

Harry S Truman

President Truman famously kept a sign on his desk that said “The buck stops here”, a gift from an avid poker player. Yet whilst we might appreciate the imagery and the sentiment, should we really rely on there being a ‘buck‘ to pass? Is there always a man in charge, someone with whom the ultimate responsibility lies? The public at large like to believe so. Having someone who is nominally in charge provides a feeling that there is some level of control over daily events, that there is some direction to the madness that seems to govern our lives. It isn’t particularly important whether that person you believe in is God, the president, the Führer or Chuck Norris. Nor does that responsible person need to be an individual, it can just as easily be taken as being particular position, a group of people, or an organisation.

Yet having someone to look to as the ‘Man in Charge’ also entails having someone to blame when things go wrong. In general, people are not willing to look at events as the result of complex systems of uncountable interconnected threads. Such systems lack palpability, they invoke confusion and lack obvious conclusions. Much easier to view events as the result of simple inputs and outputs, revolving around the decision-making roles of important personages. When the proverbial hits the fan, the easiest response is to find those at the helm, whether particular individuals or a group, and lay the blame as thick and fast as the cement mixers can provide it. It’s a simple and effective reaction, since any person that can be held culpable must have made decisions, and any decision can be deemed retrospectively fallacious. Ergo any individual can be made and held responsible.¹

Take a quick flick through the history books, and you can find countless examples of this kind of scapegoating. The individual in question need not be reprimanded or even blamed, but we can see how the complex events of history were pinned on the actions and decisions of this one great personage. Take the failed General Strike of 1926, which occurred because Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin went to bed early, for example. Or the Battle of Borodino, was lost because Napoleon had a cold that day. There are any number of examples strewn throughout the historical literature, which describe the passing of major events through the actions and ideas of great individuals. Such writing of history maybe frowned upon, but it makes for a simple and entertaining discussion. How often have you seen a history of Europe in which whole peoples are summed up in such remarks as “the Germans believed” or “Russia felt”? How often are the courses of nations described as if being the personal hobby of one or other historical personality? Or how many people would recognise the name Gavrilo Princip as belonging to the man who started the chain of events that apparently led to the First World War?

Responsibility for events perhaps never takes a more crazy turn than in the realm of economics. For all the bales of paper used exhorting economic theory, for all the man-hours and computing power spent documenting the ticking of our economies, the complexities of a system that relies on the psychologies of six milliard people factored up by any number of other inputs, outputs and interactions remains as difficult to predict and describe as it perhaps ever will be. And yet the ups and downs, the dippings and divings, the riding of Kondratiev waves and Kuznets cycles, can all be pinned on the policies and opinions of a group of individuals. As William Easterly wrote in this post on Aid Watch,

Why do we all fall for the Man in Charge fallacy? We like to anthropomorphize a complex system of multiple power centers, bottom-up social norms, and spontaneous markets, innovators, and entrepreneurs, because it is scary to think of such a complex system with no Man in Charge.

Perhaps fear is exactly what prevents us from acknowledging the complexity of such systems. Though a certain level of convenience must also be acceded. Opponents of the government can argue that in the face of an economic crisis, it is clear that they overspent in the preceding year(s). Others argue that they spent too little. Some that they interfered too much in the market, yet others that they were too lax. It is the greatest position for the opposition to be in, since every argument they use is right. For the government was responsible at the time, thus the government must have been in error, therefore the government made the wrong decisions, and in that experimental laboratory of history there are no control tests and no repeat conditions.

Yet whilst the truth of what Easterly writes is fairly evident to see, for all who stop and think for more than a few seconds, the illusion of anthropological authority will always be with us. Set aside the angst ridden problems of an existentialism based on chaos and unrule, we need the chimera of the reprehensible individual as an idea we can understand and utilise. A complex system with more factors than we can conjure may be something to study in an ivory tower, but it isn’t something we can talk about, argue about, and shout about in the streets. Man is the centre of Man’s universe, and his self-deification continues to this very day. When Man created God, he had God conveniently recreate Man in his own image. Now that God has for many become optional, Man is left to fill the gap of responsibility. Despite the evidence of his exploits staring him in the face, Man continues to distance himself from the world around him. Extinctions almost always have his actions at root, global warming is a result of his ignorance or greed. Even the very products of his toil are labelled as man-made, counterpoint to all that is natural in the world. We take responsibility onto ourselves as a species – and then we play pass the buck.

Responsibility is an interesting phenomenon, when we step and look at it a little more objectively. We deal in it as currency, taking it when it suits, gladly passing it on where it doesn’t, and when things go wrong, laying the finger of blame on anyone we happen to find carrying it. Finding the roots of this psychology would be a difficult quest, though an interesting one, and one that no doubt shows fundamental equivalents in other members of the animal kingdom. But I cannot in any event imagine a future in which responsibility will not play a part in everyday society, qualming angst before unpredictability, providing the illusion of control over the unaccountable, and affecting change through the apportioning of blame and the running of scapegoats.

1. We should not forget, of course, that as much as we enjoy seeing certain individuals as being responsible for the workings of the world, both for the comfort it gives us whilst things are ticking along smoothly, as well as the convenience of having someone to blame when they don’t, the individuals themselves also enjoy a level of revelry in the illusion that they are the ones with all the answers.

Of course, the supermarkets can hide behind their names, disguising the fact that the economies of scale have destroyed the vagaries of the market and left us with these abominations. There may appear to be some jostling at the top, but the same essential products are on sale in essentially the same way in every one of their stores. Of course, the true competition goes on behind the scenes, out of sight of the consumer, to keep the prices down and keep the margins up. But the other competition goes by on the very shelves, as the supermarkets surreptitiously promote their own brand goods above third party offerings. Who can deny that the sliding scale of quality runs from Tesco “Value”, through Tesco “Finest” to the majority of third party products? Whilst their lower end products capture the price conscious element of the market, the better quality products attempt to undercut the price of the third party products whilst offering at least a competitive level of quality. That’s not to say this is a policy actually pursued by the chains, but it is certainly within their power to do so, and the fact that they can simply stop stocking third party brands makes such a goal all the easier to achieve.

The problem is that whilst the supermarket has altered the way we buy food, it has also destroyed the competition and rivalry which kept food quality up. Whilst the corner shop has evolved and taken on a new role in the marketplace, backed by the big names of Spar or Londis, the butchers, bakers and greengrocers have been confined to those areas the supermarket cannot yet penetrate. Since this very basic competition is now out of the public sphere, it is little surprise that food quality has dropped over the years.

What is needed is a true incarnation of the supermarket. It cannot be denied that the modern day supermarket provides many conveniences that critics often ignore. Convenient parking, bulk purchases, single transactions, a wider selection of food, competitive prices, are all benefits that the modern consumer will not give up for the sake of better produce. A true supermarket could and should, of course, maintain these benefits, by providing exactly the kind of infrastructure found in today’s behemoths. Everything from site maintenance and in-store facilities, to marketing and financing, through to storage and distribution, would all be handled by the overall supermarket organisation. The store itself, however, would comprise market stalls of all varieties, rented or leased to producers and distributors, organised exactly as might be found in a modern supermarket. Of course, such a layout would limit the scope of individual suppliers to sell a wide variety of products, but the consumer’s demands must be catered to if such a system were to compete with the established giants. Similarly, with today’s technology, a system could easily be established to allow all financial transactions to be made by the overarching supermarket edifice, skimming profits from the sales of individual retailers.

Whilst more rural markets could integrate local producers akin to the farmers’ markets, the demands of the city would continue to rely on the methods of today. Yet even in the urban environment, consumers would be free to choose based not only on price, but on what they can physically see, smell, and should they be a regular customer, taste. Of course these rules could not apply to many items stocked in today’s stores, and perhaps these areas would be taken up by the supermarket edifice itself, but the space for competition in fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy, baked goods, preserves etc. is overwhelming. Potentially, of course, the supermarket could also serve to change food production patterns, as local producers bring their products to market locally, reducing the need for long distance deliveries and longer term storage, and contributing to a more environmentally friendly outlook. The success of a product such as Bonne Maman preserves to some extent illustrates the subconscious level of desire for high quality, locally produced foods. Their determined efforts to improve quality, and their deliberate marketing image replete with labels printed to resemble handwritten equivalents, and patchwork lid designs, have seen tremendous market gains in recent years.

Ultimately, of course, the supermarket in its present form is here to stay, and having already cornered the food market, giants such as Tesco have already found their only avenues open for continued expansion lie in the non-food section. With food prices seemingly set to rise, after years of underpricing and the effects of the world’s burgeoning population starting to take effect in combination with the backlash against technological and intensive farming, it would appear that the supermarket focus on good value for money will continue to take priority over food quality, a fact we can only learn to accept, with no alternative in sight.

The key here of course is cash, that anonymous key to the monetary house. Some have pointed out that the age of using cash as a medium is gradually drawing to a close, and the establishment is beginning to see the benefits of expediting its demise. This includes the government, banks, financial markets and big corporations. For an example, we need only consider the recent charges introduced by BT.

According to the government watchdog Ofcom, in recent years BT have had a residential market presence of 70-80%, with the latter figure roughly representing the number of residential lines. This totals roughly 20 million landlines, which using the traditional quarterly bill paying system makes 80 million payments a year. So how much does it cost BT to collect these charges? Well, consider the options.

• An old-fashioned method such as paying your bills at the Post Office should involve little detriment, the money being transferred electronically into BT’s bank accounts, with presumably some small handling fee for the Post Office.
• A cheque made payable to the company, which given the scale of their operation should also be a simple matter for the giant to deal with.
• Online credit card transaction, which would incur charges from the credit card companies, though I’ll admit I don’t know if BT passes these on to its customers.
• Electronic Direct Debit payments direct from customers’ bank accounts.

BT’s preferred method is clear, and as their website points out:

Many of our customers now pay by Direct Debit which is an ideal option if you find it difficult to get out or worry that you will forget to pay your bill on time.

The arguments are dressed up and sugar coated to make the idea of giving BT direct access to your bank account seem to be a rather agreeable proposition. The icing on the cake is that it costs customers less to pay via this method. BT have introduced a scandalous ‘payment processing fee’ amounting to £4.50 (plus VAT) per transaction, paying via cheque or cash.

Now one can understand the complexities of dealing with payment methods such as the cheque. Assuming BT have no automated procedures for dealing with cheques, manually inputting the figures, such as dates, sums, account numbers etc., requiring an hour’s labour for 100 payments, one can see how a wage of £500 per hour is justifiable. But to charge such extraordinary fees for cash payments that are dealt with by another body, where is the justice in that? The levy represents around a 10% increase on the average customer’s quarterly bill. Add to that the fines for late payment (which are avoided with Direct Debit by having your bank balance overdrawn instead), and it becomes clear how BT are dictating the payment methods of their victims customers.

This isn’t the first example of prejudice against traditional payment methods, nor is it a precedent for cash payments being made financially unsound. But it is surely an example of the way in which the demise of anonymous paper money is slowly being exacerbated by that interlinked establishment of government and big business.

Visit the Countryside Centre to find out more about the estate’s wildlife and conservation work before setting off to explore, perhaps to Threave Castle or the bird hides overlooking the River Dee and Black Park Marsh, a Special Protection Area for breeding waders and wintering wildfowl. If you’re lucky you may even see otters and osprey fishing in the river. Just make sure you leave enough time for a cup of tea and a slice of home-made cake.

Sound wonderful? A perfect day out for the family, wouldn’t you say? That is, until it comes to paying entrance fees. Bearing in mind the respectable discounts offered for families, simple admission to the gardens costs an impressive £5 per adult. Access to Threave House in addition (by guided tour only) brings the ticket price up to £9. In order to visit the nearby Threave Castle a further £3.50 need be added to the day’s toll.

Of course, these are more extreme price figures, and some people may even consider these prices to be good value. Indeed for families of the just the right proportions, the discounted family ticket prices offered by the Trust do make travelling with a family much more affordable. But that’s besides the basic principle. According to the National Trust’s annual review financial summary for 2005-2006, admission fees account for just £12.4 million of the £337.2 million total revenues – just under 4%. This proportion is not as low in the case of the NTS, but the figure begs the question: how can they be so low? The answer is simple; the prices are set to make the costs of membership all that more inviting. The National Trust boasts of membership exceeding 3.4 million. From the NTS’ website:

The National Trust for Scotland is the conservation charity that protects and promotes Scotland’s natural and cultural heritage for present and future generations to enjoy. With over 270,000 members it is the largest conservation charity in Scotland and it depends for its support on donations, legacies, grants and membership subscriptions.

That massive membership cries testament to the injustice of the National Trusts’ admission fees. Claiming to be an organisation run for the benefit of everyone, in truth the Trusts offer the preservation of the nation’s gardens, collections, stately homes, castles and sundry for the benefit of those who can afford the membership costs. In principle, through the National Trust Acts 1907-1971 which grant the singular right of the charities to hold lands in perpetuum, by declaring them inalienable, every member of the nation has paid their dues to the Trusts, by the foregoing of the inheritance taxes on National Trust lands which often directly precipitated their acquisition in the first place.

Whilst few would quibble with the way in which the National Trust and the National Trust for Scotland conduct their business, the issue of funding is in need of some redress. The Trusts’ current position on admission fees actually limits access to certain sections of the public, for the sake of gaining increased revenues through membership fees. Although membership offers good value for money for the regular daytrippers, it does little to assuage the image of elitism the Trusts project to the poorer sections of society.