This Is The Modern World

Yesterday, Keen posted in support of a tweet from a particularly disgruntled game developer, who made the controversial - some might say bizarre - claim that "In a world of $5 lattes a game with 50 hours of content is worth $1,000." Wilhem responded with a hilarious rebuttal, which Zubon saw fit to reblog, so by now the topic has probably had about as much publicity as it needs, at least as far as this corner of the blogosphere is concerned.

It's unfortunate for me that the analogy chosen happened to be chain store coffee. I already have such a strongly negative, pre-determined position on the coffee-shop phenomenon that the mere mention of it in any discussion drives all other considerations clean out of my mind. Luckily there were plenty of more rational responders in Wilhelm's comment thread, easily able to dismantle and dispose of the entire spurious argument.

It only occurred to me this morning that there is a potentially relevant and apposite analogy to be drawn between the modern coffee and video game experiences. Comparing a $5 latte to the video game itself is ludicrous but comparing that same purchase to the purchase of a consumable within the game is not.

Indeed, once you step in front of that particular train, the argument in favor of video games being at a disadvantage when it comes to separating consumers from their cash gets knocked into next week and then some. Just open up your current MMO of choice and browse the virtual shelves of the in-game cash shop and see how the prices for boosts and buffs compare with your local coffee dealer. Then think about the production costs and marginal costs. We've come a long, long way from the days of the Ten Dollar Horse.

That $5 latte's beginning to look like a bargain, isn't it? No? Okay, but if it's still an insanely overpriced rip-off then what does that make a $2 Revive Orb?

The game developer who kicked all this off, Michael Hartman, is someone of whose existence I'd previously been as unaware as he surely is of mine, but it turns out he's behind a game that's been, very vaguely, on my radar for a while: Stash. And when I say "vaguely" I really mean it - apparently Stash went into Steam Early Access last year, something that completely passed me by, although it was reported on MassivelyOp at the time.

Michael Hartman is President and CEO of Frogdice, which claims to have been "arguably the first video game studio to utilize the "free-to-play" (F2P) business [model] in 1996", a model the company defines as one in which "players can play the game for free and have the option to purchase additional content, customization, cosmetics, boosts, etc".

His Linkedin entry goes on to say that F2P is "currently the hottest business model in the industry and Frogdice has 20+ years of experience with it". All of which leaves me somewhat confused as to why Mr Hartman was railing against customers' unwillingness to part with cash for games upfront in the first place. Maybe it made more sense on Twitter...

Talking of things that don't make much sense, given Keen's open hostility to the F2P business model and his deep suspicion of Early Access, he and Michael Hartman do seem to make unlikely allies but then I guess it makes about as much sense as the original proposition. I think I'd best leave them to it while I drink my tuppenny instant coffee and open the unsolicited free gifts that shower down around me in my own MMOs of choice.

In the end it comes down to this: make something I want, sell it at a price that's worth paying and I'll willingly give you my money. On the other hand, if you insist on shoving things at me, things that I also want, far more of them than I can possibly find time for, and all of it for free, then you can hardly complain if I take those instead and spend my money on something else, now, can you?.

If I promise not spend any of it on  a $5 latte, will that do you?