PBBG Player Survey 2024 Results - Part 2: Monetization

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• The Role of Monetization In PBBGs
• Player Spending Behavior
  • Self-Reported
  • Observed Behavior
• Tradeable/Giftable Premium Options
  • Tradeable Options
  • Giftable Options
• Balance and Fairness
• Conclusion

Introduction

On the back of our PBBG Player Survey 2024 and some recent discussion in the #monetization channel on the PBBG discord server, we're going to talk some more about one of our favorite topics - Monetization in PBBGs.

While this post is specifically talking about monetization in PBBGs, much of the advice can be used as food for thought for other game types and mediums as the monetization methods are not exclusive to PBBGs.

This post serves as part two of the survey results series, following part one from August. Part three (and possibly more) of this series to come at a later date.

The Role of Monetization In PBBGs

There are only a handful of high-level reasons that you're making a PBBG; #1, you love making games; #2, you want to make money and think games might be a good choice; #3, you're being employed to make games; and #4, you've played another game and think you could do a better job yourself (this option has a lot of overlap with #1, but slightly different motivation)

Half of these reasons are explicitly about making money for yourself, so the role of monetization should be obvious to you, but for options #1 and #4, monetization might be a total afterthought or even handwaved away early on.

Unless you have a benevolent benefactor funding your endeavor, monetization in PBBGs is going to be important to you, at a minimum, to allow you to continue the development and operation of your game over the long term - making and running games is not free, your time has value and servers cost money. Monetization is essential in ensuring that you can continue on your project and, if successful, may even allow you to fund development (even if only by covering server costs and your own personal needs) for future games.

Player Spending Behavior

Self-Reported

The PBBG Player Survey 2024 posed two questions to players regarding monetization in PBBGs that can be seen below with their results:

Observed Behavior

With well over a decade of experience running free-to-play PBBGs with various monetization methods across them, I have observed that approximately 5% of players will spend money on your game. This figure will obviously vary from genre to genre and from game to game, and you may experience lower rates or higher rates of spending depending on what you offer.

Monthly subscriptions, as with the self-reported options shown above, have shown to be an easy choice for players to decide to spend on your game and have historically been very low controversy with very few issues being raised with them (assuming they're not wildly unbalanced, that is!) from players. Subscriptions do not account for most of the income from the monetization methods offered. However, they do provide a relatively stable and predictable level of income that is likely to cover most direct expenses that you will see operating your game (i.e. server costs, etc., as opposed to your own time spent)

While the self-reported option of Cosmetic purchases comes in at the choice most players are happy to have present in the games they play, in my experience with PBBGs, outside of highly visible cosmetics such as those displayed wherever your player name is shown, players will often opt not to spend much on cosmetics as they're more difficult to "show off" with, for lack of a better word. Players who would not spend were very seldomly vocal about the presence of cosmetics on other playesr and thus made for a good community-minded option that wouldn't rock the boat. Cosmetics in PBBGs are also overwhelmingly one-time purchases and are not usually a great option for the recurring income you will need/want for your game - that is to say only that you likely shouldn't try to rely on them as the only method of monetization, they should be part of a balanced set of choices for your players to spend.

In practice, I observed the third-highest option of One-time unlocks being more controversial in terms of player opinions as they were often decried as pay-to-win by those that did not purchase these themselves. They also fall victim to the same issue that cosmetic purchases do in terms of being non-recurring and making it more difficult to plan any financial choices around them. While I have only implemented these in multiplayer games, one-time unlocks will likely thrive more in single-player PBBGs where there willless reason for other players to feel hard doneby.

Microtransactions, predictably, came in as an one of the options that was not overwhelmingly desirable to the respondents as it is generally the method that garners the most negative attention for being pay-to-win. While it is true that microtranscations can often be seen and utilized in free-to-play PBBGs as an option to get ahead of your fellow players, as long as the choices you offer are well-considered and don't quickly destroy game balance if purchased, they are a great option for generating income for your games and many of the spending players (especially those that are time poor but are big savers/earners) will be explicitly looking for this type of option.

Tradeable/Giftable Premium Options

Regardless of the many monetization methods you choose, you should strongly consider making them either tradeable, giftable, or both. Including this functionality will often see your spending players buying extras to sell on the open market, allowing players who otherwise won't, or can't, spend real money on your game to obtain premium benefits for themselves, too.

Here is a quick overview of each of these two options to consider:

Tradeable Options

This is often seen in the ability to purchase a premium option that is then sent to your inventory as an "item" (or equivalent) that can then be sent to other players, given to guild members, traded on the in-game markets, or otherwise stashed in your own inventory for later. Players can then "use" the item to apply/reap the benefits of the premium option on themselves at their leisure.

You may also see restrictions on the type of trading and/or the number of times trading may be carried out with premium options. For example, some games opt to only allow a single trade to be made with premium options (e.g. Player A purchases a premium item, sends/sells it to Player B. Player B is unable to send/sell the item to another player)

Giftable Options

Not too dissimilar to the tradeable option with a "single transfer" restriction, these are overwhelmingly seen as a "gift to another player" type option on the premium page/store where you elect a recipient for the items that you then make the purchase for.

With this method, you never see the premium item in your account; instead, the recipient receives it directly in their account - it is often not also tradeable (though where games implement both options, it can sometimes be the case), and you, as the purchaser/gifter, are sometimes also able to specify a gift message to go along with a purchase.

In practice, I've seen this option usually reserved for players purchasing for their friends and guild members, who may or may not be paying the purchaser with in-game money/items or may just be on the receiving end of a friendly deed.

Balance and Fairness

A recurring theme that you'll see talked about throughout our posts is balance (and, by extension, fairness), and it is one of the things that is absolutely vital to take into account when thinking about monetization methods in your games.

By their very nature, many monetization methods found in a game (not just in PBBGs) will be designed to tip the balance in the purchaser's favor. This is a necessary selling point to be able to entice a player to spend on your game; most players would like to receive a benefit of some sort in return for the money that they give you. Some games will accept "donations" in lieu of other monetization methods. However, they're often only enough to cover server expenses, if at all, and will rarely see much in the way of surplus for the developer(s).

The concept of "fairness" comes into play when talking about multiplayer games (or "single-player" games with leaderboards), when a monetization method can quickly tilt the scales in the purchaser's favor and significantly outstrip or negate the work of a non-spending (or lesser spending) player, it very quickly evokes thoughts of being "unfair" to many players.

Balancing the benefits gained from the monetization methods present can be a tricky endeavor and will likely need to be tweaked over time as players make use of them. An issue that you should consider early on is the impact of what is colloquially known as "whales" - players that will spend large amounts of money on your game. Depending on what benefits you're offering, a whale may have the ability to quickly destabilize your game economy, take the top spot in your leaderboard, or ultimately ruin other players' experiences if they can have a direct impact on other players via battles, debuffs, or similar.

Mechanisms to ensure that a spending player, including whales, can't cause significant damage to the game, economy, or community are things you should consider upfront. Many options are available here, including more "drastic" measures such as limiting player spending by week/month to more community-minded options such as only ever allowing players to purchase "global buffs" that will benefit everyone online during the buff and not just the current player.

Conclusion

As a game developer, it's ultimately up to you to decide what, why, and how you introduce these things and you know your community best. Remember; it's perfectly okay to make money from something you've made, even if a vocal minority scream at you otherwise!

It's a longer than usual article here, but thanks for sticking with us this far! As always, there is no one "right answer," so feel free to take the experience and opinions we're offering up and experiment with what methods you're comfortable with.

That's all for part two of the PBBG Player Survey 2024 results series! Check back later for part three, or, if you still haven't done it, check out part one for more graph fun!

First published September 6, 2024

Tags: Monetization , PBBG , PBBG Surveys