Opinion: Fun Is Important, But So Is Your Business Model

["If a game is built around a business model, that’s a recipe for failure," Realtime Worlds co-founder Dave Jones said in 2009. But with online games that utilize untested price schemes, should building fun really come before establishing a business model? Gamasutra's Kris Graft investigates...] When reading a recent analysis on Gamesbrief about the collapse of APB and Crackdown developer Realtime Worlds, one quote from studio creative director and industry veteran Dave Jones stood out: "If a game is built around a business model, that’s a recipe for failure." -- Jones at GameHorizon 2009 There's a part of me that admires that mentality -- in a time where the game industry is becoming increasingly focused on blockbuster hits and monetization of Facebook users, it's kind of nice to hear someone say that if you focus primarily on making money, you will fail. The implication is if the fun is there, everything will just work out, and it makes sense that the guy that created Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings would say such a thing. Those games became successful and memorable because they were, above all else, fun. He told me as much in a meeting at E3 in June this year, which turned out to be just two months before Realtime entered administration. I asked if he had any overarching philosophy about game creation, and between sips of coffee the confident, affable red-haired designer answered, "I have very simple goals, and that is just make a game as much fun as possible. So that was our goal with APB." Now let's just admit here first that APB didn't quite nail that goal, according to game reviewers, anyway (I did spend a very limited amount of time with the game -- mainly morphing my custom character into a twisted abomination). So even with a better focus on a business model, APB may not have been all that successful at launch. Also, I should note that judging by comments Jones made to me personally, I don't think that Realtime just blew off consideration of a business model and a month before release said "Hey, let's charge people this way!" Anyway, Realtime's APB business model is a somewhat controversial hybrid of free-to-play, monthly subscriptions and hours-based paid subscriptions. There's also a user-to-user marketplace for player-created items. Realtime tried to convince gamers the scheme was "flexible," but when some gamers saw that APB was more like a tactical online shooter than a typical MMO, they were critical about the subscription model in any form. Money As An Afterthought While I think that Realtime had some solid reasoning behind its pricing scheme, it appears that instead of building game around or atop that business model, Realtime tried to shoehorn a business model into a design (a move that might have been necessary when examining mid-development how the studio would pay back investors). With online games that utilize emerging, untested business models, is this really a wise decision? Even without picking apart the mistakes of Realtime, which essentially burned through $100 million of VC funding and whatever Crackdown earned over the course of a few years, you can pretty easily argue that some of the best, most successful and fun games take their business models into careful consideration in a game's early stages. How a game will money -- especially one with a recurring fee -- shouldn't be an afterthought if you're making games as a business. We can go as far back as arcade games in their heyday to see how a business model and "fun" can fit together. In games like Donkey Kong you get three lives, or with Street Fighter you're allotted two losses per match before you have to insert more coins. Did the game designers arbitrarily choose to implement those parameters? No, they knew the platform they were building on, and that platform was an arcade machine that made money by requiring the user to put in more coins to beat the challenge provided by a very fun game. The designers of these games had a business model in mind; maybe not at the forefront, but it was implemented within the creative process and certainly was part of core design decisions. Online game models are a different beast and are a bit more complicated than pumping quarters. But again, for the most successful games out there, it's pretty clear that the designers, as much as they focus on a game's fun, have the platform or method of delivery in mind at an early stage. Look at World of Warcraft -- you don't think that the game's designers knew from the start that they had to keep players coming back month after month to pay the subscription fee, designing the quest and leveling system, the expansions, the guild system, the frequency of updates, etc.? Ever hear of the term "sticky"? But tying a business model to an MMO is not just about getting gamers to pay monthly subscriptions. I spoke with Guild Wars studio ArenaNet about their online franchise in 2007, and from the beginning, the developer didn't want to charge monthly subscriptions, rather aiming to release frequent standalone expansions. "By adopting the business model we have, not only do we think it will make it very easy for people to get into the game and try it out… but it also allows us as designers and developers to just focus on mechanics that are fun and we don’t always have to have the thought in the back of our mind about whether or not something is 'sticky' enough," said co-founder Jeff Strain at the time. Again, the business model was there right at the beginning, and the developers made successful design decisions to accomodate that. Also, I think that today's expanding online Asian companies that have seen huge success with their microtransaction-based games would absolutely disagree with the sentiment that a base focus on a business model spells doom. Even smaller developers who release games exclusively on Xbox Live, PlayStation Network or the Wii Shop need to consider that most games on those services sell for $10-$15, and a game needs to be designed according to the expectations established by that price range and distribution method. And as much as some people like to make social game companies out to be villains for their sometimes overzealous approach of business-over-design, maybe packaged game companies can take a couple cues from these money hoarders before jumping headlong into the online market. APB's "Real Killer"? Now it might seem like I'm singling out Realtime and its management, as I look back on the unfortunate disaster from my armchair with 20-20 hindsight (actually that is exactly what I'm doing). To his credit, when I spoke with Jones earlier this year at E3, he in fact did express some business foresight, and did not seem to blow off the importance of a business model when designing a game. At the time, a spokesperson for Realtime even told me that the game's designers were "heavily involved" in coming up with a business model in the game's "pretty early stages." Jones said that Realtime decided to go with the game's controversial flexible pay model a little over a year before the game's release (a decision that really might have been later in the game than it should have been). But a credible-sounding post on PC-focused Rock Paper Shotgun had a purported former staffer on Realtime's other project, MyWorld, state that the model was ultimately "out of the team’s hands" and in the poster's opinion, "the real killer" of APB. "You can’t simply charge what you feel like earning and hope the paying public will agree with your judgment of value," said the poster. "Many of us within RTW were extremely nervous at APB’s prospects long before launch, and with good reason, as it turns out." Really, even for a great game, the business model for APB would still be a difficult sell. Even the traditional buy-the-box-pay-the-subs model that so many MMOs use isn't all that appealing to many gamers, hence companies' move to low-barrier free-to-play models. On Tuesday, Realtime administrators Begbies Traynor, which is assisting in selling off the studio's assets, revealed that APB may not have been a complete failure. The game reportedly has 130,000 registered players, with the average player playing four hours a day and the average paying player spending $28 per month between game time and user-to-user marketplace trading. Joint administrator Paul Dounis said the figures "prove this is a very enjoyable game." So maybe APB in its current form could eventually become a viable business under the right guidance. Maybe. I'm not arguing that game designers should be sitting around deciding what business model to use, I'm just saying that building a game around a business model isn't necessarily a recipe for disaster, and in fact there are games out there that show otherwise. Maybe the creative minds in a game maker can view a business model as a constraint, a scenario that can often bring out one's best work. Building a game on top of a business model is where a huge chunk of the industry is going, and the practice of slapping a price tag on a box is slowly but surely going away. If you're still resistant to that sea change, at least make sure you're not making games with $100 million of someone else's money and if you are, be absolutely, positively certain that the final product is in fact fun. [Thanks to industry consultant and Gamasutra expert blogger Nicholas Lovell of Gamesbrief for his Realtime post-mortem and his declaration of "Bullshit" that inspired this editorial.]