Jenova Chen, president and creative director at thatgamecompany, has an insightful view of microtransactions and why people pay for things in a free-to-play game.
If you’ve never heard of thatgamecompany, you’ve probably at least heard of some of their games. Flower puts the player in control of a flower petal as it flies through the air and grows into a beautiful flower, while Journey is an incredibly artistic title that serves as a metaphor for life itself.
They’re both one-and-done, pay and play games, and these days you can get them both for pretty cheap. Their latest game, Sky: Children of the Light, is totally different. It’s a free-to-play mobile game that funds itself entirely on microtransactions. It’s still artistic, but it’s less of a journey and more of a social experience.
Going from artistic indie games to a free-to-play mobile game sounds like an enormous leap that might otherwise completely change a company (as it has with so many larger publishers--you know who you are), but Jenova Chen at thatgamecompany has kept their focus on the player’s emotions rather than the extremely lucrative mobile market.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Chen explains that Sky: Children of the Light has been a big success, and part of that has been through an extremely insightful view of monetization. Sky is a free-to-play game where they make cash through microtransactions--usually cosmetics, such as capes, masks, hairstyles, hats, pants, musical instruments, emotes, and more. That’s a lot different from other mobile games that often use gacha mechanics like loot boxes, or pay-to-win mechanics as with many mobile strategy games like Clash of Clans.
In both those cases, the player either feels like a gambler, going through the constant ups and downs of winning and losing or like a mercenary begging for the latest and greatest weapons from their arms dealer. Neither of them is great, says Chen, who wanted something different for his players.
Instead, Chen wanted Sky to feel "like a Pixar movie" theme park--"a place people go to just to hang out and relax." The focus with Sky was making a social space where people can interact safely.
Once the theme park is established, it comes time to support the game through monetization. Originally, Chen tried to monetize the game entirely through altruism by making it so players could only purchase gifts for others and not themselves. This system didn't go quite as expected.
"We spent a long time working on an economy where giving and altruistic gifting is the driver of the spending," Chen explained. "We removed a lot of abilities that players could purchase for themselves, so they have to purchase them for other people, but that backfired on us. When everything is about giving, people start to do quid pro quo and sometimes when you gift something to someone and that person doesn't return the favor, you get angry because you're expecting it to return."
After months of testing, Chen decided that a healthy mix of selfish and altruistic purchases are necessary. Now you can buy yourself a hat, or you can give that hat away to a friend.
"Without selfish choices, sometimes the player will question whether your altruistic action is sincere. We want players to feel sincere toward each other, so after we introduced some selfish purchase options, players were much more positive about receiving gifts and requests for forming friendships."
Sky is all about forming relationships. Chat and gift-giving options only become available after building a friendship with other players, and the gameplay itself requires other players in order to progress.
Sky: Children of the Light is currently available on iOS, but it’s coming out for Android and the Nintendo Switch later this year.
Source: GamesIndustry.biz