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On the Headaches of MMO Billing Structure
Posted by Maggie Greene at 6:30 AM on November 9, 2008
Gene Hoffman, CEO of Vindicia (a billing and fraud protection company), has some words of wisdom regarding the headache that is billing and payment for MMOs — be they the more 'traditional' subscription model or the free to play model. Obviously, there are benefits and downsides that come with each model, and companies are constantly trying to negotiate a balance between profit and player happiness. Even the vaunted subscription model comes with its own problems and a variety of structures within that model:
I had an interesting discussion this week on the topic of microtransaction models, East-West interaction, and the fact that few people pay much attention to such issues (or dismiss them out of hand); Games In Motion has a nice interview up illustrating the 'fly under the radar' nature of a lot of those microtransaction models. WIM sat down to chat with Rob Goldberg, CEO of GMG Entertainment — the company produces branded pre-paid cards for a couple of franchises, sold at big box stores like Target — to talk about where the market is currently and where it's headed. They estimate somewhere between $75 and $100 million in sales this year, but what about the future?:
Surprise! WoW may be good for you (or rather, good for kids): LiveScience has a nice little piece up on the myriad uses of WoW in educational settings, from getting kids to up their reading and writing ability to parents who use it as part of homeschooling. Constance Steinkuehler of Pop Cosmopolitanism organized a group of middle school-aged boys to play WoW after school (for educational purposes, natch), and the benefits derived from the social community that sprung up were obvious:
There's an interesting article over at The Escapist on the rights of players in virtual worlds — covering a myriad of issues (recourse for theft, ownership of items, DRM, etc) on a global scale, Erin Hoffman has a nice look at some of the issues that have been rearing their ugly heads and what players, companies, and even governments are doing about it. Whatever the resolution ends up being, 'virtual' rights are an increasing problem for parties on all sides of the issue(s) at stake:
Preservation of 'new media' has gotten some attention in recent months — a lot of venerable collections are moving to figure out the best ways to preserve games and gaming media in an archival setting, while building useful collections for the future. The University of Texas at Austin was recently awarded over $US 250,000 to study the collection and preservation of MMOs. In addition to the obvious bits of preservation problems — software and the like — the project is also pretty broad in scope, including an oral history component, as the project head Megan Winget explained:
Veteran UK game journalist Jim Rossignol, currently one of the Big Four at the 
In a Funcom investor briefing, the company has spilled the pricing strategy for their MMO Age of Conan. United States gamers will pay $US59.99 for the game and $US14.99/month for the subscription. (Meanwhile, European gamers will pay 49.99 Euro and 12.99 Euro/month.) A quick skim through the briefing reveals some other interesting factoids, like that the game has already gone gold, Funcom expects 500,000-600,000 active subscribers at launch and internal surveys show that a "large proportion" of beta testers would like to buy it. Anyone out there considering cheating on their WoW account? 
