Quote:
Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn
No limit of course.
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Markus, please be careful dismissing this idea so quickly. There are economic, legal, and moral reasons to at least consider it.
First, I'm guessing that you said 'of course' because it would feel like stupid business practice to limit revenues. Please correct me if my reading of that phrase is incorrect, and you have other reasons for feeling that dismissal is the obvious answer. In any case, if that is the assumption, that's a facile understanding of this type of monetization within the game industry.
Limiting spending in a given time period is actually unlikely to decrease total expenditure of a committed fanbase (i.e. whales, the only ones who would be affected by such a limit), it will simply smooth out the spending over more time. This will keep the whales logging in more often, as opposed to spending a ton of money and then ignoring the game until they feel like spending a bunch more. Wouldn't you at least potentially prefer to have someone with a lot of disposable income spending $100 every day instead of spending that same ~$3,000 once a month?
Legally and morally, this would also help you monitor the type of spending behaviors which you have elsewhere mentioned understanding the imperative nature of keeping an eye on when building this sort of monetization model.
It would help prevent kids from spending more money than they can conceptualize on their parents' dime.
It would offer better data on spending patterns, providing more opportunities to reach out in person by email to check in with customers who demonstrate potentially compulsive, limit-reaching, gambling-addiction-type spending patterns, which might allow you to prevent them from throwing away their life on a game. And again, just in case anyone thinks I'm overstating what can happen or how devastating it can be to players, I'll remind them I've worked at Ubisoft and other game companies on market intelligence and strategic planning, and the team has built something here that is easily fun and addictive enough to ruin lives if precautions aren't taken.
I don't know for sure whether there should or shouldn't be a limit, or where one should be set, but I think there are very strong arguments for a limit, and I can think of few strong arguments against one given the aforementioned facile nature of a revenue-based argument. It seems there is at least an important discussion to be had, if it hasn't been had already (in which case I'd love to hear more about the thought process that went into the dismissal of the idea of limits).
Edit: Also, there are gameplay reasons for considering a limit. Not only does it encourage whales to log in more often, it gives them a more level playing field amongst themselves. You can't just spend until your team is all Perfect at once, though you can over time - in the meantime, you have to play with some skill too. The balance at the top levels, while still stacked compared to low levels, will remain more even, which is a good thing for player retention at all spending levels.