Topic: Would you play a game for 50c...

[Stogi]

....at home and every time you died or continued, you'd have to pay another 50c to play?


An arcade game at home.

[S-U-P-E-R]

Maybe if I didn't have to pay for any of the hardware or software!

[RedBlue]

Only if the game was free and non of that you used up your turns pay 50 cents or wait 1 day.

[S-U-P-E-R]

I feel like this has been tried before and it flopped. MS Game Room or something?

[TJ Spyke]

Game Room flopped because Microsoft thought people would be willing to pay $3 a piece for Atari 2600 and Intellivision games ($5 if you wanted both the Xbox Live Arcade and PC versions).

[S-U-P-E-R]

IIRC you could also just play games with credits.

[TJ Spyke]

Yes, at $0.50 per play. But unless you intended to play a game less than 6 times, you were better off buying the game

[Adrock]

I wouldn't. I'd probably end up paying more on continues than on the cost of just buying the game. Not to mention the times I turn on a game, decide I don't feel like playing it then turn it off.

[Stogi]

What if you get to keep the game if you reach the retail price or have an opportunity to buy it with the amount you already spent deducted from the final price?

[ejamer]

What kind of game are we talking about?
What type of hardware is involved?


I'm totally willing to do something like that if it makes sense for me. But if this is a new pricing model for existing games, if I'm required to buy any hardware to play, or if the game experience is something that I can easily get at a lower price elsewhere then it's ridiculous.


Arcades are still interesting for me because they offer a different type of game experience than home consoles. For home consoles I'm totally against pay-to-play or free-to-play* models and refuse to support games that employ them.


*ie:  Free-to-play initially in gimped mode, but raping your wallet with microtransactions if you want to keep playing or be competitive.

[Ian Sane]

No fucking way whatsoever.  I wouldn't pay even 1 cent in this model (and I associated 50 cents a play as a rip off; in my day an arcade game cost a quarter PERIOD) for the simple reason that the shelf life of the game is finite.  It has a remote off-switch.  One day the publisher will decide to stop supporting the model and then I'm at the mercy if they let me keep it or not.  I like how 20 years later I can put a cart in my SNES and it works and Nintendo can't do **** about it.

The concept also reinforced the bullshit notion that you don't own the product you buy but buy merely some licence to it that puts too much power in the hands of the company making the product.  You would never buy a car where Ford can literally disable your car remotely and tell you you have to buy a new one, yet we're cool with this for games or other forms of IP?  **** that.  I'm not going to give up my rights and gain nothing for it just because some big corporation has politicians on his payroll.

[Stogi]

Ok. What about online rentals? You pay a fee to play it for a day and get to keep your save should you like to play it again.

[magicpixie]

As much as I hate some of the ideas that have surfaced recently, I like the fact that there is some discussion going on in the industry about their broken pricing model.  I just hate that certain publishers will inevitably come to a solution that ends up hurting consumers.

Personally, I doubt I'd be willing to pay per play.  Online rentals... eeeeeeeehhh....  Maybe.  Depends on the pricing structure they come up with.

[jvgsjeff]

I wouldn't. Why pay 50 cents when you may be dead in a minute? That comes out to $30 an hour to play a game. Sure, you'll last longer once you get better at the game, but you'd have to spend a lot of money early on just to get good at it. It's definitely not worth it, I'd rather buy a game and play it as much as I want.

[Shaymin]

Only if after... 40 plays, it unlocked free play.

[S-U-P-E-R]

I wouldn't. Why pay 50 cents when you may be dead in a minute? That comes out to $30 an hour to play a game. Sure, you'll last longer once you get better at the game, but you'd have to spend a lot of money early on just to get good at it. It's definitely not worth it, I'd rather buy a game and play it as much as I want.

Sounds like someone is terrible at video games!

If I paid per death in a game, I would get through most games really, really cheaply, honestly.
 
edit: forgot my emoticon

[jvgsjeff]

No, I'm not. But if you're playing a new game, you're not likely to last 5 minutes on the first 50 cents. And some games have a timer anyway. I played some racing game in an arcade once, I think it cost a dollar even. It gave you about 45 seconds of play time, it didn't even let you finish the race before it was asking for more money. That was the last time I paid a dollar to play an arcade game. If it's not a game you're familiar with, it's just throwing money away.

[smallsharkbigbite]

I think it depends on the quality of the game and the exact specifics on how it is unlocked. 


Some modifications that may make people more on board is what if you paid $.50/$1.00 a day that you played the game.  MMOs have gotten away with a pay to play model so it's not new.  I've considered subscribing to iRacing as an old NR2K3 fan.  That uses a monthly fee and is a pretty solid game. 


I think it comes down to value, pricing will obviously be more dynamic in the future. 


Would everyone really be upset if the next Zelda was $.99/day or $4.99/week to rent?  Especially if they still give you the option to buy for $59.99?  What if they gave an updated dungeon every 3 months to bring people back into the game rather than start a completely new Zelda?  I know we like to think we own the games, but every generation it seems they push us more and more towards a rent model and unique content is released download only.  I think the key to this model working is the developer bringing updates to keep bringing you back to the game. 


What if instead of Zelda (since Zelda is considered AAA), what if say the latest Need for Speed Most Wanted was released at $.99/day $4.99/week?  I would personally love that.  Great way to download and try out full game versions that I'm not that interested in paying $59.99 for. 

[ShyGuy]

I will pay 25 cents.

[UncleBob]

Would you pay $50 for a full, complete game... but when you die, you die.  Game over, you can never play again.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/raitendo/you-only-live-once

[KeyBilly]

I'd rather go with a rental model, where I get a certain time period (a month?) to play the game, after which it goes away.  There are very few games that I play more than once, since time is limited and there are so many games to experience.  Usually, after beating a game on Steam, I immediately delete it to clear the SSD space.

Paying 50c per play could work for demoing a game, as long as the save was kept and whatever money was spent could be used as a credit toward purchasing the game.