A couple days ago Valve said
this:
Coming off the heels of Steam's biggest year, Valve will also share with partners the data it gathered during the hugely successful launch of Steam Microtransactions late last year within its own multiplayer classic, Team Fortress 2. An in-game economy can now be readily created by partners using the microtransactions system within the Steamworks SDK."We've come to understand what type of content sells well in TF2's in-game store, and the various price points at which players value this content," said Robin Walker, game designer at Valve. "Our players are continually teaching us what works and what doesn't. Much of this feedback can be generalized to other titles on Steam, so we're looking forward to sharing what we've learned with partners at GDC. We're also interested in seeing partners get up and running with their own in-game economies, so they can collect game-specific data to inform their design decisions."
And now today Stardock said they will be implementing basically
the same thing.:
Digital distributor Impulse, Inc. (www.impulsedriven.com) announced the addition of several new features designed to enable developers easily add "free to play" type features to their PC games. The next beta drop of its forthcoming game developer platform SDK, Impulse::Reactor, scheduled in March, is expected to include an in-game store experience, feature unlocking, and seamless downloadable content management all managed from an easy to use developer portal. Parent company Stardock Entertainment has begun to migrate all its titles to utilize the new features of Impulse::Reactor.
Wardell did an
interview and said something interesting:
The company's own games will be taking advantage of these new features in the future, and Wardell says he wishes he could have used it in some previous releases. “If I had to do it over again, I would have made multiplayer and other features premium features [in earlier games],” he said.
“I'd rather lower the price of our titles and then have these features that most people don't care about be something they can buy extra. … I'd rather make a game for $20, $30, $40 bucks, and then make multiplayer something that people can pay for if they want that feature. That way people don't have to subsidize something they don't want and will never use.”
Now if that sort of thing actually happened then it might not be so bad. I don't play multiplayer in a lot of games I buy, so if I can buy the game brand new for $30 instead of $50 because I have no need to pay for the multi part then that would be pretty cool. I can see Stardock doing such a thing, but we all know everyone else is just looking to sell you a full priced game and $15 map packs.
