Often when people are debating costs of online services, such as MMO’s or SL Go, the coffee argument will be trotted out. On the face of it the coffee argument is a good one, the cost can be compared to buying a few cups of coffee a month, which is true. The problem with the coffee comparison is that coffee is a consumable product, with little investment opportunity. I mean you may get a coffee loyalty card which can earn you free coffee, but you know that each cup is going to be disposed of in one form or another.
People who spend time in MMO’s and virtual worlds such as Second Life are investing in their avatar, there are various different ways of doing this but people generally don’t think of this avatar investment as a disposable product. They see it as an ongoing cost in developing said avatar.
That avatar investment is extremely important for developers of MMO’s and virtual worlds, it’s the hook, it’s why people are prepared to keep logging on, there’s progression. This is why in MMO’s a hardcore mode where you lose everything if your character is killed is not the norm, some have it as an option, but it’s not the norm because if that were the norm, people would see their character as disposable, like coffee.
Coffee is not a good comparison, nor is Pizza or even a trip to the pictures. This of course leaves one in the awkward position of trying to find a good comparison. In terms of something like The Elder Scrolls Online, it’s other MMO’s, and there are plenty of them with different pricing structures.
In terms of SL Go, it’s a lot trickier because there’s nothing really like it. Lumiya is a mobile client for Second Life, but it doesn’t deliver its service in the same way as SL Go and it won’t provide the same levels of performance. However Lumiya will provide a means of logging into Second Life on a mobile device.
The fact that SL Go is new and delivering via a different method to that people are used to is one of the reasons why a pricing debate is difficult. We may get a better comparison when the pricing for War Thunder is announced because that will also use Onlive Go. Although there is talk in the War Thunder blog about this, unlike SL Go, there are no firm pricing details.
Comparisons with the main Onlive gaming service are unfair, as I’ve previously mentioned. A standalone game has static or pre-determined content, it’s not streaming new and dynamic content as Second Life requires.
The Onlive team themselves have made an attempt at a price comparison on their blog post : The Respawn Of OnLive :
This variable-rate billing model seems very 1990’s, but is inescapable since so many MMO users spend large fractions of their lives connected, sometimes only in the background. Think of it this way, at 5 cents/minute it is 37% cheaper than a Skype call to Italy from the USA, and it’s a connection that consumes >100X Skype’s bandwidth and includes a very powerful computer that would only have been cheaper to have owned after you used it for almost 1000 hours, and even then, it could not achieve our speeds since our data centers benefit from gigabit connections to the internet. The latter claim can be verified by subscribing to our amazing OnLive Cloud Desktop (for iOS and Android) and running SpeedTest.net or similar bandwidth tools. SL Go is a power tool that delivers a fast and immersive experience that enables one to experience Second Life in all of its beauty and complexity. If you want almost-free with less performance, use Lumiya for Android. This power tool is for people who value their time and getting the best graphical experiences where they are or would like to be.
Fair play to them for mentioning Lumiya in their post, that shows a refreshing honesty. However the statement is a bit contradictory because it mentions that sometimes people are only connected in the background, yet it’s that connected in the background concept that puts people off a per minute billing option.
Early reviews on Google Play highlight both the price and the per minute issue, with some people claiming they are losing minutes whilst trying to login. Others complain the price is too high. Realistically it’s much too early to write this off as an over priced white elephant. Things will settle down, some people will find good use cases for it and the product will live or die by the market.
In many ways the pricing debate is good for the OnLive team, if people were merely saying the product was rubbish and didn’t work, then they’d have a lot more to worry about. Ultimately time will tell whether this model is viable, the service is just over 24 hours old and is in beta, it should be given time to find its feet. I’ll have more on the technology later because that has been somewhat under emphasised so far, well by me anyway!
SL Go is meant to be used for people on the “go” who need the speed and quality that Lumiya does not offer. I would compare the pricing model to airline internet. People routinely pay a $15 fee for internet access on a 45 minute flight. $3 an hour is a drop in the bucket when you are away from home and need access on a tablet or laptop that can’t normally handle SL.
It seems like the ones complaining about the price are acting as though this would be a replacement to the main client. If you are using this more than casually you need to look at a mobile device that can run the standard client. There are several options out there these days that run full Windows 8. For anyone using this casually, it seems to me like the convenience fee they charge is more than fair. If you don’t like it, then don’t use it.
I’m not sure about that, it’s aimed at people who want to experience MMO’s on mobile devices, from their blog post:
“These applications are designed to do best on high-end computers with fast GPU’s. Most people are not buying those, and instead migrating to laptops and tablets, on which these applications do not perform as well. To use these apps, you have to either own or rent the fast computer. OnLive Go, including SL Go, lets you rent the way an Internet café would, only it gives the freedom to use it anywhere that you have high bandwidth.”
However I think the use case you cite, on the go, is far more likely to be the main use case under its current guise. However it’s beta and they’ve already told Draxtor they will study usage and consider a subscription option. Obviously usage would change if there was a subscription option.
Were SL Go aimed solely at being a replacement for running the viewer locally, I’d be in wholehearted agreement with you. I certainly feel that for those users, the only way forward for the product is a reasonably-priced subscription model (which OnLive have not ruled-out at all).
However. it is also being aimed at an audience who many only require occasional SL access while away from their primary means of access to achieve a specific activity at the time. And just because this audience might be small, doesn’t actually make them any less valid.
For such people, a pay-as-you go option is potentially far more favourable than something like a subscription. For example: someone who’s work / home situation means there are times when they are away from home and need to drop-in to SL for an hour or two each month would actually see paying $8.00 in order to do so a lot more attractive than paying – purely as a hypothetical – $14.95 or $19.95 (which have been mentioned elsewhere) to achieve the same thing. They may even opt for spending $25.00 on the basis that it could buy them a couple of months of access to SL when compared to the cost of a monthly subscription.
Being dismissive of analogies (or even use cases) because they don’t fit a particular view of how the system might be used actually isn’t helpful, because doing so reinforces the idea that SL Go is automatically and completely unacceptable on the basis of cost – which actually isn’t true for the reasons I’ve cited. Citing the likes of coffee, pay-as-you-go internet access services and the like actually do help bring a little perspective to matters.
If anything, the reality here is that we need a mix of both approaches: pay-as-you-go and subscription (which you’ve alluded to elsewhere). The former for those who see SL Go as a useful and occasional adjunct to their SL times, and which is actually cheaper than a subscription model for such circumstances, and a subscription-based model for those who wish to have SL Go as a “full time” alternative to running a local viewer – assuming OnLive see it the same way (and their comments in this regard are somewhat contradictory).
The problem here of course is that even a subscription model will likely be argued against just as vociferously as a pay-as-you-go model.
I’m dismissive of the coffee analogy because it doesn’t work when comparing it to a specific product. If people don’t like one coffee brand, they’ll happily substitute it for another brand without batting much of an eyelid.
The same doesn’t often hold true for virtual worlds and MMO’s, particularly when someone has invested a lot of time and resources in said virtual world and MMO.
The investment angle is important because it’s that very investment angle that will make people consider whether SL Go is worth it or not.
I mentioned OnLive go to someone at work, told him the per hour cost, he’s a very big gamer and just said “No chance”. That’s without even mentioning a specific title. So in all reality, the casual use case Summer and yourself have both mentioned is the one they should really be pitching. They can use this as a proof of concept of a brighter mobile future, but they should talk it up more.
I very much support the model that gives people a pay as you go or subscription option for the very reasons you highlight. I also support the free to play or choice of payment option Second Life currently utilises.
If subscription were the only option for SL Go then people certainly would argue against it, even in a mixed model some people are going to argue against it, the trick for a business is finding the net that captures the most fish and as this is a new product, it may take a while.