The Eastern Way is the most faithful
The Japanese type of monetization is the way to the wallets of Western users,” the head of Ngmoco believes.
The emotions that a player experiences when transferring funds when playing an f2p project are very important. Moreover, they are very different for Western and Japanese players. And it’s about the type of monetization,” says Ben Cousins, managing director of the Swedish studio Ngmoco.
Cousins is a veteran of the gaming industry. Before joining the Ngmoco team, he worked at EA on Battlefield Heroes. According to him, he learned a lot from the Japanese from DeNA: “At EA, I was considered an expert on freemium games, but I was infinitely far from these guys from Japan.”
DeNA’s numbers speak for themselves. In the third quarter alone, the company’s sales amounted to $448 million, of which $79.2 million was net profit. In the native market, the company manages to monetize about 10-15% of its audience. For comparison, Ngmoco manages to monetize only 1.6-2% of the audience of its games.
Cousins explains that the main problem with monetization in Western f2p games is the focus on negative emotions. Western games, as a rule, monetize those players who want revenge. In-game purchases, as a rule, remove the barriers that the developer has put in front of the player, or grant any advantage. Cousins calls this method “as exciting as buying insurance.” He believes that in the long run, this method is not very attractive.
“While working on Battlefield Heroes, under pressure from the management (EA), we started selling those items that give an advantage in the game,” says Cousins. – “We did not see a drop in the number of audiences, but I am sure that if we had not done this, the audience of the game would have increased faster.”
Japanese games, by contrast, focus on making spending money fun. Something that can be compared to buying friends a drink. Cousins believes that if this approach is tested on an audience of avid players, success is guaranteed.
According to http://www.insidemobileapps.com
