Will gamers pay real money, just to benefit other players?
Nicer Than You
Remember Smarter Than You? Luca Redwood's ambitious social duelling game that dabbled in AI and altruism?
If you forgot, it was a clever rock-paper-scissors variant where you could spend real money to tip your opponents, and boost their experience points. Paying cash only helped other players - not you.
At the time, Redwood said "I’ve consulted with a lot of people, and everybody has told me there is literally no way this will work. They’re probably right and thats OK."
Now, a month after launch and a million downloads later, I followed up with Redwood to see if his barmy experiment bore fruit. Can you make a successful free to play game about generosity, not greed?
Perhaps not. After around five million matches, "1,602 people tipped their opponent for $0.99, 169 people tipped their opponent at $1.99, and 21 people tipped at $2.99".
"After Apple’s cut and taxes I’ll take home around a thousand dollars, which is decent, but certainly not worth four to five months full time work," admits Redwood.
"But, I prefer to look at this on the bright side: around two thousand people tipping their opponent out of the goodness of their hearts."
Redwood did notice something interesting, though: people tweeting to him about the game were often younger kids - "maybe too young to even have a credit card on their iTunes account, so they couldn’t really get involved with the tipping part of the game even if they wanted to."
So he put out an update that let some players watch a 15 second video advert if they wanted to tip, and the results were pretty amazing. "When given the opportunity, 85 percent of people will choose to watch the ad, soley to benefit their opponent".
Unluckily for Luca Redwood, the update came too late. "If i’d put it in for launch it probably would have made $40,000 in ad revenue that week alone."
While the game was not a financial success for the creator of 1000000, it did at least provide some interesting info. Like the fact that Smarter Than You's AI METIS is learning how to play, and is now winning 65 percent of simulations.
"I’m sure I can get her a lot better than that, mostly because I’m learning about AI as I go".
Also, the most popular sentences to construct - by a significant margin - are "Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear" and "It’s Good Gravy". And if your opponent says "You Should Not Counter" you should listen to them. But if they warn against should using attack or arrow, they're less predictable.
Luca Redwood's next game is the more traditional You Must Build a Boat.
