What monetization of "Destiny 2" can be tolerated by fans and Activision?

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I'm not quite sure what's going on behind the scenes between Activision and Bungie at the moment. Activision recently cast a fair amount of shade to destiny, saying that the series was underperforming. The director of the game Luke Smith came out with a tweet yesterday that says that Bungie was not disappointed by Forsaken, and that "we set out to build a game that destiny the players would like, and at Bungie, we like it too. Building destiny for players who like it is and will remain our goal in the future. "

In a nutshell, I guess the conversation in camera looks like:

Activision: "Fate must earn more money."

Bungie: "But everyone loves the game now and says it's the best it's ever been!"

Activision: "Fate must earn more money."

So what to do? As much as the appropriate response seems to be to tell Activision to abstain, this is not how it works, and changes, to some extent, will probably have to be made. It seems that in the beginning, Bungie must continue to do what they did in the days of Forsaken to ensure that the quality of the series remains in line with expectations. That's a fact, but if we need to address this irritating Activision monetization problem, what are the options on the table to raise prices? destinyRevenues while not pushing the fans?

This is a difficult proposition for all games, but especially for destiny more difficult to monetize in the same way as most other titles or Activision games they try to imitate. But let's go through all the options I can think of:

Play for free with paid downloadable content: We already see this idea tested in a minor way on a PC for a limited time, but if the test of your computer succeeds, it can become permanent, if the idea of ​​a permanent PC works, it might apply to console. The idea here is that by getting free players in the door (look, destiny is funny! Feel like the shots and looting are good!) That the players will end up spending money on DLC and Eververse afterwards.

The problemI agree it's a good idea, but I do not think it's possible enough for Activision. This does not encourage current players to spend more money than today, and they want more than $ 35 a year from players, what does the annual pass for the second year. Now, they are also losing full sales of games. , so DLC sales would need huge solves all current income problems, which will probably not happen. It may be boring to hear, but it's the truth. This can be a good start to building the base of players, but that would not be enough.

Eververse Revamp With Pure Silver: Eververse was incredibly bad when it was nothing more than a loot box factory, but now these item boxes are so easy to win in the game and Bright Dust is so prevalent that the store may not exist not as good, and I can not imagine that it made it very difficult. a lot of money in its current state. One of the ideas is to completely eliminate the idea of ​​brilliant engrams and simply set a flat price for money on every item in the store. You can cut a lot of trash that currently fills the engrams (do we really need 14 different legendary ghost shells and sparrows that people will never use compared to exotics?) And put the emphasis on them. essential elements that people want. Cut out your armor to avoid P2W charges, stay with cool cosmetics, people will pay $ 5 or $ 10 directly, rather than stuck them in loot boxes. Essentially the Fortnite / League of Legends skin shop template, except that skins are ships or ghosts or ornaments.

The problem: This would eliminate the possibility for players to get all these items for free as they do now with the current system of "winning brilliant engrams". destiny the players get very crazy when something is purely sold and can not be won, and yet that could be an area in which they have to give a little, especially if it's essentially aesthetic things.

Added cosmetic characters: It's something I've been screaming for years now, we need the ability to A) redefine our current Guardians and B) buy more aesthetic looks for our Guardians. The first redesign may be free, but it costs money every time. Aside from that, you could sell countless amounts of new hairstyles, face shapes, scars, face paints, color palettes, exo pieces, and so on. at flat and silver prices.

The problem: There are some here. A fundamental problem may be that the way destiny was built in "hard coded" our character permanently in the game, and extracting them for a redesign is probably not easy otherwise Bungie probably would have done it already. Even if it is possible, I must admit that it would probably be a relatively small niche of the community that would pay for this stuff, since you rarely see your guardian's unmasked face in this FPS, really just in the tour and menus, and only if you check the box for your headset to be turned off.

Interiors of ships / guards apartments: It was an idea I had before the triumphs, but it's an idea that could somehow be married. Since destiny is all about collecting and realizing things, I thought that a purely cosmetic space for your Guardian / clan to "cool down" would be cool. It can be the inside of your ship or a place in the city, but you can display your best weapons, armor and armor, as well as cool feats that could be linked to triumphs such as some banners, Flags or trophies (a Warbeast head the chimney, someone?). And if such a thing existed, some of its aspects could be sold. Extra showcases, different furniture, whatever. It will not affect the gameplay, but it would be a cool "collectible" that players can build.

The problem: Again, probably some kind of niche attraction for players, and it should be built entirely from scratch, just for that purpose, which is more complex than a lot of those other options.

A Destiny Battle Pass: Fortnite currently reigning over the income world with his fighting pass, and I keep trying to dig my head in trying to figure out how it could work in destiny. I guess you could Doing is more or less killing Eververse and asking Tess to sell a $ 10 combat pass or anything by season, and each of the 100 levels or whatever corresponds to a new item that would have been in Bright before. Engram. Earn XP or reach milestones or complete challenges to classify and unlock items, or pay to unlock levels if you run out of time before the end of the season and you really want that level ship 100 or other.

The problem: I … do not really see the disadvantages here? I suppose, again, that would eliminate the potential of getting all of Eververse's material for free, but it may be a concession that players must make. I think it would be interesting and that's one more thing that players should be tackling. So that might be cool, but of course that would make some people angry.

A Destiny Subscription Template: If I think a game could get away with a WoW style subscription model, it might be destiny Because of its base of hardcore fans, and if you force players to pay for monthly access to a game, it's a cash cow like most other games will never see.

The problem: I can not pretend that this is entirely realistic at this stage. It's 2018, and I doubt very much that it would have worked fully at the launch for Destiny 1and certainly not now, while the current problem is not having enough players to show up. There may be a parallel universe in which it would work, but that's not it. Even though I would pay $ 10 a month to play destiny If that solves all these problems and creates new content, I can not say that the general public would receive that kind of thing. You would have the hardest of the hardcore base and literally no one else at this point.

Ghost voice packs: Here we come to something that I call a "macrotransaction" that would be expensive, maybe 20-30 dollars, but that's due to the nature of the product. I think destiny could sell different voice packs for our ghost, re-record its lines as actors or actresses (I would kill for a female ghost to match my female guardian), and I would pay a lot for that to happen. It could be a luxury purchase, but it would have its share of takers.

The problem: It does not look like a normal "advertiser pack" for other games, because there are probably many more lines that would have to be saved for it to work, and not just that, every time the game created a new one content, they would record all the lines with all the other actors too. If Bungie is already cutting costs by having (almost) dumb our Guardian, it sounds like an expensive prospect that may not be profitable for them, I'm not sure.

Pay to win: Oh man. Here is the most controversial to date. I do not support this myself, but the idea behind this is that yes, destiny just starting to sell … a lot of his booty. You do not have time to run the raid 50 times but still want to play with A Mille Voices? Buy it. You really want this full faction armor, but you do not have time to handle 200 areas lost at a rally? Buy it. Etc. It's "pay to win" for those who have more money than time, and yet what is the definition of "win" in destiny, really? I would say that's not the case (you can have all the best equipment in the world, but if you're really bad, you'll always lose in Crucible or Gambit or in raids), and what others have or n & Do not really should not affect your own experience. You know what you have won, if you want to pay the price of iron for your collection.

The problem: I mean, there is no way on earth to not bring about a nuclear fusion in the destiny community. same if Someone who wants to spend $ 200 or whatever to own each exotic should not really affect you personally, just the fact that can doing that would probably hurt any experience of the game. Obvious cosmetic items are one thing, but it would be a gesture that could bring in some (rich) casuals, but turn off huge portions of the hardcore base. I would not recommend it.

So, it's not all ways to monetize destinybut I will not pretend to make the eververse chests more irritating or to make foolish things like paying breaks to wait are viable options. As you can see, there is no really interesting option here because Destiny is simply not a game designed for continuous monetization, other than paying for high quality content and small size. But that's not enough, especially when other Activision games are often based on entirely around loot boxes or card packs or anything that you can buy candy Crush. It sucks, but that's the reality right now, so we have to find compromises, it seems. What are you willing to sacrifice to make sure destiny has a future?

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Read my new detective science fiction novel Herokiller, now available in print and online. I have also written The trilogy born of the earth.

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I'm not quite sure what's going on behind the scenes between Activision and Bungie at the moment. Activision recently cast a fair amount of shade to destiny, saying that the series was underperforming. The director of the game Luke Smith came out with a tweet yesterday that says that Bungie was not disappointed by Forsaken, and that "we set out to build a game that destiny the players would like, and at Bungie, we like it too. Building destiny for players who like it is and will remain our goal in the future. "

In a nutshell, I guess the conversation in camera looks like:

Activision: "Fate must earn more money."

Bungie: "But everyone loves the game now and says it's the best it's ever been!"

Activision: "Fate must earn more money."

So what to do? As much as the appropriate response seems to be to tell Activision to abstain, this is not how it works, and changes, to some extent, will probably have to be made. It seems that in the beginning, Bungie must continue to do what they did in the days of Forsaken to ensure that the quality of the series remains in line with expectations. That's a fact, but if we need to address this irritating Activision monetization problem, what are the options on the table to raise prices? destinyRevenues while not pushing the fans?

This is a difficult proposition for all games, but especially for destiny more difficult to monetize in the same way as most other titles or Activision games they try to imitate. But let's go through all the options I can think of:

Play for free with paid downloadable content: We already see this idea tested in a minor way on a PC for a limited time, but if the test of your computer succeeds, it can become permanent, if the idea of ​​a permanent PC works, it might apply to console. The idea here is that by getting free players in the door (look, destiny is funny! Feel like the shots and looting are good!) That the players will end up spending money on DLC and Eververse afterwards.

The problemI agree it's a good idea, but I do not think it's possible enough for Activision. This does not encourage current players to spend more money than today, and they want more than $ 35 a year from players, what does the annual pass for the second year. Now, they are also losing full sales of games. , so DLC sales would need huge solves all current income problems, which will probably not happen. It may be boring to hear, but it's the truth. This can be a good start to building the base of players, but that would not be enough.

Eververse Revamp With Pure Silver: Eververse was incredibly bad when it was nothing more than a loot box factory, but now these item boxes are so easy to win in the game and Bright Dust is so prevalent that the store may not exist not as good, and I can not imagine that it made it very difficult. a lot of money in its current state. One of the ideas is to completely eliminate the idea of ​​brilliant engrams and simply set a flat price for money on every item in the store. You can cut a lot of trash that currently fills the engrams (do we really need 14 different legendary ghost shells and sparrows that people will never use compared to exotics?) And put the emphasis on them. essential elements that people want. Cut out your armor to avoid P2W charges, stay with cool cosmetics, people will pay $ 5 or $ 10 directly, rather than stuck them in loot boxes. Essentially the Fortnite / League of Legends skin shop template, except that skins are ships or ghosts or ornaments.

The problem: This would eliminate the possibility for players to get all these items for free as they do now with the current system of "winning brilliant engrams". destiny the players get very crazy when something is purely sold and can not be won, and yet that could be an area in which they have to give a little, especially if it's essentially aesthetic things.

Added cosmetic characters: It's something I've been screaming for years now, we need the ability to A) redefine our current Guardians and B) buy more aesthetic looks for our Guardians. The first redesign may be free, but it costs money every time. Aside from that, you could sell countless amounts of new hairstyles, face shapes, scars, face paints, color palettes, exo pieces, and so on. at flat and silver prices.

The problem: There are some here. A fundamental problem may be that the way destiny was built in "hard coded" our character permanently in the game, and extracting them for a redesign is probably not easy otherwise Bungie probably would have done it already. Even if it is possible, I must admit that it would probably be a relatively small niche of the community that would pay for this stuff, since you rarely see your guardian's unmasked face in this FPS, really just in the tour and menus, and only if you check the box for your headset to be turned off.

Interiors of ships / guards apartments: It was an idea I had before the triumphs, but it's an idea that could somehow be married. Since destiny is all about collecting and realizing things, I thought that a purely cosmetic space for your Guardian / clan to "cool down" would be cool. It can be the inside of your ship or a place in the city, but you can display your best weapons, armor and armor, as well as cool feats that could be linked to triumphs such as some banners, Flags or trophies (a Warbeast head the chimney, someone?). And if such a thing existed, some of its aspects could be sold. Extra showcases, different furniture, whatever. It will not affect the gameplay, but it would be a cool "collectible" that players can build.

The problem: Again, probably some kind of niche attraction for players, and it should be built entirely from scratch, just for that purpose, which is more complex than a lot of those other options.

A Destiny Battle Pass: Fortnite currently reigning over the income world with his fighting pass, and I keep trying to dig my head in trying to figure out how it could work in destiny. I guess you could Doing is more or less killing Eververse and asking Tess to sell a $ 10 combat pass or anything by season, and each of the 100 levels or whatever corresponds to a new item that would have been in Bright before. Engram. Earn XP or reach milestones or complete challenges to classify and unlock items, or pay to unlock levels if you run out of time before the end of the season and you really want that level ship 100 or other.

The problem: I … do not really see the disadvantages here? I suppose, again, that would eliminate the potential of getting all of Eververse's material for free, but it may be a concession that players must make. I think it would be interesting and that's one more thing that players should be tackling. So that might be cool, but of course that would make some people angry.

A Destiny Subscription Template: If I think a game could get away with a WoW style subscription model, it might be destiny Because of its base of hardcore fans, and if you force players to pay for monthly access to a game, it's a cash cow like most other games will never see.

The problem: I can not pretend that this is entirely realistic at this stage. It's 2018, and I doubt very much that it would have worked fully at the launch for Destiny 1and certainly not now, while the current problem is not having enough players to show up. There may be a parallel universe in which it would work, but that's not it. Even though I would pay $ 10 a month to play destiny If that solves all these problems and creates new content, I can not say that the general public would receive that kind of thing. You would have the hardest of the hardcore base and literally no one else at this point.

Ghost voice packs: Here we come to something that I call a "macrotransaction" that would be expensive, maybe 20-30 dollars, but that's due to the nature of the product. I think destiny could sell different voice packs for our ghost, re-record its lines as actors or actresses (I would kill for a female ghost to match my female guardian), and I would pay a lot for that to happen. It could be a luxury purchase, but it would have its share of takers.

The problem: It does not look like a normal "advertiser pack" for other games, because there are probably many more lines that would have to be saved for it to work, and not just that, every time the game created a new one content, they would record all the lines with all the other actors too. If Bungie is already cutting costs by having (almost) dumb our Guardian, it sounds like an expensive prospect that may not be profitable for them, I'm not sure.

Pay to win: Oh man. Here is the most controversial to date. I do not support this myself, but the idea behind this is that yes, destiny just starting to sell … a lot of his booty. You do not have time to run the raid 50 times but still want to play with A Mille Voices? Buy it. You really want this full faction armor, but you do not have time to handle 200 areas lost at a rally? Buy it. Etc. It's "pay to win" for those who have more money than time, and yet what is the definition of "win" in destiny, really? I would say that's not the case (you can have all the best equipment in the world, but if you're really bad, you'll always lose in Crucible or Gambit or in raids), and what others have or n & Do not really should not affect your own experience. You know what you have won, if you want to pay the price of iron for your collection.

The problem: I mean, there is no way on earth to not bring about a nuclear fusion in the destiny community. same if Someone who wants to spend $ 200 or whatever to own each exotic should not really affect you personally, just the fact that can doing that would probably hurt any experience of the game. Obvious cosmetic items are one thing, but it would be a gesture that could bring in some (rich) casuals, but turn off huge portions of the hardcore base. I would not recommend it.

So, it's not all ways to monetize destinybut I will not pretend to make the eververse chests more irritating or to make foolish things like paying breaks to wait are viable options. As you can see, there is no really interesting option here because Destiny is simply not a game designed for continuous monetization, other than paying for high quality content and small size. But that's not enough, especially when other Activision games are often based on entirely around loot boxes or card packs or anything that you can buy candy Crush. It sucks, but that's the reality right now, so we have to find compromises, it seems. What are you willing to sacrifice to make sure destiny has a future?

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Read my new detective science fiction novel Herokiller, now available in print and online. I have also written The trilogy born of the earth.