Four Tiers For SoN … Hooray!
As Shizz mentioned in his post …
TWS – SoN for $500, Alex … Shadows of Nightside will have a multi-tier pricing system.
Reading his post, and looking over our notes on the subject, got me thinking once more on why we planned it this way and what we hope to accomplish with it.
SoN scores a goal
I can’t talk about the “why’s” of the tiered pricing without talking about the goals of FPG and SoN.
None of us really expect FPG to make us rich.
Sure, it would be nice, and we’ve all played the “wouldn’t it be cool if [insert game company here] bought us out” game. But once all the wishful speculating is done, we all pretty much agree that if SoN can pay for itself and a small staff to keep it running, then we’ll be happy.
But What About The Players?
Another goal we have for SoN is that we want to make it available to as many people as possible.
All of us enjoy playing games as well as creating them and we want to play with you all and share our creation.
((It’s really a selfish reason. There really is nothing like the feeling you get when someone experiences and enjoys what you’ve created. 
))
Four Tiers – No Waiting
With that in mind, we set out to come up with a revenue plan that would meet the goal of making SoN affordable to people and not cost us money to run.
We headed to the web to do some research. We then combined what we learned on the web, what we learned from our work and experience with a previous game, and what we as players would like to see, and came up with the four tiers.
Tier One – Free for All
The best way to get someone interested in something is to give it away for free. I mean who can resist playing a free game?
This tier has to be open enough to give the player a good feel for the game and not shut them out if they really can’t (or won’t) pay. But there also has to be limitations. We can’t be expected to give it all away free.
Tier Two – One Fee to Unite Them All
The next tier will be a single fee to unlock the rest of the game. Opening up all the game play and (with the exception of a few vanity items and perks) allow access to all the content.
This is what we feel will be our main source of revenue and the tier where most people will go and stay.
Tier Three – Subscribing to More
One of the things we learn from the previous game we worked on, is that some people are willing to pay a little more to help.
We wouldn’t feel right taking money from people without giving them something in return. On the flip side of that, we wouldn’t want people to be able to pay their way to success in the game. So we need to be able to reward the generosity of people without unduly affecting game play or balance.
So for those that are willing to pay a small monthly fee, we’ll give them access to vanity items and perks. We’ve tossed around a few ideas and won’t be able to finalize a list until more of the content is built, but here are a couple of ideas of what we have in mind: More storage for items, access to special dyes to color armor and items, the ability to rename items, and hot key to change outfits.
Tier Four – Credit Where Credit is Due
And finally, we have tier four … the ability to spend real money on virtual credits that can be used to buy in-game vanity items and perks.
These can be used independently of tier three and there will probably be some overlap but again, this tier will give access to optional vanity items and perks that you wouldn’t normally have access to.
No Battle Plan Survives First Contact
So that’s some of the thinking behind what we have planned for the revenue system. I’m sure once we go live, and we start to get feedback on the tiers, changes will be made.
Just keep in mind while we go through these changes and growing pains that this is something we enjoy doing and as long as it doesn’t cost us money to run, we’ll continue doing it.
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