MMO Monotization : The not so F2P option

The Top F2P Monetization Tricks

 What is F2P ? It stands for "Free to Play". 

Tanstafl you say ? (Tanstafl = There Aint No Such Thing As a Free Lunch )

You are correct . 


Coercive Monetization
A coercive monetization model depends on the ability to “trick” a person into making a purchase with incomplete information, or by hiding that information such that while it is technically available, the brain of the consumer does not access that information. Hiding a purchase can be as simple as disguising the relationship between the action and the cost as I describe in my Systems of Control in F2P paper.



 It's long. It's complicated. To simplify ... 
Your playing a game, we'll say "Bejeweled" , with slowly increasingly difficult levels. 
This is called a skill game. You need skill to advance.
Suddenly , you reach this level you cannot get past no matter what , but they'll let you "buy" your way past with in game "Jewels" , the game currency. How do you get jewels ? Well, you pay for them. With real cash.  And you get volume discounts, and maybe one or two jewels drop once in a while in game. 

this is called the money game. You need money to advance. 

Money games are tricky. They do everything they can to hide the fact that you're paying real world cash every now and then.  Common tricks are , as I mentioned , volume discounts. Now it's hard to calculate how much real world cash you're paying to get past this "money game" level and back to the skill game. Other tricks include occasionally dropping in game currency (the afore mentioned jewels as an example) but not often enough , you will have a hard hard  road if you don't drop some cash. 

The first purchase is the hardest to get. After that , you are marked as a spender , and from then on , most of the game is the "money game" , difficulty levels now explode to ridiculous levels and the only way to get past any level is to buy your way past, though the game will always advertise there are people who get to the end without paying a dime. This is like a casino advertising it's winners. For every winner there are ten thousand losers. 

Three online MMO's I have played are this kind of "Coersive Monetization" model. They are the Star Trek Online game, Guild Wars 2  , and the new Star Wars The Old Republic has switched to it. And they all use the same mechanism. A box will randomly drop (very frequently randomly) , but you need a key to open it, and that key costs special game currency to buy. (never real world cash , that would trigger a response from the user and you'd realize you're being tricked, always there is an in game currency of some kind) . And inside are random items that are far more powerful than what regularily drops from the mobs you're fighting 

In effect , you can't have the good stuff unless you spend cash. You're a second class user. 

SWTOR is a specially abusive model in that they charge you 15$ a month to unlock anything , and then they still sell these packs full of good stuff that you simply cannot get by just playing the game. So they're collecting from the free to play crowd and they paying customers indiscriminately, thus abusing the people who pay the 15$ / month. 

Different from this is Wow's free to play model. They basically let you play until level 20 for free. And if you want to keep on playing it's 15$ / month and away you go. No packs, no special keys to buy , none of that "coersive monitization" junk . Just an honest "play our game for 15$ / month" , and the guys with the impressive gear got that stuff honestly , by playing , not because they dropped 100$ real money on packs or special keys to unlock f2p treasure and stuff. 

Police given OK to murder Civilians.

Provocative title , you think ?
But It has an unfortunate amount of accuracy to it.

Mountie cleared of perjury charge related to inquiry into Dziekanski taser death 

 

A Mountie accused of lying at the public inquiry into the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski has been acquitted on a charge of perjury.
The Crown was able to provide only circumstantial evidence to suggest Constable Bill Bentley had willfully concocted a false story, Justice Mark McEwan said in B.C. Supreme Court on Monday.
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The Crown had pointed to the Mounties’ similar notes and statements – which contradicted amateur video that later surfaced – as proof the officers had colluded. For example, officers claimed Mr. Dziekanski advanced on them with a stapler before he was stunned and wrestled to the ground, but the video showed no such occurrence.

VIDEO LINK HERE




This cop, one of four, murdered this polish guy at the air port, lied his ass off to cover it up , is publically caught lying his ass off with incontrovertable proof...

And is found innocent of all charges.

Basically , the cops have been given a free ride to lie and murder anyone they like. It's hard to see any other conclusion.
Because that's exactly what they've done here. Murdered some guy , and then made up stories to justify it afterwards. And then got caught red handed. And got turned loose anyways. Free to go , thank you and good night don't bother submitting a second set of lies we don't want to go through this again.

It is the principle of Law that Justice must be seen to be served.
I see no justice here.

US House votes to continue NSA's phone surveillance

 

The US House of Representatives has narrowly voted to continue collecting data on US phone calls, in the first legislative move on the programme.

In a 205-217 vote, lawmakers rejected an effort to restrict the National Security Agency's (NSA) ability to collect electronic information.
The NSA's chief had lobbied strongly against the proposed measure.
The vote saw an unusual coalition of conservatives and liberal Democrats join forces against the programme.
The details of the NSA dragnet were made public by Edward Snowden, a former contractor for America's electronic spying agency. He is now a fugitive, seeking asylum in Moscow.

 

 In a 205 - 217 vote  , US Law makers decided to continue to listen in and spy on every phone call , email , chat , skype call , and more , in the entire world. Or at least any such information as they could steal. 

The rest of the world did not get to vote on the matter.

Power Outage July 19 / 2013

Article = none, personal experience

   So I'm at Girlfriends place on Friday , sleeping until three in the afternoon (it's 30 degree's out , major heat wave). Finally get up and take a shower ...

   Thunderstorm. Flickering lights . Darkness.
    Now I'm in the dark ... but the shower is still working we still have water. Where's the soap ? where's ... pretty much anything ? It'd hadn't been dark a moment ago. Get out of the shower , which I hadn't finished, visions of slipping on a bar of soap and killing myself and no one finding me for a week dancing in my head.
   Find some diet cola in the fridge left over from last week sit down on my favorite chair and stare at the blank computer screen.
   No power. No computer . No internet.
   Girlfriend is on the phone talking to a friend. In Tagalog. I have no clue what they're saying. Luckily everyone I know is on cell phones these days. Wind with some kind of unlimited local calling is actually cheaper than a land line.
   We talk about the last power outage. Lasted for days. No no  , Girlfriend assures me. That was when some power company in the states blew a gasket and blamed it all on us. All I remember is getting out of work early and endlessly walking around the building while our bosses tried to decide if they were going to send us home or tough it out and hope the power came back sortly. The stars were very pretty that night long ago. Seeing as how there were no lights near by to drown them out.
   Checked the balcony. The sun was still up , and it was quite cloudy, owing to the thunder storm that had most likely knocked out the power.
   Sat down and watched the rain a bit. Girlfriend was glad I was there since the room mates (who now lived in my room while I lived in a broom closet across town that probably still had power and internet where as her place didn't) were off for the weekend. Camping or some strange thing.
   I phoned my sister in toronto. She was on a wind phone too , so wind to wind call , no charge. We chatted for an hour. She was at work but no one else had shown up so she was sitting at her desk feet up on it relaxing. Or so she told me.
   Talked about our dear sweet father , whom her interest in Geneology had turned up. No idea where that is going. Could be a new friend for life, or he might tell us to bugger off and quit bothering him. Not a clue . This isn't a soap opera, and things don't always have a happy ending in real life.
   Then again in most good soap opera's there rarely is a happy ending either. House MD ended with House's best friend having terminal cancer. Greys Anatomy it's almost traditional by now , season nine, to have some disaster strike and kill someone off at the end of the season (end of september we find out if Richard survives or not... I'm betting not , mostly because I read an online artical saying one of the main actors had asked to be written out of the story , and it was Richard webber on the ground getting electrocuted at the end of the season finale. Could be a fake out though.  )
   Why am I meandering on like this ?
   Blonde Sister (the one in Toronto) doesn't like my blog. She says I sound like a crazy man with issues all over the place. I tell her ... the blog is where I vent.  It's where I can vent in private / public without sounding like a crazy man . So , according to her , I sound like a crazy man on my blog instead.
   Aha. Win some lose some. I'll try to keep the ranting down to a minimum.
   But really. The Americans listening in on every phone call, every email, every skype call, and more ,  in the world ? And their president not only refuses to apologize, but see's nothing wrong with it. Everyone does it , he publically states. Who wouldn't want to rant about that. Am I ranting again ? Sorry.
   Girlfriend decides to take me to dinner, her favorite Buffet across town. She's nice enough to even pay for it , though she tells me she's knocking it off the price of the computer I "sold" her and never got paid for. Apparently I'm being paid in the form of whatever T-Shirts and pants she finds on sale at the Sally Anne , and the occassional night out.
   Win some , lose some. I'm keeping my current lap top though. When Ottawa Housing comes through and gets me a place it's becomeing my new Ubuntu machine, since she has my old one and it just sits on a shelf while she uses my previous main computer.
   On the internet they're constantly taking surveys, for marketting purposes, who's using what operating system. Are you an apple user ? A windows , a linux man ? Statisticians want to know so they can sell the information to advertising agencies who can in turn sell it to computer manufacturers. There's a lot of money on the table for junk like that.
   Do I count as a windows guy or a Linux Guy ? I wonder sometimes...since I like to have one of each at all times (when I get a choice in the matter, when Girlfriend hasn't "liberated" one of my machines" )
   We get home and the powers back on. I remember I promised myself I'd write a blog entry about this , and that I would try to keep the ranting down to a minimum.
   We'll see how it goes.


   

Big Data Asks, "How much can we overcharge you ?"

Study: Firefox users pay less for car insurance than users of other browsers


 "CoverHound deals with several insurance companies to offer side-by-side rate comparisons, but it decided to flip the script and compare something almost as exciting as insurance: it’s users’ choice of web browser.

It found that, on average, Firefox users pay $608 for six months of car insurance, Chrome users pay $731, and Internet Explorer and Safari users pay the same: $750."


So Essentially , business is spying on you, basically which browser and by extension which computer you're using , and deciding they can charge extra if you're on some computers because you seem rich , or you're gullable or something.

Does anything seem wrong with this to you ? Do you suddenly feel like a sucker , a mark waiting to be ripped off , because you don't have the technical expertise to install firefox on your comptuer ? Do you feel ticked because you think insurance, in this case, is looking to take you for a ride ?

Trust me. This is only the beginning of Big Data and it's effect on the general population. Business people will do anything to make a buck. Today they figure what browser you use tells them something worth money , tommorow it will be your picture on face book , or who knows what else. But they're mining , and they're spending millions looking. 

And apparently it's working.

This is why data privacy is so important. You are now being ripped off financially because of violations of your data privacy. And where there's money involved, you can bet they're going to exploit this as far as they can.