Game bugs aren’t just the issue here.
So then, we love playing our favorite online games. Some of them are lasting longer for at least 10 years and such. But did you know that some other long-running online games aren’t really lasting forever until ages? Some online games only lasted for less than a year — let’s say eight months! But did you know that game bugs and server maintenance aren’t just the issue here?
In this blog post, let’s talk about this topic.
Online Game Through the Years
I am an addict online gamer and smartphone gamer in the past and present, and I had played several of them. But did you know that those games I had played are eventually shutting down with a notice?
One example here is the Ragnarok Online in Philippines (I call it as pRO Server). It lasted for more than a decade, until it has finally shutdown because they are losing more players, as well as losing its quality of maintaining their servers for their rude players. I am a player of that game, too, and I had experienced the dilemma, like unoccasional lags and intermittent disconnections.
After Ragnarok, I had played other games, notably Grand Chase and O2Jam. So then, I had decided to shell out my money in order to buy some powerful items in the game. But then, they don’t last longer, and they had finally shutdown.
I was wondering why they are shutting down, not only because a few players are already playing the game.
And recently, the current smartphone games that I am playing, notably from the LoveLive! Series, the LLSIF and LLAS, had shutdown already. And then, their latest flagship SIF2 MIRACLE LIVE is also shutting down soon, while the Global Version of it would only last up to three months with a short notice.
So then, these are my highlights for more online and smartphone gaming through the years.
IAPs are their Lifeline
From the header itself, the IAPs (in-app purchases) are the “lifeline” of every single online or smartphone games that we are playing in the present. It is because without them, where will these game developers get money? Of course, they need money in order to:
- Hire more game developers, and to give them salaries for their work
- Maintain the Server (Hardware replacement and troubleshoot)
- Buy some equipment, programming and animation tools
- Pay some rent, electricity, or other utilities
- Create more merchandise from the game, and other marketing
Basically, in the present, everything becomes more expensive now. That’s why companies decided to lay off their employees because they are losing more money than earning them. Rather than losing their money for their salary, while not giving out some good output, they just decided to release them for a good reason. Now, I had realized that some online games that I play doesn’t really last for at least one year is because of the development costs for the game, and they are losing more money than to earn it.
That’s why IAPs are their only lifeline in order to make their online gaming service to last longer. If there is only one thing that you can do in order to extend the life of that online game, just do an IAP. It doesn’t matter on how cheap or costly will your IAP for the game will be, but then not mandatory.
Customer Satisfaction
Besides IAPs, customers or players are their only followers. Players wanted to experience new features of the game, and not some “recycled” and boring nor repetitive features. So then, the game is also customer/follower dependent. So then, you can tell if the game is literally dying because not only they are losing more player base from their game. And the players/customers, who are also long-time players/customers (call it as “whalers”), are their only source of IAPs, wherein it’s their only income in order for the game to survive.
So then, the game can earn more millions of money — just only a “gross income”. But the reality is that their “net income” are just less than a penny, somehow.
And I can tell that a game is literally dying is because it is not profitable anymore.
End
So then, we should realize on how a smartphone or online game operations should work. It doesn’t matter on what company it is. But then, we should understand that they had shutdown the game, not because of the shrinking of the player base. Yep, everything becomes a lot more expensive now, wherein we can’t afford something like regular clothes to wear, or foods that we eat on our daily basis.
