Western Virtual Goods

I have found an study on digra written by Miho Nojima that talks about the 'Pricing models and Motivations for MMO play' although the study looks on how mustly the pricing models and the relationships between play time and immersion rates, it does talk about how 'per-item' (purchasing virtual goods) billing rose in the western market. According to this the total titles in sep 2005 with 'Per-Item' billing was 32.2% of the market that rose in the following year 2006 to 59.6% which even beat the total of monthly fixed fee games in that year. The adoption of In game item selling took over monthly fee games in a year showing how strong and noticably popular the concept was.

Reading further into the study i like how there is a relationship with the player type to who might be more interested in 'per-item' sales or paying a monthly fee. The study brings together areas like Richard Bartles thoughts on player types and how a different player type has different relationships with different mediums of sales.

"...people who are motivated by social aspect of
the game may continue the game instead of low immersion
to keep in touch with game friends. Relationship structure
of motivation and purchasing behavior, including payment
amount, willingness to pay and play period..." - Miho Nojima

This related firmly to the likes of freemuim models as they are usually highly repetitive but draw in large social groups, thus although the same itself may become boring the gamer might be more of a 'social' player and continue to play and purchase in game items and the cost of small sums of money. I also feel that after playing games you find that games tend to sell the virtual items that relate more to the player type, 'killers' may perfer weapon or game enchaning based item. Games like 'Gun bros' sell weapons, and player asserorys as the game is based on killing as well as multiplayer creating two player types and giving both types items in which to spend money on.

"human’s reaction to novelty has a
reverse U shape. Users perceive high degree of novelty in
the beginning of the usage, and then novelty decreases
along with time." - Wathieu, L (2004), “Consumer Habituation,”
Management Science, Vol.50, No.5, pp.587-596.

This ties into my thoughts of low priced goods realating to time used. Players that can buy accessorys will have a time were the players novility might run out, i have experienced this feeling, but for the low cost of the item the player may feel more inclided to purchase another at a small price as they havent payed for the game.

http://www.digra.org/dl/db/07311.40164.pdf - Miho Nojima.

http://www.digra.org/dl/db/07311.40164.pdf - Richard Bartle.