Who is currently offering real-world monetization?

News & General Discussion
1

Hi all

So far I am only aware of Kongregate, TinyUtopia and DimeRocker that offer a virtual currency (to any degree) if you use their API.

  • Kongregate I have no info on, just found out about their existence today :stuck_out_tongue:
  • Last time I looked, TinyUtopia only supported buying tokens and spending tokens in game but offers no method of turning the tokens back into cash
  • DimeRocker does, but for some weird reason, back when I was trying out their API, I couldnā€™t figure out how to let n user ā€œsign inā€ when they start a game and I have gotten 0 response to my query regarding this.

So now my question is, who else is offering virtual currencies that allows you to actually sell real world items in-game in exchange for real world cash? (Directly or otherwise).

Say I want to take an iPhone game that uses Appleā€™s microtransactions system to allow in-app pourchases and then port that game to a standalone game. Who can I use to handle the transactions?

Thanks in advance

2

What about the major player above and beyond any of these: Facebook? :slight_smile:

3

http://virtualdoubloon.com/ ?

Iā€™d like to hear opinions from any users of this service, looks interesting.

4

I know the world and their dog is going nuts over facebook but I donā€™t care for it very muchā€¦ I want to make a standalone app that you click, it starts, you play. i donā€™t want an app that you click, it asks you for your account details from a third party, opens up a web browser, sends you to a third party website, demand that you create an account there and agree to their rules before going back to my app and agreeing to my rulesā€¦ Do the whole verify identity thing and then, finally, get back to the appā€¦

Not exactly the experience I was aiming for :frowning:
ā€¦but thanks for the suggestion.

And thus there are 4ā€¦ :slight_smile:

5

And thus there were 5 :slight_smile:

This looks like an interesting optionā€¦ Definitely worth a look , I reckon.
Thanks

6

Or if youā€™re in the other half of the worldā€™s population and are already signed up and logged in to facebook anywayā€¦ itā€™s a lot simpler :wink:

7

That and the fact is that no option allows you monetizing without logging in to a 3rd party system cause that system will verify ownership etc.
difference is just, as alric mentions, that they are likely logged in and using FB already, which is not needfully the case with congregate

Also a targetbase of up to 500M user beats what anybody else can use and so does the use for endusers that the tokens they buy are much more widely usable than a single game.

8

Facebook is beginning to sound more and more alluring. At first what put me off of them was the thought that to use facebook you need to create an app that you must play in your web browser while in the facebook site. That was a daunting thought back then since I wanted to allow iPhone users to play against Mac Standalone players etc etc etc.

Since then I have just lost interest in Facebook as a whole and simply donā€™t pay it any mind. I am thinking now that perhaps I should look at them a bit more seriouslyā€¦ The fact that DimeRocker offers Facebook integration currently puts them in the leadā€¦

ā€¦although I was planning on giving VirtualDablooms a serious read through tonight as they sound like what I was after, actually. I donā€™t mind loggin into a third party, that much is agiven, but having to open up a another app to tell users to go register on another site first and then start my game againā€¦ ewwā€¦

That is what I like about TinyUtopia. They have a REAL simple way of creating an account and logging in to it right from within the game. I have already customized that process to the point where the entire system is now simply a prefab that needs to be dropped into an empty screen and voilaā€¦ instant graphical interface to create an account, login and sign offā€¦ Too bad their business model only allows you to spend and not get anything backā€¦

DimeRocker seemed to be Facebook driven and that put me off back then. I was trying to find a way of creating an account without having to be logged in to Facebook but couldnā€™t find a way to do thatā€¦ with me not being a Facebook fan, that put me off them completelyā€¦

Another thing that bothers me about Facebook is how frequently I read about people complaining about privacy issues, how a new feature is gonna raise privacy issues how privacy issues forced a change in this and that terms and how the api has to be adjusted etc etc etc. Facebook seems to have an incredible user base and offers great uncertainty in terms of whether your app will still work from one day to the next or wether it will require maintenance every other day just to make it work the way it did the day before lastā€¦

Am I a bit toooo paranoid, perhaps?

9

Facebook is being very selective in terms of who they allow to participate in their program. I think itā€™s only 100 or so developers currently and is for the most part invitation only.

Theyā€™ll do a background and credit check on you, and even if you have a perfect credit score they still will not be likely to accept you. Itā€™s being tailored towards the big players like Zynga and Crowdstar. Itā€™s still in beta, but once itā€™s out I still donā€™t believe itā€™s going to be an option for a small developer wanting to monetize their game.

10

Doubt they are going to nock out indies from the game cause the big players iwll never enter it, they have all the reasons to exactly not do it:

  1. why share if you donā€™t need to?
  2. why use tokens users could use on the competition?

Its indies that are likely to benefit from it, not the big players, for big players its a lose game only

11

The big players have entered it.

There was an initial pushback a year ago, as 30% is far greater than the 3% they were paying to the credit card companies. However they realize the conversion rates are far higher and itā€™s in the end a win. I remember reading an interview with someone from Crowdstar suggesting they were expecting a 5x increase in conversion rates.

As far as indies, there are probably some small indie studios in that mix of 100. I seriously doubt thereā€™s a guy in his basement who made a killer game with his friend on the list. Theyā€™re looking for actual established companies, thatā€™s the reason for the background and credit checks.

The big concern for many is whether facebook when credits are out of beta, will eventually ban any games which have a monetization system other than their own. That would sort of torpedo dimerocker for example.

12

I donā€™t know, using facebook coins as alternative to real money is not exactly entering it.
thats ā€œalso supporting it instead ofā€

Entering it to me would mean that they really use facebook coins as their currency and handle all that path not just ā€œensure that people getting it gifted have to spend it in some other placeā€.
If it werenā€™t for the amount of cash in there for facebook, I doubt they would allow such sidetracked patterns. Apple knows why they actively locked that out when they added the InApp Store, so they really get 30%, not 30% of < 1% of all money being pushed through

Any quality game thats interested in dedicating itself to FB coins would likely be more than warm welcomed.

13

I cringe whenever I think about FB games, but maybe Iā€™m missing something. I see large companies with deep pockets doing well, but are there ANY indie devs turning a modest profit using FB? Is FB even a viable platform to monetize an indie game?

Admittedly I donā€™t understand much about how gaming works on FB. I canā€™t seem to find much information on the subject other than stories about Zynga. I understand the whole micro-transaction thing, but is that the only way to monetize on FB? What about revenue sharing? I mean, isnā€™t that how FB generates itā€™s billions? It seems to me that if you have a page that is helping them rake in advertising dollars, you should get a cut relative to your contribution.

I really just canā€™t understand how a small indie team could make any money on FB at the moment. I see the potential for an awesome system to be set up eventually, I just donā€™t see it actually happening yet.

14

I dont think I understand your concern with UnityTokens. I would like to understand since i am thinking of using themā€¦

as I understand it unitytokens lets you do everything in your game and users never have to leave. user can buy tokens and then spend them in your game on whatever you sell.
and then you can take their spent tokens and cash them in for real money. but the user can never cash in their tokens, just spend them.

did i get everything correct or do you have different info than i have?

Thanks,

  • P
15

You got one thing wrong. You can sell your stuff for Unity Tokens and USE that UnityTokens in other games, but you can never cash them in for real money. The money goes one way: Into THEIR bank. You buy the tokens, they get the money, you get the tokens, you use the tokens, the tokens become less, you buy some more tokens, they get the money, you get the tokens.

People buy your product(s), you get some of the tokens, they get some of the tokens, you buy and sell, each time the owner gets some of the tokens, they get the rest of the tokens, when the tokens are up you buy some more tokens, they get the money, you get the tokensā€¦

ā€¦and so it goes on. Currently there is no part in this equation where you can add ā€œI cash in my tokensā€. I asked them this about 2 or 3 weeks ago and they confirmed this was still the case. Once it does I would be very happy indeed as I find their API very simple to use.

16

Nearly no system offers the backcashing of tokens, as thats not the idea of them normally. often it does not even make sense as microtransaction based games donā€™t tend to allow you to trade the virtual currency. I only know a single webgame dev that allows trading and even they donā€™t allow back cashing of them.

I doubt you will ever find one as no payment processor has any reasonable interest to lose money, even less do you cause the back cashing share will always only be taken from your end, not the payment / token processing layer inbetween, as nobody is going to pay for your desire to lose money (sounds potentially hard, not meant to, but its a fact that nobody is interested in losing money. Microtransaction games only work cause the transaction is 1 way and has a tendency to lose part of the payment in the transaction due to unusable parts of the virtual currency which lead to more bought vcurrency)

If thats a crucial feature for you, you basically have to pull off an own solution as any game (I know at best a handfull) that offers that has an own virtual market unless I missed something (the majority of this virtual money world wide is floating around in second life)

What puzzles me is that you are not consistent on what you are looking for cause the desire to cash back while mentioning iphone at the same time makes no sense, cause that will NEVER happen.

in app store payments are not allowed to become virtual currency that can be traded with other users, it can only become something the user can spend ingame for a service / item, and the transaction is permanent, no refund - no back cashing. And as you might know, in-app store is the only way to monetize microtransaction on ios at all, any other solution gets instant rejected by apple

17

Dreamora: In my infinite idiotness the question seems to be ā€œHow can you earn money from in-game salesā€ and your post seems to sound like ā€œYou canā€™t unless you build your own custom monetization system and handle it all yourself.ā€

I personally would use tokens simply because the processor requires me to. Apart from that, pfffftā€¦ This is the item, this is the price, click here to buy, thanks for the payment, hereā€™s your productā€¦ This mechanic suits me perfectlyā€¦ but thatā€™s just me. :stuck_out_tongue:

Take any of the Zynga gamesā€¦ from what I read they make millions from in-game transactions and advertising etc. They take payment via PayPal, though, so perhaps that is the direction to look at, but to think that one can sell virtual goods for $1billion and be told ā€œSorry, you canā€™t cash in your money cause we are not in the business of loosing money. Go buy your girlfriend some virtual shoes. Iā€™m sure youā€™ll be able to afford 2 or 3 pairs for $1billionā€ ā€¦ that is not really inspiring to sell anything in-game, now, is it? :frowning:

Am I right in my understanding that you have not come across a company that would do your payment processing AND give payouts? I could have sworn (speaking under correction here) that DimeRocker doesā€¦ ???

From re-reading your post I think I am understanding where you are coming from and I think that perhaps this is again a confusion in terminology. It seems to me that your definition of ā€œmonetizing a gameā€ means ā€œGetting virtual currency into the game for players to useā€ whereas my definition of ā€œmonetizing a gameā€ means ā€œBeing able to make money through the gameā€. Wether this means sponsored adds or item sales etc. If my understanding of your definition is correct then I can see your point 100% and it all makes sense, but by my definition your reply simply does not.

For that matter, let me ask this: If users who buy tokens for games pay the processor (Letā€™s say TinyUtopia) in cold hard cash to receive virtual tokens, they spend it, they give TU more and so the cycle repeatsā€¦ If the developer never receive ANY form of income from this virtual ā€œmonetizationā€ of their game, what possible incentive could there be for developers to tell their customers to spend money on someone else?

In fact, let me go one step further and expand upon this question more clearly:
If I were to release a free game with the intention of making my money via in-game purchases, what are my options for doing so?

18

No we actually meant the same thing in the end.

I reread your answer for PHeck another two times and now understand where my thinking went wrong.
My understanding for some reason became that your intend is to find a solution that offers you the possibility to allow your users to cash out ā€œtokensā€ to realworld money again, so basically what Second Life offers with its virtual currency payment system.

That you get your share of the money that your users invest in tokens spent in your application is something that I consider as clear and given, otherwise it wouldnā€™t make any sense as virtual payment gateway :slight_smile:
That was also my initial understanding of what you are after which is why I brought Facebook onto the plate which with 500M++ users subscribed to this gateway exceeds anything else on the globe at the time.

19

Gotchaā€¦ This last post or two has been quite the head scratcher, to be sure. I thought you had a grasp on the topic so when I read your last post I was thinking to myself: ā€œhuh?ā€ :stuck_out_tongue:

So I was confused by your confusion caused my me confusing you. Gotcha. :slight_smile:

When I asked TU if they allow the developers to cash out, they stated that due to gambling laws they are restricted in their ability to offer cash outs. I guess if we were to allow our users to cash out then this would become a money laundering or gambling havenā€¦

Could you just imagine a warehouse full of 7 year old kids playing the game for 18 hours per day to earn rewards they can sell to players who play 20 hours per week just so the bossman can make a weekly trip to the Caimans? ā€¦and Bahamasā€¦ andā€¦

Nah, money to and from the users is just asking for troubleā€¦ Itā€™s like a virtual bankā€¦ money lending comes to mindā€¦

20

The dimeRocker Arcade is completely Facebook driven. If Facebook credits are forced to be implemented, then dR will implement FB credits.

Kongregate offers ad revenue share, which is how developers make most of their money on Kongregate. dimeRocker is aiming to support this as soon as possible.

I should mention you donā€™t actually need to implement any special API to use the dimeRocker virtual goods. For example you can make a ā€œDonateā€ item that playerā€™s can buy. It has nothing to do with anything in-game, so you donā€™t need to implement any of the dR API into your game.