Gabe Newell on monetization before game design

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/30/gabe-newell-on-monetization-before-game-design-spoiler-it-stin/

by kevin_morrill • 15 years ago

38 21 15 years ago

joystiq.com

kevin_morrill• 15 years ago

Interesting contrast at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/zyngas-quest-for-bigspe...

eric-hu• 15 years ago

"One person familiar with Zynga’s business ... says a user spent $75,000 in one year on a single game"

kingkilr• 15 years ago

That's all well and good, but that's kind of easy to say when there are several established business models for your type of product. And you're a profitable company.

alnayyir• 15 years ago

His attitude got him where he is now.

No one's suggesting that you shouldn't think about monetization, he hasn't even launched his product yet.

Now what would be stupid is doing like some founders and giving away the product gratis for a year or two and then suddenly demanding money. That would be stupid.

Getting something worth selling before worrying about what you'll charge for it isn't.

rictic3• 15 years ago

His attitude is fantastic, and he's easily in the top three most inspiring figures in gaming right now.

But I bet the millions of dollars from working at microsoft helped a bit too in giving him a long perspective.

kevingadd3• 15 years ago

Saying that there are several established business models for his type of product is kind of missing the point. It's surprisingly hard to get people to give you money for something you built in the games space, in part because there's so much competition. Even Valve can't afford to ignore monetization; his point is more that their focus is always on product first, not on revenue model.

Even before Valve had ever shipped a product, this is how they worked, and you could argue that their customers rewarded that approach.

6ren3• 15 years ago

Hi kevingadd, just a heads up that your other comment here is dead (your reply to corin_): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2940599 - I think it's a perceptive, reasoned and evidence-based comment, and in no way should be dead. It's been inappropriately flagged, I believe. (I can see it because I'm browsing with showdead: yes in my profile).

Perhaps the simplest fix is to just make the same comment again.

6ren3• 15 years ago

> "I think not sucking is way more of an important thing to pay attention to first,"

Like "build something people want".

One way to looks at it is in terms of dependencies. Complicated problems have a ton of dependencies, so that when you change one thing, it ripples through, changing other things. Therefore you'd best get the most important things right first, leaving everything else loose, flexible and uncommitted, so that as you fiddle with the important things, you aren't tied down by other issues. I find I can easily become overly fond of some secondary aspect that prevents me backing out of that local minima and seeing the true (or truer) truth. Once you've got the key things right, you can start worrying about secondary things (secondary in that they are still important, just not as important). So it's similar to the knuth quote alluded to (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PrematureOptimization). (though I'd say that the most important thing is understanding the problem and solution, rather than having correct code).

It's really good to just completely forget about making money, and set out purely to make the world a better place (or realize a vision). It's freeing.

jgavris• 15 years ago

I think it was difficult for HoN to keep providing the level of service and updates on a one-time fee of $30 to play the game. A subscription model would fit the cost model more appropriately, for a game with continual upkeep like HoN / DotA.

kayoone• 15 years ago

For a company in Valves position this is a very nice approach, and i like their overall vision on product quality and user experience alot. Still, if you are a smaller studio, possibly backed by investors and not making hundreds of millions in revenue it wont sound very good to say "we dont know and dont worry how to make money yet". If your company ever reaches a point where you can say that before a new major product release, you probably made it ;)

d_rwin• 15 years ago

Nobody falls for the monetization, its the products. Gabe's approach without trying duplicity messages is great design.

The product is the only selling point in Valve design.

lastkarrde• 15 years ago

The original interview (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6471/the_valve_way_gab...) contains more information about how Valve is approaching Dota2, and some background around development of the game.

samlittlewood• 15 years ago

Well worth reading - makes it clear that this is one aspect of a whole attitude based around people enjoying working together and making cool stuff.

"I don't know about other game companies, but it's dangerous to kvetch at Valve. You're suddenly Director of Fixing That Shit! Vice President of It's Your Problem Now."

corin_2• 15 years ago

I didn't care when gamers on sites I read took this at face-value and nodded along, but on HN I'm shocked nobody has yet pointed out that he's talking PR spin.

They've started a big push marketing the game, they obviously want people to stay excited for what it is, rather than thinking about any downsides. His answer doesn't mean they haven't thought about it, it means one of two things: either they are yet to come to a decision, or it won't actually be free-to-play. Either way, answering that in this interview would have been a moronic step to take, so he changed the subject away from it, and onto "we care more about games than money".

I love Valve, they're a wonderful company, but they definitely think about monetisation right from the start of a project - they're not idiots. And making money from a game doesn't have to mean the game isn't good.

rictic3• 15 years ago

I read it differently. I think Valve wants to hold off on the free-to-play announcement so that it has the biggest impact. Making TF2 (their game that they call their testing ground for new ideas) free to play with an item store seemed to me to be a fairly obvious telegraph of their Dota 2 plans.

corin_2• 15 years ago

Even if that's the case, my point still stands: it's not that they prioritise making a good game over thinking about monetization, and anyone who thinks they do is way too gullible.

6ren3• 15 years ago

> "we care more about games than money".

He said they care about the games first, i.e. ordering over time. I quote, adding emphasis to his time-based terms (four times):

> "and then we'll worry about monetization ... we're not going to worry about that until later." Further pressing the point, Newell adds, "Premature monetization is the root of all evil."

> "I think not sucking is way more of an important thing to pay attention to first,"

As an example of making something cool first, and monetizing later, consider google. They didn't do ads for several years, until they found a way to do it that didn't conflict with what made their search cool.

BTW: kevingadd's perceptive, reasoned and evidence-based reply to you is [dead] - this is disturbing to see on HN.

kevingadd3• 15 years ago

I'll reply here with some extra text on top in hopes that whatever caused it to get flagged as dead doesn't flag it again. Thanks for pointing out it was dead...

I don't think that's actually true. If you look at a lot of their past projects, the real clever monetization comes after release, and very often they release piles of cool content entirely for free when they could easily have charged for it. They also spend much longer in development than is strictly necessary, and that tends to not make sense if your goal is to earn money efficiently. As a company they clearly understand monetization, but I don't think it drives their development process.

SandersAK• 15 years ago

I heard Gabe talk at Games For Change in NYC this year, the dude is really really smart.

I don't look at it as money vs quality. I see it more as, more quality more money. So start with quality.

The only way to make money is if people play your games. The perceived value of your games is higher, and the amount of interest is higher when you make good games.

One thing Valve has, probably more than any other game company (besides possibly Zynga) is a ton of data on gamer behavior across all their titles.

They've looked really hard at how players interact on some of their AAA titles like Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead, and more recently on Portal 2. They know how people play, and what they're willing to spend on.

Seriously, they are running EEG brainwave scans and pupil dilation tests on gamers during play testing to understand how their games are effecting their players. That level of customer understanding makes it pretty easy to know where and how to turn the money machine on.

Gabe Newell on monetization before game design

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