5 hassle-free ways to reward/pay an online customer without asking for too much personal information.

Most smaller gaming companies today struggle with this one. How do you pay or reward an online player without having to deal with too many legal and transactional hurdles? Especially when the payments are really small (micropayments), like a dollar or worth around a dollar. Indie game developers often like to offer tiny cash incentives to their players but opt out of it because of all the associated legal hassles.

Some of the major issues companies face are:

1) Asking for personal information - A lot of companies need a customer’s address and other contact info to mail a reward or transfer any money to their account. This almost always is a deal killer because most customers are wary of sharing any such information.

2) Game studios themselves can find it a little embarrassing to transfer such small amounts to a user. One alternative is to offer virtual gifts (coins, game points, virtual toys etc) but let’s be honest here, not everyone likes these things. Anything that has actual cash value is always preferred more. 

3) Sweepstakes: A lot of times, people who win online sweepstakes don’t even bother claiming their prizes if the prize is actual money. Because the company offering the prize money needs all kinds of personal information from the user. And because of this, a lot of users don’t even bother claiming them.

      My team built out a trivia game a while ago that would give out a $100 each day to a player who finished all 10 questions correctly and then entered his/her name into a daily sweepstake. Surprisingly, most of the winners didn’t even bother claiming their prizes inspite of repeated emails to them informing of their win! After some research we found out that no one was interested in filling up the claim form because it asked for too much personal information. But because of legal reasons, that was the only way we could actually pay a user.

At that point, I decided to do some research and find out different ways that we could pay a user without ever needing their personal information. The one thing I realized was that it was pretty hard legally to pay small cash prizes ($1 or more) to a user. The only alternatives were products that had ‘real cash value’. Not virtual toys and stuff, but paid services that we could offer as a reward. Here was the list I came up with. The only thing you will ever need to distribute these prizes is an email address. 

1) Redbox DVD rentals. These DVD’s rent for $1 a day and it’s very easy to give these out as prizes. As you may know, Redbox gives out free rental codes on a regular basis which can be redeemed for a one night DVD rental. A studio could buy these codes in bulk and offer them as prizes. They also have this for the Blockbuster Kiosks.

2) iPhone, iPad and Android paid apps, songs and other media – Most apps sell for 99 cents as you already know, so a studio could offer a bunch of paid apps as payment. The way this can be done is by using the “Gift an App” feature found in the iTunes application.

3) Longer game playtime (Gaikai, Big Fish, Tagged etc) – Big Fish games offers their games in a way that the first 30 minutes of gameplay is free. A studio could offer the players’ longer playtimes (60 minutes of free playtime) as prizes. In a similar vein, Gaikai, Gamestreamer and Onlive offer cloud streaming of hardcore console games. Studios could offer digital copies of these games/demos as a reward.

4) Groupon/Living Social deals – These can be offered if the prizes are of a higher value. Groupon allows a person to gift a Groupon deal to someone else.

5) Subscriptions – A lot of publishing companies offer newspaper/magazine/game subscriptions. These can be gifted to a player too. I was supposed to implement this in one of my games and it actually works well.

I am gonna keep this list open for now. I am sure there are many other ways to reward a user and it would be great to hear from the readers on suitable alternatives.

You can follow me on Twitter @aabidsiddique or mail me at aabidsiddique81@yahoo.com. 

Virality, Monetization or User Retention. Which one of these matters the most in a social game?

I personally feel that virality is the most important aspect. Here are some reasons why:

User Retention: The core social game demographic consists of middle-aged women with high disposable incomes. Unlike hard-core gamers, social gamers tend to have a much shorter attention span. They play purely for fun with not a whole lot of competitive spirit (unlike hard-core gamers). Because of this, social gamers can easily gravitate towards other popular social games once they have played a particular game for a long enough time. So long-term user retention is almost always the hardest metric when it comes to driving the success of a social game. Think about it yourself, when was the last time you came across a person who had been playing the same social game for more than a few months? For that matter, hard-core gamers are known to stay true to a game franchise (Call of Duty, FIFA, Halo) for years at a time.

Monetization: This same social gamer demographic tends to be quite careful about its spending habits too. No matter how addictive a game, most social gamers try their best to keep actual spending to a preset limit every month. Again this is because of the demographic itself which is older than the average gamer and is more mature about its spending habits. It’s also because actual spending on social games is often considered wasteful expenditure by the general population. So it can sometimes become a taboo topic. Ask any of your friends how much they spend on social games and you will never get the right answer! This is different from hard-core gamers who are willing to spend a fortune on gaming equipment and accessories and make no bones about it.  

Virality: Coming back to my original point, the best way to drive the success of a game is by focusing hard on virality. That helps in keeping a safety cushion of new users and also helps in offsetting existing users who may or may not end up being a long-term customer. Every game will have its loyal fan base and they will generate a constant revenue stream. But often, that’s not enough to sustain a game. Because of this, generating new users is what every publisher should constantly focus on. And each new user brings with him/her a fresh perspective as well as a new revenue opportunity.

I personally believe that Facebook is one of the most expensive and unstable platforms for virality. The company constantly changes its rules to satisfy its users and not the publishers. So most of its policy changes are almost always detrimental to a games’ viral development. It’s not a level-playing field too. Everyone knows that Facebook has shown favoritism towards some developers and left out the rest. That’s one of the reasons why there is a strong need for innovation when it comes to making a game viral on Facebook.

(These views are solely that of the author and are open to random dismantling and violent criticism)

Follow me @aabidsiddique or check out my site at www.aabid.me

Have comments or questions? You can also mail me at aabidsiddique81@yahoo.com