Mithril Knight: Free to Play and Bot-free Philippine Ragnarok Online through Advertising

The botters/cheaters constantly blackmail the management of the game. They say that without the botting community, there will be no more Ragnarok Online, because more than 80% of the population are botters. They claim that they are the ones salvaging the game from bankruptcy and without them, Philippine Ragnarok Online will close down.

If RO is Free to Play, then the management will no longer tolerate the bots in the game because the company will not gain anything from them but just lags and unwanted traffic. Bots will just become a burden to the servers.

Botters always reason out that they just don't want to waste their load. They just want to maximize their load : level/zenny ratio. If RO is F2P, then this reason is made worthless.

If RO is F2P, old school players will definitely comeback. Those who quitted before because they were turned off by the sight of bots roaming the servers, and those who just simply wants to play RO because it is a great game but does not want to pay a subscription fee. Many new generation gamers will also give it a try because it is F2P. So to keep the new players coming in, we must ensure a fair game for everyone, a game without any cheats or bots.

But how will the management earn money to pay for the server's maintenance, patches, bandwidth, utilities, and salary of its employees? The answer is ads and hypermart.

As RO's population increases, more and more companies will be enticed to show off their ads here because there are a lot of people who will be able to see their products. Ads can be shown in loading screens and in game.

As the population of real players increases, hypermart earnings will also increase. This is because the people who are previously loading their accounts for gametime, will now use their freed money to purchase things in the hypermart. This means that earnings would stay relatively the same. But when we take into account the bigger community resulting from F2P setting, hypermart will have a bigger pool of prospective buyers, as compared to a small community paying subscription fees. This would result to higher earnings.

Overall, income will increase significantly because of the revenues coming from the hypermart and the ads .

Wont the lag increase due to an increase in population?

Because of the increase in revenue, the management will be able to maintain the servers well and keep up with the increase in population. As the population of real players increase, the more fun the game becomes, also as it increases, revenues from ads and hypermart increases.

That is all, I hope you liked my suggestion. This is the only solution that I can think of to keep Ragnarok Online alive for many years to come.

Summary:
1. Go F2P
2. Ban Bots
3. INCREASED POPULATION
4. Find sponsors
5. Post ads
6. INCREASED HYPERMART SALES
7. HYPERMART + ADS = MORE INCOME
8. Improved service

Example advertisement:

Stat food: Big Mac
Description: Pure 100% beef, fresh lettuce, onions tomatoes, with delicious dressing, sandwiched in bread. Increases str and vit by 5 for 30 mins.
Price: 400 rok points Qty: 10

"The more people who can see and read the ads, the higher the value of the adspace"

Yan ang dahilan kung bakit magandang magF2P ang RO. No company would want to put up their ads in a deserted place.

Role of the much anticipated Server Merge

After the server merge there will be fewer servers, that's a great time to make a F2P and bot free server. In the new worlds that will come, ragdefender will be implemented, and all the rules and regulations will be strictly implemented, there, new players can relax and take it easy, knowing that there is no need to rush to become strong and powerful. This is where real role playing begins, a fresh new start that will definitely attract new players in the game.

Money Matters

Doing this will increase the lifespan of the game. When this is implemented, it is very easy for each server to reach, say 12k each server during peak loads. With that much players, ads will start coming in. (The Coke in Can back then, during RO's golden age is proof of this, but ads stopped when bots proliferated) Don't worry, leveling wont be crowded, since now we already have lot's of levelling places due to recent updates. Hypermart is also a big moneymaker. When there is no more load, the players' money will be freed, they can now use that to buy in Hypermart field manuals, bbgums, etc. Thus, what the company will earn after going F2P bot free, will be almost the same as before when there are still bots and load. Almost the same, but with greater lifespan, therefore, more money in the long run. When there are lots of players, ads will start coming in, augmenting the income of LU.

It is a fact that Filipino players are more likely to play free OL games, also, Filipino players are very competitive thus making hypermart a hit.

Bots and load are what's keeping new players from coming, why would they pay for a game that is very unfair and with a wrecked economy? Removing these two will greatly solve the problem of depopulation. However, load is what's keeping more bots from coming in, the problem of bots is what's making this project difficult. First, LUG must find a solution to the problem of botting.

Order your favorite food while playing RO!

What if you can order food while playing RO? All you have to do is type /pizza or /mcdo, after that RO will be minimized then a new window will pop-out, then you can order.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/index.php?q=node/2167

Why Companies would want to Advertise in RO

1st point: Exclusivity. If I am a company that sells a product, I would want a place to advertise my product that cannot be reached by my competition. For example, if I own McDonalds and I advertise here, Burger King wont be able to advertise here anymore because this ad space is exclusive for me only.

2nd point: Lower Price. Cheaper compared to TV.

3rd point: Accurate. You advertise directly to your target market because of RO's age group

4th point: You can reach out to people. RO players are not the newspaper reading and TV watching type of people. The only way you can reach out to them is by entering the game.

5th point: Diversity despite Exclusivity. If two products of the same kind cannot be placed side by side on the same advertising media (as in the first point), there are still a lot of other kinds of products that can still be advertised side by side, provided they are not competitors or their products are of different types. The different kinds of products I have listed below.

Refreshments

softdrinks

fitness

Restaurants

Fine dining

Fast food

Tech gadgets
cell phone companies
call center jobs
Auction.ph
Tourism (Example: WoW Philippines)
Snack items (Example: Jack and Jill)

6th point: When you advertise to kids, it's not like the kids themselves will buy the product. You advertise to kids so the kids will ask their parents to buy your product. What you are actually after is their parents buying your product for their kids. Also, the age group of RO players is not only limited to kids. Highschool students, College students, Young professionals, and some adults play RO. These kinds of people have the money to spend. Teens are known to be huge spenders in the family. Let me quote this article I researched.

More important than teens' purchasing power may be the influence they bring to online purchased made by their parents and other adults. One in four teens surveyed report that their parents consider their opinion about household purchases. "[Teens] can be very influential on overall household buying," said Patti Freeman Evans, lead author of the report, in a release. "Retailers should not ignore where teens go to get information about product purchases, especially at this time of year."

Now, teens actually have a big say in the market, wether it is thru online purchasing or cash. Here are other quotes, just to show you that you should not underestimate the teens' dictate on the market:

"Under 18" does not equate to "no money." (Things have changed since I was 18!) In fact, data from Teenage Research Unlimited show that U.S. teens (ages 12 to 19) spent $172 billion in 2001, an 11 percent increase over the 2000 figure of $155 billion.

Michael Wood, Vice President of Teenage Research Unlimited, confirms that figure and points out that there's more where that came from, saying, "We expect overall teen spending to continue to increase along with the increase in size of this demographic group. The number of teens in the U.S. population has been growing since 1992, and is going to continue to grow until the year 2010, at which time there will be more teens in the U.S. population than ever before. We expect that per-capita spending will remain roughly the same, but we'll see a gradual increase due to the increase in the size of the population."

An important point to remember is that the $172 billion figure quoted above doesn't include spending by others on teens' behalf; Wood explains, "It's just the money that teens themselves are spending. It's direct spending by the teen; it includes teens spending their own money and also teens spending their family's dollars."

Add in spending done by adults but influenced by teens, and the figure grows substantially. Research by Harris Interactive YouthPulse shows that one in three consumer dollars either is spent by or influenced by someone under 18. Wood remarks, "I think people in the past have underestimated the amount of influence that teens have, even on something as simple as grocery shopping. Whether it's cereals, or breakfast bars, or sports drinks, teens play an important role in determining what brands or products end up in the household. It's not only the direct spending of teens that's so important, but also the influence they have on family spending."

Certainly the mere existence of a teen creates a significant amount of spending. According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average two-parent family with a pretax income of $50,600 can expect to spend $9,690 per year raising a 12- to 14-year-old-child and $9,860 on a 15- to 17-year-old. (These figures include spending on housing, food, transportation, clothing, healthcare, childcare and education, and miscellaneous expenses.)

So just what are those teens spending their money on? Wood says, "Traditionally, teens have been big buyers of products like apparel, footwear, video games, entertainment, food, and so on. What's been interesting in the past few years, though, is that it seems that almost every product category is looking at this demographic group to see if perhaps they may be able to make inroads with the teen audience."

Teens' firm grasp of high-tech suggests another target market, says Wood: "[Mobile electronics and computers] are huge. All types of technology products are huge right now for teens. They certainly are attracted to technology items - cell phones, of course, are at the top of their lists, and we're seeing big increases in the percentage of teens who not only own cell phones, but who also plan to purchase one in the next year."

The mall probably always will be a Mecca for teen consumers, but in recent years another venue for shopping and socializing has evolved: Cyberspace. A study by SpectraCom Strategic Planning and Research revealed that 41 percent of Americans under the age of 18 have made an online purchase, and 58 percent have asked a parent to buy things they have seen on the Internet.

Wood agrees that the Internet must figure in marketers' plans when designing a teen-focused campaign. "It is an environment that teens are very comfortable in; it's something they use not only to find information, but also to stay connected with each other. They're certainly using it as a resource for learning more about products before they actually get to the store. Marketers are being challenged today to look beyond banner advertising, which tends to turn teens off, and look for more innovative ways to get involved, whether it's through instant messaging, or promotions, or contests, winning free stuff - things like that."

Source:
http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/12/...&frame=true
http://www.rab.com/sales_meetings/7-02-2.html

Explanation:

American Teen or Filipino Teen it makes very little difference or no difference at all. Look at the commercials, they all target the teen population. Look at the commercial models, majority of them are young people. These facts only mean one thing, teen trends in the US and in the Philippines is almost the same. Based on my research, there are three impacts that teens have on the market, namely:

1st impact: Teens buy
2nd impact: Teens influence
3rd impact: Adults buy in behalf of teens

Conclusion: You should not underestimate the teens' dictate on the market. With a very large number of teens, young professionals, and some adults, companies can expect an increase in gross sales.

7th point: RO runs 24/7, which means, ads are constantly being displayed independent of the time of the day. There are no primetime, noontime, afternoontime, morningtime. A company is more likely to get the benefits of a primetime ad slot at a lower cost. Also, RO can be played all over the country.

8th point: Making a commercial on TV is much much more difficult and expensive than advertising on loading screens. Companies will save on manpower, equipments, and models. Add that to the fact that ads on loading screens costs less than TV commercials.

9th point: RO is special, because you can put commercials in it without destroying its immersiveness. How was I able to say that? Let me explain: RO is a unique game, it somehow combines the modern world and the ancient world. RO is not a very stiff game that only focuses on medieval life, dungeons, and dragons, knights and damsels and magic. RO is a hybrid game, combining the modern and the ancient. That makes RO very adaptive to ads.

10th point: RO is still one of the most popular MMORPG in the market.

Number of Players

To get a large number of players we need to become F2P, because the trend right now is F2P games. F2P+massive campaign+Fair gameplay will definitely entice new players.

Peak load is not equal to actual population. If there are 15,000 players online at 3:00pm, that 15,000 is just the peak load. Players come and go, so the actual population is much much higher, about 20k-25k. And don't forget the other servers, so there will be a lot of people in this game.

3rd Party Programs

Removing the bots is very essential in this suggestion. Bots deter companies and new players from venturing into RO. A company seeks real people who will see their ads, while a player seeks a fair game. Bots is a big hindrance, but need not worry. They maybe tenacious, but no computer program can match human intelligence. The solution to bots not only relies on an anti-bot program but also on the active participation of the community. The Midgard Police is a promising solution. For novice accounts, the MP's can always patrol novice areas, which are quite few. To create a new account, one must first top-up 50php worth of RoK points, and then afterwards, it's F2P. The last suggestion aims to control the creation of bot accounts. I don't agree that a mere 50php registration fee will deter new players from coming in. After paying 50 php, you get 1000 RoK points, and F2P service, this 1000 rok points, will also serve as trial for the new player to try out the hypermart. It's a double solution, paying 50php as registration fee, will act as an anti-bot measure and at the same time promote the hypermart to the new player

Check and Balance

This suggestion also has the check and balance issues covered. It goes like this. If they don't do their jobs well, LU will lose players and sponsors. They got ads to show, a little delay on the maintenance will make them lose face to their sponsors. Of course LU would want their game balanced and orderly without corruption and power trips because they want to get the trust of their sponsors. To get the trust of their sponsors, they have to get the trust of their players first. Free does not mean crappy in this suggestion.

Testing of Feasibility

What if LU starts an RO server that is F2P, bot free, and ads supported? There will be two kinds of servers then, one is P2P, the other is F2P, but with ads. Of course the hypermart will also be implemented on the F2P server according to my suggestion.

I got a great idea.

Slotted equips will now be available on the Hypermart. But you can still hunt them if you want to. Cards will never be available on the Hypermart in my server. You have to hunt them down. I believe that with this update, a F2P server like this has become more feasible.

Supporting Research

Last year, TV rating company Nielsen Media reported a fall in the amount of prime-time TV viewing among 18 - 34 year old men. In a report from Ziff Davis Digital Gaming they reckoned that a quarter of gamers had swapped TV watching time for playing time. Seeing that in 2003 US advertisers spent $ 12 billion on TV spots targeting young men while the equivalent figure for in-game ads was just $ 10 million, the US advertising landscape is poised to undergo changes in the years to come. As millions of young men and women change their lifestyle and entertainment habits, advertisers now finds an additional venue to reach the coveted 18 - 34 demographic through the medium of games ... and Funcom takes the first step in March 2005.

Trond Aas, CEO of Funcom stated "As opposed to a medium like TV you know that the gamers eyes are always watching the screen while playing games. With official ad measurement methods from Nielsen we are sure advertisers will cherish this revolutionary new opportunity to reach the extremely valuable 18 - 34 demographic. Through our own research we know that most gamers want in-game advertisement to heighten the sense of realism. Seeing that the live billboards in Anarchy Online do not interfere with gameplay I am confident our free players will welcome the permanent continuation of our complimentary subscription in the ultimate sci-fi MMORPG."

Source:
http://www.worthplaying.com/print.php?sid=23567

In-game advertising--poised to pop

Analysts agree: advertisers' need to capture elusive teens means in-game advertising will be big--but the infrastructure needs work before mainstream marketers will come on board.

SAN FRANCISCO--The atmosphere at today's Game Advertising Summit is buoyant. Speakers at this GDC-produced conference on the emerging in-game advertising market believe it's poised to explode. And it's not all talk either--some players are putting their money where their mouth is, as evidenced by Microsoft's recent purchase of in-game ad leader Massive.

But although it's widely accepted that the market is heading for rapid growth, questions remain: How fast will the market grow? Who's the best target for in-game advertising? Will advertisers, publishers, and gamers get on board?

At this morning's analyst session, Michael Cai of Parks Associates and Julie Ask of Jupiter Research addressed these questions. Cai opened the session by sharing his growth predictions. In 2009, he believes that in-game ad revenue on PCs will crack $400 million--more than 10 times the revenue in 2005. Though projecting more than tenfold growth may seem aggressive, Cai points out that $400 million will represent only about 2 percent of the total online advertising market in 2009.

If Cai's projections are correct, in 2009 it will be hard--maybe impossible--to find a new game that's ad-free. Will gamers support the injection of advertising into their favorite pastime? Cai has explored this question in depth by surveying gamers, and his research has yielded interesting results.

Though a significant percentage of gamers (from one-fourth to one-third depending on demographic group) are strongly opposed to in-game advertising, a similar percentage is strongly in favor of it--as long as it enhances gameplay or provides an opportunity to win prizes. Moreover, the hardcore gamers--the ones who play the most and spend the most money on gaming--are much more likely to be tolerant of in-game ads than are less committed gamers. In short, it seems that public opinion in the game market will not be a significant barrier to the growth of in-game advertising.

Julie Ask took the podium next to present her perspective on how in-game advertising will coexist--or compete--with other forms of advertising.

As Ask pointed out, there's plenty of competition for "emerging technology advertising dollars," and just 8 percent of online advertisers currently use in-game ads. As that statistic shows, in-game advertising is still niche media, much closer to podcast advertising (used by 9 percent of online advertisers) than to in-page display ads online, a well-accepted format currently used by 46 percent of online advertisers.

However, Jupiter's research shows that in-game ads are much more effective in reaching teenagers than other kinds of online advertising. The teen market is notoriously difficult for marketers to capture, so as the infrastructure for in-game ads improves, it seems clear that advertisers will recognize the potential and get on board. Ask is particularly interested in the potential in the mobile-game space, where a number of companies are already working with different ways of using ads in mobile games to target the enormous audience of cell-phone users.

When is all this going to happen? Or, in the words of Michael Cai, "Where's the inflection point?" At some point, like Internet adoption or use of cell phones, in-game ad revenue will switch from its current steady but slow growth to a rapid growth phase, Cai predicts.

Speaking with GameSpot after his presentation, Cai said that the catalyst for that phase of explosive growth was to reduce the complexity of in-game advertising. Currently, the in-game ad market offers no common ad format across games, and there's no central point of contact for advertisers, who mostly negotiate separate deals for each game.

Though a number of firms, including Massive, have made progress toward solving these problems, until these barriers are removed entirely, Cai explained, in-game advertising will not be attractive for most marketers. Cai doubts that point will come within the next two years but thinks it's a possibility in 2009 or 2010.

But when it happens, when the market does take off, will developers get on board. After Cai and Ask finished their presentation, GameSpot caught up with Dan Connors for the developer's side of the story. As the CEO of Telltale Games, which both develops and publishes, Connors sees in-game advertising as a promising opportunity, especially for independents and smaller firms. It's a new source of funding that could supplement traditional models, and Connors even thinks that in some cases it might be possible for in-game ads to completely underwrite development.

So it seems that smoothing the technical bumps may be all it takes for in-game ads to explode. It will be a challenge for rival firms like the platform owners and competing developers to work together to make this happen, but the potential gains are so large that Cai's estimate of a few years for the market to gel may be right on track.

Source:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6152597.html

What do you think of in-game advertising? We've gotten used to it on the basketball courts and baseball fields of the real world, but somehow, we just aren't all that happy with the idea of ads getting into our video games. They destroy the game's immersiveness and detract from our pleasure in playing, we might think. It cheapens the game enough that we might call it a sell-out, some of us might even dare to shout.

Have you ever looked at it from the other side though?

Over at Victor Rottenstein's blog, he mentions something that would make perfect sense to anyone who's ever thought of the bottomline:

It has changed the marketing strategy itself, not only because the �advergame� benefits, but because this e-marketing enhanced model let (sic) you know what your clients are doing at real time, and yes, it works for you as a marketer, because it will show you a real time world of metrics that you have never seen before with your expensive offline marketing actions.

It makes sense. Because we're playing games, marketers already know what we're doing. The more popular the game, the greater the chance that they could find some way to plug themselves in it for less than the price of a real-world ad campaign. While a real world ad campaign increases buyer intention by 2%, game ads hit for around 15%, which is definitely a big difference for advertisers.

Of course, they have to be very careful about what games to plug ads for. We could expect something of the sort in sports games like Madden 07, but wouldn't you be pissed with a shiny ad for a soft drink in the dark, disturbing town of Silent Hill?

Source: http://mmorpg.qj.net/tags/e-advertisements/9733

Advergaming �is the practice of using games, particularly computer games, to advertise or promote a product, organization or viewpoint�. What we have here is only a cold definition, we are talking about games, real computer or console games.

A few years ago the Internet began an exponential growth based on many new emerging technologies that made possible great bandwidth for users at a reasonable cost, and �browser� technologies like flash and Ajax.

So advergaming was moved from real world to the Internet for the last 5 years. Well I think this monster has mutated:

Long time ago, some of the top 500 companies invested a small piece of their marketing budget to get a sponsored game, Budweiser and 7up at the beginnings.

10 years have passed and today advergaming is a real fact with a 100 Millions U$S global market share and a 1.000 Millions U$S market share estimated for the 2010. We can see advergames everywhere, not only on the Internet, but in �real� games for PS, Gamecube, Xbox and computers. We could take �Winning eleven� (The best �Soccer� game ever) as an explicit example: It has a lot of advertises around the field.

Internet has provided the next step for advergaming and now we can clearly use it as a powerful marketing tool at a really low price. It has changed the marketing strategy itself, not only because the �advergame� benefits, but because this e-marketing enhanced model let you know what your clients are doing at real time, and yes, it works for you as a marketer, because it will show you a real time world of metrics that you have never seen before with your expensive offline marketing actions. That�s why I have defined this as:

Interactive Advergaming

Think about it for a second, why should I read your promotional e-mail? What in hell will force me to stay in your website for more than 30 seconds? Do you really think that users enjoy reading about your product benefits?

Well, I don�t have the answers because I don�t know how your e-marketing strategy is, but what I can tell you based on my experience is that your client will be happier if he spend the same time playing a little game that is telling the story of your product benefits in a non-invasive way.

And probably, if you have selected the right Agency to develop your advergame, it will be �viral� so your client will share and promote his experience (and your game) with his friends.

The EIAA (European Interactive Advertising Association) has a real fact: they say that a standard publicity campaign increases the buyer intention in 2% , while a advergaming campaign increases it around a 15%.

I-advergaming is not for all audiences, but you could think about it as a low cost way to involve your clients in your campaign story within a interactive way, with real time knowledge of their actions, and a deeper brand memory-retention .Of course don�t forget that this is only one of your marketing mix variables

Source: http://1879.blogspot.com/2006/09/interacti...dvergaming.html

Global Youth Culture: It's a Small World After All

Walk down a street in Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, or Hong Kong and it's easy to have a feeling of d�j� vu. The kids look surprisingly familiar: Nike shoes, Levi's jeans, Chicago Bulls T-shirts wherever you look. Indeed, the National Basketball Association is fast becoming the first truly global sports league. About $500 million of licensed merchandise is sold outside of the United States in a typical year. U.S. firms like Nike and Levi Strauss find it easy to go global because of the special appeal American products have around the world. They benefit from their strong association with innovation, rebellion, and a casual lifestyle fueled by youth idols from Elvis Presley to Kurt Cobain.

It seems that kids are the same everywhere. The New World Teen Study surveyed over 27,000 teenagers in forty-four countries and identified six values segments that characterize young people from Cairo to Caracas. The results of this massive segmentation exercise have been used by companies like Coca-Cola and Royal Phillips Electronics to develop ads that appeal to youth around the world.

Fantasies in Consumerspace

That comment is a reminder that kids are doing more than shopping online. They also are avid participants in virtual gaming sites as well as online communities forged around themes or characters (more on this in Chapter 6). On any given night, up to 50,000 people can be found roaming around a fantasyland in cyberspace called EverQuest. This is a "massively multiplayer game" that combines the stunning graphics of advanced gaming with the social scene of a chat room. And teens commune with each other about shared fantasies by establishing virtual communities devoted to fantasy characters.

Source: http://www.aef.com/on_campus/classroom/boo...erpts/data/2503

People under 21 currently comprise 51 percent of the country�s population, with its median age at 22.5 years old.

McCann Erickson said the growing dependence of today�s youth on technology-driven inputs poses a distinct challenge to companies that want to corner a piece of the burgeoning teen market, as wants and needs have also increased over the past five years.

Teens also watch less television and instead focus more on online chatting and texting. They also read less books, magazines and newspapers compared to 2000 numbers, the study said.

The proliferation of Internet caf�s has also democratized Internet access as respondents from the C and D demographic reflected the highest jump in terms of Internet gaming and surfing usage across all clusters.