How CS:GO's In-Game Economy Can Grow a New Generation of Players/Fans and Slow Down Hackers

I've written about Counterstrike and Valve before; most recently being about CS:GO not being ready for the Free-to-Play model. This article will explain how Valve has designed a system where they have created an in-game economy and added a secondary ranking system that has creatively solved the balance between wanting to grow the player base without flooding the competitive matchmaking system with hackers and griefers while growing wave after wave of new players.

Link to original article:
http://www.r4bb1t.com/2014/04/why-valves-csgo-isnt-ready-for-free-to.html

To address the secondary ranking system to get it out of the way; Valve implemented a experience-based ranking system as well as keeping the original skill-based ranking system. While the original system is important for the system to create balanced teams for matchmaking, the newer experience based system serves two purposes - to tell other players how long that player has been at it as well as slowing down the rate at which hackers and griefers can access the competitive matches to ruin it for others. Every account must hit at least level three to play competitive matches, which takes just under a day's worth of hours in-game to get through - this prevents people from just buying new copies and jumping straight into serious games. It gives the system a chance to slow down an individual account and assess what it is doing before letting it roam free.

Now, down to the fun bit:

While Global Offensive isn't free to play yet, the in game economy (briefly explained in link at beginning of article) has created what I would call a "free by referral" system. Valve's system creates a direct-dollar translation of value of items/skins/etc which while it can't be directly traded back for cash, it can be used for other items and more importantly, games in the Steam marketplace.

So, CS GO players that have been at it for a while who have accumulated a stock of items from drops can then theoretically trade it in for more copies of CS GO to give out to friends and strangers. I'd love to see the data that shows the correlation of Steam sales of CSGO with dumps of items into the Steam marketplace and bulk purchases of copies from individual players.

This means that players of any level can eventually earn enough in-game to purchase the game for others without spending another cent on the game, giving the general in-game economy a 'pay it forward' kind of vibe, which is fascinating on an economic as well as social science perspective.

On the other hand, it's generally used by these players to create 'smurf' accounts, basically accounts intended to hide the user's actual skill level. These smurf accounts are used as a vacation for high rank players and/or trolling purposes - while not quite as uplifting as the thought of buying other players copies, it is a real part of the CS/Steam economy.

There is something innately interesting about Counterstrike as a game. On the surface, it's another FPS game, shooting your enemy and winning. The level below that, there is an appreciation for the level of thought high-level players need to compete - everything from usage of sound to the in game physics of throwing a perfect grenade. The level below that is the most interesting - hidden deep past the actual gameplay is that fact that Counterstrike is actually a game about economy. If you ever watch a game, there is a bar at the top of the page that indicates one team's buying power over the other. It's an aspect that can make or break teams - if a player or two refuses to go along with the rest of the team in buying strategy, the opposing team can splinter and slowly rip the team's ability to buy effective weapons and body armor. The quick math needed to analyse the economies of both teams, deciding whether or not to save, partial buy, or full buy is amazing, and is a trait needed for leaders of these teams.

An explanation of how buying strategy affects the game in this video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyPKqovdNqI

Continuing on how CSGO is actually a lesson on economics, the actual marketplace and the buying and selling of skins is the world's easiest lesson on the principles of supply and demand. Watching new cases of weapons skins jump to the 20 dollar range in the first week from rarity and demand to seeing it sell for 10 cents a month later from the market being flooded with the same box will teach your child about the stock market and IPOs better and faster than playing with the real stock markets (see picture below).

The last point about the in-game economy is about how these items are part of the change in how sponsorships work- main sponsors now know what kind of viewership their money bought, and the community itself is now part of the funding for major events, with sticker sales contributing towards the prize money at this year's competition at Cologne. The quote below is from the CSGO newsfeed:

"CS:GO fans had the opportunity to directly support their favorite teams and players and their response was unprecedented: thanks to crowd-funding with event stickers, the players and organizations received a total of over $4.2 million!"

 This means that as teams grow their fanbases, they can now feel directly involved with the amount of pull/sponsorship they will receive, a new addition to the world of e/sports and how that microeconomy works. This realization should further drive the reach of CS/Valve in the long run through the effective harnessing of self-interest in the respective parties.

So, at the end of the day, this article is actually about how Valve and GabeN has basically tricked a bunch of people around the world into learning about how an economy works, and how good flow of currency can help individual teams in competition as well as the system and new players as a whole by combining the principles of capitalism and teamwork together. Absolutely silly and fantastic simultaneously... good job, guys.

Thanks for reading.

Why Valve's CounterStrike:GO Isn't Ready for Free-To-Play Gaming

Counter-Strike : Global Offensive - Why Valve's Competitive FPS is Growing so Quickly, and the One Reason it Should Not Go F2P Yet

The reason Counter-Strike is one of the longest lasting, most popular games on the planet is because it emphasizes something many modern game developers seem to not understand - money spent should have absolutely no influence on in-game performance. The second the developer starts to add perks that improve gameplay to customers who pay more, it breaks the game, frustrates players, and the community chokes itself out.

I'm not on a anti-capitalist rant here, I'm suggesting that don't mess with in-game mechanics to make a quick buck, and your game will have the opportunity to make more in the long run and create a real competitive pool with a giant fanbase.

So, instead of doing the aforementioned to make big $s, what does Valve do? The explanation is in this VGCats comic strip. Go read that and come on back, I'll be waiting.

...You're back? Cool.

It's no surprise that two of the most successful F2P games on the planet, Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2, are Valve products. I wrote an article about this a while back on another site: http://www.ycadmarketing.com/2012/10/valves-lessons-on-their-free-to-play.html

While the systems are slightly different, because TF2 items can have different properties that affect the game and CS items are purely cosmetic, the idea remains the same: make a good product with items/drops that don't break the balance of multiplayer gameplay, and loyal players will shell out money to customize their character. Also, cut your players a little portion of the profits in the form of items and store credit regardless of whether they pay or not. They're all paying with their time, making your game more profitable and enjoyable through a larger pool of players, don't forget that.

Tactical.

A Little Backstory:

 I was one of the earliest adopters of Steam, back when it was taken with as much enthusiasm as EA's horrid Origin platform, just to play games like Day of Defeat and Team Fortress, but the main reason was to play Counter-Strike, originally a mod for the first Half-Life. Not to sound like a hipster douche, but I played CS before version 1.0... back then, the only map we really played was de_dust, and we LIKED it that way! (whippersnapper.)

Took several years off, played Source almost exclusively for fy_iceworld and GunGame maps (currently known as Arms Race), stopped again due for personal reasons (you're getting fragged by a sight-challenged person, did I mention that?), and jumped into Global Offensive a little over a month ago. I've had to relearn a lot of stuff, and at the time of this article being published, am sitting at Gold Nova II.

Current CS:GO competitive ranks.
Gold Nova I is the equivalent of having a Karate Black Belt (eg: congrats, you just mastered basic mechanics!)

So, what is the main difference between CS:Global Offensive and the past two iterations?

It's not graphics (although, check picture below, the new graphics are pretty), it's not the improved capabilities of weapons that aren't the M4, AK, AWP, and DEagle, it's certainly not the core gameplay mechanics, it's the addition of the competitive match making system.

Ex-1.6 Pro and current GO player SiderMan1 with an excellent review:

I can give some good advice here--I think.

I was a professional CS 1.6 player...stopped playing for a very long time because of a change in the game type I / my friends were interested in and the complete dislike for CS:Source.

CS:GO takes the element most admired by higher caliber players, the scrimming 5v5 format, and brings it to the forefront. In the beta, there are a couple of mods that are fun for a late night drunken play (arms race, as example) but the core / match ranked games are really entertaining to play.

Having it be in a 5v5 format all games creates a lot more tense situations. First team to 16 wins (both sides) win the match and that team gets more points for the match making.

The game plays a lot more like 1.6 than I thought it would. Grenades are thrown like source and some of the guns behave awkwardly but those are things you can get used too.

I've docked 50+ hours on the Beta and am looking forward to the public release and constant tweaks from Valve to make it better.

I would say for this price, if you have interest in CS at all---buy it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So now, with the integrated competitive system in place, the ability to stream and monetize gameplay becoming easier, and international competition with big-name sponsors becoming a regular occurrence, Counter-Strike is again poised to take the lead in competitive FPS gaming.

So, with so many players joining, and the marketplace grows ever larger, why doesn't Valve make CS Free-to-Play like TF2 and DOTA2?

My theory? The drastic effect cheating has on Counter-Strike over the other games.

Think Aimbots and Wallhacks is a tiny problem? Read this:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/04/30/hacks-an-investigation-into-aimbot-dealers-wallhack-users-and-the-million-dollar-business-of-video-game-cheating/

Take it from some folks more experienced than I on the subject in this Reddit /r/GlobalOffensive thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/1cm0qg/counterstrikeglobal_offensive_and_the/

In a top down RTS game like DOTA, where the core mechanics have more to do using basic algebra and statistics to micromanage actions that your avatar plays out, cheating may only present a small advantage, like a casino adding an extra 0 on the roulette table. On the other hand, cheating drastically breaks FPS gameplay mechanics that are more based upon reaction time and accuracy, like bringing a grenade to a water balloon fight.

This is what cheating in CS looks like:

The current system to keep hackers at bay is a combination of Valve's VAC (Valve Anti Cheat), which took some flak recently for sending a user's DNS cache to Valve's servers for monitoring (turned out to be misleading, but was big enough for Gabe Newell himself to come down and explain things), and something called "Overwatch," which is a system where real players who are deemed experienced enough volunteer their time and review footage of players suspected of cheating.

Here is a pretty solid overview on how to spot cheaters in Counter-Strike:

So, the system seems to be made to auto-detect when it can, but for the newest wave of cheats, they must trust the opinion of people who both report an individual and the Overwatchers who make the call. Now, given statistical generalizations of human behavior like the 80/20 rule and the like, it should be expected that the number of people who care enough to report and volunteer their time watching replays would not be the majority of the players. This means that opening the floodgates to cheaters by making CS F2P would overburden the in-game "justice system,"as well as increase the chances of false positives harming innocent players.

So, to maintain the community, some kind of barrier to entry must be preserved in order to create an opportunity cost for the troll who wants to ruin other people's good times, and keeping a non-zero price is a good start.

In a picture you may have seen earlier, Valve's F2P model revolves around a few core principles:

- Avoid Pay to Win in PvP
- Avoid inventing an unnecessary virtual currency
- Let people have fun without paying
- People are more comfortable buying items than we thought
- It's worth it to cut your community in on the deal

Basically, the impact of hackers flooding the pool would be big enough to break the third rule down - it wouldn't even be "Let people have fun," just "let's just try to keep our real players from getting frustrated and rage quitting."

So.

Will CS ever go fully F2P? 

Maybe when Valve's Anti-Cheat System is darn near flawless and can compensate for false-positives with precision. Who knows.

Anyway, that's all I really have to say on the subject, thanks for reading.

Are you a CS player? I just might be willing to trade you a clan logo for keys. 

Magus - DOTA 2 Clan Logo Design

Here's a set of logos I made for a DOTA 2 clan, Magus.

For those of you that don't know, DOTA = Defense of the Ancients, one of the most popular Free-to-Play games on the market.

To the Magus guys - best of luck on your endeavors, and kick some ass at tournaments so the world can see the awesome logos I made for you guys.

b0mb3r

benolot

flawless

Mutex 

TurtalyTurtle

Nintendo is Pushing Big on PR for the Wii U on Reddit - A Mostly Unsubstantiated Theory

Is This Social Media Marketing Done Right?
Is Nintendo Cleverly Gaming Reddit/r/Gaming for the WiiU?

Disclaimer: This is just a half-baked thought exercise.

Whatever, they've got nothing on Korean Starcraft players

Here at Rabbit, we think it's kind of beautiful in a perverse way when companies can seemingly trick/buy-en-masse/convince social media users to do their marketing job for them.

To be able to do so properly on a marketing aware website such as Reddit, a brand must be able to slip itself into a meme, spark discussion/nostalgia, and/or light a fire under the rear ends of "Karma Whores" (the white washed sepulchers of the community) to make them imitate the previous meme in hopes of accumulating those sweet sweet approvals from strangers upvotes.

Did Nintendo manage to do this successfully this past week to regain their footing right after their 18% post-forecast announcement stock plunge and are they buttering up the Reddit community to get them ready for a new batch of titles, mobile gaming, pre-hype the Nintendo 'Fusion', or just get their stock back to normal (which already happened)?

This short article is intended to entertain these ideas.


First, Some Non-Nintendo Examples of Reddit/r/Gaming Branding/Reactions:

Done Right: Valve/Steam
Manages to generally get positive reactions (comes and goes in cycles) if a Team Fortress 2 meme about hats is even semi-funny, an article talks glowingly about how awesome the nearly zero-tier corporate structure of Valve is, a rant about waiting for Half-Life 3 is seemingly heartfelt, or if Valve President Gabe Newell is even mentioned.

Done Horribly Wrong: Microsoft/XBox One
Mention of XBox One, or "XBone" as it is often referred to, may cause unnecessary anger, spark the First-World Gamer's equivalent to PTSD, or brings up links to articles and discussions about how Microsoft is trying to buy upvotes and pay people to say nice things about them. Bill Gates is still cool, though.

Nintendo seems to be right in between the two on Reddit, where a perpetual argument between diehard fanboys defending the company against XBox/PS4 gamers takes place, all while PC gamers just step in and throw in condescending remarks every once in a while.

Check out /r/HailCorporate for more displays of attempted viral marketing.

Top Nintendo posts this week

Nintendo has managed to capture the front page several times in the past week - users bringing up old clever ads, submitting product ideas, and even making "get well soon" memes directed at the company after a /r/bestof comment hit the nail on the head regarding the marketing failure of the Wii U:  http://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/1vowvg/how_can_nintendo_right_the_ship/ceuqe4g?context=3

The best response:

"Holy shit I just caught on to the fact that the wii u WASN'T an attachment for the wii.
This is exactly true for me...and now I feel old as shit."

Nintendo has essentially bowed, apologized for their failure, then turned right back around and got their footing back with the help of nostalgic internet gamers over the course of a few days by (possibly) lighting a candle under their butts by flooding the net with content and giving their fanboys a purpose. Don't believe me? Their stock returned to normal and only a few people noticed: http://gaminrealm.com/2014/01/23/nintendo-stock-returns-normal/

Regardless, I think the biggest lesson learned for them (at least in the US market) is that their strength is in their beloved first-party IPs... the things that bullrush many gamers with memories of childhood and hopes that the next iteration will be even better. When Nintendo makes a new console, they need to go down a checklist of games they need in the first year: Mario, Smash Brothers, Zelda, Mario Kart, Metroid, Pokemon, Mario Party, Mario Sports, etc. If they can't throw down at least 5 checkmarks on that list, the console might be done but it is not ready.

I specify the US market because the Japanese market for Nintendo is just fine: 9 of 10 best selling games in Japan last year are all on Nintendo consoles.

So, did Nintendo anticipate the stock drop and plan a brilliant online/Reddit PR strategy that got them right back on course darn near immediately (and made a select few a ton of money in a short period with the stock fluctuation)? Or was it just a completely natural and user-driven recovery?

It certainly is interesting to think about.

Your thoughts? Leave a comment.

How to Market Your Way to a Top 25 Paid Mobile App Game

A Case Study of Piston Game's iOS Success on the Apple Store

Here is a post from Reddit User and Piston Games member brainsolid explaining their success of their iOS game Gemibears. It is an excellent list of marketing advice that distills months and years of experience into a bite-sized piece and the thoughts applied here can be extended to any App, not limited to games.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We here in Piston Games just launched Gemibears for iOS and after few days break through to top paid 25 overall in US.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gemibears/id471855200?mt=8

This was really hard and interesting, so I would like to share with you our experience. There are 10 steps to get top paid 25 overall in US:

1) Make a great game and prepare great marketing

You need to spend on marketing as many time as you spend on development. Bad app can be pulled to top by great marketing, but when your campaign will end — app will be dramatically dropped down. This is what you see every day in top free charts with lot of farms that makes rocket jump because of great marketing and falling to nowhere another day. So you must make great game.

2) Test your gameplay

But game must be great not just for you — because what you make is already great, otherwise you wouldn't do it, right? Every developer just love his game because it's like a child and sometimes you just not strict enough to your child. So test your game a lot — give it to your friends or even strangers. And don't ask anything — just look at their reactions and make conclusions about mistakes and advances.

3) Catch all bugs

 Test game on different devices and firmwares. The worst thing you can have is a great game with bad review, because of some bug. Don't release unfinished product. And have some support page, like getsatisfaction, so people will tell your about bugs not by App Store reviews, but on your support page.

And if you miss some bug — use expedited review. You can use it once a year, but it really helpful — about one day and update with fixes will be on App Store.

4) Don't make lite version

It's boring and player will have to pass through same levels in full version if he buy it. But you need free version for players who would like to try your game! So make something special — we call it Gemibears Mini. It's free prequel for Gemibears, it have completely different planets, levels and additional game mode — all these features are original and don't appear in paid version. Same way was made Trainyard Express and Hambo Begins. Different content for free is a best way to show your game and have positive response from players, because you don't cut anything from the game — you add something new to it.

Remember that your paid and free (not light!) versions — are separate products. Free will help you with promotion of paid, but you need to promote free somehow. So plan your marketing for both free and paid versions.

5) Cross promo and ad

Make cross promo with other cool games. Gemibears have promo screens, buttons and so on in different games from our friends. This is not about money, more about your connections. Send email with cross-promo proposition to games you like, or even travel to another city for meeting with their developers. Because support from other great games will give you lot of downloads.

Connect all your previous games by some cross-promo module. You can make in house solution or use something like chartboost — but 3rd party solutions are not flexible at all.
Use paid ad — but use it carefully. Buy iOS ad ONLY. No web, no magazines, videos or anything else outside device. You can buy installs for free app in chartboost or buy ad spot directly in Backflip, EA or Zynga games using Burstly, but be careful planning your budget.

6) Make something that will generate new users from inside of your game

We have twitter community in Gemibears and Facebook connect in Gemibears Mini. Both give an option to attract new players, because community is always great idea and attract new people, and by connecting your friends to the game you can gain additional content.

7) Make all marketing efforts in one day

Don't spread it for month or even week. We release Gemibears few days before all marketing and have no downloads at all. But after using all marketing that we prepare in just 3 days — top 25 occupied!

8) Icon, screenshots and trailer

You need a genius icon. Most of people make decision about buying or not your game just by looking at it icon. We make about 26 different variants of Gemibears icon before we considered it good enough. Great, to be honest.
Other really important part — App Store screenshots. Actually, they aren't just screenshots — they are banners. Most of people don't read description, so take each screen and tell about key game features on it. Be brief and persuasive. Not "unique gameplay", but "match-2" — this is truly unique!
Official trailer. If you don't make it — some youtube teen will record video from shaking hands and all people will see the game as it looks at this video.

9) After release buzz

Don't underestimate any additional free buzz that you can make. Register your game in Facebook App Center if you have any fb functionality. Submit your icon (it's must be great, do you remember?) to iOS icon gallery sites. Make TouchArcade forum post — in upcoming section before release, in discussions right after or even make some contest!

Don't expect Apple feature on App Store. You can't control featuring process, so concentrate on making great game and marketing.

Don't expect Press will admire your game for first time, even if you have a great game. Press and blogger like success stories, so you will have press after success, not before it.

But you have to write to everyone. Make not just text letter, but some custom html template or at least image banner for header of the letter. This way we have TUAW game of the week for our previous The Screetch game. They ignore our text letter with promocode, so we make nice-looking picture, send a latter again and — it works!

10) Write useful post on Reddit!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The thing I find the most interesting is that they spend a large chunk on advertising in one big go in a highly targeted way - bid to spend as much as fast as possible in a short period of time dedicated to users on Apple iOS mobile devices - a PPC approach that embraces the fleeting popularity of mobile games. Brilliant.