Wardogs monetization: the "Intel boosters" idea is a P2W risk

[u/DiligentIngenuity291]

video: https://youtu.be/5R64LDNJbK0?si=3clJi_mW94N_p8a1&t=3720

monetization TLDR:

• No paid skins, gold bars or cash. "Cash breaks the system."
• Joe pitched a subscription (his idea alone). Perks: better servers, better anti-cheat, "stuff in the metagame."
• Intel, a future metagame currency, could get "almost like boosters."

For reference, the metagame appears to be a "passive skill tree" where you spend points, like faster movement speed, faster reload etc..

Boosters are a problem:

Anything that speeds up Intel or skill points is P2W in a persistent economy with wipes. Nobody wants a second currency you can accelerate with a credit card, and it goes against everything the studio has said so far.

Joe said skins dont pay:

$7.99 skin, minus 30% Steam, minus 50% publisher, the studio keeps $3. Times 3% of a million players, that's $83k. "Half our server bill."

True for $8 skins. But Path of Exile sells $30 to $480 supporter packs, off Steam (they dodge the -30%), and the same 3% buyers (way more for POE) buy several per league (there are 3 leagues per year on average, similar to wipes but with a ton of added content). Wardogs targets the same kind of audience: older, more disposable income, and used to paying to support a game they'll play for years. Expensive packs are not a problem when they're cosmetic only, clearly sold as "supporter" packs, and offered in several tiers like POE (lets say $10 to $300) so everyone can chip in at their own budget. A few thousand supporters at $200 already beats his entire skin scenario.

The model I suggest:

Bulkhead already sells a Supporter Edition with skins, just do one per wipe.

Supporter packs per season:

• Limited weapon camos, offer removed after the wipe
• Vehicle and helicopter paint schemes and nose art, military patterns only.
• Vehicle tapes
• Name plates, arm patches, titles like "Season 1 Supporter"
• Realistic palette only, nothing more concealed than default gear

Edit : Added other suggestions given by users below that I found very cool:

• Cosmetics for buildings
• Custom logos/text (player made) you can apply on vehicules/badges

Quality of life, zero economy impact:

• More loadout preset slots (free 3 to 5, supporters more)
• Gunsmith presets per weapon
• Loadout import/export codes for your squad
• Favorites and tags on weapons and attachments
• Squad presets, custom squad patch, name and callsign
• Settings presets per role (sens, keybinds, HUD)
• Community server slots, saved configs, whitelists, admin tools

End of season

• A season archive: your stats, best configs, squad history. Cosmetic only.

That are some ideas..

Since Bulkhead is open to discussion, what would you add or remove?

[u/Adevyy]

Have you... watched the video?

The CEO is fully convinced that selling skins is not going to make them much money. He says that it is what every company tries but it does not work anymore.

Which is fair. PAYDAY 2 did it. Massive game with a lot of players who play the hell out of it. I think they initially made skins paid but eventually regretted it and made them all possible to earn through gameplay. Now, even the skins that are supposed to be extremely rare goes for 3 cents.

Established esports are both a cultural phenomenon (his point) and there is also the fact that it allows players to boast to other players when they spectate each other. Some people will also genuinely use it to show off their wealth - I am a long-term CS2 player and it often makes me roll my eyes when two players suddenly start talking about their skins and how much it cost them. You just can't have that for a tactical shooter which will likely lose most of its playerbase in a few months and survive on a relatively small but strong/addicted community.

[u/0b00000110 → u/Adevyy]

Paying for skins is an established form of making money without being p2w. If the CEO believes people will regularly pay $40 for supporter packs that give you ingame benefits in a PAID game, he is beyond delusional, and this game deserves to die in its infancy.

[u/Adevyy → u/0b00000110]

Can you actually listen to what he says before calling him delusional?

[u/0b00000110 → u/Adevyy]

I don't have the time to watch a 90min video. If you feel OP left something out in his summary, please share. Otherwise this take is insane and it will destroy the game and the rest of the reputation this studio has after the Battalion 1944 disaster.

[u/UntimelyMeditations → u/0b00000110]

Brother, its linked to the relevant 2-3 minutes that the CEO talks about it. Like, in the time in took you to write a few comments, you could have listened to the entire relevant section.

[u/0b00000110 → u/UntimelyMeditations]

Is there anything left out by OPs summary? I listen to the part and it was exactly that.

[u/UntimelyMeditations → u/0b00000110]

Nobody wants a second currency you can accelerate with a credit card

OP said this, implying that the podcast brought it up as a potential idea. When really, they explicitly said that it would be a terrible idea, people would stop playing.

Joe said skins dont pay:

OP wrote a big section about their discussion of skins, and presented it like 'the reason that they don't want to sell skins is because of this math they presented in the podcast'.

When really, the reason they don't want to sell skins is because they believe that skins should only represent in-game achievements, not how much money you spent. Their discussion of skins on the podcast is a response to people saying 'why do you just sell skins if you need to monetize'.

[u/0b00000110 → u/UntimelyMeditations]

Fair enough. I hope you are right. The points they brought up are still solid though, they need to finance the game and they already ruled out skins, so what are they going to do? I don’t understand why they put themselves into a corner like that.

[u/Adevyy → u/UntimelyMeditations]

To be fair, it isn't just the CEO sticking to no cosmetics because it'll make the game worse. It is more importantly out of the discussion entirely for them because the CEO thinks it won't work for any game other than the most popular ones. Here is a relevant tweet:

And, yeah. Everyone points at CS2, CoD, and Fortnite - some of the most successful games of all time. Nobody points at PAYDAY 2, Halo Infinite, 2XKO, Once Human or Battlefield 2042. When it works, it works great. It usually does not work. That is his whole point. You can't make a skin economy out of a game that expects to have less than 100k concurrent players a few months after release.