CM 2.0 Ripoff - wrong payment strategy

[Darknight (DC)]

Why do people get their panties in a knot over something that seems like a minor issue?

People work and expect to get paid for their work (including the employees at BFC).

I work and expect to come home with a paycheck as well.

I choose how to spend a portion of my entertainment money and if that includes a small fee for upgrading a game I enjoy playing, it's no big deal.

If I didn't want to purchase the upgrade, I could just play one of the new CM theatres as they are released and get all those features (personally I like fighting the NWE battles, so I am happy to have the ability to upgrade).

On a side note, this thread seems to be a rehash of other similar threads complaining about this item since the announcement last month.

So my question is, 'Why do we continue to feed the trolls?'

[JonS]

Why do people get their panties in a knot over something that seems like a minor issue?

Oh, that's easy. Redwolf knows better than everyone else how to configure hardware, write software, and run a business. And he's such a caring fellow that he freely shares his expertise.

my question is, 'Why do we continue to feed the trolls?'

My god man, don't you know? This is the internet! That's what we do!

[MikeyD]

It would be nice to have a look at what the tradeoff of charging for patches is.

First, patches are still free. I expect you'll see a standard free download CMBN Commonwealth patch shortly before the big CMBN upgrade appears. As to v2.0, you'll be able to experience the V2.0 upgrade to your heart's content as soon as the CMFI demo becomes available. So nobody's going to be buying a pig in a poke.

[sburke]

This isn't the only thread to start dispensing business advice to BF in response to the announcement (and not the first by a long shot since the debut of the company). Personally I find the conceit implied to try and dispense advice without actually managing your business much less one in this niche to be pretty daunting.

Maybe before we start trying to dispense our Kramer like business wisdom to BF we should review a couple important statistics.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) keeps the stats on business failures and claims that more than half of new businesses will disappear in the first five years.

A study done by Inc. magazine and the National Business Incubator Association (NBIA) revealed that 80 percent of new businesses fail within the first five years.

According to Dun & Bradstreet reports, "Businesses with fewer than 20 employees have only a 37% chance of surviving four years (of business) and only a 9% chance of surviving 10 years."

BF is now in year 12 (? I think anyway). Not only have they beat the odds for new business survival, they have come through one of the biggest economic downturns in memory hiring additional personnel and announcing an aggressive schedule of new releases and upgrades.

Granted they haven't been the best at meeting their own release dates, however they have been phenomenally good at figuring out their long term game plan. They have established their niche, know their client base and demonstrated a capability at figuring out how to keep producing a quality product that now has an even longer expected support time frame.

I think maybe we can stop telling BF how to run their business, they seem to already know.

Now sign me up for the pre order for the upgrade and CM MG or whatever you are gonna call it.

[Redwolf]

Oh, that's easy. Redwolf knows better than everyone else how to configure hardware, write software, and run a business. And he's such a caring fellow that he freely shares his expertise.

Exactly. No irony, except the "than everybody else" because anyone with a half-decent understanding of business has the same opinion.

Small businesses fail because they get cornered into a smaller and smaller customer base. Plans to make good for it by charging the remaining loyal customers more and more only accelerate that trend.

Now, that doesn't mean that individual customers cannot be asked for more. You do that by offering value-added things that allow those who don't have a problem with it to voluntarily pay more for what appears to be not strictly needed. And we are talking a game here, the whole thing is not needed. So as long as you don't make it appear that you strongarm them the customers are happy.

[sburke]

I thought that Bill the Cat's only observation on life, the universe, and everything was "*kack*" or some variation thereof.

Michael

Ack! is his most frequent statement however though I got it slightly wrong, he does have at least one other word in his vocabulary.

The cat's most frequent spoken sentiments are "Ack!" and "Thbbft!", unlike most other animals (and children) in Breathed's work, who not only can speak English, but have advanced vocabularies. The former is a result of his regularly choking on hairballs, the latter sound an approximation of the "raspberry".

Damn I miss that strip.

[gunnersman]

Hi mom!

[Michael Emrys]

Damn I miss that strip.

Yeah, me too. Especially as it was 25-30 years ago. Happily I bought the collections from that era and so can enjoy them whenever the burden of a steadily crazier world gets to be too much.

Michael

[General Lee Irked]

Do you really believe your strategy of selling addons for 55 Dollars and making people pay for patches (because let's face it, your great "improvements" are no more than that) will pay off?

Take a look at your pathetic MP experience - wake up! It's not 1996 anymore...

Getting any better? No? Meh... But heck, expecting your fans to dish out 50 bucks non the less! Oh wait - MP may be in it for CM 3.0 - for another 50$. Lol.

You have lost me as customer. And fan. Sorry to say but you are traveling down the wrong road... Building communities works differently.

GL to you gentlemen, but you no longer deserve my time or money.

Don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya!

In before the lock

[sburke]

Exactly. No irony, except the "than everybody else" because anyone with a half-decent understanding of business has the same opinion.

Small businesses fail because they get cornered into a smaller and smaller customer base. Plans to make good for it by charging the remaining loyal customers more and more only accelerate that trend.

Now, that doesn't mean that individual customers cannot be asked for more. You do that by offering value-added things that allow those who don't have a problem with it to voluntarily pay more for what appears to be not strictly needed. And we are talking a game here, the whole thing is not needed. So as long as you don't make it appear that you strongarm them the customers are happy.

Really?

Granted it is a bit dated, but nothing I have seen significantly alters his premise. In his book Small Business Management, Michael Ames gives the following reasons for small business failure:

1. Lack of experience

2. Insufficient capital (money)

3. Poor location

4. Poor inventory management

5. Over-investment in fixed assets

6. Poor credit arrangements

7. Personal use of business funds

8. Unexpected growth

Some of these obviously don't apply for BF as a software company, but in the ones that do apply, BF has obviously been making good decisions even if they aren't necessarily some we'd like.

Who is Michael Ames you ask?

Michael D. Ames runs a nationally recognized Small Business Institute-recipient of 33 awards from the U.S. Small Business Administration-and directs a multi-disciplinary entrepreneurial management program at California State University, Fullerton. He is the author of Small Business Management and Pathways to Success.

What were your credentials again?

Now can we stop trying to tell them how to run their business? Please? Really they aren't going to listen anyway. Fortunately they know better.

[sburke]

Yeah, me too. Especially as it was 25-30 years ago. Happily I bought the collections from that era and so can enjoy them whenever the burden of a steadily crazier world gets to be too much.

Michael

Yeah I was a bike courier in Wash DC in those days and part of the morning routine was to stop in the garage and check in with a dispatcher buddy on what Opus and Milo were up to now. Remember Billy and the Boingers? I even had the vinyl sheet 45.

[Michael Emrys]

Remember Billy and the Boingers?

Of course! But...

I even had the vinyl sheet 45.

I never heard of that. How did you get ahold of one?

Michael

[sburke]

Of course! But...

I never heard of that. How did you get ahold of one?

Michael

It came in a sleeve in the Billy and the boingers collection book.

you can even hear "Opus" on the Tuba.

and the title cut-

[Battlefront.com]

What amazes me is how someone has the ability to read and only comprehend a part of it. Why is it always the negative part?

Patches = fix things people already paid for. These are free and will continue to be free. We are planning at least one patch for Normandy before Upgrade 2.0 is available.

Upgrade = new features which people have NOT already paid for. These come at additional cost to us and therefore customers must compensate us for our efforts. That is called Capitalism and so far nobody has really figured out a viable alternative. Someone has to pay for it, be it the end user or advertisers.

Of course people can say "this or that should have been in the game before and so I shouldn't have to pay for it now". To that I say piffle! If you don't think a game has enough value to purchase it as it is, then don't buy it until it does. Don't buy it, play it for 1000 hours, then cry like a baby about how awful the game is. It insults everybody's intelligence.

Small businesses fail because they get cornered into a smaller and smaller customer base. Plans to make good for it by charging the remaining loyal customers more and more only accelerate that trend.

Er, part of this might be true, but you're overlooking the fact that there are many reasons why small businesses fail. And because there are so many reasons to fail (see sburke's excellent post above) the odds are that one or more of these will take the company out. The ones that buck the trend do so because they are able to.

Now, the part you are sorta right about is what is often called the "death spiral". That's when the business finds that it's current pricing isn't covering costs, so it increases its pricing above what some customers find acceptable. Lose enough customers and the price increase becomes counter productive. Raise prices again, lose more customers, and at some point you're out of business.

However, there is another thing to consider. Undercharging customers for your labors produces unfavorable economic conditions to remain in business. At that point the business has a choice... charge the customers what it costs to produce the product and POSSIBLY go out of business *or* continue to undercharge and FOR SURE go out of business for failing to meet costs.

In other words, at some point it simply comes down to customers paying what it costs. A smart business, however, avoids getting into this predicament in the first place. Battlefront is just such a company.

We decided to allow people the option to upgrade their previous investment. Why? Because we think we're going to have problems convincing someone to pay $125 for a Family today and then in a few years ago spend another $125 to repurchase the upgraded version. Therefore, instead of investing a ton of time and energy on making something people will hesitate to purchase we have instead come up with the Upgrade strategy. This allows customers to leverage their existing investments and inexpensively gain new use out of it for many years in the future. Optionally, of course.

I wish PhotoShop and Filemaker Pro worked this way. Not to mention some of the $1000 development tools we use to make the games you play. Funny, none of them seem to have embraced the concept of giving away new features for less than several hundred dollars.

Now, that doesn't mean that individual customers cannot be asked for more. You do that by offering value-added things that allow those who don't have a problem with it to voluntarily pay more for what appears to be not strictly needed. And we are talking a game here, the whole thing is not needed. So as long as you don't make it appear that you strongarm them the customers are happy.

Which is why you guys should be excited about the Upgrade strategy and thrilled you're not going to face any of the standard game industry alternatives. Fortunately the vast majority of you are excited. Only a few cranks are upset. We always have cranks, and they are always upset. The also frequently continue buying our stuff even after they have thrown various tantrums.

Something about boys crying wolf comes to mind.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

I even had the vinyl sheet 45.

I think I still have that too! Hell, my band started to write a song for that competition! I remember the song they chose sucked compared to what we thought it should be. We should have followed through and recorded one. But that was back in the days of recording being very expensive to do right.

Not many of you probably have a 2' tall stuffed Bill the Cat hanging about their house either.

Steve

[sburke]

I think I still have that too! Hell, my band started to write a song for that competition! I remember the song they chose sucked compared to what we thought it should be. We should have followed through and recorded one. But that was back in the days of recording being very expensive to do right.

Not many of you probably have a 2' tall stuffed Bill the Cat hanging about their house either.

Steve

I did, but I don't know where it went..... Also had an Opus collection. Reindeer hat, tie with sneakers etc. Alas I don't hang on to collectibles very long. Fortunately that means I'll never be featured in an episode of hoarders.

[Battlefront.com]

Now, to get back to the original post:

Do you really believe your strategy of selling addons for 55 Dollars and making people pay for patches (because let's face it, your great "improvements" are no more than that) will pay off?

Well, if you start off with a line of thinking that can't distinguish between a new feature and a fix to an old one, well... we're starting out in different forms of reality. According to your mindset people pay once and forever get improvements. Odd... I don't know of anything in the consumer market that works that way. And F2P doesn't do it either since customers are paying every time they play by having their privacy violated and their eyeballs polluted by advertising.

Take a look at your pathetic MP experience - wake up! It's not 1996 anymore...

Getting any better? No?

When people are willing to pay us more to play MP, then we can talk about diverting our resources into something that only a minority of our customers find interesting enough to use. Wargames aren't MMOs. Never will be, unfortunately. We'd love to make more money without perverting our products.

Meh... But heck, expecting your fans to dish out 50 bucks non the less! Oh wait - MP may be in it for CM 3.0 - for another 50$. Lol.

And for such a smart guy (yeah, I know who you are), do you advise your clients to make stuff up or jump at shadows as a way to improve their business skills? Or can you point to anything that indicates we are planning on charging $50 for an Upgrade? No, you can't because we haven't said anything of the sort. And why would we charge that much? $5 difference between a new purchase and an Upgrade? Who on Earth would think THAT was a good idea?

You have lost me as customer. And fan. Sorry to say but you are traveling down the wrong road... Building communities works differently.

It does, which is why we aren't traveling down the road you think we are.

GL to you gentlemen, but you no longer deserve my time or money.

Based on your attitude and lack of concern for facts, you no longer deserve our products. Seems like the free market is working just fine.

Steve

[Paper Tiger]

Heh! I finally got around to reading 'The Runes of the Earth', the first of four intended volumes that will eventually comprise the Final chronicle of Thomas Covenant. I forked out just over five quid for the Kindle edition. I do not feel that this investment of money entitles me to receive the following three novels for free. Perhaps if there were numerous typos and mistakes in the construction of my Kindle copy, I might feel entitled to a free update from Amazon but certainly not to receive the intended sequels. 'What! You mean to tell me that I bought a story that was not complete? <insert expressions of rightous outrage here> When I buy a story, I expect it to be complete. I want to receive all the follow on novels for free! <mutters about the state of the industry today forgetting that Dickens and Hardy among others also serialised their works in this fashion to make money>'

I know that this is a different part of the entertainment industry but the thinking still applies.

[ChrisND]

Do you really believe your strategy of selling addons for 55 Dollars and making people pay for patches (because let's face it, your great "improvements" are no more than that) will pay off?

Take a look at your pathetic MP experience - wake up! It's not 1996 anymore...

Getting any better? No? Meh... But heck, expecting your fans to dish out 50 bucks non the less! Oh wait - MP may be in it for CM 3.0 - for another 50$. Lol.

You have lost me as customer. And fan. Sorry to say but you are traveling down the wrong road... Building communities works differently.

GL to you gentlemen, but you no longer deserve my time or money.

For someone who works in the game industry you lack in communication skills.

[MikeyD]

Small businesses fail because they get cornered into a smaller and smaller customer base.

Admit it, you'd be the first one to complain if BFC split its resources between wargames and an expanded pre-teen fantasy computergame market. Don't give them any ideas. They may conclude a 'Gumby's magical adventure' title would earn double the revenues of CM. Then there would we be?

Oh, also, I think it would be rather difficult to interpret 'CM Touch' for ipad, iphone and android as a 'smaller customer base'.

[womble]

... 'Gumby's magical adventure' title would earn double the revenues of CM. Then there would we be?

"World of TubeGuy" though, we'd all buy. You know it's true.

Could CM support at some stage a persistent MMO environment? Like "WW2 Online", but with the CM tactical engine? How many Company Commanders were there in Normandy?

[futon river crossing]

Firstly - it's great news that CMBN will be upgradeable to the new 2.0 engine. From my understanding - we will have to purchase the new engine upgrade for CMBN before Market Garden? This is a price sensitive issue for me - I'm glad to hear that Steve has said the upgrade will cost less that $55 - I'm hoping it will be something like $25 (or less ) - in my view the combined cost of the 2.0 upgrade and Market Garden should, ideally, be less that buying the full game i.e. CMBN. I appreciate the workload involved - and obviously you guys need to earn a living!! If the cost is too steep - I may duck out of upgrading CMBN...... presumably in the future we will be paying to upgrade several titles..... so the costs will start to spiral -

As for multi player - na - not interested.

[TrailApe]

They may conclude a 'Gumby's magical adventure' title would earn double the revenues of CM. Then there would we be?

'Gumby's magical adventure' in a M4A3E8 with double barreled 17lber and a crew of misfits having thrills and spills in the wine producing regions of Germany and France (just think of the terroir) would fit the bill quite nicely thank you.

When's the Demo out?

[Baneman]

'Gumby's magical adventure' in a M4A3E8 with double barreled 17lber and a crew of misfits having thrills and spills in the wine producing regions of Germany and France (just think of the terroir) would fit the bill quite nicely thank you.

When's the Demo out?

and a sequel of "Sven Hassel's Magical Adventure" with Tiny and the Old Man and all the others rollicking around in a Tiger ! You know it would sell !

[Sixxkiller]

Official Announcement: New BFC Game

Foz News

We have decided to skip developing games on the current CMx2 and Cmx3 engines and go to CMx4 (Codenamed Madoff) so we can compete in the current PC game market. We have been in the business for many years, and while we feel we have been successful in delivering close to realistic military simulations, we need to stay current with what other developers have done in the last 3 to 4 years.

I asked one of the co-founders about this today and Steve Grammont was kind enough to reply to my e-interview. Here is a snippet.

Interviewer: Hi Steve, this is quite a surprise. What made you decide that the new engine needed to be changed?

Grammont: Hi thanks for asking. We at BFC have been around for 12+ years now and the current engine requires a lot of money and time to implement new units in a cost effective manner. Charles and I were discussing a few problems and we came to the conclusion we had far too many units in the game for some and not enough for others. This really gave the UI some serious limitations. This begged the question, how to solve it? Well I think our less is more approach will solve all of the major issues without inserting new minor nagging ones.

Interviewer: Less is more? How does this work?

Grammont: Well in the first games we did, you could have a sizeable force, but never really the amount you needed to represent complete fronts like in the hex based games, especially dealing with 3-D graphics that took away some of the physics based calculations we needed in WEGO. We had a really neat solution. If we take out all of the units and scripting and AI, and essentially all code, we could make the game truly perfect for all.

Interviewer: How do you take out so much but provide more content?

Grammont: Oh see this was the truly inspirational part. If we take out all of the units and the other stuff I mentioned the player essentially can imagine the battle in real time, with any units, over any military era, pitting dream scenarios...anything you can think up. Just think of it like this. You can play a multi-player game without need of the internet service with 1 million players, in a lag free environment at the touch of a button, or without touching a button. You can play Real time and turn based at the same time! Thats why we feel that our game will revitalize the computer wargame industry.

Interviewer: Wow that sounds great. Do you think this will be the game you can retire on?

Grammont: Well the overhead will be really low. We will not need artists, programming, bandwith, manuals, CD's, and box art so this really frees up most of the resources typical of our earlier titles.

Interviewer: So what will be the cost and when can we expect to see it?

Grammont: It will be available for pre-order in 24 hours (except in Malta) and the price will be $70 with future upgrades and patches free for the first 3 years (except in Malta).

Interviewer: Thank you Steve for this wonderful news.

Grammont: Our pleasure.