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#Post#: 1323--------------------------------------------------
Why Kix Won't Fix The Glitch
By: LcdDrmr Date: September 21, 2012, 9:15 am
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Why Kix Won't Fix The Glitch
(The Bad Scenario)
Imagine a pie chart illustrating Kixeye's income from Battle
Pirates when they had ID's under 2000000. At that time, it was
still the dark water, no blueprints/drac tech, no specials,
etc., just the basic game. There were glitches, a few, but
nothing terribly game-impacting. They certainly didn't account
for more than a sliver of that pie chart. It was all pretty much
buying resources and speeding up repairs.
Now imagine that same chart today. Raids (repairs and builds for
raids) likely account for a very large slice of that chart, but
the next biggest (if not the biggest) slice would be due to
glitches and the fleets they destroy. Asking Kix to fix this
would be asking them to cut their current revenue stream by a
large percentage. Yes, it would make the game far more
attractive and fun (like it used to be), and encourage a big
bump in 'voluntary' and useful (as opposed to recovery) coining.
But this would not be any more than a fraction of what they are
currently pulling in due to glitches alone.
The problem for Kixeye is that, even though they might like to
fix what's wrong, even though they (theoretically) might be
willing financially to take the hit, since the glitches have
actually inflated the revenue 'artificially' in some sense--they
are faced with a serious issue in the market if they were to fix
things. What happens to a company when their revenue dips
significantly? What happens to the public and business world
perception of them? The stock and investor confidence in the
company is shaken, regardless of the cause of the 'downturn'.
In the business world, revenue cannot even remain flat, it must
grow, and so must the profits. Battle Pirates is a finite game
living on infinite expectations, but where players reaching top
levels are at an effective ceiling where they grow more and more
slowly and incrementally. Only the raids still provide
motivation for high level coiners to acquire anything and feed
the ever-widening maw of Kixeye's coffers. This is why
introducing the magic Harry Potter ship looks so crass and
desperate, 'cause it is.
So, if they were to fix things, even knowing they had improved
the game, attracted more players, maybe increased the life span
of its revenue generation, nevertheless the market is going to
look at them and say "Your revenue stream wasn't broken, that
was a bad move, bad judgment, you suck." That is bad for Kixeye,
bad for their image, bad for their business dealings, their
advertising contracts, bad for everything except the players.
Which brings us to the really important point: You, the players,
even though you are the source of their revenue, their golden
goose--you do not count. Not as long as you keep paying for
their broken game. That's all there is to it. This is a
carnival, and you are the marks. Not people, marks, to be taken
for whatever they can get out of you. That's what business is,
whether selling you cars, tv's, phones, games, whatever. The
object is to get you to give them more than they give you.
That's their profit. Your 'profit' is enjoyment, fun, whatever,
but always something intangible. "You can't put a price on it."
Uh-huh.
The forums, the CM's, the 'support', is literally nothing more
than PR. It is there to help the revenue stream and absolutely
nothing more, just like the helpful carnival barker encouraging
you to lose your money for something less than its value, but
which is 'fun'. Whether it really is or not. Every corporation
has PR, to put a 'human face' on the company, so they can behave
as inhumanly as they believe they need to. There is no human
factor in how business works beyond convincing people to shell
out their cash. That's it.
Like most businesses in today's world, they are selling you a
fantasy. It doesn't matter what the product is, as long as you
can be hooked into paying for it. Which is to say, especially in
the virtual world, a total fantasy. And we are okay with that,
for the most part, as long as we're getting the 'fun' we're
paying for. It's entertainment and we don't mind paying for
entertainment, games, movies, whatever. We are sold this fantasy
through more fantasy. For example, when the female commander of
the Drac's was introduced, that was to associate her 'hotness'
with the upcoming raid. You get to 'engage' with her. This 2D
cartoon drawing would stimulate libidos just like such
associations do for selling cars, phones, toys, etc. (And if
you're a girl, well, she was not only "sexy", she was
"empowered".) And, of course, it worked, because we are so
solidly conditioned to be manipulated in this way. That's why
they try to make you think the "something intangible" that
you're getting is somehow enhancing to your deficient self, ie:
you will be more sexually attractive (because you're not), or
even, 'you are buying sex!' (how else you gonna get some,
loser?)--pretty much the basis of advertising.
All of the PR aspects of this game serve to enhance revenue.
They are their created illusions, and they are your accepted
delusions. If they can promote and sell a broken game, it is no
more or less dishonest than the carnival's off-sited bb guns,
and other such rigged games. How can they lose when they are
selling you your own fantasies?
Disclaimer: this is not an accusation in any way that Kix
'introduced' the glitches for the purpose of boosting revenue.
If they could have fixed the big ones early on, they might have
done so in the belief that hurting the game would hurt revenue.
But once the metrics were in, imagine their surprise when people
coined even more, much more. At that point, it would become more
and more difficult to justify the bloodletting they would have
to suffer as their profits returned to normal. They may,
however, keep introducing new glitch-producing content without
much hesitation. If an issue is large enough, like losing
relocate (little effect on revenue, large outcry from the
players), they will address it and fix it. Basic, long-standing
problems, or problems like the increasing failures of specials,
are good for revenue. The outcry is far larger, but c'mon,
seriously? You don't really need that fixed in order to play.
Kind of.
So, in the end, this game will die. Not because they fix it,
they won't. Not because their customers will 'wake up' to what
is being done to them. Most of them are okay if all of the above
is true. It will die because the revenue starts falling because
the game sucks so badly even addicts won't pay for it. Nothing
else will do it. Kix will close the game, saying it was an
experimental prototype, had run its course and it is time to
'move on' with other projects. It was a great success, but "all
good things... blah, blah. Hey, look over here at our new
games!"
How the game ended up doesn't matter. Whether you enjoyed it or
just struggled, whether you played (as best you could) for free
or paid a little, or you paid megabucks, does not matter. It was
never about you. It was about real money, for them. All you
got--all you mostly ever get--was a fantasy. You will be, truly,
the Forsaken.
How Kix Will Fix The Glitch
(The Good Scenario)
Kixeye intends to move its games off of Facebook, starting with
Battle Pirates. Nothing will be changed for you in this move, as
far as your bases and fleets, etc. You can still logon to
Facebook to get into the game, if you so desire. Or you can
logon directly to Kixeye's servers. How the direct
method might affect your connection with your Facebook friends
is unclear at this time, but since Facebook got rid of its own
chat it is likely that third party chat systems will be
utilized. Or, once the Alliance feature is in place with its own
chat, it may become a moot point.
The reason Kixeye is moving its games is that it contends that
Facebooks alerts, updates, etc., cause interruptions to the
games' data streams, thus causing our SoS screens and Flash
crashes, white screens, blue water, and such. Although this is
not the cause of the specials failures, like hailstorms, when
issues like those arise they do find it harder to separate them
out from the issues caused by Facebook's Flash interruptions,
apparently.
If Kixeye is correct and all of our most serious glitches are
resolved by this move, the game will be in a far better position
to last a long time. Assuming they can then also resolve the
persistent coding glitches for specials and repairs, the
stability of the game would finally be back to what it was when
the game was only in Beta.
New features, such as alliances, could be introduced--and
thereafter tweaked or patched--much more easily and quickly,
bringing a far more satisfying gaming experience to the players,
and presumably to Kixeye's bottom line (as new players flock to
join).
When will this move happen? Um ... "soon"?
(A Dash Of Reality)
At that point, the most daunting issue would still be the
current problem of extremely long repair and build times that
cause enormous backlog for most players once they reach level 28
or so. The option most requested by the players for another
shipyard or just a refit dock has been addressed by CEO Wil
Harbin with a resounding N. O. Period.
(
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t_EMG4nw74)
This problem is built in to the structure of the game itself
because of the revenue generating model that underlies its
conception. Battle Pirates, like most Facebook games of this
type, gets people to pay to avoid frustration. It is a negative
principle. You don't pay to enjoy the game but to avoid negative
feedback from it. Once that is relieved, by paying to avert it,
you can then enjoy playing the game. You are, it is true,
indirectly paying to get to that enjoyment, but you are paying
for the same reason you pay taxes to avoid going to jail (unless
you feel some quasi-patriotic loyalty toward Kixeye and their
need for profits). You are paying to minimize your experience of
the dark side of the game.
The conundrum for Kixeye is that this gaming model relies on
those who are most successful, who have advanced the furthest,
to provide the most money. Yet, those who have advanced the
furthest also have the highest negatives staring them in the
face, like two to three week build times for a single ship,
etc., as we all know. These people, being near the top in the
game, already have the least to look forward to in terms of real
advancement, and even with new toys, there's not really much
newness in the game itself--they've been playing it for a long
time.
And, of course, eventually, they start leaving. For large
numbers of them, raids and new toys are not enough and they move
on. This happens with most games, because being at the top in
one thing, you might as well move on and try to make it to the
top elsewhere. Like mountaineers climbing a different mountain.
So, as huge numbers of people are now level 30 and above, Kix
simply must encourage a much wider base of new players, tempting
them with new graphics and toys they can obtain. Of course, this
has its own built-in problem of players leveling faster and
having better stuff much sooner than in the past--which creates
a hyper-inflated condition of needing ever higher numbers of
players joining the game. We all know that ponzi schemes are not
sustainable, and the game is already top-heavy now. And unless
Kixeye finds a way to accomplish a level of recruitment that
pays for an ever-expanding server system, the game will
inevitably fold as the players ascend out of the top levels and
are reborn into level 1 in some other game.
If only they'd make a Battle Pirates Classic version of the
original game, we could actually reincarnate. Just think: they
could avoid all the mistakes they made with this one, and we'd
all know what to expect as the game introduced 'new' things.
Well ... that is, unless when you're reborn you forget
everything about the previous game, and everything just repeats
like some horrible karma. That would suck.
#Post#: 1333--------------------------------------------------
Re: Why Kix Won't Fix The Glitch
By: jwalters2011 Date: September 25, 2012, 11:36 am
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That was the longest post I have ever seen! I didnt read it all
but I have figured it out. Kixeye has those glitches there for a
reason, they know shit will freeze cause your fleets to get beat
to shit and you will have to repair or coin to keep playing. A
lot of people say they quit but really don't and until they see
a huge drop off in their numbers, they will leave it in place to
make money between raids. Simple formula Kixeye+glithces= repair
time = money for kixeye.
#Post#: 1335--------------------------------------------------
Re: Why Kix Won't Fix The Glitch
By: LcdDrmr Date: September 25, 2012, 9:17 pm
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Yup.
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