Posted By Shivniel Gounder

“What’s the engagement model to keep the consumer”

EA is desiging it’s game with microtransation, subscription based design. EA CFO Blake Jorgensen said that EA wants to avoid “nickel and diming” gamers. Blake said that EA is thinking through a gaming model which will really entertain the consumer for a long period of time. Blake said that what we want to give consumer is “a great value for their money and keep them deeply engaged in something they love to do”.

…A lot of mobile games don’t allow you to have fun unless you’ve paid for it,” he said.

“Our game teams are all thinking through, ‘What’s the engagement model to keep the consumer, to really entertain the consumer for a long period of time?'” he said. “When you think about that, it’s not really the economics; the economics come afterward. There might be multiple models of ways to engage people” he said

“The fundamental way that we as an organization think about [microtransactions and subscriptions] is all around engagement,” he said. “How do we engage the consumer as long as possible? In the old days, people played Madden for a few months and then stopped playing. When the Super Bowl finished, they were completely gone. Today, with Ultimate Team, they engage for 12 months, all the way up until the time you start playing a new season”

So we’re looking at new models of ways to try to alleviate some of that fatigue that’s going on. Some of those might come in the form of subscription-style, but some of them might simply come in different ways to play games over time so you don’t feel like you’re always getting nickel and dimed.