Worried About Permanent Free Tier Abuse
Hi all,
Long time creeper, first time poster. I'm currently developing a suite of tools for tabletop role playing games. The tools allow registered users to create "campaigns", which will tie together all of the story elements and props they create. The TTRPG community offers a tremendous amount of open and permissibly licensed content. In keeping with this, I'd like to offer a free tier where any user can create one campaign free forever. I know a lot of game masters and enthusiasts run multiple games at once, and I'm banking on them liking the tools enough that they will move to a paid tier that allows multiple campaigns.
My question is, how seriously should I weigh the risk of people creating multiple free accounts to get multiple free campaigns? I'd love to hear from anyone who's had issues with people abusing free tiers. Did you end up solving the issue? Do you still offer a free tier?
Thanks.
Until you see people abusing it, I wouldn't worry about it. The product has not be perfect in the beginning and since this isn't really anything that users see negatively (quite the opposite) I wouldn't worry about it right now.
So many early products can be gamed if you try hard enough. Think about Google in the beginning. The algorithm was so basic that keyword stuffing was actually a thing. But Google solved the problem of their costumers the best at this time. That's why they succeeded. And when the keyword stuffing problem became to big they denied it. That's how I would approach the problem.
Thanks for your thoughts, Marius. The consensus seems to be to not worry about it until it's a problem. After all, as a solo developer I have better things to do than to engineer a solution for something that isn't a problem. If need be, I can figure it out later once I have a user base established.
Thanks again.
Ethan-
If your biggest problem is that your product is so successful that you suffer from free tier "abuse", then you should be congratulated on your victory (abuse is a negative way to look at the positive). If enough free tier users tell enough of their friends about your great product, you should have no problem finding paid users.
After the core product works, is there a "killer feature" that you can use to entice users away from the free tier? E.g. If you could provide some level of personal customization, or a tool to further help them manage gameplay between sessions that would make your product sticky to their gaming experience.
Thanks, Chris. Seems the consensus is to just not worry about it. I hadn't considered making paid tier only features but you're not the first to ask about them. It's probably something I need to think about seriously in the future. At the moment, there isn't anything that I would feel comfortable with leaving out of the core product, but it's early days and I'm just getting my feet wet with the functionality of the site. It's definitely possible that as the feature set grows, I could find something to carve out as a "premium" feature.
Thanks again for your thoughts.
I don't have an answer to your question, but I love RPG's and just wanted to give you a nod of encouragement! I've played DnD5 and FATE Core. Unfortunately I moved and left my RPG group behind, but I'd love to get another one going someday. :)
I've played around with a lot of the DM tools on the market and there's definitely room for improvement. I've never been a fan of Roll 20, which I think is the market leader right now.
Thanks for the encouragement, Matthew! It's a great hobby. I've been playing them for years and definitely echo your sentiment about there being room for improvement in the tools space, which is why I'm jumping in.
I'm focusing on Dungeon World (http://www.dungeon-world.com/) and Apocalypse World first. They are fantastic 'soft' systems with an emphasis on storytelling and role play. If all goes well, I'd love to tackle FATE and Savage Worlds, among others, in the future.
I've never heard of Dungeon World, but it looks fun! I love the idea of streamlined rules. The thing I hated about DnD was when people spent 45 minutes looking through the rule books to figure out if they can kick in a door or something...
Have you thought about cross promotion with someone like drive-thru rpg?
You'd love Dungeon World then. The entirety of the rules for your character are on 4 sheets of paper (6 if you're a spell caster). As long as your GM knows the other parts of the game, you don't even have to crack a rulebook to get started.
I had thought about some cross promotion, actually. The TTRPG community is pretty tight-knit with lots of sharing. I'm hoping that some posts to reddit and the RPG Stack Exchange will generate some traffic in the beginning. Then I can move into partnerships with other industry sites, just like Drive-Thru RPG.
Nice! I'd love to see more of your project once you're ready to reveal. :)
I think that your last problem in the world is having users of your free tier. Put in the terms of service that you will send periodic updates via email, and or provide a 'Notes of Note' item in your workflow to engage and continue the conversations with your customers. See http://cluetrain.com/book/markets.html and anything by Christopher Locke and of course: http://newclues.cluetrain.com/
Great point, Kent. It might be best to accept the fact that some people will try to abuse it because, hey, at least they are using it.
Thanks!
Yes. and the conversation does not end with the signup for a free tier. Participation is about engagement. RPG fans understand immersive engagement. Perhaps you can add a gameification to the signup process, accumulate points that can be applied to adding a paid campaign to their free tier account.
Oh, man. This is a great idea that hadn't occurred to me. This definitely has potential. Thanks again!
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Great points, Thomas. I hadn't really thought about "premium" features for paid tiers and was focusing on the number of campaigns as the sole differentiator. This may be a good strategy to get people to move if they aren't doing so on their own. I'll keep this in my pocket.