Kwari

          Kwari was released not too long ago, and it was a game that caught my eye. I have been a fan of shooter games for a long time, and competitive gameplay has always been a plus in any shooter. From games such as Unreal Tournament to Team Fortress, I have been a fan of them all. This is why when I heard of Kwari, I was intrigued. A game that pays players if they're good, and is basically pay to play if you're bad. But I had my doubts about the game, especially after doing an interview with the community manager before it went into beta. After finding out the pricings of ammunition and such, I was skeptical to even try the beginner part of the game. Some people think it was a totally new type of business model for online games, but to be honest we've seen this for years. Even MSN has a section for there games where you can pay to play against others online, with the winner earning money. But now that Kwari has shut down, is it really even a surprise?

          The entire business model of Kwari is built to fail. When developers make a game they try to reach out to a specific audience that is as broad as they can get it. This is why the developers of Dekaron made the game adult-themed. They reached out to mature gamers because they felt it was a broad area with the lack of games targeted to this audience. But when you look at Kwari's model, it's basically targeting those who are really good at shooters. We've all seen them before, whether your getting shot in the head everytime you spawn in Call of Duty 4, or if you're being stabbed in the back by a spy in Team Fortress 2, some people are just naturally good at this type of games. But how many people are actually that good? Normally, there's not room for many great players. In Team Fortress 2, you hardly ever see six people on a team with 200+ points after a couple rounds, usually there is one person with that amount and then a bunch with a much smaller amount. Whether it may seem like it or not, there's a lot of casual gamers that enjoy shooters, making the percentage of great players to everyone else have a huge difference.

          That would be like if I made a game that was only for people ages 18-19 with a birthday in June. Why would I possibly do that? I should be trying to reach a large audience to increase revenue. That's why I didn't think Kwari would be very popular. A lot of gamers will lie, say they are so amazing at a game, etc. I mean, why shouldn't they? They can easily refuse to play a game against someone, and just keep talking trash. But when real money is put into the equation, people are a lot less willing to lie about there skills. No one is going to be talking trash and buying tons of ammunition to play when they know in reality they are not very good. Thus, they just won't play. They might try it by spending $2 on the game, but then they'll probably quit if they don't win. To be honest, the entire system behind it will, in the end, reward few players while, to the rest, just be an extremely expensive game to play. Kind of like a pay to play game, but the time limit can be altered depending upon how much you play.

          Let's look at another path they could have taken. Say they release Kwari, but instead of charging for ammo, they charge a monthly fee. Then, players can win money in-game through the jackpots, a little bit through kills, headshots, whatever, and then through tournaments and such. Now, people are paying money to play a game as much as they want with a chance to earn money. This way, the company makes money, but can also control how much money they release through earnings a lot easier. Have each kill be worth a very small amount, but also have jackpots so players still have the big prize in sight. I would much rather pay a monthly fee for a quality online game and be able to play it as much as I want, then to pay money for every single shot I take. Even though they probably cost near the same, I can get much more playing time out of the monthly fee option if I choose to, which people probably wouldn't.

          Then again, there's also no way to monitor for every single bot or hack used in-game. This was proven when several people found ways around the system in the Fury Challenge back when that was going on. They thought that because of the complexity of the scoring, since you don't simply kill opponents you must kill certain ones and hang onto the blood tokens after collecting them, hacks and bots wouldn't be effective if they could get past the system. But a good player could easily use a hack to increase his hp or defense, which could be easily done by bypassing the system and because it wasn't a huge change like from 2000 HP to 8000 HP, the game master's wouldn't even notice. Imagine if someone got a working aimbot in Kwari. So now the player is running around, controlling the shots, doing basically everything except a program is detecting players, items, etc., and aiming for them to make it easier to kill. Minimalize the amount of bullets shot to save money, while getting the most kills and damage to earn the most amount of money.

          Kwari was doomed from the start, as the business model is too risky. From the audience it applies to, to the terrible P2P system used, Kwari was not a great idea. Perhaps if they made the game with better graphics like Huxley, then people would be more willing to pay to play. The game was basic, and with many better shooter games out there for free it wasn't going to be a hit. I just wish another game would take this idea and have tournaments in-game, or even a weekend where you could earn money through kills or headshots or something. It's a great idea in theory, it's just extremely hard to pull-off successfully.