Monetizer: Batman: Arkham Origins

hello and welcome to pocket Gamer's monetizer feature this is where we video the first 5 to 10 minutes of new uh freet to-play games and have a look at the monetization techniques being used the social flow and the general user experience so the game we're going to look at now is um Batman Aran Origins from Warner morning brothers so let's start stop watch and fire it up see what we get okay so first thing we get is push notifications I really hate this I really think um this should be after you've experienced the game I think it's a fine thing to ask push notification very useful not this early on this is this is just kind of like um rude rude etiquette I think psychologically I will allow it in this case because I want to see what they send me but in most cases I think developers need to put this kind of you need to start a relationship to put it that way with with your with your Gamers you can't just ask this straight

up um I think this is why push notifications are uh kind of not being allowed but in most cases anyhow off we go we're going to straight into the game are you back for the night Sir shall I warm up Christmas dinner no no it's going to be a long night Alfred I had a run in with one of the Assassins assassins sir as in more than one that's right black mask isn't messing around Slade Wilson Death Stroke former military subject of a failed medical experiment failed you say Garfield lens AKA Firefly burns on 90% of his body his obsession is going to be his end how unlike anyone I know

here's a face I don't recognize Copperhead strange these reports reference a male not a female 14 escapes huh well you won't forg not what the have to say Arkham Asylum has proved historically not very good at keeping uh Arch criminals under Lo key says here he's an expert Sharpshooter us suspected of many assassinations dangerous but Reckless Street tough named Lester binsky calls himself electrocutioner shocking V here and Gotham

why would he be taking money as a hired killer is that W Joseph must be how black mask got inside the prison he uses torture for intimidation and entertainment eight assassins after your head what are you going to do I'm going to find black mask and put an end to this okay so I guess one of Brothers going for the uh the big console style cut scene guess with Batman being a one franchise that kind of makes sense so let's see how quickly get into gameplay so that's about 3 minutes we're into at the moment so let's go through the tutorial okay we've been given some upgrade points to purchase my first bat suit I think um this this kind of stuff it was pretty standard for a tutorial but it's um the the developer one needs

to show players how to use the store system in the game and also obviously giving kind of credits is is a well-known kind of retail proposition where you kind of give someone a little bit of something and that you know talking about building the relationship between between a player and and developer or any retailer and the consumer so we've got uh so I'm going to Tap a button excuse this one see what suits we've got okay so we have 10,000 whatever these units are and there are 10,000 that's going to cost 10,000 so that's going to be pretty obvious to we're going to be purchasing the Arkham or yeah the Arkham Origins bat suit obviously you can see there's another currency presum this will be a hard currency soft currency we haven't got any of the uh the harder or hard one so we'll purchase that okay and we go quit

okay another clear thing we can see we down here we got a health so that's 550 Health damage speed block damage reduction current suit and we're going to have some three attributes to upgrade skills assault stance and guarded stance uh we also see we're level one here and there's a stamina bar here which presumably presumably will be some sort of energy fuel um system okay probably skip through that basic tutorial now probably W be very good um using the stylus but let's see how we get on buk okay going wait tap three times to to basic combo so that's on the third one hold two fingers or Shield to block tap the special attack button presumbly is this one we' got the shield

mission complete okay tutorials go um it tells us what to do I suppose so we got 100 XP points we got a guarded stance combat stance that favors defense over offense improve the stance to take less damage Health booster restore some health during combat um okay okay so this is going to be more complicated so even within this guarded stance we have various attributes different abilities so this is a purchase again using the same soft currency spend okay bit more information so what going to give us upgrades

options so iCloud save there unlockables here with a Warner Brothers ID log into to Facebook um let's go and do some more stuff okay looks like we're going to Uptown Gotham uh okay tutorial two Advanced combat techniques so the mission re board we can see now we're going to get 10 of these harder currency it's going to cost us nothing cuz we're still in a tutorial please guard St tutorial okay guard stance proves defense tap on the St button so looks like we're going to toggle between these two tap Health booster so that's the one we bought okay it's teaching that switch between assault and guarded STS so we not switch

switches prob we good at this okay so not power move come on okay getting some rough idea what's going on so getting my rewards very good so that's tutorial um so I've got my 10 up points up here I'm leveling up a little bit a quick look B suit so

okay so these are the other B sus obviously very early in the game so this is all locked down quite a few of those okay so we're about 8 minutes in let's have a quick look um the other things we like to do is have a quick look at store so obviously this is our get more currency so looking at the currencies here so as we look said before we've got these upgrade points so these are earned through play or bought through purchase um with these we upgrade our starts special attacks and bat suits most bat suits so um so it's a hard currency in the sense that we spend money to buy it but it's a the softer of the hard currencies as we can earn it as well so that's the the traditional you can grind through or or kind of like speed up um by buying with real money and then here we have the way Tech points which are rare and more valuable than upgrade points used to instantly refill your stamina bar so that's um as we've seen particularly in the racing games that's the energy also sort in in the drowning where it didn't work so

well where they were kind of gating um gameplay sessions with um again they use it as a fuel system um so with way Tech points uh we can purchase powerful but temporary gameplay boosts so that's um I you know the developers are kind of um kind of try to be careful that it's not this bu to win thing so obviously in this situation we're buy we're not buying permanent upgrades so in this ones we're buying permanent upgrades with these way Tech points there a bit more more like a a temporary a kind of more like a consumable item based thing um and they also used to buy the exclusive bat suits so let's have a look uh at the upgrade points first so this is quite nice so they're actually um have their own special um kind of titles dense lucky silver dollar Catwoman stash um so this is uh so the smallest uh that's

£2 in English money so that's $3 and this is something we kind of like to see this kind of discount ratio that I call it um so here we can see we're getting compared to the unit price you pay for so you're paying here $3 for 15,000 here we're spending $5 and for 30,000 so effec getting this 5,000 free I think is a good thing to show people I obviously it's an encouragement to spend more but um and all the way up I this is typical as well so best value is the most expensive one so it's 1.1 million um so we're getting 600,000 free obviously it's not free because the price is is set however you want to do it um so but that's a pretty standard one two three so that six bands um with most of them on the low ends of the scale and one at $50 and one at $100 so that's all fairly standard

so let's go and have a look at the way Tech points again this looks like a similar situation so we got six bands okay sorry camera Switched Off there um so just the last thing I kind of wanted wanted to say is not specific to to this game but I think it's interesting to look at the conversion ratio you're kind of seeing between real money spent and the amount and kind of unit um cost you you get for for the in-game virtual currency obviously this can be set to anything but it seems to me um that psychologically and a nice way of doing it and and some of the more high-profile games so Clash of Clans Infinity Blade 3 the games from gree and Ma seem to be using this as well um if you spend kind of $100 which is a you know reasonable sum of money for for most people for virtual object to get a,1 100 seems okay it doesn't really matter it's all made up but psychology it seems like oh you know

that's that's not a big kind of um doesn't be getting very much it seems weird but there I think the psychical number of getting spending 100 here and getting a th000 here so that's basically each one of those is worth $10 um so for each dollar you're getting 10 um that seems like kind of the wor of doing it I mean conversely if you go back to this one obviously this is we said this was a softer cury this one you're spending $100 and you're getting just over a million so obviously in this these ones don't seem very um very valuable at all so you almost have this kind of weird kind of dichotomy I think in this game between these seem really expensive and the and the sof currency seem really cheap which is why I think what you're looking is you're kind of roughly getting for each dollar you spend a good kind of ratio is about 100 to 150 and that's kind of what you're seeing so something like CL of in Clash of Clans you spend $100 or if you spend $100 you end up with I think it's $6 16,000 um and the rtio tends to be

something like you know to get 10,000 of these seems for $100 seems to be just a better kind of almost some psychological ratio to have but that's a bit by The Bu so anyway so we kind of um so we've kind of seen uh what's going on with Batman game obviously um this is the second one in the series so the first one in Justice um was used kind of more um more characters wasn't wasn't pure Batman game that did very very well um and obviously the highend graphics in this and and the and the characters suggests that this will do quite well as well it' be something certainly we will be uh following in our article um and looking at more detail as we play through it in terms of monetizer so uh yeah good job there Warners