With more and more Western development companies starting to see the light, or at least investigate and test the waters of microtransactions, 2009 looks like it might very well be the year of RMT and/or MTX. More and more western developers simply can’t ignore Nexon’s run away success, doubling and tripling revenues from the previous year. SOE is a prime example with the recent EverQuest and EverQuest II introductions of items available via an in-game shop, not to mention ‘home’. EA is still working hard on microtransaction based Battlefield Heroes, and now Turbine is recruiting for a new position.
Despite recent staff cuts, Turbine’s Westwood, Massachusetts office is currently recruiting for a “microtransactions/e-commerce manager” who’s job responsibilities will include “delivering and maximizing the revenue derived from Turbine’s micro-transaction-based in-game store.”
While Turbine has kicked this idea around in a number of interviews, they’ve never given a truly concrete answer, but this job ad certainly hails a new direction for Turbine.
While the Eastern market has a tendancy to lean on the ‘pay to pwn’ style of play, offering players superior items (mainly weapons and armor), this concept hasn’t really taken off in the Western market, where players like a more balanced play style, but do support cosmetic and non-stat enhancing items. Turbine has played a lot of cards right in the past, and it would be a mighty stretch for them to botch this kind of deal. If anything, I’m willing to bet the farm on the fact that Turbine is obviously going to respect the market that they’re working in and only offer cosmetic upgrades. Then again – I may be entirely wrong, which, I hope for Turbine’s sake, I’m not.
Turbine’s responsibilities for this microtransaction/e-commerce manager include:
- Deliver sales and drive growth in monthly in-game transaction amount and frequency through merchandising and price/product mix optimization
- Recommend and implement in-game store offerings and promotions
- Use web analytics tools to optimize store layout, flow, and user experience
- Develop product catalog and roll-out plans for new product offerings
- Provide detailed reports and analysis of sales, traffic, and in-game merchandising
- Create and deploy email promotions to drive players to the in-game store
- Work with product development to balance the in-game economy and ensure that revenue driving game features and items are available to players
- Keep abreast of competitor and micro-transaction/e-commerce practices
- Identify short and long term product initiatives and opportunities for meeting goals and driving revenue
Tags: Battlefield Heroes, EverQuest, everquest ii, microtransaction, Nexon, RMT, soe, Turbine, westwood massachusetts
