BattleCorps and Subscriptions

In case you weren’t sure, I’m a big fan of the subscription model for businesses that offer content and services. I’m comfortable with the subscription approach, and I think it’s one of the best ways to provide a high-quality, low-risk product to a consumer in niche-markets. Subscription business models are perfect for web-and digital-content. So much so that I often wonder why game publishers have avoided taking full advantage of it. I want to spend a little time exploring why the subscription model(s) are so effective and why I like them so much.

For starters I think it’s pretty good to take a quick look at the subscription model in a context we’ll all understand. In an interview with NPR, HBO’s John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight discussed some of the benefits of having his show on HBO. During which he said:

The exciting thing is that [HBO] let[s] you do whatever you want. They don’t say anything. They’re amazing. It’s almost a confusing amount of freedom.John Oliver

Here’s why he’s afforded this amazing level of freedom: the freedom Oliver has achieved is largely the result of the subscription model. HBO is a premium channel, and both his show and channel have no advertisers. HBO only answers to its paying customers. With this type of creative freedom at his disposal, Oliver can chide President Obama or the GOP without fear of losing advertisers or sponsors. Oliver’s only and most important relationship is with the viewer, the subscriber. As long as they are satisfied, his show is a success.

This is just one (especially important) benefit of the subscription model for game publishers—it has an unparalleled amount of integrity. Game publishers can take content risks with a subscription model that traditional sales models don’t allow. With a subscription model game publishers can take immediate advantage of a captive audience to pitch new ideas and test product ideas with much less risk. Results can be measured immediately, and unsatisfied subscribers can be assuaged with a return to older content types. The subscription model also drives innovation because content publishers have to continue to earn business by engaging with subscribers.

Unsurprisingly, the subscription model is more popular than ever—and therefore increasingly acceptable. Your cable bill, your cell phone bill, your Netflix account, your Amazon Prime account, your Sirius channels, your Pandora account, your FitBit account, your Kindle subscriptions—all of these are driven by the subscription model.

The subscription model creates incentives to innovate. In the scholarly world, when you compare subscriptions to models like Gold OA, which have innovation limits hinted at by the basis for payment—the article processing charge (APC), which defines the business precisely—the subscription model is flexible and rewards innovation. Whether it’s Spotify improving its algorithm or Amazon improving its delivery times or UPS improving its tracking information, subscription innovation is everywhere, and it is increasing exponentially. With service-based subscriptions and apps the new trend it’s a market that’s easily overlooked by game publishers.

Even though it’s known generally for selling individual items, Amazon is perhaps the quintessential subscription company. Amazon Prime is a popular subscription offering—so popular, in fact, that Amazon is implementing a 30% price increase for it in 2015, and nobody is shocked. They are loading it with value, from streaming video to streaming music to faster shipping (with or without drones…)

Speaking of Amazon, look at their recent acquisition of the Washington Post. Amazon is utilizing its proven internet-driven subscription strategy to leverage the new subscription-based infrastructure of the Digital Age for a revamped Washington Post newspaper.

For content publishing businesses—like Catalyst Game Labs—the subscription model works well because it has long-term viability—and because when it fails, it fails quickly (or “fails fast” to use my favorite ongoing BattleTech term). Even without specific numbers, I “know” BattleCorp failed fast at the first onset of trouble because subscription models are like the canaries in a mine. Combine it with some form of community board and even the most casual observer can see a subscription failure as soon as it starts. In addition, every business works better when the vicissitudes of supply and demand are smoothed out, and when risk is spread across many sources of variability. The subscription model does both of these things well.

By amortizing the cost of acquisition over a multi-year period, the subscription model also cements a relationship between producers and consumers. It incentivizes long-term value creation and a focus on end-user needs. It provides publishers with stable revenues from a diverse set of customers, reducing the risk posed by single points of failure, which can occur with issues like customer concentration or low barriers to competition (which the tabletop industry has). It also provides the largest purchasing pool possible, as consuming information is much more common than producing it.

So lets take a look at BattleTech’s BattleCorps subscription service:

“BattleCorps is the only official short fiction publication for BattleTech. Each month we bring you exciting new content, including a mix of exclusive fiction, in-universe new articles, opportunities for interaction with writers, developers, and artists, sneak-peeks at upcoming products, and even scenarios and tracks you can’t get anywhere else!

In addition, membership allows you the chance to purchase stories from five years of back issues, all discounted and all available here in the BattleShop. Even better, members are given discounts on all merchandise they purchase from the BattleShop!”

BattleCorps’s current subscription model is a combination of membership and magazine models, and a dose of your typical pay-for-content with the opportunity to purchase backlog product. The combination of membership and magazine model isn’t surprising. Most membership-based subscription models provide paid members with a library of information on a specific topic of interest or a cluster of topics and creates a community of individuals who share a common interest.

The magazine component, which is defined by a setup that sells subscriptions for a related print or digital entity and to provide access to content, is how the vast majority of BattleCorps’s subscription content is organized—with linear and periodic “issues” for download. The MIU (minimum information unit) of BattleCorps is a downloadable BattleCorps product in the form of a story, unit digest, etc., brought to print during the time a membership is active.

Membership is a subscription, pure and simple—long-term relationship, high cost of acquisition, long-term value creation, conversions and renewals, and so forth. It is no surprise that publication subscription (like the magazine model) and membership are nearly always bundled, as they spring from a common business model.

Choosing the right subscription-model is a business-critical decision, as the chosen focus pretty much dictates the initial chances of a subscription’s success. Not considering the subscription website business model, or periodically reevaluating the existing one is a major mistake.

While the failures of BattleCorps’s subscription model has much to do with providing inconsistent and poor content to BattleCorps’s member-subscribers, the subscription model itself is also to blame, which only accentuates the content production problems. New members are forced to purchase old issues after purchasing a site membership. While new membership costs ostensibly pay for the production of new content, the production issues make this long-term sale a less-than-appetizing proposition for what amounts to pre-library access.

In light of the production issues there are only a few options available short of a complete site reboot. BattleCorps could capitalize on its existing library by dumping its current membership fee and moving to a single pay-for-content subscription model that allows customers to pick and choose old BattleCorps content for purchase. While this would freeze the production of new content, and is not a true subscription model, it’s an easy and effective way to garner sales from already produced product. In other words, it’s a simple way for Catalyst to get a little “blood from a stone” without having to spend new resources on anything new. The quick conversion to pay-for-content would also provide Catalyst with an opportunity (and some money) to revamp the existing subscription model for something more sustainable, as well as some time to work out the content production issues that have plagued the site for so long.

If a full reboot is in order the available options for revamping the site’s subscription model increase dramatically depending on whether or not Catalyst can correct its content production issues. Assuming the company cannot fix the production plague, there are other gameplay and content alternatives the site can deliver to justify the continued sale of membership to its customers without undue burden.

In addition to utilizing the preexisting story and article library as pay-for-content as mentioned above, the membership subscriptions could be built around web- and mobile-based game aids. While this type of subscription takes on some aspects of the application subscription model it could be uniquely suited to a tabletop game like BattleTech with its vast and rich product library. For example, one optional game aid function could include monthly access to the BattleTech sourcebooks, record sheets and core rulebooks in a non-downloadable format using the same software as Flippybook. The BattleTech library would be divided up into tiers, with monthly membership dues increasing with tier advancement. Newly released product would be added to the membership library tiers on a quarterly or semiannual basis to encourage individual purchase of new product. Since most of BattleTech’s library is already in PDF format the resources required to create this feature is minimal compared to creating a catalog of new content. This type of membership subscription offers current and returning players an on-going incentive to maintain their subscriptions, and could be competitively priced to entice new players. The catalog tool also affords Catalyst the opportunity to guide players with “suggested” reading options and an opportunity to integrate directly to BattleTech’s e-commerce platform. This membership will address the problem of immediate access-immediate download-immediate cancellation as sometimes seen when customers have full access to downloadable digital document libraries.

Other game aids to entice and satisfy ongoing membership include offering supplement expansion to existing products. Expansions could include new scenarios, interactive maps, limited edition units and record sheets linked to previously published products. While this type of game aid requires the creation of new content, by connecting it to published product the subscription can create cohesive narratives, make use of varied expansion types and utilize digital resources to reduce cost. Redeveloping previously released product is a fast failure method to achieve immediate results since the older product is already a financial success. Offering full era coverage will appeal to all BattleTech player-types, while staggered and rotational release using the standard publication production schedule will ease stress on the production pipeline and act as an enticement to extend membership. The key to success will be to stagger the expansions appropriately. Releasing expansions too far apart (less than 2-3 a week) or over emphasis on a single era will have a negative impact on the subscription.

I believe that BattleTech’s and BattleCorps’s site model has interfered with direct subscriptions, but since the financial bargain has been (largely) acceptable, the strategic issues have been grudgingly tabled despite faults in the setup. The last decade of fixation on the status quo—in my opinion—led to a general neglect of subscription marketing and e-commerce infrastructure. By the level of resources leveled at it, at the strategic level, direct subscriptions and group subscription offshoots are often overlooked by Catalyst Management or simply not considered viable anymore.

However, game publishers like Catalyst shouldn’t run from or forget to build for the subscription model, especially when it’s proven so successful for digital businesses. It is especially valuable now that hard goods (e.g., printed books, printed journals, record albums, CDs, and DVDs) are purely digital products, making purchase more of a license than actual acquisition. The challenge is to tune the subscription model for BattleTech and tabletop gamers, with additional attributes like auto-renewal, planned price increases, enticing product bundles, and confident marketing. But we also have some work to do, as the infrastructure for subscriptions has languished to the point of entropy—in personnel with the expertise to execute, management with experience to lead, and technology that paves the way.