Membership. This can be a subject that causes multiple contriversies when it comes to games such as Animal Jam and Club Penguin. It could be a factor in why some games shut down. (More on that later) But why is it such a large problem? Why could too many membership benefits and too little membership benefits both be a problem?
First, it might be important to understand the reasons as to why there is membership in the first place.
Membership is a way to earn money from free-to-play games. As the people who run games such as Animal Jam need to profit off of the game, they need to somehow profit from it. Thus, new features are added to the game, and cost money to be unlocked. Membership seems like the perfect idea for this.
Membership can unlock all features and aspects of the game as well as making it more fun for member players. With membership implimented in a game, the workers who run the game can earn profit and make the game even bigger and better. So what could possibly go wrong? Well, this is only one point of view.
What about someone who cannot afford membership, or cannot buy it?
Well, they may not like how some good and cool features are members-only. They may start to hate the game and dislike how some items or games are members-only. They may protest and demand more features, but then this could also escalate to a problem.
See, there has to be a good ratio of member features to features everyone can unlock. It should be around 2:1 to 3:1. If it's higher, or lower, then the game could possibly shut down.
What if there were too many member features compared to features everyone could unlock?
The game with membership could start getting hated on and less and less players who are non-member or have an expired membership will slowly leave the game. This can result in less players, thus, less popularity.
Does that mean there should be more features for everyone than there are member features?
Well, no. I have an example for this situation. Amazing World.
This was a kid-friendly game which shut down this year. However, this game had membership but was a bit different from other games. This game was incredibly generous to non-members. You didn't even need a membership and you'd enjoy the game just as much as a member did. So what could go wrong? Players would enjoy the game for free and play without a membership!
This, would of course, mean less membership purchases... which would make the game start to lose profit...
So how should a game like Animal Jam maintain keeping non-members and members happy but still earn profit?
As I said, there could be a ratio of member features to features everyone can have. However, I can't exactly say what that ratio would be, as there isn't a determined one and I don't really know. However, my best guess would have to be 3:2, member to non-member features.
If I said anything incorrect here, please point it out for me...