Business Model Canvas

In class, I learned about the business model canvas. A business model canvas is a tool used to design how a company or developer intends to make money through the product or idea they're planning on selling. The business model canvas consists of 9 building blocks in which each of the blocks all make up the structure of the business model canvas. Each of the 9 building blocks each have it's own role but all connects and supports the other roles.

Here's how the business model canvas looks like:



Each of the 9 building blocks will be explained to get a further better understanding.

Costumer Segments 



Customer segments are the group of people that you want to sell your product to. These group of people are the business focus/target audience. These customers are the people the business plans on making a profit from. Usually the needs of these customers are looked into carefully to see what they want and desire more so that it would match the product a business wants to sell to them.

Value Propositions 



Value propositions are the things that makes the company valuable to their customers. This is usually something that draws the customers' attention towards your company.It either meets their needs or don't. Not only that, values can meet the customers' needs by either being quantitative or quantitative.

Channels



Channels are the type of communication between the company and it's customers. Channels are the type of communication that would help bring out the product the a company is selling to for their customers. Finding the right channel is the best way to reach the target customer.

Customer Relationships



Customer relationships are the type of relationship that a company wants to share or have with their customers and what the company promises for their customers. These relationships are what keeps the customers wanting to be around the company.

Revenue Streams



Revenue streams are the decisions that has to be made regarding how much the customers should spend. This is where a a decision is made in order to decide how much customers should pay or are willing to pay. There are many different ways where a company can decide what type of transaction that should be involved between them and the customers.

Key Resources



Key resources are the different resources that was used in order to create the business model of a company. Key resources/activities looks more into the costs it took to make the business model and the total costs of all the resources used to help make the business model. Resources not only includes money, but also other resources such as human, physical, or mental resources.

Key Activities

Key Activities are the type of actions that a company must do in order to make sure that their business model actually works and becomes a success. Usually the key activities must match what the business model try to aim for.


Key Partnerships



Key relationships are the people or partners of a company that helps promote and make the business model work. By creating partnership with others such as a network or another business, it can help create an alliance in which full support will be given. This can become useful in a way where if a company doesn't have access to a certain type of resource, one of their partners who has access can provide it.

Cost Structure



Cost Structures are the overall total costs to plan out and take part in making the business model. All of the costs are added up through the different structures within the business model. The cost structure looks into how much was spent in order to make the business model work.

Here's a quick video that sums and explain what the Business Model is:

Video Game Monetization Model

In order for game developers to make money for their games, they have to come up with a monetization strategy that would not only benefit them, but make sure that the consumer would end up enjoying.

There are many different strategies involving utilizing the monetization strategy. Game developers can decide to have trials, time fees, ads/ad free, free-to-play(F2P), premium, micro-transaction, downloadable content(DLC), and episodic release. Each of these models or strategy have a purpose behind them and they have to be used properly for a developers game in order to make a profit.

Trials and time fees could fall within the same strategy involving the monetization strategy. Game developers would release a game and it would only be a trial where the players are limited to how far they can play the game. After getting to that point, there would be a fee established where the players can pay to continue on or not pay in which they wouldn't be able to continue on. With this strategy, developers allows the players to play the game to a certain point and if they enjoyed it, they can pay to have the full version to further continue playing.

In order to get money for games, developers allows advertisements to be broadcast within their game. These advertisements can be pop-ups of a product or idea, a video that pauses the game, or even within the game such as in the background. Developers and also promoters can get profit just by having ads. This is commonly and largely seen in mobile apps. There are apps that would require you to pay a monthly fee in order to make the app add free like Pandora or a game that makes you pay a one time fee to have no adds like Pocket Heroes.

                                                          

Developers can market their games as either free-to-play or pay-to-play. This strategy is commonly seen within online games MMORPGs. F2P games would be available to the players for free and there'll be in-game purchases within the game. These in-game purchases usually consists of purchasing items, in-game currency, or features. There'll be times where the game wants you to pay for some features that needs to be unlocked. For a pay-to-play game, it consists of a a players paying money in order to play a game or a subscription fee. This can be either having to pay a one time fee, monthly fee, or even annual fee.

  


DLC are separate game purchases that allows the player to buy various things. DLC can come in forms of being an extension to the main game, having more maps, outfits/costumes, exclusive weapons and armors, and other features to expand the game. These DLC are sold both separately or in a bundle. The cost of DLC all depends on what the publisher or producers want to market out and charge the players. There are times where a game's DLC can have an impact on the main game itself. This can be seen in the game Mass Effect. Mass Effect has numerous DLCs where the player plays a story not available in the main game and once they return to the main game, they'll have access to exclusive weapons or suits.

Games released in forms of episodes are becoming popular. Telltale's The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and the newly released Game of Thrones started this episodic releases of the game. This method involves a release of the first episode of the game and then after that episode comes to an end, the player needs to wait for the next episode to come out so they can continue playing, To continue playing, players are charged money in order to buy the next episode. After a while once all the episodes are released, there'll be a release of the full game with all the episodes available within a certain season. The game can continue on to season 2 in which case the same process of episode availability and release will repeat.