[GDN] A professional gamer might command $25 to $115 per hour for an online game training session. But that doesn’t translate into an everyday gamer. How are rates decided?
[JB] Keeping in mind that we have built a "start your own business" platform for these coaches to take advantage of, we have decided to allow the coaches to set their own hourly rate. Add to this [that] we have an ebay-like community rating system that will allow players to rank and comment on the coaching they receive we feel confident the market will allow better coaches to rise to the top and lesser ones to be filtered out. Those with higher ratings will demand more per hour that those with lesser ratings. This will provide a "peer review" function similar to that used on eBay.
[GDN] How are you going to maintain a high level of quality? These are going to be ordinary people who are training other ordinary people.
[JB] Again, we believe it is the market that will dictate ratings and lead customers to those coaches who have been proven competent by players who have hired them. Additionally, we plan to provide coaching for the coaches to help them understand quality customer service and communication skills. However, we are gamers ourselves and want to be careful not to make it feel overly corporate and risk our getting in the way of the gamer’s way of communicating and establishing "community." As noted above, we will also incorporate "peer review" which is the way many professions strive to control quality-- including the medical profession.
