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Do Free-To-Play Games Get a Fair Shake?
An anonymous reader writes "This article makes the case that most gamers treat 'free-to-play' games with derision and scorn when they really shouldn't. The author refers to it as 'snobbery.' We've all either encountered or heard about a game company using shady business practices to squeeze every cent from their users through in-app purchases (a.k.a. microtransations, a.k.a. cash shops), or a simple pay-to-win format. But these stories don't represent all games — by a long shot. It's something endemic to shady developers and publishers, not the business model. Think about traditionally-sold games, and how often you've seen a trailer that horribly misrepresents gameplay. Or a $60 game that was an unfinished, buggy mess. Or a Kickstarted project that didn't deliver on its promises. The author says, 'When something is new, when it isn't aimed at you, when it is created by strange people in strange places, when it breaks established norms and when it is becoming hugely popular... it's scary for the establishment. The ethical critique is an easy way to fight these changes, a call to protect the children or protect the irrational people who obviously can't like these games on their own merits. We begin to sound as reactionary as the ban on pinball or the fears over jazz music corrupting the minds of our youth.'"
It's my first foray into CCG. I'm quite enjoying it. It's boring to read MTG snobs remind people that it's not as strategically advanced (yes, by clearly by design), or free players complaining that it's pay2win (I do fine by collecting cards by winning games), or pretty much anyone who has lost a game against a particular class talk about how "unbalanced" it is (I don't lose unusually often against that class), or people complaining about the lack of cards (it's only been out of beta a few weeks), or any number of complaints that OH IT'S ALL SO AWFUL AND NOT AS GOOD AS EVERYTHING ELSE... until you find that EVERY other game has a similar level of complainers.
usually when we're criticizing "think of the children" positions it's because they threaten something of value. we're talking about games that are designed from the ground up to exploit people for money on a continuous basis, and the best defence they have is that "hey, we're not that bad, some people actually like it"
According to the author, apparently "free-to-play" is a new business model. Funny, I've been playing "free-to-play" games for well over twenty years now; and back in the old shareware days it was fairly common to have a feature-limited free version that you had to upgrade to get the whole game.
Yes, some of the mechanics of ways to make money off of a free-to-play game have changed along with technology, but in concept things really haven't changed that much.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
The attitude stems from something more basic. In conventional games, even bad ones, once you have the game you have everything and how well you do is then up to your own skill and ability. In many free-to-play games, though, the game itself is just the hook. Once you're in, you find that you can't, for all practical purposes, go beyond a certain point without spending money and how much further beyond that you can go depends on how much you can afford to spend. It's why the derisive term is "pay-to-win". In large part how well you do in that type of game doesn't depend on your skill or ability, it depends on how deep your wallet is. And a lot of gamers are offended by the idea that a skilled, knowledgeable player who happens to not be that well-off will by design be less successful in the game than an unskilled, not-very-good player who happens to have well-off parents who'll toss him a couple of hundred dollars a week to fund his entertainment.
The folks at Trion have converted Rift to a fair and decent F2P game IMO. I played when it was not free, and was worried about the change but it's not pay to win, and it's still decent quality. Paying can make "the grind" less grindy but those with more time and less money can still be competitive.
The microtransactions are what really turn me off to F2P games. Most games allow you to progress rapidly to a certain point, then you hit the wall HARD. You either continue to shell out a few dollars here and there, stop playing, or just continue to coast along without spending a dime. If I was just being offered cosmetic items, I wouldn't have a problem. However, in many cases you have zero ability to progress.
There's a difference between old free-to-play, which was based on "entitlements" (purchases that you keep for an indefinite time once you buy them), and new free-to-play, which is based on "consumables" (purchases that you have to make and remake to continue progressing). The old shareware model involved making the first chapter free-to-play and making further chapters entitlements. For example, the first episode of Doom was provided without charge and ended on a cliffhanger. The Ultimate Doom paid entitlement brought three more episodes* ("The Shores of Hell", "Inferno", and "Thy Flesh Consumed"); and the Doom II paid entitlement brought another game's worth of missions. Energy mechanics in newer F2P games, such as "gems" or "berries" or "lives", are different: they force you to wait hours or days at a time to progress if you don't pay, and completing the game within reasonable time requires spending more on energy than a player would have originally spent on a whole game under a pay-up-front or entitlement model.
* Before Ultimate Doom was completed, Id Software sold Doom (registered version), which was the same as Ultimate Doom without "Thy Flesh Consumed".
Most programmers believe it is immoral to trick people into spending money on things.
Pay to Win games are designed with that sole purpose; that's why we hate Pay to Win.
The problem comes when the companys start cutting the fun. While at the same time asking for a nickle every minute.
How is that different from an arcade operator selling me 50 tokens for $10 and demanding three tokens ("no cash value", but practically 60 cents) for an 8-minute game of Dance Dance Revolution?
I played Dragon's Prophet for a while (a free to play MMO). While I thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay I just got tired of fighting my own temptation to spend on the cash shop to advance quicker.
So no, as the article points out I have no purely rational reason for avoiding free-to-play games. That said, I have no purely rational reason for playing games in the first place, it's a choice I make purely on how a game environment resonates with my own subjective perception. A game that feels like a shady carnival with carnival barkers clamoring for the most cash they can drain from me just doesn't appeal to me. How "fair" that attitude is to game developers and publishers is, to me, quite irrelevant.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
I worked as a game programmer for nearly 7 years and in more recent years, I noticed that other than people that I worked with, and others who were in the industry, the notion of essentially requiring the player to keep paying incremental amounts so that the game will be playable to any practical degree is almost universally derided by players everywhere. Somehow, however, these games continue to be the ones that garner the greatest profit margins. This fact was irrefutable... despite being so loathed, this model was clearly what had the best effect on a game company's bottom line.
Can somebody explain this paradox?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
A lot of arcades nowadays include some game tokens with the purchase of a meal, so yes, (a small amount of) gameplay is "free".
Path of Exile is one free to play game that has done free to play the right way, the entire game is free. You don't have to pay a cent and you play the exact same game at the same level that someone who has payed $1000. They offer cosmetic microtransactions such as armour skins and alternate skill effects however they are all cosmetic and offer no in game advantage. They do offer increased storage space and advanced guild functions as a microtransaction however the storage space provided by default is more than enough to play at the same level as everyone else and one can always make more than one account to use for storage.
They do occasionally offer big ticket items such as the ability to work with the game designers to create a personalised unique item ($1000) or even create your own monster ($25000) however even if you pay to design a new unique item you still have to find it in the game through normal play.
I'm not exactly certain what this hypothetical 'fair shake' is; but the obvious elephant in the room, when considering 'free to play' games, is that they aren't free to make, or free to run(and are almost always online, so they are 'not free to run' as in 'will die the moment the hosting bill goes unpaid') so you do always have to keep an eye on your wallet.
Nothing precludes 'traditional' games from also using assorted 'freemium' tricks as well as costing money (Hi there, Dead Space 3! I was totally jazzed about buying crafting components from EA in a game that costs $60!); but when you can see the transaction ahead of time (I give you $x, you give me the game or massively-multiplayer-something-something costs $y/month), there is economic room for products where you can relax and stop watching your wallet. There can, and will, be bad actors, bad deals, overhyped games sold pre-release, etc. but you are freed from the fundamental, nagging, "He obviously needs to make money, and I haven't given him any yet, so when and how does the other shoe drop?" question that dogs 'free-to-play' titles.
As for the 'protect irrational people who obviously can't like these games on their own merits' dig, same basic elephant: we know that the game costs money to make and run, and that the maker ideally wants to actually profit. We also know that monetization rates are comparatively low (something that the inevitable 'Well, $GAME$ gets called 'pay to win'; but I'm just good enough to get by on pure skill. In fact, I actually make money!' brigade exists to remind us of), so we have pretty good reason to suspect the existence of 'Whales'(just like in the casino business) who keep the average income/player high enough for the game to stay in the black.
None of this is proof that any specific operator is running a notably shady deal; but there is a reason why this business model gets special scrutiny: If a 'free to play' game is actually free-to-play, on average, it's either burning VC cash or bleeding out. So, any given title is either dying or on average not free. Similarly, if a game has a lousy monetization rate, with many players actually playing for free, it must clearly be the case that the game is either dying or really bleeding some customers. At that point, you either stick your fingers in your ears and shout "FREE WILL! I can't hear you! RATIONAL ACTORS!" or you must at least consider whether the best customers happen to be children making in-app purchases with somebody else's payment information(not that that, um, actually happened, a lot, or anything. Definitely not enough that it went to court.) or Facebook's equivalent of pathalogical gamblers.
Once large F2P publishers, advertisers and developers such as Gree, 6waves, Tapjoy, Zynga, King, etc. were all but gone. I'm not saying there aren't companies still milking the model, but they are more into niches and whales in a shrinking market. Investment for these kind of games is disappearing rapidly.
Met with many publishers and can tell you for sure that the huge success of Steam and high amount of sales of the PS4 is making them reconsider where to invest. The new trend now seems to be something called "Premium", where you basically pay upfront for a game. Something never heard of that It's going to change the world.
But that's the thing, both grinding and buying suck -- what about challenging gameplay? Isn't that what makes the rewards actually rewarding? Nowadays AAA titles put incredibly amounts of content into games, and then they want to make sure everybody gets to see all of it, and people want that too, because they paid for it, but it leads to shitty games IMHO.
I got kinda bored with gaming because of all this glorified skinner box stuff, like achievements people "hunt" just so they can tick them off. I might as well go through folders of sounds, textures and models to "consume the content". The way to win that is to not play, and that's kinda sad for me. But then again maybe it's just something one grows out of after a while, and it's not use trying to "fix" that, and trying to tell those who are still having fun with it how they should have fun :P
* Ad supported
* Pay to win
* Microtransactions
* Completely free
They should change the "Free" button where the cost usually would be to one of these.
This information is important to to know up front and I should be able to filter out "pay to win" because screw that.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
To give something a fair shake is to give it a fair chance. It started off around 1830 as an American colloquialism meaning "an honest deal", but the meaning has shifted.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
* Free-to-Play: The entire game is free to play and experience; you may be able to purchase some benefits in-game, but they do not skew the balance. They either provide minimal perks, or are purely aesthetic or to support to developer.
* Freemium: The entire game is technically available, but it will take you much longer to go through it without paying some meaningful amount. Available purchases include benefits that can't be earned any other way or require a lot of time/work to accumulate in-game. Balance is skewed to favor those who pay, but you can still compete at a disadvantage.
* Pay-to-Win: The game is there, and you can play it, but a number of important features or content are locked behind pay-walls. Benefits possible cannot be meaningfully earned by any other method. If you aren't paying, you can't hope to compete with those who do.
I scorn and deride Pay-to-Win (I feel, appropriately). I'll regard Freemium games with suspicion, but may play depending on the game itself and how exactly the "store" component is structured. I'll embrace Free-to-Play conceptually; play and support it if I like it.
I've...played Freemium and Pay-to-win. I'm not interested in paying as much as I would for a full game to enjoy said benefits for one or two months. I also hate how it feels not being able to compete because I'm unwilling to pay a bunch of money. If I find the story or mechanics engaging, I'll check it out...but I leave my wallet at home.
Game X:
Run across the map to satisfy some NPC's fetish for collecting some stupid shit... and..
Kill 10 bears
Kill 20 bears
Kill 30 bears
Killed myself.
In my mind, the difference is that there is some level of skill involved in arcade gameplay which is missing in current f2p games. Having grown up in the era when arcades were still the place to spend a Saturday afternoon, I can remember the excitement of nailing that perfect play which seemed to go on and on as the difficulty became increasingly harder... or, the frustration of realizing that you just wasted your money as you crash and burn right off the bat.
Really good arcade players could go what seemed like forever on a single coin, sometimes drawing a sizable audience, while the not-so-good players had a financial (and social!) incentive to improve their gameplay. This is missing from f2p games, which aren't designed to test the player's skill, but their patience. "Trolls are destroying your crops! To double your yield, build a watchtower that will only cost 99 cents!" would be akin to an arcade game prompting you, "Want to complete this level with half of the enemies? Insert a second token now!"
By actual game devs. In particular watch the CCG one.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
But you have a point in that some (probably most) games were designed unfairly require the utmost perfect gameplay to not be a coin sink IF it was even possible.
That's what I liked about DDR: you got to pick 3 songs and any of 3 different step charts for each, so long as you didn't fail out. So you could pick 2 songs you knew you could do and 1 that you thought you might be able to do.
Look up Path of Exile, it's a Hack and Slash F2P Game with a cash-shop. It's cosmetics and convenience stuff. You can buy visual effects for your items and skills, useless pets, that follow your character around. For example the biggest game related advantage that you can buy with real cash is, additional storage for your virtual items. Which can be circumvented by simply creating more account, which of course are free.
You might say that this is an exception out there on the F2P market, however, it proves that the companies are the scum bags, not the business model itself.
... free 2 play games are lower quality than real games. Even league of legends has hugely less content than warcraft 3 and starcraft 1 did with user made maps, etc. Most of the "new" heroes are mere reskins of stats. The fact is free 2 play is just feudalistic theft model of gaming where you pay to get fucked and never own anything. The problem is kids and the masses don't know any better and are ruining gaming by feeding these unethical companies.
The whole model relies on the userbases illiteracy and stupidity when it comes to technology, so in no way are free to play games "a fair shake". It's just good old american hustling conning tech ignorant suckers out of their money.
Most of the games there - even the very best of them - are totally free, and never ask users for money.
I feel the author is offering up his own kind of snobbery.
say, for example, cut the rope 2, which was not free but where you had to use consumable powerups to get certain items in the levels (the "clovers") in order to unlock some levels, only after a major outcry the developer changed it so you could get access to the extra levels if you got 3 stars on all the others. You also get a 'daily gift' (usually a powerup or two) just so you are semi-forced to check in every day, and there are also other obnoxious mechanics so as soon as you spend a little bit of time thinking about a level the "level solution" powerup starts blinking annoyingly. And this is on a non-free game!
I had insta-bought all previous cut the rope games pretty much and 3 starred most of the levels in all of them (great mechanics, om nom is cute) and I had gotten a lot of my friends into them, but I have honestly given up in disgust with cut the rope 2 (only gone through 1-2 worlds) and will not give the developer a dime for "powerups" or any further games they will release.
In terms of "pure" f2p I am actually enjoying hearthstone, I had never played a card game before but it is definitely fun (after you lose enough games to get matched up with similar "f2p" opponents without tons of rares/legendaries), it took me losing about 15-20 games in a row before I ended up at a level where I more or less win 50-60% of the time and my opponents also only have "standard" cards. I figure blizzard is losing money on me as a player, but I figure the wow subscription I have been paying for many years more than covers this (if at all I think Blizzard should give a free card pack every month to WoW subscribers as a random gift, if it was retroactive it'd be even better ;) )
-- the cake is a lie
F2P games are riddled with 12 year olds who smack talk everyone by calling them fags or some other juvenile insult. It gets tiresome.
Pinball, jazz, pirate radio, free-to-play games, and many many other readily-available forms of entertainment have done precisely that: they've corrupted social norms, minds, recreational pass-times, and priorities.
That's been the point all along.
Protecting the children is a perfectly valid reaction to any event or advance offering an easy-route through a scenario. In the case of free-to-play, it means being able to play games, socially, with friends, with no money, and no job. So if you've used expensive games to convince your children that they need a job to pay for things in life, then that simply won't fly anymore.
If that lesson (needing a job to pay for things to have things) is no longer relevant, then that's fine. But if it is still relevant, then free-to-play games do indeed make raising your children more difficult. How do you intend to teach them that money buys things if they don't need money for anything for what, two decades?
You aren't going to stop feeding them. And you won't (anymore) stop giving them a cell phone. So given a 15 year-old, going to high school, with a phone, free games, food, free school, and a bus pass, it's kind of difficult for them to want a job or career. What's the value of a job to a 15 year-old these days? It ain't movies anymore either.
You can like the corruption, I know I like most of it these days. But it's certainly corruption -- that's how society progresses quickly, within a single generation.
By "free to play" I thought it was like this actual good games that are free. Not that tossing them a few $20 for the games wouldn't be a cool thing to do, they are free games to play.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Path of Exile did it right.
Some pay to win games could be awesome of they dropped it, but the ones I enjoyed I became a GM on to keep up with cash players without mass cash injections of my own. A few would be Ming Dynasty - Forgame now hosted on LeKool, Fantasy of Sword - LeKool, Call of Thrones - Yeepgame, Conquer Online - TQ, Evony aka Civony to name a few. Each one of these games had a extreme pay to win layout and even getting thousands of dollars worth of currency I never came close to maxing out well actually I was on CO at +12 on everything except my armor that was +11. Sadly they don't pay well so my gear came from farming waters to 110 getting the gem after rebirth then selling the char.
.
Ming Dynasty 1 Max gem 80,000 USD which adds up to 3,840,000 USD to socket all your gear.
Call of Thrones maxing out would be around 38,000 USD.
Conquer Online around 18,000 USD to max out +12
Fantasy of Swords + 500,000 USD
Evony - Impossible there are some players that have spent over 1,000,000 USD
Back to POE there is none of this shit in POE sure there are cash shops but they're actively hunted by me to troll them and report their shit to PayPal. Shit it's insane I'm 98 and farming like a junkie searching for a crack rock.
No, not all F2P games are P2W games. But enough of them that it's not worth my time sieving through the dung to find the tiny gem that might actually provide me with a bit of entertainment rather than expecting me to keep tossing coin after coin at them to stay in the loop.
It's a bit like online advertisement. Yes, not ALL ads are obnoxious, in-your-face popups. But enough of them are to warrant the installation of an adblocker.
Kickstarter is the other way 'round. I've spent quite a bit of coin on kickstarter projects, usually computer games. And by and large, it was money well spent. On average, they wanted somewhere between 15 and 20 bucks from me, and on average I'd wager that I got about as much entertainment out of them as I got from AAA titles. Yes, from time to time I got a dud. But that's no different from AAA titles, is it?
I don't think we need to protect people from the evils of P2W gaming (else I'd say we should first of all protect them from shady investment businesses, something a lot MORE people ruin their life with), but painting them as the poor, misunderstood stepchild of gaming that needs more loving is a bit much.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nice wall of plug text. But why all the text when there was just a single question you'd have to answer to make me read all the drivel in the first place:
How do you plan to convince me that a F2P game from a huge corporation, Sony especially, is not going to be P2W?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There's actually plenty of game companies left. If you count all the indies that rely on a single game, it sure gets into the thousands.
You'd be surprised how many people are willing and able to pay for entertainment if, and only if, it's worth the money. IMO, that's not the case with most high profile AAA games today. You get the same old, tried-to-death formula in a new coat. The 20th installment of FPS game A, the 50th installment of RTS B... yes, that's mostly risk free because you can rely on your fanboys that like your formula (and even though they will complain about everything you changed because it's different and about everything that stayed the same because you fail at innovation) but at the same time your game is about as interesting to me, and probably a lot of other people, as an old loaf of stale bread.
As long as the big studios keep up with the practice of just repeating the same formula over and over and over while at the same time adding more and more obnoxious DRM to their bland crap that drives even more people away, I am not worried that smaller studios will get into trouble finding customers any time soon.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yeah. Because F2P is a misnomer in most.
Basically it's tied to eastern-style grinding unless you shell out big bucks in the cash shops.
And talking about being nickeled-and-dimed to death?
Yeah. You WISH! Most transactions are $5, $10, $20 or more. What the fuck is "micro" about those transactions.
That and the gambling, Things like PWE's lockbox gambling system. The boxes drop free in the game. But you have to pay to open them. And they deliver random crap. And worse, some of the gear in the game is ONLY available this way.
This is the sort of thing that kept me AWAY from MMOs for so long.
I was pleasantly surprised by City of Heroes and the fact that they didn't treat their gamers this way. Even when they converted to a cash shop and F2P.
Unfortunately, nothing good lasts and those idiots at NCSoft killed the game.
Now all that's left are a bunch of cash shop pushers.
As such, I'll just avoid them altogether.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Bought the app, happy I did not kickstart it. Good idea, accptably written story, but incredible hardware requirements (and even then its slow), and the gameplay just sucks. Unfinished, badly managed product at any rate.
We all might despise the idea and enthousiats, but all software developers here know: "Real artists ship" (attributed to Steve Jobs). Getting something out of the door which is usable and focuses on the core idea, but maybe limited, is crucial for all shareware and free to play developers, so yep, the quality requirements may be different. If a free to play game is too late to catch a certain wave of game mechanics, or so the gameplay bad that nobody want to continue playing it may be worse than having 10years old graphics.
Except... It's not actually true that these are all "games that are designed to exploit people for money on a continuous basis". At least some of the games that have adopted F2P models have worked very, very, hard to avoid exploiting players.
Agreed, but the underlying problem with the f2p model is the financial pressure on its developers/publisher to milk their players, as follows :-
1. A large majority of players play f2p games for free.
2. A small minority of players spend money on the game.
3. Games cost money to produce, and have ongoing expenses to maintain.
4. When their quota/sales target is not met, developers/publishers are under pressure to make up the difference.
5. One of the easiest ways to boost sales is to introduce items which will confer a greatly desired benefit on its purchasers. OTOH, non-buyers who cannot enjoy the greatly desired benefit will endure a comparatively degraded playing experience.
Developers/publisher will continually be tempted to intentionally degrade the players' playing experience so as to create demand for new items that will remove the obstruction. One example is EA's infamous lawnmower tax where a previously free feature, lawnmowers was made a purchase item.
In summary, players who play f2p games have to live perpetually with the fear that the developers/publisher may at any time modify their game in any number of ways to try to gouge more cash from them. Not all f2p games gouge their players, but the risk that they may do so in the next patch is always there.
It is something fundamentally wrong with the business model. Name a recent popular f2p game where the pay element isn't an issue?
f2p is fundamentally flawed because of how people use it. The majority of people who download a f2p game are parasites with no intention of paying, the game company doesn't want these users to stay longer than it takes for them to casually enjoy it, maybe recommend it and possibly change into one of the minority of paying customers. Because most customers will never pay, the few that will have to be taken to the cleaners to make enough revenue to cover for this. For those of us who are happy to spend a moderate amount on games this is a shitty model because instead of paying $5 upfront for a good experience, we need to pay tens of dollars to get an experience that is cheapened by the purchase mechanic.
Call them what they are, "Free to Pay". Because the games are without exception designed to make you want to spend money, which you will need to do if you want to be one of the game's badasses — because you feel so pathetic in your own life that this is important, and you are so pathetic that being a badass in a videogame will make you feel better. And this dynamic is bringing in absolute truckloads of cash for some of these guys who instead of making a game, have made a cash machine.
Some of them even make you pay twice, you have to pay for the client and then you have to pay for the upgrades, but the service is free. AKA "Fee to Pay". Developers of these games will be first against the wall etc.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'd agree that Turbine have done a pretty good job with converting LOTRO to a hybrid F2P model. You can continue to subscribe and be in the same position as before F2P launched (content and slots unlocked for as long as you subscribe, except for expansions), plus you get a monthly allotment of points to spend in the store. Alternatively you can go a la carte, and buy content and slots as 1-time unlocks (and you can earn points for the store in-game - enough to unlock everything if you're willing to spend enough time grinding). I've not found there to be any instances where paid consumables/services are at all necessary - yes, you can buy buffs and pots to make things a bit easier (but in a PvE setting I don't see a problem with this), and items that will give you quick travel or reduced a grind (but these grinds are ones that existed in the game pre-F2P).
Windows moves in mysterious ways, its crashes to perform
As long as the "free" part stands, it usually gets a "fair shake".
But games that force you to pay to progress, wont be treated nicely. Some games(like NFSWorld), have a free to play model, but restrict the upper levels of the game, to only paying customers. And unless you provide a way for people to grind through boredom to reach the same spot for free. Your game will probably be panned.
I would say a few have been designed this way and even then it's a slippery slope. As revenue starts to slip the temptation is to delve further into pay to win type purchasable. Games that use micro-transactions to sell pets, collectibles, and vanity type items are perfectly fine but very few end it there. Many free to play MMO's become simply ways to grind more purchases from the player base. Mechanics become odious or overly long if you don't purchase a boost. Raids begin to require store bought resources to keep up. Some players begin to use the store as a crutch rather than learn the game and become skillful. Some players begin to expect others to outlay store cash to power through completion. Challenge and achievement are now commodities you can buy with money. Turbine's DDO is a great example of this slippery slope. F2P started as some small bonuses and the ability to buy content in feature packs. Four years later there is a real money auction house where you can pay for the best gear in the game.
"Free-to-play" does not literally mean "free to play." It means a game that is specifically designed around microtransactions.
"Freemium" used to be used for games where it's free to play but you could buy premium content for cash. Why call the new ones "free-to-play" if you have to add a footnote saying they're not free to play?
You missed one. Pay-to-Develop Basically games that stay in perpetual Beta while offering features to move the development along or special early access features for nominal fees.
I'm reminded of Mark Cerny's thoughts on Atari and how arcade machines were run. It was completely brutal. Kill player in 3 minutes. 2 1/2 minutes was better.
Games where everyone always died in 3 minutes didn't get repeat players and lost new players because of word of mouth. You have to have at least some people who can play for a while to entice other players to spend their money.
Back in the day, Pole Position was one of the few games with a real limit to the amount of time you could play. Sure, there were a lot of games that could kill you in a few minutes, but those same games (Joust, Pac-Man, Tron, Robotron, Defender, etc.) could easily be played for 30 minutes on a single credit if you were good, and many hours if you were very good.
Today, a likely reason for the demise of the arcade is because there are very few games that offer the chance of a long play time. Many games have fixed times or are simply too hard to allow long play.
Because DCUO isn't and FreeRealms wasn't?
Oh yes. It was right here.
It's simple. On the one hand there is the incentive to make the game enjoyable. On the other hand, there is an incentive to make the game less enjoyable if you don't pay. When you simply pay for access to the game, the incentives align. When you don't, the incentives are at odds. The only mitigating factor is that the game has to be enjoyable enough to get your attention in the first place.
Whoever defends the current "free to play" is defending the new Dungeon Keeper and PvZ 2. You have to have serious mental problems to do that. Maybe the article author hasn't taken his medication lately?
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
There are a lot of ways to implement "free to play". The problem arises when developers (or more likely the suits who control the company) forget that what they're developing is a *game*, and not just a "revenue stream".
I've not gotten into mobile gaming, beyond an ad-supported word game that I've spent maybe 5 hours playing on my phone while waiting in parking lots. But I've played a few F2P online games, usually MMORPGs, and quite a few of the more "Standard model" games as well.
Some games, like Runescape, for instance, did a decent treatment to F2P.. It's possible to play a free "version" of the game and have rather a lot of fun doing it.. but you need to be a paid subscriber to access the other 80% of the game content. I eventually got bored and wandered off to other pastures, but they got my reasonably inexpensive monthly subscription for a good several years. And it was quite worth it, from an entertainment value perspective. I could get hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of less than the cost of 1 movie.
The other side is the "Pay to Win" model..which I abhor. I briefly got hooked on Evony.. (yes, I feel stupid admitting that).. Which was so poorly designed from a *game* perspective that it not only was impossible to "win" without paying, but it became impossible to "remotely contend" without paying a *lot*.. AND without botting nearly 24/7.
I was even part of the "player advisory board".. which made a lot of very good, considered suggestions to the company on how to re-balance things and fix some of the serious problems from a "gameplay" perspective. The company's response was to ignore every single one of the suggestions we put forth and release a major "update" that did exactly the opposite.
That was when I quit playing, despite the friends I had made and all the effort I had put into building my virtual kingdom. I realized that what the Developers were actually developing was a revenue stream, not a game. That was the deception. I was sold the idea of a game, not the idea of an "experiment in marketing."
I realize that game developers need to make money. But like any company, some become scumbags in the pursuit of it. With a standard development model.. "you pays your money and takes your chances". Everybody's been burned on a crap game at least once. But studios who put out crap games in that environment don't tend to survive long. The F2P model allows for a lot more subtle and insidious douchebaggery to persist for much longer periods of time, and *that*, I think, is the real reason it gets the skepticism and derision.
For me the real issue with free to play games is the amount of money they want for the so called "micro-transactions" in game. Micro to me is 10 cents, 50 cents, maybe 1 dollar. Not $500 that MechWarrior is charging!!! (yes that for a super shinny uber mech) even the cost of one of their regular mechs is something like $28 dollars when you convert their in game money "mc" to real USD. They want something like $5 for a color that you would paint your mech with!
Blizzard wants to sell you a special pet $15 or a mount for $25??? WTF. This is AFTER you are already paid for the game $60 and paying for a monthly subscription of $13-15, and they are asking for more??? (keep in mind that when WOW had 10mil + subs and charging avg. of 14$ a month, blizzard was making around $140,000,000 a MONTH!!!! That's... One Hundred and Fourth Million dollars a month. over $1,680,000,000 a year...)
Is it better to get 100 people to buy stuff at 1 cent or 1 person to give you $1 dollar? IMO the 1 cents guys are better because you have 100 people playing your game. and more options to sell more stuff for 1 cent to those 100 players.
Gaming has evolved for me. I am no longer interested in shelling out hundred of dollars for just OK games. I decided to start voting with my wallet. sorry Elder Scrolls, I will play you when you go F2p and if you want any money at all from me, you better make your micro-transactions micro! Too many good games out there now on Steam that are F2P or very low cost. Those are the guys I am going to give my money to.
There is a certain kickstarter game that is doing very well and it could potentially be a new model. A Pay to Develop model, where as it matches like minded users with programmers to make a product they like.
The F2P community for the most part is rabid about insisting they are playing for free. Maybe so to a point, but eventually you succumb to paying for, a horse..then it becomes easier to buy other items, like weapons, armor, dying kits, houses...What this group doesn't realize, that EA does is it is a more profitable model, hence the mark is paying more to play than in a subscription model.
I don't have a problem with companies making money, we all need to make money for our various reasons, but I also believe in fair use. The subscription model is fair use, the F2P guise is milking the people a little at a time over a broad spectrum. Hook and reel in the fish.
I used to think we gamers were a very smart group of people, but I've decided that most gamers of today are like the rest of the sheep of the world, they don't have any math skills to figure out when they are being swindled. There is no such thing as free. It costs something to make and investors expect a return on investment and to think otherwise is insanely stupid.
Not everyone can be Valve or Blizzard, and Valve has that game free (as well as a couple other) so that they can gain a lot of Steam users, which then gives them new revenue unrelated to the game. They will even lure users to an OS where you almost cannot run games outside of Steam (I'm not putting a judgement on that, just reporting a fact)
b. You may pay for some in game character visual-enhancement kits, but none of the money incurred goes to valve, it goes to the kit developers(so its basically not part of the business)
Citation needed. I thought the whole business of Valve was to take a cut on everything that happened on their platform. They invented the "app store" model.
Just to clarify Point b:
A majority of the money goes to Valve on these, but a good chunk (25%? not certain) DOES go to the creator. Valve is the only company doing F2P correctly but that isn't to say they aren't making money hand over fist.
Personally, I avoid any game or application that uses in app payments now, after being burned by developers. The most expensive Android game I have purchased had a single IAP to convert from a one level demo to the full game which was acceptable. When the same game was released with a "micro" IAP model, it was clear quickly that the dev had ruined the game and it would cost a lot more to complete the game. The best part was the payments were mostly for consumables that didn't carry across when starting a new game. They even removed the original game from the store... Their excuse was the usual pathetic nonsense claims of piracy with the old model which always ignores the fact that their new model harms the honest customer far more than any pirate.
Trying a limited demo or ad supported version first and then purchasing a full version or unlocker is my preferred option. Combating intrusive Adware and Spyware from the truly evil developers means that I simply start out not trusting an app or developer at all. There are a small number of developers that have my complete trust and support. The end result is that I now only install new apps very rarely, with a firewall and other security software in place. While that saves plenty of money, it does limit access to the latest games and apps.
I remember there was a time where gamers were all asking for microtransactions, and thought they would be a good idea. As it turns out, not so much,
First off many of them turn out to me no so micro. Also in a multiplayer situation it generally makes a game unbalanced. It becomes an arms race to spend the most in order to even have a chance, which is what the developer wants. There have been a few examples that work, mostly through making the content cosmetic only.
One of my favorite games of all time was a free one: Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
Now my current favorite game is also free: DOTA 2
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