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.'"

Comments

free to play isn't worth defending

[Anonymous Coward]

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"

New?

[aardvarkjoe]

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.

Re:New?

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that in the old model, you paid to have more fun. In the new model, you pay to skip boredom.

I loved Plants vs Zombies 1. I gladly paid $20 for it (or whatever the price is). Plants vs Zombies 2 was a completely different story. Even at "free", it was boring. I do not want to pay just to progress. Let me just play a flat fee for a game that is completely optimized for fun.

Re:New?

[Kjella]

The difference is that in the old model, you paid to have more fun. In the new model, you pay to skip boredom.

This AC is spot on the money, that's exactly how I feel. And that boredom tastes artificially added, usually not that bad at first to get you addicted but the deeper you go the more the paid and free paths diverge. Like you can have the normal game or you can have the game with lots of extra grind, would you like to pay $1 to skip it? I guess some feel that's less of a dick move than setting up a paywall and say pay $1 to proceed or it's game over, but at least then it's in their best interest to make the experience as good as possible for you. Not that I like being heckled for money with tiny little DLCs everywhere either, give me large expansions and leave the sales booth out of the game itself. Nothing worse than an in-game NPC with a dollar sign over his head.

Re:New?

[ildon]

"Free-to-play" does not literally mean "free to play." It means a game that is specifically designed around microtransactions. A game that was designed, scoped, and balanced around the idea that you will just barely not be able to succeed, or just barely not be able to get what you want done, unless you fork over some cash a little bit at a time.

In order for a shareware classic like DOOM to be designed in the Free-to-Play model, imagine that instead of the levels having 3 colored key cards with associated doors, they had 10 colored key cards, and you could only pick up one per day. You might reach the second key, but you would have to wait a day or fork over $0.50, or have someone click your post on Facebook to pick up the next card. Not only that, but as you progressed through the level, monster health, damage, and density increased, to the point that it would generally not be possible to complete a level unless you paid for a "boost" such as bonus healing or ammo or a temporary damage power up. There would also be no cheat codes in the game, and no difficulty level selector at the start. But you wouldn't have to pay for episodes 2-4! They'd be included but extremely hard to complete without paying for boosts, and without paying for the extra keycard access it would take you weeks to reach them.

So yes, the current "free-to-play" design paradigm is completely different from the old shareware system. In a shareware system, the most unscrupulous thing a game designer might do is front load the best level designs into the first episode, and get lazy with the designs of the later episodes, but they still had to actually make the core gameplay and difficulty progression fun, and the main gameplay loop fun. In the F2P model you create a core gameplay loop that is fun and balanced, and then you intentionally skew it to be impossible, time consuming, or frustrating, and add payment opportunities at those points of near defeat or frustration or "I'm just 2 points away" or "I just want to play one more level." And the worst part is that once you actually fork over the money, and the restrictions are released, the resulting game is bland and repetitive. The challenge disappeared because the only challenge the games usually provided were in the management of limited resources. You literally just paid $1 to make the game less fun for yourself by effectively cheating. It leaves you feeling empty and unfulfilled.

More basic than that

[Todd Knarr]

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.

Re:More basic than that

[Ralph Wiggam]

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".

Far too many gamers paint all Free To Play games with the same brush. Everyone should check out the games Loadout (FPS) and Paths of Exile (Action RPG). Both are more polished than many traditional model games. Paths of Exile has absolutely no way of paying for an in-game advantage. My objection was that their cosmetic items are obscenely priced. Turning your town portal from blue to orange is like 9 bucks. Adding a cosmetic lightning effect to your weapon is more than $20. Loadout offers an array of hilarious cosmetic stuff, plus short term double XP periods as part of a larger package. The thing is that a good player can earn 1500+ XP per match while a shitty player earns 500-800 per match. So a shitty player who pays for double XP isn't going to surpass a good player who pays nothing.

Too many microtransactions.

[B33rNinj4]

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.

Re:Too many microtransactions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Path Of Exile follows that model, microtransactions are and always will be purely for cosmetic items... not to mention that the game rated better than D3 when it came out (judging by the players, anyway)

Entitlements vs. consumables

[tepples]

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".

Re:Coin operated

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you are paying for the electricity, rental of the building, and wear/tear on hardware. Same reason that f2p MMOs aren't hated nearly as much as single player f2p phone games, servers cost money to run.

But if it is a single player game on your own hardware, charging for tokens/berries/etc without an expense to justify the price is just deliberately making the game less fun in an attempt to milk players.

Obvious Elephant in the Room is Obvious...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

The play store needs categories

[egarland]

* 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.

"derision and scorn when they really shouldn't"

[jargonburn]

No, no I don't think I do. I've heard free-to-play broken down into three categories:

* 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.

Re:Hearthstone is good.

[MtHuurne]

I'm enjoying Hearthstone as well.

Something some players may not realize is that when you're playing other humans in a ranked system, if you win half your matches, you're doing OK. You can win more if you're new or if you're improving rapidly, but then your ranking gets adjusted and you'll face tougher opponents.

It's a collectable card game, so having more cards will give you more options. If you want to be able to compete with people who have been playing for months on your first day, you'd have to spend a lot of money. But you wouldn't be able to build a good deck out of those purchased cards with so little experience, so it's a rather pointless criticism. If you play now and then for a few weeks you'll get a decent set of cards and you'll learn how to use them. And every level of rarity has good cards, you don't need a lot of rare cards to make a good deck.

Reading the forum posts about Gelbin Mekkatorque (a promo card given to people who purchased something during beta) was hilarious. Some people complained that handing out a promo card like that was pay2win. Others complained that the card was seriously underpowered and they felt ripped off. So in the end it shows that you simply cannot make everyone happy. (In my opinion, the card is way too random to be used in a competitive deck, but it is quite funny.)

Re:Free to play, otherwise known as pay to win....

[rsmith-mac]

Indeed.

As a whole, mobile game players don't actually buy anything. It's the tiny, tiny percentage of whales that brings in much of the revenue (and ads fill in much of the rest).

0.22 percent of players account for 46 percent of mobile app revenue

Given this, it's no surprise that mobile game development is so damn broken. It's impossible to have a healthy development environment if most players aren't actually willing to pay for the game.

Financial pressure to exploit players

[Camael]

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.