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Free To Play, Expensive To Love: 'Fortnite' Changes Video Game Business (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: To see the storm that online video game "Fortnite" has unleashed on the world, just visit Jett Sacher in Brooklyn. The 13-year-old spends an hour or two every day on the game with his friends and is not afraid to spend his pocket money on it - bit by bit. "So I bought one dance, two skins and the battle pass," Sacher told Reuters TV about recent gaming sessions. "So that's, I spent $20 on both skins so $40 ... and the dance was another $10 so $50, 60 bucks, something like that."
Sacher's pay-as-you-go expenditure on dressing up his online avatar in the 'free-to-play' game helped "Fortnite" take in an estimated $223 million from in-game purchases in March, according to Joost Van Dreunen at research firm SuperData. "Fortnite," a sort of hybrid of "The Hunger Games" and "Minecraft," drops 100 people onto an island to fight each other for survival. It is a game-changer in the industry, analysts have said, because of the huge revenue it is making from "tween" and teenage boys purchasing outfits and other add-ons. Its publisher, Epic Games, is now worth $4.5 billion, according to an estimate. Further reading: Gamers are the new stars. Esports arenas are the new movie theaters (The New York Times).
Sacher's pay-as-you-go expenditure on dressing up his online avatar in the 'free-to-play' game helped "Fortnite" take in an estimated $223 million from in-game purchases in March, according to Joost Van Dreunen at research firm SuperData. "Fortnite," a sort of hybrid of "The Hunger Games" and "Minecraft," drops 100 people onto an island to fight each other for survival. It is a game-changer in the industry, analysts have said, because of the huge revenue it is making from "tween" and teenage boys purchasing outfits and other add-ons. Its publisher, Epic Games, is now worth $4.5 billion, according to an estimate. Further reading: Gamers are the new stars. Esports arenas are the new movie theaters (The New York Times).
A new age indeed ... "boys purchasing outfits" didn't use to be much of a business model ...
I know modern graphics and shaders are a bitch to program, but that does not compute. Especially for a relatively low poly game like Fortnight. Nice work if you can get it. But it sucks for us old timers who want single player games or at least to just buy a game and call it a day.
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I'm so glad I stopped playing video games before this pay to play nonsense. Totally destroys the experience for me. I play video games to get away from things like a real life economy, not to make me a victim of it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Because free-to-play and making money on cosmetics has been around for several years. You speak of it as if it's a new phenomena.
Targeting microtransactions (MT) at minors should be against the law. These games are designed to be as addictive as possible and to frustrate or dupe users into overspending.
Free To Play is "free" in the same way as the first hit of crack cocaine is available for free from your friendly neighborhood crack dealer.
> I just don't get how people can spend so much money on so little real content.
ePenis bragging rights, aka Vanity.
The same morons (*) who pay thousands of dollars for a Rolex watch or a Gucci bag ($2,000+ WTF?)
(*) Paying $20 - $500 for a watch is fine.
Paying $5,000 for a watch is vanity, aka More money then brains.
People make vanity purchases all the time.
That fancy Car costing over $50k will last and work just as well as a $25k car. You may be getting some extra luxuries that will cost the car manufacture a couple of thousands of dollars. But you are really paying for the vanity of saying you have that type of car.
Or people paying extra money on clothing with a logo on it.
Apple caters to the vanity purchase.
Is it the most optimal use of your money? No.
However it may be worth it if it makes you feel better.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
For free to play games, the tech support is primarily viewed as customer support. They know how much you pay, and the level of attention you get will be scaled to how much you are known to spend. I know this from a previous job where I was implementing the code for our game to use a 3rd party tech support service.
It is not the fault of whoever ended up speaking to your wife, as call center employees are basically doing what they are told. But for the developers and publishers of Freemium games, helping or catering to players that generate zero revenue is not a priority. There is literally no incentive for the publisher to pay a customer support tech to help your wife who is not spending any money, as she is not really a customer.
END COMMUNICATION
Ex professional game developer here. (I've shipped games on PS1, PS2, PC, Wii, DS, and helped numerous companies with their PS3 engines and toolchain. Left the professional industry in 2011 for a stable paycheck but I do my own (indie) game programming and design now, am a hardcore gamer, and help fellow game developers with advice.)
Sorry for the LONG read, but think I can lend some information that will be insightful and not inciteful. =P
> why we still haven't seen modders, foss developers and artists get together to build their own games.
We have, but on a limited scale.
TL:DR;
* Tech Hurdle
* Too many cooks in the kitchen
* Co-dependency upon the Game Engine and everything else
* Theory vs Implementation
* The "good" modders get "poached"
The LONG answer:
There are numerous reasons for this:
* Tech Hurdle
The first hurdle was the tech hurdle. Up until recently writing a "general purpose engine" was folly. Was the game 2D or 3D? If 3D, you HAD to optimize for indoor or outdoor environments for the most part with various kludges to support the other. If you notice both Unity and Unreal now offer a "2D" mode -- Unity with 2D Game Kit and Unreal with Paper2D
Examples where tech matters:
Trying to do "dense jungle environments" in a 3D shooter was basically a recipe of framerate FAIL until Crysis came along:
We "solved" this problem by basically throwing more money at hardware (GPU / CPUs)
How does the engine handle the "contradictory" nature of transparency?
* Opaque objects can be rendered front-to-back using the hardware's "Early Z Test".
* Transparent objects need to be rendered back-to-front so you get the correct colors.
How does an engine handle thousands of lights?
* Deferred rending "solves" this problem but doesn't work for transparency. DOH!
People are using hybrid approaches of Forward Render vs Deferred Render. If the "big boys" are STILL figuring this out, Unity 2018.1 with their High Definition Render Pipeline (HD RP) (Preview) -- what chance does amateurs have? Yes, we see engines like Irrlicht but that is a steep learning curve for non-technical people.
We've seen SOME limited success. Back when Quake 2 was popular we Cube 2: Sauerbraten as a good example of the community coming together to produce something "good."
Open Source engines have typically performed like crap. I've posted in the past
How many people own Jason's quintessential engine development book Game Engine Architecture? How many understand it?
* Too many cooks in the kitchen.
C++ is "good" example of "Design by committee." Everybody has their favorite pet peeve bloating the core user experience until it is an over-engineered clusterfuck.
You'll notice that almost all of the
In my days, nobody had time to feel happy or sad because we were too busy running away from raptors.
#DeleteFacebook
It's a good thing for sure .. learning social skills, functioning as a team, competition, seeing hard work pay off etc -- these are just quaint, outdated notions that kids don't need to learn from playing team sports anymore.
Here and now in 2018 schools are helping to prepare kids for entry into the real world where yes, everyone is in fact a winner, and everyone gets the same reward for simply showing up. So yeah, sports are pointless.
Also obesity is just fat shaming, and pushing physical activity is just another form of body shaming perpetuated by a patriarchal society. I'm sure it's somehow racist as well.
As my boy gets older i'll definitely steer him towards pwning noobs on xbox live and watching anime.