Is Free Really the Future of Gaming?

TRNick writes "Is the future of gaming more or less free, perhaps funded by advertising or micropayments? A bunch of MMOs have pioneered the way, and now they are being followed by the likes of EA, Sony and id Software, each of which is offering some form of free gaming. But it's not just the big guys. TechRadar talks to a new generation of indie developers who are making names for themselves. 'I make most of my money from sponsors,' says one. 'We're all here because we love making games first and foremost,' says another. But can free games ever make enough money to fund the really ambitious, event games that get the headlines?" While paid games aren't likely to be on their way out any time soon, more and more developers and publishers are experimenting with cheaper pricing, and the results so far seem positive.

History repeats itself

[mcgrew]

id Software... offering some form of free gaming.

Wolfenstien 3-D? Doom? Duke Nukem (2D side scroller, Apogee and Id were once the same bunch of guys)

Surely you guys remember "shareware?" Free is what made Id the powerhouse it eventually became.

From my experience...

[CyberData4]

I work for (I guess I should say DID work for as I'm on my two week notice...job laid off half of us last week) a small game company that makes free to play games for the PC. We have a loyal following but not NEARLY enough to entice advertisers in this economy into spending money for ads in our games. We don't use the most recent engines. But we use a very stable and powerful one for what we do. And lemme just say that free gaming, while possible will never have the quality of a large budget console or pc game. Just not enough money to pay enough programmers/artists/testers...etc.

Re:Free and Open Source?

[bami]

I used to have a frontend for mine, but when switching to ubuntu, ditched that.
In both windows and linux is pretty easy to just make shortcuts, dosbox supports a lot of command-line arguments so you can just make each shortcut automount your dir and run the appropriate file.

But here are my recommendations for windows:

First, all frontends listed here:
http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/DOSBoxFrontends [dosbox.com]

Then:
D-fend: Pretty easy to use, has dosbox profiles that is basically just a different config file for each dosbox game, along with some general info. Games can be sorted on developer etc. Discontinued, but there is D-fend reloaded. No experience with that though.

D.O.G. : Easy to use, pretty much same functionality as d-fend. Also added zip functionality (just keep all your game-related stuff in a zip). Also a version of dosbox can be specified per game so if a update of dosbox breaks a game you can use both versions side-by-side.

Re:In-game advertising.

[pushing-robot]

Mostly because getting rights is a PITA. Think of each product as an actor, and the parent corporation as their overzealous agent.

Say you're a game developer with a brilliant vision, and you think it would be realistic to put a Coca-Cola logo on the side of some vending machines. Now you might think "Hey, Coca-Cola would love that! I'll contact them and see if they'll pay me to put their logo in as I see fit!"

Not exactly. Some guy at Coca-Cola's marketing department contacts you back and says "All right, but we have to approve of every placement. Show us where you plan on using the logo.

And you talk to your modelers and level designers and figure out everywhere in the game you'd put a Coca-Cola logo.

And you talk to Coca-Cola again. They look at the nice pictures you made, then point to a picture of a wrecked Coke machine in a bombed-out building and say "This just won't do. See how the machine is all broken and scratched? The lights aren't even on. Replace it with a new machine in working order."

And they point to another picture and say "Here you've got a Coke machine in the enemy headquarters. We don't want that. Make all the good guys visibly drink Coca-Cola products, and make all the bad guys visibly drink some generic product."

And then they tell you "Hey, we've been thinking. Gameplay is 'where it's at'. We'll pay you a tidy sum if you make the player drink Coca-Cola products to restore his health. And have the player hunt for Power-Ade bottles for an extra 'Boost'! It could add a whole new mechanic to your game!"

And you go back and forth with Coca-Cola until you finally say "This is going nowhere! I don't want to turn my game into a Coca-Cola commercial! Can you just give me permission to put the logo in my game according to my artistic vision? I don't care about the money any more!"

And they reply "Sorry, unless you intend to portray our brand in a positive light we won't give you any rights to it."

And you're back at square one, albeit a bit wiser. The next day, you ask the art lead "Hey, can you come up with a nice generic soft drink company logo?"

Hollywood has been banging against this problem for decades. Companies won't pay for just any instance of their product on screen, or relinquish their rights merely for the sake of "Realism". If you want their logo, you have to play by their rules. That's why ninety-nine out of a hundred items seen on film are still "genericized", and the few that are branded are usually quite conspicuous.