How Free-To-Play Is Constricting Mobile Games 115
An anonymous reader writes "Mobile gaming is crystallizing around one concept: games must be free-to-play. As an industry, it seems to work — there's no shortage of players willing to drop money on microtransactions and in-app purchases. But for making compelling or unusual games, this is a problem. 'Pitch a title that isn't games-as-a-service to publishers or investors and they'll practically install new doors to slam in your face. ... Free-to-play advocates naturally think their model is dominant because "that's what mobile gamers want," explaining that in-app purchases are just the players way of saying they care. If they've entertained the more dull notion that free-to-play is popular because... well, it's free? They seem not to let on. ... Recent data shows 20 percent of mobile games get opened once and never again. 66 percent have never played beyond the first 24 hours and indeed most purchases happen in the first week of play. Amazingly only around two to three percent of gamers pay anything at all for games, and even more hair-raising is the fact that 50 percent of all revenue comes from just 0.2 percent of players. This is a statistically insignificant amount of happy gamers and nothing that gives you a basis to make claims about "what people want."'"
I, for one welcome... (Score:4, Interesting)
... our 0.2% benevolent overlord angel venture capitalist gamer demographic who will now guide the development of all gaming.
Can't find the link (help me out here), but there was a recent interview with a f2p game studio that basically had a developer dedicated to keeping one particular gamer happy after this gamer had basically dropped $10k in in-game purchases.
So does this mean trickle-down economics does work in some domains?
Re:How is 'free to play' constricting? (Score:5, Interesting)
First, it requires you to design a game with logical free to play elements. This restricts the nature of games that can be written.
As for charging for games means none would be played- there's a couple of good counterexamples. Nintendo, Sega, Playstation, Xbox. All of the companies that develop for all of those.
I've been a games since I was 5. I'm ok spending 50 or 70 dollars on a good game. I have never once paid a dime for a free to play game, and it's next to impossible to get me to download them- I know they're going to try and nickle and dime me or charge me a fortune if I don't want to slowly grind stuff out (or make it impossible to play parts of the game if I don't pay). And I'm far from the only gamer like that. So they pick up a large number of people who won't ever pay a dime while disenchanting the existing base of people who are known to play video games. That's idiotic.
Re:It's a money cow. (Score:4, Interesting)
Now even Unreal Tournament dev. system want to go this way, free to...well...download...you figure out the rest.
Unreal tournament will be a very interesting case study over the next year or two, because there are a lot of different variables that don't apply to mobile gaming.
First, a few questions regarding the market model:
1.) Will the game be sufficiently open source that you can download the source, write in the MindPrison Content Market, and distribute the recompile? Android technically lets you do this, but short of Amazon, no market has taken hold since Google Play comes on literally every Android phone sold through carriers. Unreal Tournament is not as similarly beholden.
2.) If it's not that free, will it be possible for modders to release their maps independently, and for players to install them without going through the market? Also different from the mobile market since every UT release ever has had this system in place; users only familiar with iOS will be confused but I see the overlap between the two markets as vanishingly small.
Next, a few differences with the TRUE market. F2P games are, ultimately, marketing to players. Unreal Tournament makes money another way: directly through Unreal Engine 4 subscriptions and the gross revenue therefrom. $20/month per subscriber starts to add up when we add in all the modders and map makers. Similarly, the next Gears of War release will make Epic a fortune with that 5% gross revenue thing happening. Epic doesn't need to make a killing from players in order to get their hookers and blow. Unreal Tournament is a tech demo for the engine and a low-barrier-of-entry for indi developers to get started.
Finally, the Epic Games that released Unreal Tournament 3 was pretty awesome. Why? Because despite not selling as many copies of that year's Call of Duty release, the folks over at Epic Games did release five update packs including the Titan pack (which had several modifiers, new gameplay modes, and new maps) for free, a year and a half after its release. It was also the only game I'm aware of that had a full plastic-disc release that never required an internet connection but also let players put their CD key into Steam and get all the wonderfulness of having the game on Steam. You don't see that kind of dedication from Activision and while it's been quite some time, I'd at least like to think that some of those people are still in charge of making decisions here. I'm fully aware that it's an unreasonable amount of optimism to have, but what can I say - I have hope.
Re:they aren't games, they are like slot machines (Score:2, Interesting)
the business model on many of them is similar to slot machines too.
a number of these titles will NOT let players pass levels until a certain income target has been met, until that point it will continue to give them an impossible level (just like a losing spin) while presenting them with options to buy helpers to pass it.
because everything is tied to a central account this income can come from any one of the players so one person might buy something and the game servers will then allow another 10 people to pass the level for free by giving them better 'luck' (a winning spin)
this works because eventually a player will become frustrated enough to buy a helper, but it also gives the illusion to the other players that it is possible to play the games and win by 'skill' without buying anything (if they have the patience to fail a level many hundreds of times) There's minimal actual skill involved with a large number of the games, you pass the key levels when the company that made the game want you to pass them. (other levels are actually skill based to help with the illusion)
the balance is fine, but I've seen the code for some titles that were popular at one point, and this is exactly what they do.