Do Free-To-Play Games Get a Fair Shake? 181
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.'"
free to play isn't worth defending (Score:3, Insightful)
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"
Financial pressure to exploit players (Score:4, Informative)
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 [segmentnext.com] 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.
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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.
These two aren't necessarily true.
4. Smaller developers especially may not have things like quotas and sales targets which dictate their entire behavior. They're also more likely to be developing for fun as much as income such that $$ aren't the only consideration. And they're more likely to pick free to play as a model just because nobody will pay up front for a game/company they've never heard of.
5. There are plenty of ways around this. Many games don't even require direct player-to-player competition. Yo
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They *can*. But they *don't*.
While not pushed by quotas, they are tempted by personal incomes directly proportional to in-game sales. Ther is always the incentive to grab more money, whatever it is.
And single-player games can be (and frequently are) made equally hopeless money sinks in pursuit of progress in game, as opposed to advantage over other players. When a game requires you to spend three years to accumulate enough valuables through "free means" to avoid that one $30 payment required to progress (ac
New? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Entitlements vs. consumables (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
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WORMS FTW! jk, jk, srsly when I buy a phone game and can choose between an ad-supported free version and a paid version that costs a buck or two, i usually choose the paid version. one, because i read reviews to learn what the good games are and don't download everything just to try it. two, because ads annoy me. three, I'm not going to pay for stuff I wouldn't pay for in real life. In real life I'm not going to throw down for a shiny metal helmet, so i'm not going to do it virtually either. four, all games
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To give an examples
Jurassic Park Builder has
1 a DNA research bit that flat FAILS about 40% of the time (and you have to pay 10 to 30K per try)
2 hatch times measured in DAYS
3 has recently added one of those 'get points to get "lottery tickets"' things
Dragons World has
1 a rolling set of "Buy Resource Pack and get special dragons" thing (at US$25 US$50 and US$100)
2 an rare system that about requires you to buy gems to get the best dragons
3 Wait times measured in DAYS
Dragon City has
1 a bunch of "social buildin
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The Simpsons Tapped Out has kind of an interesting model in the sense that they'll give out something for free for a limited time, then later bring it back as a "premium" item. For example, if one was playing for the Christmas 2012 update they would have had the opportunity to get Barney for free, but now he costs 250 donuts (about $20). They recently just did the same thing for Maude Flanders (free during Halloween 2013, now 150 donuts). I guess it can be viewed as either a way of rewarding the long-ter
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This exactly. I've been playing a lot of smartphone apps recently. I have no trouble paying something for a game. If they want to release a "lite" version with limited levels, I'm fine with that. It lets you get a feel for the game play and see if you want to spend the cash for the full version. I don't even have a problem with additional level packs costing more money. What I have a problem with are games where you either 1) Need to buy items with the "premium currency" (only obtainable by paying cas
Re:New? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Also, PvZ2 includes a lot of components that you cannot eventually earn, but can only buy. A handful of plants, a number of other bonuses. I added it all up at one point, and it was well over $50, just for the perpetual benefits, not even consumables. I resist paying that much for an AAA title. No way in hell will I pay it for a little iPhone distracter. I was late to the original and only paid $5, which I thought was fair. I'd pay $5 or even $10 for everything in #2. But not $50 or $60. Ridiculous.
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The difference is that in the old model, you paid to have more fun. In the new model, you pay to skip boredom.
If you're bored by a game, you can just stop playing it for free!
At least that's what I do.
Re:New? (Score:5, Interesting)
"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.
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Exactly. The second I hear a game is freer to play, I immediately assume all of these things about it, and it's up to the game designer to try to convince me to "buy" it anyway. The only one in recent memory that has done that for me is Path to Exile. The entire game is free to play, and all of the purchases are for cosmetic stuff, with, arguably, only additional stash space being something that might give you an advantage in the game.
What happened to Freemium? (Score:2)
"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?
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You are absolutely correct, but it bares saying that not ALL free-with-microtransaction games are like that. Dota2, Team Fortress2, Path of the Exile, League of Legends are all good examples of free to play done right (although League of Legends does dip somewhat into the time-wasting nonsense you mentioned, not enough to break the game though).
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But you pay one time for the full game, maybe one time per levelpack. Now you for each time, you play the level. And in 10 years you won't be able to get your old android tablet and show someone the old game, because it cannot contact its license-server and will only run the minimum features, if it starts at all.
More basic than that (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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There's a world of difference though between "pay for content" and "pay to win". For years, Turbine was a shining example of doing it right in DDO (and probably LOTR online), where the free-to-pay portion was most of the low-level content and some of the mid-high level content, and mostly you paid to unlock new quest lines (permanently, for all characters on your account) and new race/class options (again, permanently). Sure, you couldn't get to max level on the free content alone (well, not in any sane w
Re:More basic than that (Score:4)
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.
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True, but I've noticed that the F2P games that use that model are now trying to entice players back into monthly subscriptions. I think it's inevitable: if all you can buy is cosmetic, there's no real incentive to spend much money at all and the company starts wondering where all the cash they were supposed to be getting is. I'm of the opinion that the whole "free to play, and we'll make our money off the cash shop" is right in there with "free site, and we'll make our money off the advertising" as a busine
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True, but I've noticed that the F2P games that use that model are now trying to entice players back into monthly subscriptions.
What games are those?
Rift (Score:2)
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Yeah. Rift does a very good job. I know at least one person who was raiding without ever having spent any money on the game, and also without having bought credits (the store currency) with in-game money. The game is built around the same tuning that was generally regarded as acceptable when it was subscription-based, and the majority of the purchases go towards convenience things, cosmetics, and gambling. If you really want to be powerful, the best stuff still requires you to actually play the game.
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I think Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online did a good job too. These were the first top tier MMOs to go that way.
However they are not strictly "F2P", they are a hybrid allowing players to either subscribe or to pay for content/features ala-carte. Plus players can mix the two, unsubscribing or resubscribe any time while still being able to play. These have not turned into "pay to win" despite the predictions of doom.
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Cryptic with STO and SOE with DCUO as well.
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Yep, I feel the same way about STO, I'd play it more except it doesn't work very well under Wine now.
I'm experiencing the symptoms descibed in the Performance Degradation subthread:
https://appdb.winehq.org/objec... [winehq.org]
A couple of months ago, I was getting annoyed by the ugliness of my "golf ball" Olympic Research Science Vessel,
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Resea... [gamepedia.com]
so I ponied up some cash for some points to get a Nebula.
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Advan... [gamepedia.com]
While the nebula did have a few advantages over the RSV, the en
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Too many microtransactions. (Score:4, Informative)
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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)
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In my experience, this only really kicks the hardcore players in the ass. I play sasually, and the various rewards given as time progresses work well to offset the non-pay penalties.
SWTOR does this well. Sign up for a secure key app, there is 100 coins a month. Progressing in levels and achievements in game nets you xp boosts and such. Quest rewards are the same for everyone- and often it is XP or power boosts as well. Spend the coin to pen pay-only areas for a week, go play them that week. if you like it o
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SWTOR is ok in this regard, but frankly the restrictions on F2P are long and painful.
Even being a sub, I find some of the timers and limits annoying. Why are fleet passes not instant for a sub? What possible benefit is there to having the fleet timer be 6 hours for a sub who pays $15 a month?
SWTOR is coasting on the Cartel Market (cash shop), the actual game content has been pretty thin for a year now. Some new end game content to be sure, but the actual story has suffered.
I'm playing it because it is St
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I don't mind the model of "extended free trial, then you have to subscribe", in fact I think that's great. What I fund scummy is when you're stuck with all the microtransactions, and can't just subscribe to be free of them.
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IMHO, the author is "ethically challenged" (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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I have never been tricked into spending money. But I do not play app games, so I may have dodged a bullet. Pay-to-play on PC has been a rather pleasant experience thus far.
Not my cup of tea (Score:2)
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 carn
Free to play, otherwise known as pay to win.... (Score:3)
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?
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Well, I don't mean to insult your 7 years of experience repeating what you likely already know: It is the pacing cycle of build up and release found in everything from day/night, neurons, fire/reload, rising action/climax, browsing/buying, waiting/playing, suspense/resolution, ect. that is primarily the cause of the profit margins. By exploiting essential cognitive rhythms of rest and effort, risk and reward, etc. one can skillfully extract payment from the weak minded who are susceptible to the level of t
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So, Zynga's racking in the bucks, then?
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Maybe because what you consider "almost universally derided by players everywhere" is just "the vocal minority"?
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Re:Free to play, otherwise known as pay to win.... (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [polygon.com]
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.
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Just to make the point more obvious:
Plants vs Zombies 1: paid game, huge following, considered classic.
Plants vs Zombies 2: free-to-play game in the worst sense. Never heard anybody saying they liked it, probably got more cash than the first one. But it pretty much killed the franchise reputation of game-design mastery.
Plants vs Zombies 3: Will probably be f2p too, but even worse in the micro-transactions. Nobody will care much about PvZ anymore.
Plants vs Zombies 4: Will be the last entry and it will fail t
Obvious Elephant in the Room is Obvious... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Been at GDC, and F2P is dying. (Score:2)
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 c
The play store needs categories (Score:5, Insightful)
* 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.
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You forgot a category:
* Buy it once
I'm completely willing to shell out a few bucks up front in order to not be bothered by irritating grabs for money. Of course, I also prefer single player offline games, so this works for me.
"derision and scorn when they really shouldn't" (Score:5, Interesting)
* 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.
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I dare say there is even one more way I'd split the P2W group: In those games where you can simply "pay up" to a "full" version and on the other hand games where there is no "paid" version but only a "keep paying" variant.
A lot of MMOs are going for the former variant of F2P today. SWTOR comes to mind. You can play for free, all right, but to access any kind of meaningful content, you have to cough up dough. Or, of course, turn your free account into a paid one with the usual monthly fee. While I consider i
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To be fair, the have to spend a lot to compete model wasn't invented by p2w games. MMOs and plenty of other games often have a model that requires you to spend ungodly amou
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The business model they choose is subject to change. What might start out as a 'free-to-play' game with premium cosmetic additions can over time shift to a Freemium or Pay-to-Win model. I've invested my time and reasonable amounts of money in free-to-play games in the past, only to be burned later when they change to a more aggressive model.
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A competent discussion of the topic (Score:2)
The reality is... (Score:3)
... 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.
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Totally agree, and now they grew bold enough to troll a nerd site to sway opinion about this shit to look like a legitimate business model.
The author of that article,
"Ben Cousins has spent his 15 years in the games industry at companies like DeNA, [b]DICE[/b], Sony and Lionhead. Since 2006 he's worked on a total of 10 separate free-to-play games across five different platforms, reaching approximately 50 million users. Follow him on Twitter @benjamincousi
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"IMHO, he should be ashamed of himself."
Unfortunately enough, science says we're monkeys... in that the human brain decides via emotion, not systematic conscious reason, by unconscious processes embedded in the brain. So this is why everything goes to shit...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
no mention of Flash games? Kongregate, anyone? (Score:2)
I feel the author is offering up his own kind of snobbery.
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One thing most people doesn't realize is that there is a part of the developer population that is that crazy (as some put it) to code for free. Because they really want to make games. Of course 90% of everything is crap, whether it's Kongregate, Newgrounds, communities centered on pre-made engines (such as LÃve, MMF, gamemaker, Unity, etc), or just plain hobbyists with a website or github repo and nothing else. But there is good stuff out there, and shouldn't be underestimated because it's given for fr
What about non-free-to-play with f2p elements? (Score:2)
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 th
F2P Games Are For Kids (Score:2)
But they have corrupted minds and youths (Score:2)
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
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Difference here isn't that a lot of people are decrying the culture of F2P, that's fine. It's the business model a lot of people have problems with.
It's like toyetic cartoons. What's the corruption? That they're basically 20 minute advertisements for toys that has 10 minutes of advertisements for more toys. It's cynical and doesn't actually add anything to anyone's life.
When I was a kid, I figured that one out pretty quick. Some of my peers though...
I thought you said free (Score:2)
By "free to play" I thought it was like this actual good games that are free [techdrivein.com]. Not that tossing them a few $20 for the games wouldn't be a cool thing to do, they are free games to play.
Not all. But enough (Score:2)
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 kickstart
Do F2P games get a fair shake? (Score:2)
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
Shadowrun retruns (Score:2)
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, s
I don't accept your premise (Score:2)
It is something fundamentally wrong with the business model. Name a recent popular f2p game where the pay element isn't an issue?
"Free-to-Play" is a bullshit misnomer (Score:2)
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
Where have I heard this before? (Score:2)
Conflict of interest (Score:2)
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.
He's defending EA? (Score:2)
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?
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Oh. He WORKS for EA. Go hide under a rock, worm.
There's this gem of a presentation in the article comments on Polygon, done by the same person defending F2P: http://www.slideshare.net/bcou... [slideshare.net]
Microtransactions (Score:2)
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 f
Coin operated (Score:2)
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?
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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.
Arcade games are still skill based (Score:3)
Really good arcade players could go what seeme
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you can play pinball and keep wining free games over and over.
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Actually, there were a few arcade titles following the 80's crash offered advantages if you chipped in more coinage. Cyberball 2072 would sometimes give you the option to buy improved team performance or enhanced players between quarters. And I seem to recall Xybots offering extra in-game currency for tokens. Thankfully the trend never caught on back then.
Buy meal, get tokens free (Score:2)
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There is this barcade that has some games on free and others on coin / bills.
there is also one with free games and high beer prices.
Cobalt Flux (Score:2)
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.
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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
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Re:Hearthstone is good. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.)
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Thanks for the discussion about Hearthstone. I hadn't heard about it, but it's been fun. I played a little Magic back in the 90's and miss that style of game. Free is an excellent price for a little dabbling.
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I totally agree, Path of Exile is one of the best, if not the best F2P models I've encountered, I spent $20 on it purely to support them, I spent almost all of the credits on storage space though. :)
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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?
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Because DCUO isn't and FreeRealms wasn't?
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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 fanb
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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 [wikipedia.org] 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 m
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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.
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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.