Free to play
Free-to-play, a business model that is taking the games
industry by storm, it’s been around for years but why only now has it become so
popular? And why is it so successful?
The free to play model has become vastly popular in recent
years, however it has been around for a lot longer than one may think. The
earliest type of free to play games were mainly aimed at younger and more
casual audiences, titles like Runescape and Neopets were around in the late 90s
and offered most of the game for free but offered a premium subscription
service unlocking extra content and game play elements. For example in Runescape there are various
areas that can only be explored if you are a premium subscription owner.
A major factor in the advancement of free to play games is
the advent of mobile phone gaming, portable gaming used to just be on devices
produced along side home consoles; they were clumsy, large and you could only really
play games on them. Now you can play
them on your mobile phone which you carry around anyway, making it much more
convenient. In the early days of mobile gaming, games were often sold as free
but after a couple levels you would hit a wall where you cannot continue
without “buying a new game”. Nowadays you are faced with in game transaction
allowing you to buy extra content get past levels you are stuck on or speeding
up certain aspects of the game to continue playing rather than wait a few more
hours; this is usually done with in-game currency which can be purchased. This
is now the standard model for free to play, depending on how the developers
implement it, some are a little more subtle while others are accused of being a
pay-to-win game.
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| An example of the sort of items you can buy in the game DOTA 2 |
One of the more unique free to play games on the market at
the moment is DOTA 2, a free MOBA game made by valve; recently featured in a
documentary by valve. This game is more or less completely free, all items you
can purchase are simply for aesthetic purposes and the XP boosters don’t add
much unless you are good at the game. However steam will put popular player
made items on sale through the steam workshop. One of the major pluses for
valve is that to play the game you will need to install their online digital
distribution software Steam, increasing the chances of sales on other games
that are often on offer.
The free to play model on one hand is really good for the
consumer as well as the developer, the consumer gets the game for free and the
developer gets the game in front of lots of people. Sounds good right? On the
other hand, it can be a bit of a pain for the gamer. Whilst you do get to play
a game for free, there are a number of problems you can encounter with F2P
games such as in game adverts or you might not get the whole game unless if you
pay up. That said, many gamers have become used to owning physical copies games
and having everything there instead of having to pay to unlock everything. Therefore, some consumers may get angry. I
feel that free to play games are definitely here to stay but I consider them to
be a bit of a temporary fix for the economical issues the games industry is
struggling through, unless game developers innovate the business model it will
fade away and become something we just see in mobile games.
References:
http://www.e-clubthailand.com/image/wallet/Dota-2-Store.jpg
http://s.pro-gmedia.com/videogamer/media/images/pub/large/free.jpg
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