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A few nights ago I was checking out Battlefield Heroes. Price of admission: just install a browser plug-in and create an account. It's a third-person rendition of good ol' Battlefield - two teams with multiple character classes running around capturing flags, crashing vehicles, and pwning each other. By current standards, it's quite a lot of game for free... which got me thinking about the "free to play" model for games.
"Free to play" is a funny expression. It sounds a lot like "Free shipping" or "Some sets not for use with some cars". It leaves you waiting for the other shoe to drop. Perhaps because so far it's been used more to describe games with hidden costs than games provided gratis. Going back to BFH, there are a variety of ways EA profits from the game, besides the brand loyalty and market share benefits it yields:
- Players can pay to rent a server.
- There are banners on most of the pre- and post-game screens. They are currently populated with BFH content, but screaming out for some back-to-school-laptop-deal banners.
- The game's host gets a plug when the game starts ("This round hosted by
YOUR DOMAIN HERE"). Presumably advertisers will pay for this too.
- Players can pay for in-game accessories and upgrades.
Server rentals and the related hosting plugs are a cool idea. Ads are just as tacky as on the rest of the internet, but they're a price almost everyone is comfortable paying. The tricky one is in-game spending. Something about it doesn't sit well with me, and I've been trying to figure out what.
I think what I don't like about this model is that it has the potential to shift the focus away from designing good games to instead designing profitable spending systems.
The traditional model of making a game and then letting the market decide your reward does at least incentivize the creation of good games. The system is not ideal, it also rewards mediocre games with great marketing and penalizes games that can't get into the right distribution channels. Nonetheless, if you make a good game, you're at least not paddling against the current.
Of course if you make a good game but use the in-game spending model, you can expect to be rewarded with a similar large player population. The catch is that your financial reward is not just a factor of how many people like your game, but also how much money you are able to get each of them to spend while playing.
If this is where all of your revenue comes from, then the spending imperative can easily run afoul of some of the qualities we think of as important in a good game, like balance and longevity. Designers are now encouraged to introduce intentional imbalances to create value for premium game items. Likewise, if the free parts of the game are fun and engaging for too long, it can undermine sales of add-on content.
With this model, it's more profitable to make a game where players regularly get bored with their content and want to buy more. It seems inescapable that some parts of the game will have to have these game design toll booths installed to be profitable. The problem is there's no synergy in this approach. The toll booths don't add anything to the game, but they can definitely detract from it.
BFH is not solely dependent on the sale of in-game items to pay the bills. From what I've seen so far you can enjoy the game just fine without spending any money, as long as you don't care too much about cool hats and have the patience to play to earn the points you need to access new items, rather than buying them.
This turns the in-game spending into more of a tip jar, rather than a toll booth - it's an optional part of the game. It will be interesting to see how other games will try to use in-game spending in the future. Kudos to EA for giving it a try with Battlefield Heroes.
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So, you have to give them some way to "earn" it inside your game. Of course, when you start thinking about giving the players the same rewards that they can pay for, you'll ask yourself the question - how do you guarantee that players wont find some exploit in your design that will allow them to make overhelming amounts of gold (or other in-game currency that can be bought for real money) from the game, create gigantic inflation and never pay? The answer: you don't give them gold. Paying players will.
And there goes the most brilliant aspect of free2play game design that really brings new kind of synergy to the online game. Non-paying gamer, using his time and skill, farms the epic sword - and then he sells it to the paying gamer, who just bought gold for money. Time (spent to farm it) is money, and all we have to do is let the players set the price for it.
It seems everything will be free in the future because marketers will need it in order to obtain attention from the "buyers". I think maybe this trend is starting to show up and that's perhaps another reason why casual games are having such a big boom. People like paying less for everything (is free better) and developers are providing this in their own way. It seems EA knows a lot about marketing and they are starting to experiment the "free" model with bigger budget games.
I play:
Ace Online
Taikodom
Warrock
TrackMania
PokerStars
Rohan
And they're all excellent games... Over time tho, i think the advertising is going to get thin because lots of free games are coming out. Then Bam!... Someone is going to make the god of all free games tan take all the advertising.
I beleive the reason alot of free games are doing so well are not only because of the F2P aspect, but they have low system requirements.
I dunno, I'm waitin' for that one special game to come out, and I don't care if I have to pay for it or not. So long as it's reasonable.
The worst offender I can think of is Wizard 101. My kids played it, enjoyed it and then, wanted me to pay for it. Not so bad right? Well, they played it for free for all it was worth, until there was no more free content to be had, and wanted to get into the additional areas. Also, they wanted to be able to play together and converse which you can't do unless you pay.
What did they find out? That paying doesn't get you much more out of the experience and it was a disappointment. There was no real benefit to paying. That the free game was what the game was really about and the paid for content was just more of the same.
I think the free-to-play model is trouble. I doubt it can really pay off for either developer or player unless the developer can commit themselves to something more than just creating a gateway to your wallet.
If you're going to be able to get ingame purchases, at least give the details of wtf you can purchase. I am so sick of the MMO industry's approach to marketing. What ever happened to geting something for your money?
So for this can I get a special gensture to give the finger to EA, how pathetic, gestures cost you credits.
That aside I do like the approach of server renting, but again no details on who, what you get, and in no way can you compare services.
Again, I play no MMO because their are NONE out there that deserve my money or time atm!
Don't care if it's free either, no info no go!
1. no spam from EA
2. ingame purchases are for clothes and XP boosters only
3. You don't have to rent a server to play
4. its 16 players to a server far from MMO
5. http://www.battlefieldheroes.com/ (videos under media tab , top right of page)
With your attitude David its probably better you don't play. It took more information from me to sign up here to post a comment than it did for me to beta test and play BFH :P
making a decent game is the problem.
Make a good game first, then add bells and whistles I want to pay for that add to my experience.
I was looking at a free mmo list, it's seems to me that every game offered is basically the same.
The difference is some just have nicer graphics than others.
Korean MMOs do this a lot, and there are hundreds of them now.
I don't have any problems with Free-to-play, in fact I like it.
It's just the way developers have been using it.
David Reeves, what is so wrong about signing up to find out what something is in more detail if you don't have to pay or give out any personal information?