14 DAY TRIAL // Ed Rumley, the chief operations officer at Chillingo, believes that the free-to-play market should be seen as just a market rather than a separate genre in order to allow more developers to take advantage of its opportunities.
The executive tells VG247 that, “I think from a consumer’s perspective, there are obviously a lot of consumers who like free-to-play games, and there’s also a huge number who hate them. I think the confusion comes from most people talking about ‘Freemium’ and talk about it as a genre, rather than a business model.”
Rumley says that titles that are based on grinding mechanics and on free gaming time constitute their own genre and a number of players will always be attracted to them.
He adds, “From an indie developer’s perspective I think free-to-play games scares a lot of people because it’s a complex market, and I can imagine that developers put a lot of time and effort into their games, and that they’re very proud of their work, but it’s scary that they’re about to give this game away for free.”
Chillingo itself sees free-to-play video games as a big opportunity for the future, but the company is also still using a traditional pay per download model that’s still very effective at the moment.
The company is also ready to shift various video games around between the two markets in order to expose new audiences to them and make sure that they get as much publicity as possible.
The free-to-play market has been on the rise, mainly on the PC, all through 2012 and it also has a strong presence on the various mobile devices that run iOS and Android.
Comments from developers like Crytek also seem to suggest that the next generation of gaming devices from Sony and Microsoft will deliver free-to-play titles.