I think one of their main ethical advantages is that they don't force people into piracy

Jul 18, 2014 22:45 GMT  ·  By

I've always been a fan of free-to-play games, in theory at least, because the reality is that it's difficult to offer a completely balanced experience to everyone while still trying to make ends meet, and thus incentivize players to shell out cash.

Some people do it better than others, and some manage to make it a complete disaster, as is the case with EA's reboot of Dungeon Keeper for mobiles, which sucked, begging for money at every step and holding gameplay hostage behind a daunting paywall.

Last year's free-to-play earning reports showed that League of Legends, Team Fortress 2, World Of Tanks, and many others, managed to make a lot of money even though everyone can pick them up and play them for no cost at all.

Furthermore, there is strong evidence that the vast bulk of free-to-play users don't pay a single dime during their gaming careers, leaving a very small subset of players to carry the brunt of sustainability for their favorite games.

The good news, however, is that free-to-play games don't usually have an upper limit on how much you can spend on them, which means that you can throw your fat purse around as much as you like, to their creators' delight.

This is probably what EA realized when the idea to slide a few microtransactions into regular, one-time purchase games materialized into Dead Space 3's crafting system, failing to acknowledge the fact that nobody wants those two business models to mix.

I can sort of understand the greed behind such a move, the need to capitalize on the fact that some people have money and you want them, and it's unfair to limit your greed to a one-time purchase when there's so much to go around. I simply choose not to act on such impulses because I am not a morally-bankrupt greedy goblin.

Getting back to our subject, the free-to-play model rose in popularity in Asia, where a lot of players who couldn't afford to pay for games wanted to play stuff without having to resort to piracy, and thus, the business model surged to today's level of popularity, by mainly taking the old adage "time is money" and transferring it to the digital world verbatim.

That meant that those who could, paid the royalty and got instant gratification, and those who couldn't were slowly grinding away their goals, which provided a healthy ecosystem in which everyone was happy and the paying customers were ensured to have big communities to gloat over their fortunes, instead of empty servers were nobody could see their wealth.

People liked Path of Exile more than Diablo 3
People liked Path of Exile more than Diablo 3

This means that people who can't afford games, but have the same right to pursue happiness as those who can, are able to enjoy them without being dismissed from the get-go as no good, lowly pirates, which I consider a very strong moral plus for the people who continue to offer them entertainment for free.

The model is now becoming increasingly popular with western developers, a lot of them wanting to emulate League of Legends and Dota 2's free-to-play success, and probably the most notable high-profile player joining the trend is Blizzard, with its unexpected free-to-play collectible card game, Hearthstone.

Hearthstone, a game that blends strategy and luck, is probably the pinnacle of hype-driven game audience inflation, due to several prominent personalities making what is basically a nerd's game (try picking up chicks while wearing a Magic: The Gathering t-shirt) wildly popular almost overnight.

The game is seemingly offered for free, in spite of it offering a very polished experience in terms of both visuals, sounds, and gameplay interactions. You don't have to spend a dime on it, yet it's very successful and it's making a lot of money.

You can get everything in the game without ever spending anything, but it's going to take a lot of time and dedication. You can purchase random card boosters by the truckload, and you'll be able to get your hands on whatever you need much faster. Your choice.

And that's what makes the game great, the fact that it's perfectly balanced and very, very accessible. Just like Path of Exile or Rift. Just like many other games that I see myself more tempted to play every time I stumble upon a video of someone doing something great in them.

I played a lot of World of Warcraft, but whenever I think about picking it up, I realize that it's not just a month or two's worth of the subscription fee I'm going to pay, and that I'm never actually going to play enough to warrant the purchase anyway.

On the other hand, in the case of games like League of Legends or Warface, I can always simply install them, get a few games in, and then forget about them without later coming to regret my impulse buy.

The thing about these games is that oftentimes you realize that over the course of your entanglement with them, you ended up paying more than the equivalent of a regular AAA game. For me, it's similar to going out and having a great time. When I'm having a blast, I see people actively working to improve my experience, and there's no Eye of Sauron constantly ogling my wallet, so I'm much more likely to leave a good tip.

More and more big studios want to get in on the cash, in a manner that is very friendly toward players. With free-to-play games, you don't have to commit prior to assessing the product you are purchasing. It's like someone hyping up Dark Souls, getting all worked up to play it, and then realizing that its developers didn't even bother to create a competent control scheme.

Free-to-play games can't disappoint like that. They can only fail and disappear.

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