One of the main reasons I was made redundant from my position at the studio I worked at prior to going indie was that I was (ridiculous as this sounds) too interested in the quality of our games. It caused arguments, stress, it made me a problem. I got so angry – I just wanted to make games which were good, that we could be proud of. You’d think this would be in the best interests of everyone, the studio included, since if you make consistently bad or, at best, mediocre games you’re on a downwards spiral towards the company exploding. Which is what happened.
This is the problem with financially driven entertainment. It’s easy to lose sight of the point – that games, primarily, are supposed to be fun – and instead focus on hitting those milestones so that you get your completion bonus. Balls to whether the game is good, have you technically fulfilled all the requirements of this month’s milestone? Yes? Move on.
Of course, all those development costs need paying so while it’s easy as an employee to stamp your feet and scream that the game is utterly awful, unless those milestone deliveries are met, that bonus which the studio relies on will disappear and suddenly people are losing jobs. It’s a vicious circle and a spiralling problem as development costs rise and team sizes bloat.
Everybody knows this. That, generally, games are just a business and there to make the developers and publishers money and, primarily, not there for the well-being of the gamers. But for the most-part it’s easy to separate yourself from this. You run home, clutching your copy of whatever it is you’ve been looking forward to, and you immerse yourself in it. All cynicism regarding why this game exists in the first place or how you have been moulded into thinking you need it, evaporates. From this point on it’s all about the game, and you.
Not so with Free-to-Play which reminds you at every opportunity, with a sledgehammer, that this is all about money.
Scenario A – game costs $10
You buy the game, it’s fun. You do well, but you get to level 10 and you get stuck. God this is hard. You consult guides, you ask friends, you try anything to get an advantage. You succeed, you feel great! Man, I’m good!
Scenario B – game is free.
You grab the game. Hey this free game is fun. You do well, but get to level 10 and you get stuck. Why is this so hard? What’s this, there’s an item here for $10 which will make this considerably easier. I can buy that, but where’s the satisfaction? I’ve bought my way to victory.
In both scenarios, you spend the same amount of money. But the trouble with F2P is that it makes you feel like the entire structure of the game, all design decisions, all difficulty spikes, everything is there to force you to buy that item. Is that really the best way to design an enjoyable experience? Frustrate the player to the point they give you cash (edit: or, as is often the case, bore them into giving you cash. Save yourself this arbitrary hassle! Only $5.99!)?
Or is it better to get that financial exchange out of the way, right at the start? It’s paid for, forget about it. Now the game can focus on entertaining you with no ulterior motives in play. If the game is hard, it’s there to challenge you to make you feel good about beating it, not sell you something.
Which model is ultimately better for developers and publishers is another issue entirely. But a gameplay experience should ALWAYS and EXCLUSIVELY be about the gamer.
(Other opinions are available)
I feel as though you didn’t do enough research into what sort of free to play models are out there before denouncing them in your blog.
What about games where the Free-To-Play is based on cosmetic options? Those don’t really pressure you, yet if your game is good the developers make money and the users get a free game.
Or what about where the Free-To-Play game merely offers premium bonuses, like improved XP and GP gains, but the game is balanced around not having those things? That benefits people who don’t have a lot of play time but plenty of money (working class), yet people who do have lots of free time can play the game without ever feeling tripped up?
It really comes down to the quality of the game and the point at which you decide to integrate buyable elements. If your game is low quality, nobody will play it, nobody will buy cosmetic items, nobody will want premium time. If it’s a high quality game, well, people will spend so much time in it that paying $2 for a reskin is viable.
Likewise, if you’re integrating F2P elements AFTER designing the game, well, you’re going to be shoehorning those elements in using obtrusive and offensive ways (like paying to get the next level, or paying to get a weapon needed to actually compete). If you start the game out planning for it to be free, however, you have much more opportunity to plan out ways that only get money out of the player that don’t feel like extortion.
When I buy something in MechWarrior Online or League of Legends or Team Fortress 2, I do it because I’m satisfied with my experience and want something cosmetic–not because it lets me compete.
I have absolutely no issue with entirely cosmetic items, my issue revolves entirely around items which serve gameplay functions. Offering an item which saves time, though, I don’t like. Here, buy this item to take the grind and chore out of this task. If you don’t have the money, no worries, you can play for free and do this boring grind instead! Yay! In an ideal world, that boring grind would not be part of your game design – why would you deliberately design a game to be boring? And it would have to be boring in order to make the item which cuts that out appealing and valuable.
I deliberately called my post “Why *I’m* not a fan of F2P” as opposed to “Why people shouldn’t make F2P games” or something – it is a personal perspective. Few / some / most / no other people may agree with me – I have no idea. It might be *I’m* the one who is weird, but the fact of the matter is having in-game purchases of items which have gameplay effects makes *me* cynical about *all* design decisions. I hit a barrier and my first assumption is that this barrier exists to sell me something, not to challenge me.
I like free 2 play, it stops you actually getting ripped off by playing it first. Dont like it, dont buy it. But if you like it invest some time and money into it. Your point can be found in many games and I agree with you when it’s just plain obvious what’s going on. But gamers are wise to it and developers should be careful. Also theres been a spend more money business model in arcade games scince the start. When a game was tweaked so it was nigh on impossible to go all the way through on one credit, you needed to buy continues, extra lives or health.
Bang on about arcades, but then… well, arcade games often had horrendously unfair difficulty curves for precisely this reason. What would these classic arcade titles have been like, had they not been devices for sucking 10p’s out of pockets? Would the games have been better or worse, or just different? Buggered if I know, but it’s an interesting thing to think about.
Agree here. Saying you’re not a fan of F2P is like saying you’re not a fan of movies or music.
Here’s another potential:
Scenario A – games costs $20
You buy the game, it’s fun.
Scenario B – game is free
You buy the game, it’s fun. There’s an ad on startup, a banner ad in the pause/inventory menu and an ad on exit.
“Agree here. Saying you’re not a fan of F2P is like saying you’re not a fan of movies or music.”
It’s not really like saying that though. It’s like saying you like movies and music just not music and movies which have (to varying degrees) invasive marketplaces within them and which may or may not have been designed with this sales mechanism entirely in mind. Instead of being, for example, a movie or piece of music you buy, download, and listen to, and that’s the end of it.
I’m certainly not saying that people shouldn’t make games in this way, or that people shouldn’t like games which work this way. It just doesn’t work for me.
Your example about having built in ads. That’s fine if you’re not bothered by that sort of thing. For me, I’d rather pay a license fee and watch telly uninterrupted on the BBC than have adverts every 15 minutes spoiling the flow. Nothing winds me up more than what you get now which is, programme begins, adverts, opening credits. I mean, adverts – before the titles?!? And then another set of adverts right before the end credits. Good grief. Similarly with games – I’d rather just buy the thing than have adverts plastered everywhere.