The Free To Play Game Model and Why I Prefer to Pay
If you are even the tiniest bit of a gamer today, you should know that one of the biggest things that has taken the gaming world by storm is the fee to play model. Not only limited to just mobile games, the free to play model has become a staple for PC gaming and even console gaming with the addition of digital stores. Many may look and say “ooh its free” , but breaking it down is it really free and I want to talk about why I actually prefer paying for a game.
Most of the games that market themselves have to pay for the costs somewhere and that usually comes with some sort of in game currency which you can use for cosmetic items, boosters or just to make your life easier to play the game. You wouldn’t expect this model to drive a load of sales, but actually statistics shows that people who play free to play games end up spending more than if they would have just flat out purchased the game to begin with. This is why successful free to play games like Clash of Clans don’t even offer the full game paid for up front.
Most of the time these games are just using tactics that addict the player compared to games that try to have the player enjoy their time playing. Notorious games like Farmville did this, where players were required to come back ever few hours or so to collect and plant new crops. You create a habit this way and soon checking your crops is as normal as checking your text messages. Then on top of that they will sell you crops that boast to be limited edition and you can never get again, but its all just shit you are buying.
There is never and end and even if you were to pay 20,000 USD there would still be more to do, and there are cases of children buying that much with their parent’s credit card. This is the main reason that I refuse to play free to play games because there is always something left you need to buy to be the best. I am a big player of MMOs and the free to play genre has taken over that genre by a storm. Probably for every actual pay to play game, there are 10 free to play games. That is not even a joke, as there are entire companies that do nothing but pump and localize crap games from other parts of the world.
For a while I played a few but ultimately I realized there was no way to even compete if I wasn’t willing to spend mountains of money, and I wasn’t. Even games that were pay to buy and then had no subscription fee I stayed away from and there is one main reason. If I want the best content, frequent updates, bug fixes ect. I want to make sure a developer team is incentivized to do their best work month after month and have a steady income stream to develop a good game. In my opinion the vast majority of free to play games are a scam and I would stay far away from them.
Paying for a game is a lot more fair and cheaper at the end.
I prefer to pay for games in the form of "credits" to play.
I buy $10 worth... I play it a lot and spend $6 of it... I have $4 remaining..
I get bored for 6 months.. don't play...
When I come back in 6 months and want to play it again... I still have $4 of credits remaining and can buy more if I want.
This way, I pay for the time I'm enjoying the game... and when I take a hiatus my credit balance remains.
That was the problem with World of Warcraft. They wanted me to pay every single month, even if I took a month off. I didn't think that was fair. If I didn't play for a month, I'd rather my prepaid time carry forward.
Follow my first gamer .. ;) lol
There are some ways of doing f2p right. Dota 2 is a good example. In dota 2, you start with all the content unlocked. You can play any hero you want for free. There are no features that affect gameplay that can be bought.
The only thing you can pay for is cosmetic effects. You can buy new costumes for your characters. You can pay for announcer packs. You can get new animations and make the team's courier look like cute animals.
That's how f2p should be done. Unfortunately, most games don't do it like that. They hide characters behind a pay wall. They let you become more powerful by spending in game currency, then let you buy that currency with real money. That system is broken.
The only good f2p is cosmetics only.
You get what you pay (or don't) pay for.
It's really sad what is happening with the game industry, especially the mobile game industry. It thankfully hasn't become that big of an issue with AAA games yet (but it is certainly trying to go in that direction, albeit slowly since there is more resistance from gamers). And the consumer is at fault here for playing these games, can't fault companies for giving the market what it wants and making money doing so, that's what companies are there for. People vote with their wallet and they vote for really bad games so that's what they get.
When the iPod Touch and the first iPhone came out, I remember there being so many cool games. They were just like games you'd find on actual handheld gaming devices, like the Nintendo DS. The only thing holding these games back were the bad controls (touch is just not enough for serious gaming). And these games still exist today, lots of really great games still come out, but it is becoming increasingly hard to find them because all of the top spots in the app stores, all of the most popular titles (with rare exceptions), are these crappy f2p games, which are all clones of two or three actually different games just with different graphics. When you get bored of one of these games, you go to the next one, but it's still the same game! You never stopped playing that game you grew tired of! Really crazy if you think about it.
And I have no idea what can be done about it. Maybe nothing can be done. They are the most popular games that make the most money. So you won't be able to convince anyone, neither producer nor consumer, to change their ways and give up on these games. It looks like we'll just have to live with how things are until at some point in a decade or so, this f2p fad hopefully comes to an end naturally. And how does this come about, naturally? Usually something better comes along. There is obviously something wrong with f2p games. But what if there is something wrong with other games too, that we just don't see because it isn't so obvious? Maybe whatever is wrong with those games has to be fixed, before f2p games can die off.
It probably is because we still don't really understand the market. Through mobile phones, gaming has suddenly gone from being a niche market to a mainstream market, a new market with new (and vastly different) demographics that nobody fully understands yet. All these new gamers don't (and can't) know what games they would want to play because they probably haven't seen many different types of games yet in their life. If you've never eaten chocolate in your life, you don't know what you're missing. And these new gamers don't know what they are missing by playing these f2p games. So maybe thinking of new ways to expose this new generation of gamers to different genres of games is what will solve the issue.
But like I alluded to earlier, better controls would also slowly lead to better games that would hopefully become popular over time. Mobile phones will never come with a real game controller attached to it (or never again, there was the Nokia Ngage, which I even owned). But mobile phone technology is evolving all the time. There are now touch screens being made where the flat screen can morph into physical buttons. Who knows what technology will make possible in just five years or so. And all of that will eventually lead to better mobile games and hopefully the death of crappy free to play titles that all have the same boring gameplay.
I agree, its cheaper at the end. You own it and nothing can stop you from growing your character/city or whatever it is. Even if you pay monthly fee its much better than blackmailing microtransaction games. Paying also changes overall mood in the game, players who are paying monthly fee tend to be more serious about the game etc. Anyway sure upvote!