Free to Play Forum

EA officially released Need For Speed World this week, marking yet another attempt by the publisher to get into this... God, what are we calling it now? "Free-to-play" technically isn't accurate, since it has plenty of hooks in place for you to pay for extra items. Freemium? Is that the weird-sounding marketing guy term for "game that you can download and technically play for free but boy, we'd sure appreciate it if you bought some extra stuff to unlock better stuff for your game more quickly?" It's hard to keep track of all the different business models posing as games these days. Hmm... yeah, maybe I'm being overly reductive. Everyone keeps saying that this sort of thing is eventually going to take North America by storm... but I can't help but feel like we aren't going to get anywhere with any of these alternative business models until the companies publishing these games start treating their free-to-play games like they're pay-us-to-play games.

OK, you've got me. I haven't gone out and researched every single freely downloadable, micropayment-driven game in the world. So I can only really talk anecdotally. But it feels like every time I bite on one of these free games, I come away feeling like I've wasted my time. Need For Speed World is just the latest example, and the crazy part is that it's really not a bad game. It just doesn't feel current or particularly well-conceived. Visually, the game looks like it's one or two iterations back when you compare it to the other Need For Speed games EA has released. The convenience side isn't in place, either, but hey... maybe that's why the game's site still says "beta" on it, right? So even though the game offers gamepad support, it doesn't offer the things that fans of driving games would actually expect it to have. Like... reconfigurable buttons and keys might be nice. Also, from a design perspective, the game is rooted heavily in the Most Wanted era of open-world driving mixed with race events and the occasional cop chase, if that's your thing. But you're limited to only a handful of events, and it seems like you're sort of expected to grind against these five or six races until you can level up and unlock one or two more options for your race grind.

Then there's the pay side. To get past level 10, you have to buy the Starter Pack for 20 bucks. Then you feed additional money into the system in exchange for "boost," which you can then exchange for powerups, like nitrous oxide speed boosts. Now, I don't know if you're into the Need For Speed series, but nitrous is sort of key to the experience in most of the other games. Well-timed nitrous use can mean the difference between first place and the middle of the pack. It gives the game a strategic side. While there are ways to freely earn additional uses of nitrous, the game seems to really want you to buy some more with actual money. It also has a ton of other powerups, like "slingshot," which just sort of makes your car go faster if you're behind. It's like you're turning up the game's rubberbanding at the touch of a button. Like NOS boosts, you're limited on slingshots, and all of the other game's power-ups, too. The end result? Most players today seemed to avoid the abilities completely, leaving behind a barebones driving game where are you do is peg the gas pedal down and hope for the best. Given the Need For Speed legacy, this is a pretty poor way to represent the series.

Add to that some dicey online glitches that have awarded me first place in races that I clearly lost on my end of the Internet, and you've got a sloppy game. If you went out and bought it in a box in July 2010, you'd feel like you made a poor choice. It'll probably get better--after all, this is only the first full day of proper, widely available service. But it's still a great example of the free-to-play problem, if you'll allow me to continue generalizing a bit. These games aren't as good as the ones we're already paying $50 or $60 to acquire. Forget about money, why would I want to level up my driving ability in NFS World or unlock additional weapons in GunZ: The Duel if the core game isn't actually worth the time investment? Persistent worlds only pay off when the world is good enough to make me feel good about investing all of that time. Most paid games can't even do that these days. Being that I'm not the most price-sensitive consumer in the world, how the heck is a free download supposed to compete with that?

There's no need to continue picking on NFS World. As these things go, it's probably one of the better ones. But by being directly comparable to a boxed retail product, its pay side seems way more damaging than most. The things that make Need For Speed feel like Need For Speed are made worse by having dollar amounts attached directly to their use. I wonder if Company of Heroes Online will feel the same way?

For awhile, I thought that SOE's Free Realms might actually usher in a bit of change. Not that it's some amazing MMO that you all must play or anything, but as a kid-focused online game, it felt well-made. It felt like a "real" game in spots. Of course, I'm not 11, so it also felt pretty boring after an hour or two. Now SOE is in the middle of a quick promotion to sell "lifetime memberships" to the game. For players hooked on the members-only content found in that game, dropping the equivalent of six months' worth of fees to play with that stuff forever is probably a pretty good deal.

But there I go again, talking more about the business models behind the games rather than the games themselves. And that's the real problem. Debating the dollars and sense behind these games has become more interesting than the third-tier gameplay experiences that are typically on offer. Perhaps that won't always be the case. Some maintain that there's an entire generation of kids out there getting used to these sorts of micropayments, and that a shift away from the traditional sales model for games is inevitable. I just hope that by the time those kids grow up and take over, the games they're choosing to (not) pay for have gotten better.

So where do you guys actually stand on these games? Are you playing any of this stuff? Do you actually enjoy any of it, or are you only playing it because better games cost too much?

woah. for models where you have to pay to get past a certain level, i don't think you can even call those free to play. they're really more like trials.
 
it's weird. i always feel like there's something lacking the integrity of a game when there are obvious game breaking advantages to things you can purchase, but i find as far as models go the whole you can use real money to get this gear or grind a holy helluva lot to get ingame cash to get it to be more acceptable.
 
but then the game's gotta be good, and most of the free to play games i've played are only entertaining for a few days (or weeks). there's definitely an audience of people who can't pay monthly subscriptions who'll be interested in f2p or just folks down on cash or even bored with what they have who'll give these games a shot though. it's free so you don't have much to lose.
 
but shit, then you look at stuff like alien swarm and can't help but think of the potential of that game if it had some more money behind it. i guess i'll start really caring about these games when you get that kinda quality and a real clear sense of how it can grow.

You mean Whoa to late night news articles.  Jeff was just waiting for Ryan and Vinny to finish up at the office...

I love free-to-play games and I have  been enjoying Need for Speed World, Company of Heroes Online, Battlefield Heroes and FIFA Online.
 
EDIT: Dungeons & Dragons Online and Allods Online are also great.

I've actually invested time in several free to play games Jeff, Including Gunz :/  - which i came away less than impressed with. 
 
I played DOMO, (Dreams of Mirror Online) as i wanted to try out an MMORPG and it's aesthetic appealed to me, and it's a pretty good game, really good considering it's free. I could see myself happily paying for it's features, i reccomend trying it out or at least investigating it. 
  
My favourite Free to play has been Shin Megami Tensei : Imagine (I think that's what it's called) It's like an adult version of pokemon as an MMO, fusing your monsters to create more powerful ones and levelling them up is really fun, sure the lack of voice acting and only a few songs gets a bit jarring but it's really good fun for a while.  
 
Oh and battlefield Heroes, but i don't want to speak of that....

Free to play only seems to work in Korea because they need something to kill time between Starcraft matches.

God, I remember GunZ.  It was cool at first. then I realized I would have to do a shit ton of grinding to get decent equipment.

I've sampled some free-but-there's-a-catch games like BF Heroes, some 'free' MMOs, and a few others.  Even ignoring the aspects of these games which you have to pay for, I've felt like those games were significantly lower quality even than completely free games like Alien Swarm or Trackmania Nations.
 
If they can start making higher quality gaming experiences in these initially free games I think there's still an incredible amount of questions as to whether they're worth any 'real' gamer's time.  
 
Certainly a FPS or racing game or any other genre where people can buy special powers or weapons that non-players can't isn't worth anyone's time (when you're paying real money to win matches, it's no longer a game, by the definition of 'game').
 
If it's a matter of pieces of content, like 'pay $10 to explore area X', it's a more favorable question.  I still STRONGLY prefer a whole complete game for a reasonable price.  Give me a free part of a game and I'll treat it like a demo.

OH AND COMBAT ARMS! 
 
sorry but i actually lke that game, it was the first one i know to introduce points for a NUT SHOT 

Really well written. I personally have the same feeling for these games. Like you said, the games need to be enticing enough where a consumer wants to spend time and hopefully money in the world. By and large these games are not compelling enough for me to do that. Twelve year old children, who have no income, are attracted to these because it might be all they have not because they genuinely think these games are better experiences as a whole.

I'm unemployed so I don't spend much money on games. I do dork around with the free ones from time to time and I have to say that I did enjoy the Tiger Woods Online game quite a bit. I haven't touched it in a few months though.