So I have a few random thoughts about the games industry right now. I don't pretend to know what will happen, but I thought I would share my feelings as an armchair analyst.
First of all let us discuss the idea of Free to Play. What is interesting about this is that that there is no one approach. I feel better about some models than others. For starters the big dog Zynga and their ilk. As someone who has never played one of their games it appears from the outside that either you have very strict limitations on how much you can get done in a play session. You can remedy this one of three ways:
- pay them money
- Take a survey sacrificing tonnes of your Personal Information which they are already mining some of for merit of you playing.
- Harass your friends advertising the game and if I understand the TOS giving some of your friends personal information away if they have not opted out of the platform or blocked the application.
Second we have the in game purchases model. So you play Team Fortress 2 for free, but you can buy novelty hats. League of Legends has this, with an added twist. Your characters need to be purchased, either with points awarded for paying or with space dollars purchased with real dollars. The free champions rotate in and out week over week. I am a little ambivalent about this aspect of the model, because you will get accustomed to a character and then if you want to use them to remain competitive you either need to have farmed enough points to keep that champion or fork over some cash. Otherwise you need to be comfortable loosing your competitive edge every week. I like LOL, but I forked over for the digital collectors up front to avoid the issue. It will be fine so long as they don't introduce new Champions which break the balance.
Third is Age of Empires Online. A game where you get only a couple of Civs up front and then you pay 20 to get the rest. I feel like the GB crew calling that akin to shareware is pretty spot on. I have no issue with this model as it is essentially a huge demo where you get to keep your progress if you purchase.
Please let me know if I have missed any models and how you all feel about the Free to Play trend. My biggest concern is how much room there is for games set up like this. Will it be the same as the MMO where Blizzard got the audience willing to pay a monthly fee and everyone else starves?
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