Free to play games has become a common trend in the market utilizing advertisements for income, micro-transactions, special services and DLCs. But not all games start off free and not all games are successful. Some games go free entirely and open up a micro-transaction store like Valve did with Team Fortress 2 which proved to be a huge success by surpassing their profits from when they sold their game rather than it being free. Other games go from a monthly subscription-based model to a free-to-play one with difficulties holding their community. It can be tough determining the success of a game when it goes free to play as there are advantages and disadvantages to them. For Team Fortress 2, the game was practically free with sales reaching anywhere down to $5-$10. When they opened up the store, they already had a strong community playing the game along with all the new players with some of them willing to shell out money for the items (some costing over $15).
Heroes of Newerth has recently unlocked all their characters to everyone so it is now entirely free to play without having to pay $30 or paying for individual characters. I'm not even sure where their income is coming from anymore. The most obvious advantage of going free to play is opening up to a wider audience who are willing to give a game a try. With more players, there's a larger community to convince in spending money. Then there are the disadvantages of having more players on your game. With the game open to all players, you will get players who purposely harass other players, hackers that break the game's balance, and other unfavorable players that will ruin the community within that game.
Star Wars The Old Republic is also another game that's going free-to-play and probably a better example for this article as it started out as a monthly subscription based MMORPG. The actually did pretty well reaching over 1 million subscribers. Still, Electronic Arts has decided to move onto a free-to-play model. Going Free-to-play means more players and possibly more income if their micro-transactions work out. The problem with Pay-to-Play subscriptions games going Free-to-Play is that players that were loyal to the game from the beginning eventually get ignored as free-to-play players are the bigger income for the company. When the game starts running out of things to do, the free-to-play players start abandoning the game. With Pay-to-Play games, the developers has to focus on aspects that will keep the player interested month after month of playing the game. With Free-to-Play games, developers make design choices that convinces players to pay for items in the micro-transaction stores, even if they're unnecessary. Preferably, a Free-to-Play game will want to be both enticing as a game and thrive on micro-transactions at the same time (League of Legends and Team Fortress 2 seems to work well this way). Subscription based games are difficult to hold up nowadays but have a more stable income for a company and consistent content for players who pay for them (such as World of Warcraft). Not all games work best as a subscription based MMO (such as All Points Bulletin) but rather make their success entirely on micro-transactions (such as Maple Story). The worst case scenario is for a game to go free-to-play and have little to no people playing the game. Not only does the company lose money, shut down and possibly go bankrupt, but players who did pay for the game and enjoyed it will lose everything they worked and paid for which breaks faith in the host or publisher of that game.
S2 Games seems to be holding their own with Heroes of Newerth, but things are uncertain now with Electronic Arts' Star Wars The Old Republic. From what I hear from a lot of my friends who played the game extensively is that the end-game content just didn't hold their interest enough for them to continue paying and playing. I've always been for Free-to-Play games and still am, but there's always a dangerous line between the game being fun and making the business work.
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