Free to play has been coming under a fair amount of fire recently in the press, so I though I’d talk about it a little here. I’m not against Free to Play, I just think it needs to be handled with care.<\/p>\n
Free to play seems to be divided along two axes: Visual<\/em> vs Pay To Win<\/em>, and Considered<\/em> vs Gambling<\/em>.<\/p>\n Visual<\/em> is items that you don’t need to progress, but are just there for status. Pay to Win<\/em> means you gain a real tangible advantage from paying. Somewhere along this axis is Unlock Earlier<\/em>, where a player can grind to get an item\/character\/whatever, or just pay and get it right away. I think the safest camp to be in here is Visual<\/em>, since you’re not giving anyone a way to progress with less skill. Unlock Earlier<\/em> can be good as well, but if depends on a few factors: Is the grind needed unrealistically high? Does getting the unlock provide a clear advantage? Is the unlock available on some sort of ‘trial’ basis?<\/p>\n As I’m sure you can tell, Unlock Earlier<\/em> can easy become Pay to Win<\/em>,<\/em> and this is a problem. If you’re paying to win, the ‘game’ is not worth your time (or money).<\/p>\n Considered <\/em><\/em>is when you know exactly what you’re getting for your money, and Gambling<\/em> is when you’re promised a random assortment of things. One of the problems here is that, much like in real life, Gambling<\/em> can become addictive. The high you feel from your first ‘big win’ is something many people will start chasing (especially if it’s also a Pay to Win<\/em> situation), sometimes to the detriment of their real lives. There are a few ways to combat this, like a spending cap that, once reached, gives the player ‘all’ the available unlocks … but I doubt you’ll see the big publishers go for this, since it means their income streams dry up faster.<\/p>\n I think you have to walk a fine line as a game dev making a Free to Play title, between getting enough money to keep making your games, versus getting greedy and trying to bleed your customers dry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Free to play has been coming under a fair amount of fire recently in the press, so I though I’d talk about it a little here. I’m not against Free to Play, I just think it needs to be handled with care. Free to play seems to be divided along two axes: Visual vs Pay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}