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[Graham.]

I'll see how it goes.

I'll be interested in seeing what you come up with. It's quite possible that you're much smarter than I am

No, I just care about this issue.

You are part of a programming puzzle club. I'm part wise, part confused. I can't even win at Chess.

[Xecutor]

What I HATE in F2P games is trying to cover artificially created inconvenience or annoyance with in game purchases.
It would be somewhat ok if price is around $1 for each item with investment of $10-$20 turning game into 'full fledged'.
But when they are asking $5-$10 per feature and $100-$200 to cover everything... It's just beyond good and evil.

[Graham.]

edit: But it sounds to me like most of the problems you describe could be remedied by having meaty demo-versions of games available.

A lot can, of course.

However, we're used to thinking about games in single packages. If you look at old games and try to split them, the demo/main-game split is often the best one. Maybe you could get a second split for side-quests and optional features, but the value of that would be less.

A game designed for in-app would have to be entirely different. You have exploitative stuff like Farmville, which was designed for this kind of thing. Then you have the TFC2 model which sells you "bonus" content like hats and stuff, or other multi-players where you're effectively buying powers - and that's semi-exploitative depending on the implementation.

A good model would influence the design from the beginning. For example, there are parts in campaign games that aren't that interesting to me. Now, since the entire campaign was made as one continuous thing - each piece assumed that you had the previous piece - it is very difficult to divide.

I can't split FF7; it would be demo/main-campaign/side-quests. I'd get the first two and some of the third. That split isn't a very useful one, because the meaty piece, the most important one, the campaign, was designed to be delivered as one thing. Either I'd buy it or I wouldn't. Maybe I'd try it and bail half-way, but that would only be because the demo did a bad job of presenting itself, though it still might be a nice option to have.

Your campaign would have to divide nicely. Imagine choosing courses at University. It is very nice being able to pick whatever you want. There are some packaged deals; if you go to this university in this program then you have to take these 15 classes for sure; but you get a lot of flexibility for the rest - unless you're an engineer or something and have no choice. That situation is very nice. I like the customizable degree.

Why aren't games this way? It's difficult to find ways to split things up. Universities have very complicated rules that control how you can pair courses together. They spend a lot of time coming up with a system. You'd have to do the same thing with a game. You have to give value no matter how players make their choices. That's not an easy thing to do.

Notice the parallels between in-app purchasing and player-driven narrative and player agency. Giving a player agency in a world brings the same problems as giving them agency over what they buy. Doing either is hard. Games that try to do these things often make huge sacrifices in other areas. But, I believe.

[Richard Kain]

Honestly, I don't hate the fact that a lot of games are going F2P. A lot of companies are getting wise to a simple truth. It's not about the profit-per-unit. It's about the audience. The companies that are able to gain and keep the audience are the ones who ultimately win, no matter what metric you're looking at. Even download services that still adhere to more traditional pricing structures have realized this. Steam is keen on regular and steep sales on its software, and actively encourages developers to participate in these sales.

With the advent of the internet, individuals now have the luxury of choosing what entertainment they consume. There are so many options available that individual bandwidth for consuming this content is becoming increasingly limited. Cost of individual items is rapidly becoming irrelevant. The real price for this entertainment is the time used in consuming it.

The F2P model cuts initial cost out of the equation, lowering the barrier to entry. It is one of the best ways to insure a nice, healthy initial install base.

[moi]

I have nothing against F2P+MTX per se. In fact I think these are very interesting monetization options and definitely a big part of the future of the videogames industry.
I think it's good that players have a free running of the game before commiting money, either a demo or a free mode, something like that. This is not a new idea, it is at the core of the shareware model of the 90s and in fact existed way before that.

the totally free model doesn't work. For example, the flash/sponsored/advertisement model isn't IMO very satisfying for the develloper, as for the player he is drowned in a see of crappy games and this model doesn't encourage excellence rising to the top (devellopers who make a lot crappy or exploitative flash games often make more money than devs who spend months creating a good quality flash game)

As for MTX, I like the concept that you can buy small fragments of an otherwise free game, it can be new levels, new characters why not.

The real problem with F2P+MTX right now is that the games are mostly shit (asian MMO grindfests or casual shitgames) and that all the devellopers think about right now is making a fortune by scammig people and making them pay for hats, or releasing a crippled free game and having the player pay for the full experience or the ultimate graal of creating some sort of virtual drug in their game that will turn them into digital dealers and bring them millions in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately that is all that professional devs have on their minds nowadays, it's sad.

I think tere is a future for devellopers who can use F2P+MTX honestly as a way to reduce risk and devellopment costs and offer good quality content to their players. Maybe that's where real "indie" devellopers must step in and do their duty. I think we can put the Minecraft project in this category.

Releasing crap game on iphone and hoping that you'll get to the top of the charts is not the future of games.

[RabidFrog]

I'll tell you what i hate, i hate it when you buy a game, love it and then they monetise it after the fact, make it free and destroy the feel of it, making you hate the game with no way to go back to the form it presented originally.

I'm looking at you Team Fortress 2.

Actually, i really hate the direction valve is headed, the whole hat thing is a monstrous annoyance and serves to dilute the experience.

I hope (but secretly know it wont be) the case of DOTA2 will not be similar..

[Lynx]

My two cents: I've been away from City of Heroes for a while, and then they went F2P.

I came back to look at it, and was blown away with price sticker shock.  They want a little more than $15 for a power set that's basically a reskinned version of their other power sets, and a vanity power. ...  And to get into their 'endgame' of grinding Incarnation (epic-level powers and such) you have to be a monthly paying customer, to the tune of another $15 per month.

I looked at full indie games that are available for much less than that, back at their market, and decided not to buy those items or get back into the game.

I think companies need to think about how players will perceive their offerings, and make an effort to provide reasonable prices on cosmetic items and content.  Don't get me wrong, I don't think DLC or purchasable contents are a bad idea, as long as the game is structured so you feel like you get a complete game experience, and additional purchases just add on to your gaming experience-- side stories or post-game content, or things that let you go back through the game a different way.

If I were implementing Arkham City as supporting DLC/addons for instance, I'd block off some peripheral zones for side stories, unlockable via DLC.  Then I'd add some character DLCs that let you go through the game as a different character, following the story from their point of view.  Solid, meaty stuff.  Costumes and gadgets?  I'd sell those for cheap on their own, not bundled in with other stuff.

Of course transaction fees possibly eat up a lot of the cost of really small transactions, so no doubt that's why they prefer to sell bundles of parts...

[retrohelix]

Tribes Ascend is possibly the only fragment of light in the shit-tunnel that is F2P, but I must admit, the pay to win aspect has kept me off it for a while. I've been cynical about F2P since I tried WarRock a long time ago. Perhaps not even cynical, I would love it if I could find one that I really enjoyed. So far it has just been gigabyte after gigabyte of disappointment.

[rivon]

I've been playing Blacklight Retribution for a few days and it's just great. You can buy stuff for real money that's locked until you get to high enough level to be able to buy it via ingame money and it could be seen as pay2win but to be honest, you can own everyone with just the basic equipment (or the stuff that opens up at the first few levels) without much problems - also, you pretty much just have the basic stuff all the time as you don't really buy new weapons but parts of the weapons like barrels, muzzles, stocks, magazines etc. So the stuff you buy doesn't really give you much in terms of advantage but instead it offers you a different play style - being a sniper, fast scout with an SMG, tank with a machine gun, standard soldier with an assault rifle etc. (with the last one being the starting one).
Also, you need to have at least level 10 (I think that 60 or more is the limit) to be able to buy stuff for real money. I think that it's very balanced and fun. I will invest some money in it though as soon as I reach level 10.

Edit: by the way Tribes Ascend is quite fun but the microtransactions part is bad because weapon prices are just too big (in both ingame "money" and in RL money).

[Jackson31]

I don't really care if a game uses in-game purchases ethically or not, my main gripe is with the fact that I'm being advertised to while I'm trying to enjoy a game, that and all the added complexity of simply buying the game,

When I buy a game I want to just pay a price and have the whole thing, I hate buying a game but "oh no, you didn't get the super special limited version grade II, that means you miss out on x y and z" or "hey, you may have bought the base game, but buy all this additional crap!"

Generally I play games to get away from the busyness and complexity of normal life, I want leisure, fun, escapism, having all this money grubbing hats crap completely takes me away from that.

As for reducing the barrier of entry, the deciding factor, as to whether or not you fork out money for a game, should be based on things like reviews from sites or people that you trust,
If players really need to try a game before they'll pay for it what is wrong with demos? as early back as I can remember games have simply had demo's and that has worked fine

[iffi]

I actually like F2P and microtransactions in the few cases in which it's done right, though I hate it when there are microtransactions and overpriced DLC in a game you have to initially pay for - if I have to pay for the game just to play it then you'd better not make me pay later on to get what I should have had in the first place.

I like the way Tribes Ascend approaches it. Yes, many of the weapons are overpriced, but I don't have a problem with the basic concept.

F2P I think tends to work a lot better with multiplayer games and singleplayer games in the style of Farmville than singleplayer ones with a strong narrative element. F2P works with games like TF2 and Tribes Ascend because it lowers the barrier of entry to create a large and active playerbase, something that isn't really an issue with a fairly-priced singleplayer game. Many singleplayer games also rely on creating a sense of immersion for the player, which conflicts with microtransactions.

I can't think of any narrative-driven singleplayer games that have broken up content in the ways that people have described so far, but people have divided games into episodes and sold those individually, which I guess you could count as being related.

[C.A. Sinner]

I don't really care if a game uses in-game purchases ethically or not, my main gripe is with the fact that I'm being advertised to while I'm trying to enjoy a game, that and all the added complexity of simply buying the game,

yeah exactly. i like the idea of getting the complete package when i buy a product and then being left alone.

[EdgeOfProphecy]

In my mind, you have 3 rough categories.  Being pretty new in the west, I don't think these definitions are well hashed out, and lots of companies label things "DLC" that I would consider a microtransaction.  The third is more of a mini-category, something like a consumable microtransaction.

A)  DLC:  Bigger chunks of content that are delivered digitally, or somehow unlocked.  Pretty much expansions for the modern era.  These have a fixed, usually moderate price.

B)  Microtransactions:  A very small, bite sized amount of content with a correspondingly small, bite sized price.  These have a low price.

C)  A non-durable microtransaction, one that is consumable and not permanent.  Extra energy, EXP boosts, item rentals, item gambling, etc.

I think DLC is not new, just a modern varient of expansion packs.  As such, it should be treated as expansion packs.  Take the Fallout New Vegas DLC.  That shit was good.  Added new weapons, new areas of the world, new plot lines, pretty much an expansion ala Op Force or Blue Shift.  The "trick" to making good DLC is just to treat it as an expansion, then have people download it.  DLC is the easiest to bolt onto the existing game development paradigm.

Microtransactions are a new beast.  A microtransaction, by its very nature, cannot be a large chunk of cohesive content.  It is a gun, a hat, an alternate skin, a fancy armored horse, strawberry seeds, etc.  I do not think a microtransaction system can work for most games.  When you have a cohesive experience, it's not possible to chop it up into tiny bits and sell them, because you break the experience.  Imagine if Portal was microtransaction based, and you had to buy the individual test chambers, and after buying say 10 or so you could unlock the ending.  Would it be the same experience?  Probably not, and there's no reason to bust it up like that.  Microtransactions work in games that have tons of "stuff" you can get.  Blizzard realized this and made the AH work on microtransactions for Diablo 3, for better or worse, but unless you have that collectable factor, you can't have microtransactions.

The third, non-durable microtransactions, are actually closer (most of the time) to the tried and true subscription model.  I remember hearing the keynote speech for Pax Dev last year by the CEO of Three Rings, guys who made Spiral Knights, who was complaining how people bitched so much about the energy system in the game.  Well...his critics are right, and he's wrong.  The game's simply not a good deal, and people were smart enough to pick up on that.  Unless you played the game for a couple hours a week, you'd be spending far, far more money than if they'd just charged you 15 bucks of a month and gave you unlimited access to the game.  Unfortunately, there ARE other MMO's that let you play as much as you want for a flat rate, or even for free, so consumers have other, superior options to take and they'll take them.  I think, if done carefully, this can be a decent way of charging for a game, though.  Had the price on Spiral Knights been cheaper, it would have totally been worth it.

The flip side of non-durable microtransactions are things like item/skill rentals or totally consumable items.  These are not as common, especially in western markets.  Usually you see things like XP boosts or something, but not much else (except for social games).

An interesting thing is that DLC usually has an upper limit on how much you can spend, and it's comparable to buying a couple expansion packs back in the 90's.  Microtransactions do not, or have an astronomically high cap.  I think if you bought all the champions and skins in LoL, you'd spend several thousand dollars.  Thousands.  On one game.  Usually not even non-durable microtransactions can match this revenue generation, unless they're something highly consumable.  Microtransactions basically let the user spend as much as they want on the game.  Most people won't even touch them, but there's a small percentage of users called "Whales" who dump TONS of money into the game.  These are the people that actually make those freemium games money, and thus they are monetized around whales.  They are meant to entrap a small number of people into dumping hundreds upon thousands into the game.

I don't think any of these models is inherently evil, but they have to be applied responsibly to remain ethical.  The Mass Effect 3 "DLC" is, in fact, not DLC.  That's a non-durable microtransaction that is incredibly overpriced.  Most things branded "DLC" are just microtransactions.  Paying $15 for 3 new maps in Arab Massacre 2012 is not a good deal, it's a heinously overpriced microtransaction.

Also day 1 DLC is almost invariably bullshit.

I would encourage you guys to not get turned off on these monetization strategies, though.  I think they can be used for good, because in a perfect world they could allow more people to play games, rich or poor, and make pricing scalable and fair.  I think indies should definitely watch and study up on how these work, and perhaps we can figure out new ways to use them that make our games better, not worse, and help more of us make a living making our own games.

[aschearer]

I agree with what a lot of you are saying in this thread. I think oftentimes F2P is used as an excuse by game designers to create friction in their work and then charge to remove it. If the game maker is intentionally corrupting their work in order to push the player to spend money I feel the wrong decision was made.

On the other hand, as a game maker I look at F2P a little differently. I see giving the game away for free as a means to reduce marketing costs. In reality there are so many games vying for players' attention and even a price as low as .99c will scare away a lot of potential players. By making the game free you're making it easier/cheaper to reach a wider audience.

In addition, I believe that F2P offers game makers the opportunity to earn more money for their work. Instead of receiving a lump sum from a sponsor or player upfront for your game you can potentially earn much more money over the lifetime of the game. At the same time, to do so requires more work on our part as we need to add the ability to purchase things in-game as well as continue to update the game with new goodies to keep players engaged.

Ultimately, I think if executed correctly F2P should effectively mean "games as a service" in which case I think there's a big opportunity for game developers to reach larger audiences and make more money as well as for players to get more content from the games they love. Of course, like most things there's opportunity for more business oriented folks to pervert the system in their favor. I just hope that the market will eventually settle down as F2P becomes more common and that genuinely good games start to become the norm.

[invicticide]

I don't mind F2P in theory, but what really upsets me is when it's abusively implemented. I hate games that artificially limit your ability to play for no reason other than to extract a monetary drip-feed (a pox on "energy" systems!), and I have a real problem with games that prey on human psychological weaknesses to extract more purchases than an otherwise right-thinking consumer would rationally make.

I want my gaming experience to be that of "playing", not "shopping".