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[Arnold]

Hey ho,

i was thinking about the dis-/advantages of both systems.
Basically what i like about a F2P or Free Games is, that you only have one Game in the AppStore, in opposite to having two versions Free/Paid. As we all know having a free game raises downloads almost by a factor of 10, but designing a true f2p game is really hard and takes a lot of time. To pull it off for a small indie-dev is really hard it think. So i was thinking of alternative things that could limit a full game, specifically a game without lockable levels, in a way.
I'm trying to find something that isn't to harsh, but also could lead to a possible purchase of the game. I really like the idea of having people try the game, but to get the full experience they need to unlock it first.

What do you guys think about limiting the amount of plays by time. Lets say you can play 3 Games and then have to wait 10mins to play again. This resembles the way FB games have this energy currency which also limits plays.

[Chromanoid]

Triple Town does this very efficiently.

[Muz]

Yeah, I think people don't mind getting limited on the number of plays.

[Arnold]

The interesting thing about limiting play is that some people actually enjoy it. i think it was one of the coreelements podcast guys who said  that he likes that the game limits the overall playtime to a smaller amount, like a build in child-safety mechanism. This is cool on one hand and on the other hand this would reduce the amount of paying customers i think.

[Muz]

Well, when you think about it, the kind of people who think they should limit themselves from playing games won't actually buy a game, they'll just tell themselves "No, this is bad for me, I should delete it". The uninhibited addicts are always the best customers.

[Chris Koźmik]

Yeah, I think people don't mind getting limited on the number of plays.

Actually, I have been running a pool about this and all kind of limits like that were marked as the most hasted. In comparison they would agree gladly to a page full of annoying ads or unbalanced premium features.

On the other hand, since it's the most hated, they might be willing to pay for it the most :D

[Muz]

I guess it depends on implementation.

If it's a 3 hours a day game (like say, Starcraft) and you only give them 10 minutes, it's very annoying. If you deliberately try to pull them out while they're in the zone, it's like waking someone up from deep sleep, annoying too.

Also depends on who you're running the poll with. Sounds like you're running it with people who actually like premium features. A lot of us don't like real world money being an unbalancing factor

The safe, classic method is just to release a 'lite' version of it with demo content, and then charge them for a full version.

[mrlasertron]

I think you already hit one of the main drawbacks to F2P, the amount of time you need to spend building your F2P infrastructure/architecture.  This is a big pain if you're going solo by yourself.  I have a game I've casually been working on for that past year. I would have been done a few months ago if it wasn't for creating the proper F2P elements and making sure it wasn't F2Win.

Both models can be successful. I would suggest doing whichever model works best for your game, rather than making a game centered around a prechosen business model.