See, this is why I don't get Jim Sterling ragging on it. It's totally possible to play the entire game without purchasing a single thing.kiri2tsubasa said:
Most Freemium Revenue Comes From Less Than 1% of Gamers
- Thread starter Cognimancer
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I don't know, if free-to-play games are only preying on .15% of gamers, maybe that's just the price we have to pay. Let the people who want to spend too much money on a game do so. As far as Darwinism goes, it could be a lot worse.
This doesn't surprise me too much. If I'm going to spend any money in a game at all, it ends up $50+ over the lifetime of my interest in the game, and it's been well over $100 in a few cases. I'd be very curious to break down the hours played versus money spent, since if the people who aren't spending much aren't playing much, then it's just not a game they're interested in.
This sounds a lot like lotteries and casinos... Except without the excuse that a proportion of the earnings are supporting schools.
This last weekend, I bought every Assassin's Creed game from I through III for under thirty dollars. It was a very, very good deal on games I'd been curious about for a while but never quite gotten to (in part because of Ubisoft's DRM system, which has since been revised). The idea of spending hundreds of dollars on a "free" game designed with trying players' patience is kind of horrifying to me.
Equally horrifying, in some ways, is that in three to five years there won't be an era of classic games to look back on; there instead will be lots of simplistic games with dead servers that rolled their player base as much as they could and then moved on.
This last weekend, I bought every Assassin's Creed game from I through III for under thirty dollars. It was a very, very good deal on games I'd been curious about for a while but never quite gotten to (in part because of Ubisoft's DRM system, which has since been revised). The idea of spending hundreds of dollars on a "free" game designed with trying players' patience is kind of horrifying to me.
Equally horrifying, in some ways, is that in three to five years there won't be an era of classic games to look back on; there instead will be lots of simplistic games with dead servers that rolled their player base as much as they could and then moved on.
I've always been fairly grateful for the "whales". Without them, many of the games that I play for a few hours would not be economically viable and would simply not exist. The fact is, we of the 99% rely on the 1% to finance our playing.
We get what we want for free, and the 1% get what they want for cash.
If we treat freemium games like drugs, i.e. things that people have to be protected from themselves against, then perhaps a company like Apple should take the lead and prohibiting any one customer making more than $50 or $100 worth of in-app purchases in total on any particular game, limiting the damage to individuals who cannot be trusted to spend money in their own best interests.
Of course, that would be the end of Apple as major gaming platform.
We get what we want for free, and the 1% get what they want for cash.
If we treat freemium games like drugs, i.e. things that people have to be protected from themselves against, then perhaps a company like Apple should take the lead and prohibiting any one customer making more than $50 or $100 worth of in-app purchases in total on any particular game, limiting the damage to individuals who cannot be trusted to spend money in their own best interests.
Of course, that would be the end of Apple as major gaming platform.
When you are using actual casino terminology to describe the paying 'customers' then you know there's something severely underhanded and rotten with your business model.Scrumpmonkey said:
(listen to the terminology the Casino guy uses at 2 minutes in)
-compare to this quote from the article:
We are using actual gambling terms to describe the payment functions of videogames; that children have unrestricted access to, that have no limits on advertising, availability or limiting spending. That is seriously messed up.
Exactly. Companies that do this are scum. I read an article in 2010 that said the same thing about Zynga. They make all their money off the >1% of there users who spent a lot of money each month. Many of whom are probably children, mentally challenged, control issues, or some combination of all 3. Then people had the idiocy to say "hey you guys shouldn't be happy Zynga is closing! A lot of people lost their jobs!" It's like being sorry that a thief is getting taken off the street as he gets arrestedHero in a half shell said:
Not necessarily. When you gamble you walk away with less money and nothing to show for it. With f2p games, you spend money and get things. Generally things that are of questionable value given the money spent on them, but you do get things.Hero in a half shell said:
But do you always get the things you want?Bad Jim said:
EA in particular love to use randomised drops that you pay for to access, offering some very unique and special items that everyone wants, and then a pile of useless junk that's either cosmetic, consumable, or time restricted so you pay real money and only unlock the item for several days.
They use this model in Battlefield Play4free and hide certain gunscopes behind it, causing many people to literally gamble $100s of dollars on trying to win the single item they want, and many of these never actually get their item (but... but they'll have just one more try, maybe it'll come in the next purchase... just one more purchase...)
http://battlefield.play4free.com/en/forum/showthread.php?pid=833615
http://cdn.battlefield.play4free.com/en/forum/showthread.php?tid=147212&pid=1757785
http://cdn.battlefield.play4free.com/en/forum/showthread.php?tid=83914
Literally every single thread there has at least one person pointing out "It's a gamble"
There are far worse threads of people paying literally $100s and getting nothing, but they are usually locked by the forum devs so I can't dredge them back up.
And of course there is the Mass Effect 3 random reward packages that you can either purchase through desperate grinding, or spend more money on the AAA priced game you bought for full price, because they have locked all the upgrades behind a randomised system that includes consumable items again. It caused huge amounts of frustration from players unable to play the harder difficulties because they had unlocked a pile of useless gun upgrades and consumables instead of the things they needed, and many players that never got to try out some of the classes that were locked away in these random packs (including some of which they had to shell out more cash to purchase them from ME3 DLC - essentially they were buying the ability to have the random chance of unlocking extra content - although there were other things in the DLC that they had instant access to.)
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/343/index/11085506/1
Free2play is designed around wringing the paying customer for all they are worth - enticing them into making that first purchase - and then suckering them in to pay more and more and more and more... until they've invested so much time and money into the game that it would seem a waste to stop playing and lose all that 'progress'. I will concede that many F2P titles do offer an actual definite digital item/resource for a set price, but in many cases F2P titles are also manipulating human weakness to the enticement of randomised gambling in the vein of Skinners Box, and that is absolutely abhorrent.
That's unfortunately what I thought as well. Specifically: "That sounds just like the figures that Nigerian scam artists pull in."Mr.K. said:
And I'm also guilty of having helped this trend: I've spent money on TF2 (I actually bought the game before it became F2P, but I've bought weapon packs and stuff since then) and Hearthstone. I kinda regret spending money on TF2 because I don't think it's been worth it, at all; but $1.50 for an Hearthstone arena match (when you have the option of using gold as well) doesn't seem to be extortionate to me. I wouldn't buy the card packs.
considering that less than 1% of people in the world also hold over 50% (actually - over 70%) of the value, id say the distrubtion is quite fair.
There is only one F2P game that i have put money in. All other games i usually do the ingame money traded for premium items from those that buy them. That game is World of Tanks. I have paid ~70 dollars for that game gold. Raptr counts that i have played the game for 685 hours, which puts it at almost 10 hours per dollar of fun. Granted, some of it i could ahve achieved without the money, heck i could ahve done same hours if i stayed to low tiers and just limited myself there, but i dont regret having paid that, because the benefits were worth it, and the game really was good value for the money. I would have paid much more if it was subscription based model.
There is only one F2P game that i have put money in. All other games i usually do the ingame money traded for premium items from those that buy them. That game is World of Tanks. I have paid ~70 dollars for that game gold. Raptr counts that i have played the game for 685 hours, which puts it at almost 10 hours per dollar of fun. Granted, some of it i could ahve achieved without the money, heck i could ahve done same hours if i stayed to low tiers and just limited myself there, but i dont regret having paid that, because the benefits were worth it, and the game really was good value for the money. I would have paid much more if it was subscription based model.
Hmm. If you count mobile games, and IAPs are certainly part of the F2P model, I've purchased/de-nagged maybe 5 or 6 F2P games.
Punch Quest [http://www.punchquest.com/] - great little iOS game with a lot of humor and more nuanced gameplay than I expected. Fell for the "coin doubler" trick, but it proved to be worth it.
Solomon's Boneyard [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/solomons-boneyard/id387497198?mt=8] - wish it were on PC, just a dandy fantasy twin-stick shooter. The pace of unlocks is a liiiittle on the slow side (I still haven't unlocked *bosses*, for God's sake), but it's worth.
League of Legends [http://na.leagueoflegends.com/] - still have some RP lying around somewhere, I really just wanted a Kayle skin
League of Angels [http://loa.r2games.com/] - forgive me the occasional heretical browser game
Spaceteam [http://www.sleepingbeastgames.com/spaceteam/] - a cross-platform (really! Local co-op!) mobile game that's just a scream with three or four players.
It's funny -- I think mobile IAPs can be the most pernicious form of the F2P model, but when they do deliver value, they do so pretty well. Maybe it's the low cost of entry for those games, and knowing how bad the margins are? Wish I knew!
Punch Quest [http://www.punchquest.com/] - great little iOS game with a lot of humor and more nuanced gameplay than I expected. Fell for the "coin doubler" trick, but it proved to be worth it.
Solomon's Boneyard [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/solomons-boneyard/id387497198?mt=8] - wish it were on PC, just a dandy fantasy twin-stick shooter. The pace of unlocks is a liiiittle on the slow side (I still haven't unlocked *bosses*, for God's sake), but it's worth.
League of Legends [http://na.leagueoflegends.com/] - still have some RP lying around somewhere, I really just wanted a Kayle skin
League of Angels [http://loa.r2games.com/] - forgive me the occasional heretical browser game
Spaceteam [http://www.sleepingbeastgames.com/spaceteam/] - a cross-platform (really! Local co-op!) mobile game that's just a scream with three or four players.
It's funny -- I think mobile IAPs can be the most pernicious form of the F2P model, but when they do deliver value, they do so pretty well. Maybe it's the low cost of entry for those games, and knowing how bad the margins are? Wish I knew!