News - Free-to-play will be vital to the next generation of consoles

[HEXUS]

Ubisoft see better monetisation possibilities copying the Social/Mobile model.

Read more.

[FRISH]

I prefer one time payments ):. Then again I've not bought much recently, lost interest in recent years.

[zaph0d]

This has happened in the games community before. It used to be called Shareware back in the 80's & 90's.
You'd get a game with a lot of playability, the whole first episode and if you liked it you'd buy episodes 2-x usually 4 or 5 total episodes in a game. I think Quake was the last of the Big Shareware games.

[OilSheikh]

Ah, shareware - the goold old days!

[Smudger]

Fine for Facebook/mobile games, for proper PC or console games, I'd rather pay up front and get the lot... Insert 20p to get to the next stage, my @r5e!

[crossy]

Last game I bought that had this was Galaxy On Fire for my tablet. There you got the first couple of solar systems for free, but if you wanted to advance then you had to pay an "unlock" fee for the rest of the game. This seemed pretty reasonable to me - since you got to "extended test" the game.

What I wouldn't be happy with is some kind of wonky "parking meter" arrangement where you paid for a certain amount of play time. Sure, that might work for MMO's, but to apply it to - for example - Call Of Duty MP, would be ridiculous. Or BF4 (or similar) where you hypothetically get a knife and pistol for free, but if you want M16, Javelin, grenades, claymores then you have to pay for each.

If it moves us console gamers from the position where you buy a (full priced!) game and then discover that you really need to buy "optional" DLC, (which is only optional if you don't want to play the game properly), then fine with me.

[Sacred]

Awful, bloody awful! Its ideas like this that will ruin the games industry. Just go and play some of the MMORPGs who currently use this system (Perfect World being a major one) it becomes a game of two tiers where only the rich who can keep pumping money into their characters become the strongest.
But I can see this becoming the future of gaming due to the huge financial gains that can be made by the companies, just going back to my Perfect World example, one of my best friends has spent over £5,000 in three years playing that game where even with monthly subscriptions he would never have normally spent that much.
Its just a way for the big names to cash in!!

[Tpyo]

Awful, bloody awful! Its ideas like this that will ruin the games industry. Just go and play some of the MMORPGs who currently use this system (Perfect World being a major one) it becomes a game of two tiers where only the rich who can keep pumping money into their characters become the strongest.
But I can see this becoming the future of gaming due to the huge financial gains that can be made by the companies, just going back to my Perfect World example, one of my best friends has spent over £5,000 in three years playing that game where even with monthly subscriptions he would never have normally spent that much.
Its just a way for the big names to cash in!!

True, but look at League of Legends - all the items that affect gameplay can be purchased with credits earned in game. Using cash can give you an advantage in terms of levelling faster etc. but due to the overall cap, other players will catch up pretty quickly. Cash does allow you to buy characters quickly (more options but not necessarily more powerful) but again, thjese can be purchased with in-game credit. The only thing esclusive to cash purchases are 'skins' - entirely cosmetic. I still know people who have spent stupid amounts of money on a free game because they want all the skins, but there is no long-term in-game penalty for playing entirely for free.

[Saracen]

Well, we each have a decision to make, just as with games over the years .... buy or don't buy.

An early example of this charging system is within Ghost Recon Online where, according to Wikipedia, players will “rent a gun” for a period of time.

As Smudger so eloquently put it a few posts back, personally .... "Insert 20p to get to the next stage, my @r5e!".

I am quite happy to buy games, and even to spend quite a bit on them provided :-

1) I can decide if it's a game that appeals to me
2) It isn't riddled with intrusive DRM
3) They don't expect me to rent it.

Chances of me "renting" a gun for a period of time = precisely nil. Not under any conditions, and not for any game, between now and the end of time.

If enough of the public took that view, this model would flop big-time. Sadly, I consider that to be less likely than me winning the lottery jackpot .... every week for a year.

So, that's one more nail in the coffin of gaming for me.

[kalniel]

Awful, bloody awful! Its ideas like this that will ruin the games industry. Just go and play some of the MMORPGs who currently use this system (Perfect World being a major one) it becomes a game of two tiers where only the rich who can keep pumping money into their characters become the strongest.
But I can see this becoming the future of gaming due to the huge financial gains that can be made by the companies, just going back to my Perfect World example, one of my best friends has spent over £5,000 in three years playing that game where even with monthly subscriptions he would never have normally spent that much.
Its just a way for the big names to cash in!!

Well the alternative is to spend more on games that use a traditional business model, so as ever, you just have to put your playtime where your mouth is and the companies will follow the majority (spending) viewpoint.

If you are in a minority then you have to justify being pandered to in different ways - higher cost per unit or reduced budget for production (or a game not made for profit)

[Spud1]

I really really hope that over the next few years Free to play is shown to be the awful model (for gamers) that it really is.

tl;dr? Micropayments are awful and will kill gaming, but the shareware model is excellent and a good move for all.

There is a huge difference between FTP and Shareware, which must be made clear first. Shareware is brilliant - its akin to releasing a fully featured demo and being able to pay a one off unlock fee (or it could be a rental fee, either is fine) to unlock the full game. Simple and great for gamers who truely get to try before you buy.

"Free to play" however is just a method for sucking an absolute fortune out of players in small micro payments which you don't notice until you add up the costs. This has killed Team Fortress 2 for me, whereby you have to invest money into the game to stand a chance of competing outside of the real "noob" servers. It's helped Star Trek Online into an even earlier grave (although the fact it's a low quality cryptic MMO kinda sealed it's fate regardless) and many more games are heading that way.

My biggest gripe is that with most implementations it offers a completely unfair advantage to rich players. Take COD for example, if you have to buy guns to use them..if you are poor you will have a limited selection and therefore limited abilities vs those that can afford to pay out for the guns. Or stray into the world of MMO - I am terrified that Blizzard will make WoW free to play, which immediately takes away the achievement aspect of the game when you can just buy your way in. It would be a guaranteed way for Blizzard to boost the numbers of Guild Wars 2 and Rift accounts though

EA have decided to screw up BF3 recently (I don't really play anymore) by allowing people to buy unlocks. It's legitimised cheating imo and has no place in gaming..but of course this is EA and we all know how they love to screw over their customers time and time again. That's a given so can't get too worked up about it, I knew EA were publishing it from the off.

It can however be done right. Diablo 3 is one example - ok so for those without an annual pass you are still paying up front (and imo there should always be an up front cost), but who's paying for the servers that we have to play on? Well we do, indirectly through the real money auction house and Blizzard's 15% cut. Excellent solution that removes the subscription need, solves a traditional persistent online game problem of 3rd party gold sellers, and keeps most players happy. No need for nasty micropayments to come and spoil the fun.

So my point? It will truely be the death of gaming if Free to play is implemented in the full on micro-payment method, but if a publisher does it right (effectively shareware) and stays away from micropayments, then it could be a good thing

If you are still not sure, ask yourself this. Would you rather pay a single one off fee (or a fixed, agreed monthly amount), or pay the same or in 99% of cases more money in spits/spats over the course of a year, and then the same again 2 years later when you come back to play the game....

[sula]

Meh

I prefer one-time payment or subscription models.

Not only for gaming.


Microtransactioning is too tricky and unpredictable.