The announcement of Battlefield Play4Free on Friday was the latest in what's becoming an increasingly significant trend in the way the video game suits are approaching business.
Whether it's a way of combating piracy and pre-owned sales, an attempt to clinch more of the Yankee dollar or - dare we say it - a better gaming experience altogether, the free-to-play (kind of) model appears to be gaining ground.
In fact, EA specifically outlined an intention to encroach significantly on conventional box sales with more free-to-play output.
The principle is simple; provide the basic game for free and if players like it they'll buy game enhancing building blocks released later and at a cost.
It allows for a much more flexible service and more choice for the gamer. With Battlefield Play4Free, for example, EA is working on the assumption that just five percent of players will make any micro-transactions at all, the rest will carry on with a completely costless FPS. As far as EA is concerned, that's just dandy.
Molyneux's approach is to release the first level/chapter/episode of a game for free, almost like a demo but in a completely finished and polished state.
After the first hour of gaming you'll be able to decide whether or not you want to continue in exchange for coin. Didn't like the look of that first level? Abandon ship and save yourself a chunk of change.
What concerns some people, though, is that if you do want everything a game has to offer; if you want every level, weapon, skin, map and kazoo, the bulk cost of all those little micro-transactions could actually amount to more than a full box copy anyway.
There's also the issue of getting your game in bits and pieces. As gamers, when a franchise like Halo spawns a new baby, we like to buy a disk, lock ourselves in a room and play it until our console gasps for air.
Can you be bothered with the hassle of downloading a game level by level? Is it a hassle for you at all?
Do you really want the comparatively small but annoyingly constant sting of money leaving your account over and over again until, after a month or so, you've finally lapped up your last gaming morsel?
In the end, will free-to-play initiatives benefit the gamer or ultimately amount to one micro-transaction too many?
Comments
11 comments so far...
ted1138 on 7 Nov '10 said:
I'm all for this sort of thing, who really needs a shiny little disc to make them feel they "own" something?
Though saying that, it'll not stop the cheats from ruining it for the rest of us... 
And it's got to be a force for good in the war on piracy.
hi0marc on 7 Nov '10 said:
I think we're naturally comfortable with the 'traditional' method, and are of course afraid of change.
However, there are few positives. We'd see alot more of alot more games than before, people keeping to the same 3/4 titles will spread across a world of free options, and each game will be (possibly) more populated than before.
Although i think this could lead to a lesser amount of "hardcore" players. With so many options at hand, staying to one game and learning it completely isnt much of an incentive if it could cost more and there a constant stream of new exciting games to try.
lordirongut on 7 Nov '10 said:
I've said it before, I hate this idea. It might work for some genres better than others, but I'm an RPG player - I couldn't think of anything more irritating. I don't particularly mind not having a disc (although I prefer it if the price is reasonable by comparison), but having things in bits.... ugh. Say you're playing Final Fantasy, and you reach a cutscene. Said cutscene leaves you on a cliffhanger, but, oh no! You have to buy the next part of the game to continue. Not only do you have to wait for the download (not easy for many who have slower internet, myself included), but you have problems to contend with things like bandwidth limiting - which could be a very real issue with a long RPG. If people hated the installs in Metal Gear Solid 4, they'd hate this.
Or, you could go the other microtransaction route, the one wherein in-game items are sold for real money. In many ways, this method is no better than the real money traders you get in MMORPGs. The only real difference is that the RMT is EA, Activision or whoever. This one is designed purely to con people. 'Dave, the new tank is out on Battlefield F2P! It's sooooooo powerful and it's only $3!', 'Phil, they've just brought out the new weapon pack on BFF2P! It's awesome! It makes the old guns practically redundant! And it's only a fiver!' and so on. Or, take it to an RPG - it basically gives the developer the licence to say 'You wanna kill that boss? Give us money and we'll give the sword that lets you'.
So, it would kill immersion, rip you off and unbalance everything. Sounds like a rosy, future, doesn't it? If it becomes the norm then I officially become a retro gamer - I refuse outright to go near anything that uses microtransactions. The day it becomes the norm is the day that gaming dies.
Grapple on 7 Nov '10 said:
Its not the future for me either, call me a cave dweller if you like but I like having a disc. And I wont have my tummy tickled by the corporates. For me its buy or dont buy, no in .between
beemoh on 7 Nov '10 said:
Free to play strikes me, to an extent, as a lot of misplaced enthusiasm- that's not to say that it doesn't work and isn't viable, but that a lot of the noise the industry makes about it is a mix of legitimate surprise and enthusiasm about this new idea and hyperbole from firms looking to attract investors who might need convincing of the business model.
Different business models ultimately only support certain types of game- you'll probably never see a unique GTA* or Halo on iPhone- the low prices of the app store can't pay for it, even if it could the market iPhone serves doesn't want it, and even if they did the device isn't up to controlling it. Likewise, nobody's going to put £40 down for Angry Birds on disc.
With that in mind, free-to-play only supports a certain type of game, and there's currently rumblings in China, where this model is the dominant one for gaming, that people are tiring of the type of game it supports- there's room for traditional pay-up-front type games there to come in as an Exciting New Alternative, much the same way F2P is being seen here, now, and both can exist side-by-side.
* Yes, I'm aware that Chinatown Wars is available on iPhone, but then that's already clawed back a fair bit of revenue on DS and PSP.
Gaseous Snake on 7 Nov '10 said:
Aren't there ways of combating piracy and making more money without ruining games? As someone above said-if this happens, then it's back to the good ol' days for us. I'd probably just quit gaming altogether though-a subscription to New Scientist and £40 a month more cash should be a suitable replacement.
Boethius on 7 Nov '10 said:
It's horrific, but it will improve. At first we'll have these episodic games on our consoles and we'll begin to pay more as has been suggested but that's okay we'll get something free then the horror begins. We no longer have consoles but play episodic games on low grade P.C's streamed from the cloud with horrific visual implications. It's like looking at a CRT in a haze well that's how it feels to the keen gamer engrossed in his slightly laggy bit-part episodic but then hardware and great massive power servers overcome that lag problem and we play games somewhat better than we play on consoles now without any lag. Wow.
ParamedicFoetus on 7 Nov '10 said:
It doesn't sound such a good idea to me. Surely it will be a problem will be people playing the same game but with access to different levels of content. If only 5% of players buy aditional content for battlefield what do they do when these people want to play against the other 95%. If you're paying for content only for it to be locked out 95% percent of the matches I can't see many people buying in to it. Single player games this isn't an issue of course.
jimsondanet on 8 Nov '10 said:
Iduno, collectors, people who enjoy investing thier money in physical assests. or maybe its only complete bundys with an unhealthy attachment to shiny objects, ay ...ted?
DeusXM on 8 Nov '10 said:
It's a duff idea as it kills the game dynamic. Everything about the game is designed around the idea of trying to coax you to buy more things in the game, rather than making it fun to play.
There's a lot of 'free' iPhone games out there that depend on microtransactions for the developers to make money. The way they encourage you to buy things is by making the game an absolute arse to play if you don't buy your little pot of manna or gold or XP or whatever. And the sole reason for buying that stuff? So you can unlock more things, that then demand you buy even more just to make it work. The game becomes a self-perpetuating economy, rather than something that is fun to play. And that's fine for the sort of people who get very excited about Farmville or Mafia Wars or any of the other redundant time sinkholes that appeal to middle aged American women when their daughter is hogging their Twilight DVD, but it's not really for me.
I'm all for episodic content as it cuts down barriers for new devs (Telltale, Strandlooper) and allows a bit more creativity (Valve) but microtransactions are really for people who don't like proper games.
laminated0 on 8 Nov '10 said:
I dont like this idea at all. As many people have stated above, owning the physical disc is important for collectors and microtransactions do take the fun out of the game and tend to unbalance level playing fields.