Thread: The Freemium Trend

It seems more games today are being converted to free to play or becoming ‘freemium’ if they aren’t starting out that way already.

What that means is the game is free to play forever, requiring no subscription or initial fee, but there is a cash shop from which you can purchase exclusive items, gear, effects, clothing, skins etc. This concept has actually been around for a while now but has only utilized in the realm of MMO titles primarily. Popular F2P MMOs like Rappelz and Maplestory, while not having millions of players like World of Warcraft or EVE Online are still thriving simply because they are free so they attract not only the normal crowd of gamers but also people who cannot afford a monthly subscription or costly expansion packs. This has often made F2P MMOs cater to a younger crowd who have no money but parents who do, but this just a side effect of gaming being made to an audience beyond the realm of people who have jobs. Eventually MMOFPS titles like War Rock, Gunz: The Duel and APB: Reloaded began to increase in popularity over the past few years as well.

The question is does this make money and do people actually buy cash shop items? The quick answer is a resounding yes; in fact this type of marketing platform could very well save gaming from the issues it is currently facing with overpricing and piracy.

Some very impressive games have been released lately that could have easily be released for a flat rate price as they are actually quality games, not the ‘bottom of the barrel’ stuff you might expect from ‘poor man’s gaming’. These developers opt for a free to play model because it draws more players and more players equals more potential profits. The traditional marketing platform depends on players buying the game for a one time fee but not necessarily playing it or even enjoying it.

While some players are content to play the game without buying any cash shop items ever, that ‘freeloader’ player is still potentially valuable to the success of the game. A fan of a game may tell their friends to play or even upload gameplay footage to Youtube which serves as free advertising for the publisher. It’s good for the reputation of a game to have as many players as possible. Whether they are paying money for the game or not doesn’t matter in that regard.

It isn’t difficult to get people to play your game when it’s free. Plenty of people including myself have downloaded free to play games simply because we had nothing to lose. If you don’t enjoy the game, you simply uninstall it without having lot anything but time. This isn’t the case with 50-60 dollar games which often propagate piracy since nobody wants to buy a game for that kind of money only to find out it isn’t worth the money.

Recently the free to play trend seems to be slowly spreading into other areas of the gaming industry. Bigger publishers are starting to notice how much long term profit these smaller publishers are making from their cash shops without a dime coming from the distribution of the games themselves. Not only are publishers releasing more free to play games but many are actually starting to convert their games marketing models, thus making many games that were originally pay to play titles completely free of charge. Most titles which undergo this transfer are ones that did not have much success as pay to play subscription titles.

Some recent examples are:

APB: Reloaded

The original APB met harsh criticism for it’s buggy gameplay and the subscription necessary to play didn’t seem worth the price so the game was ultimately canceled due to a lack of subscribers. APB: Reloaded is the revamp into a F2P model of the game with many overhauled features. The game is finally get the popularity it wanted the first time around as many are finally willing to give it a chance now. It may still have it’s flaws here and there but it’s free so many players have less of an issue with such issues and are willing to wait for them to be fixed before writing the game off as a piece of crap. You can’t get this kind of reaction from games like MW3 and BF3 because the players dropped a hefty chunk of change for both and expect the game to be as flawless as possible on release.

Lesson learned here:

Not only can a F2P model revive a dead IP but people are more willing to stick with a game despite it’s issues if they have the choice of whether or not to invest money in it.

Champions Online

This superhero MMO flopped after a while due to lack of revenue from subscriptions. It went free to play under a new publisher and was re-released with many gameplay elements now smoothed out and fixed. It now has a thriving community and has some of the best character customization in any MMO. It’s almost shocking to see a game with this much potential flop not long after it’s release but it just goes to show that anything is possible when a monthly subscription is required.

Lesson learned here:

No matter how good a game is it can fail if mandatory payment is involved. Subscriptions and one time payments can deter gamers from giving new IPs a chance.

League of Legends

The closest incarnation of a sequel to DotA available right now; this game could have easily been a subscription title and it still would have brought in an enormous playerbase considering the massive popularity of it’s ancestor. Riot Games opted for the free to play model instead to encourage a broader range of players to try it rather than rely only on the fans of DotA with jobs. It is one of the most successful and popular free to play titles to date. It’s safe to say it would actually make less money as a one time payment model than it’s current cash shop model.

Lesson learned here:

Free to play titles can make just as much money as paid ones and attract a wider audience too.

Team Fortress 2

If you’ve watched the long awaited Meet the Medic video you are sure to have seen the end where they announced TF2 going free to play. This is one of the most significant departures from a traditional marketing model in gaming history considering the sheer amount of people who play TF2. The game has featured items that give players advantages for a while now so the cash shop items and hats you will be able to purchase will not change the game much at all.

Lesson learned here:

Free to play models work for bigger games too; not just smaller or dying ones.

These are just a few games among other new F2P titles like Tribes: Ascend, Alliance of Valiant Arms, Global Agenda etc. Valve themselves have even added a F2P section to Steam.

Of course, there are downsides to the free to play model when it is not properly executed. There was a point in which free to play games were mostly looked down upon by the majority of gamers for how broken they were. This was mostly due to their cash shop items or the low quality of games attached to the ‘freemium’ label. Many publishers pushed the items too heavily in your face and gameplay was limited so heavily that the game would cease to be fun until you opened your wallet. There is a large issue with items from the cash shop being too powerful and overall unbalancing the game making certain players incredibly overpowered and giving them an unfair advantage.

Bad uses of premium items:

• Weapons or items that expire after a short time or expire at all. (Items and upgrades should be permanent if you are paying real money for them.)

• Weapons and items that unbalance the game too heavily or give the player a massive advantage over others resulting in near god-like domination of the game.

• Any content that should be in the game initially in order for the game to be complete. An FPS should not limit you to one type of gun while keeping the rest of its arsenal cash shop only. This sense of restriction gives the game a bad reputation and ultimately a low amount of players.

Good uses of premium items:

• Aesthetic items like clothing, cooler looking weapons/vehicles and unique graphical effects. These items only change the look of your character etc, but not the gameplay. Many people are willing to pay money to make their weapons glow pointlessly.

• Unique pets or similar partner NPCs which are exclusive to the shop but are not an exclusive feature to the game.

• Rare weapons, items, vehicles and clothing that are included in the normal gameplay (which can be obtained without using the cash shop but are difficult to get without great amounts of effort involved). You pay for the convenience of not having to invest time in obtaining the item while also not being overpowered.

• Real life merchandise like clothes and posters.

• Expendable items that provide an improved version of an already existing spell or action in the game (i.e: an AOE version of a normally already powerful spell that could be used as a table turner/last resort type action.)

• Allow players to spend in-game currency to purchase cash shop items (for a considerable amount of course). Cash shop items should be tradeable between players for in-game money, thus allowing the players to decide how much each item is worth. The more options you give a player the more willing they will be to stick around.

Everyone has purchased a game before only to be disappointed with it despite looking up reviews prior that persuaded them to buy it. Ultimately you will never know what you think of a game until you actually play it and these freemium games allow you to try the game without marrying it. With the demo becoming an increasingly unpopular trend, piracy has become more rampant because sampling a game hands on will always be more preferable than having to be persuaded to buy it with flashy trailers, marketing hype and pre-order incentives. Most people who pirate games are only doing so because they want to see if the game is any good. A trailer or commercial for the game is not going to give them a truthful review of it.

The traditional marketing model revolves around making players think a game is good before it’s even released without allowing them to evaluate that for themselves. This makes publishers release lower quality games more frequently. Many publishers don’t particularly care about your opinions about their game once you have actually shelled out 60 bucks for it. This has lead to a plethora of sub-par game releases in the past few years as all games are on equal footing in the realm of trailers and advertising. Since these games only charge the player once, the revenue will ultimately stop coming in when everyone has purchased the game and the publisher will have to release more titles more often to keep that steady flow of revenue. This puts more pressure on developers to release unfinished and unpolished games which are functional enough to market but not enough to provide quality gameplay.

One time payments have frequently failed to generate long term revenue for games. The majority of industry’s answered this problem with defunct marketing gimmicks like overpriced DLC while the other publishers opted for the F2P model which is the much better choice between the two.

F2P provides incentive for developers to make great titles so people will flock to them and recruit friends to them as well. If a game is good enough players will start to purchase cash shop items and since this is a permanent income the game will ultimately earn more revenue over the course of its life than if it was sold for a one time fee of 60 bucks plus DLC.

source

Look at WoW gold. It was a million dollar industry. The freemium model works and can work. Also look at farm and cityville.

Originally Posted by mkl

Look at WoW gold. It was a million dollar industry. The freemium model works and can work. Also look at farm and cityville.

Or f2p Runescape? Before the bot buster update on Runescape you had so many stupid bots in f2p that it was worth $6.00 upgrade to members a month just to get away from that. Now there are not as many bots and f2p actually works and is enjoyable. LOL! Wonder if Jagex shot themselves in the foot over that one.

Originally Posted by Dardaigh

Or f2p Runescape? Before the bot buster update on Runescape you had so many stupid bots in f2p that it was worth $6.00 upgrade to members a month just to get away from that. Now there are not as many bots and f2p actually works and is enjoyable. LOL! Wonder if Jagex shot themselves in the foot over that one.

Perhaps, but if I were a developer I would try to preserve the reputation of my game first before trying to preserve revenue.

I'm sure Jagex intended the best results and didn't even consider a down side. And, truly they made Runescape better for the f2p players who can't afford membership. Everyone deserves an undisturbed spam free play experience. Though truly Runescape membership still does have it's advantages with ability to unlock unique members only weapons and skills.