In Week 2, our cohort discussed Free to play models of games. ‘Free to play’ games offer the gameplay free but ask for payment for upgrades for skins, weapons and upgrades.
“In a week 2 video (around 10:50), the instructor mentions a hook (to bring players back) e.g. in free-to-play games you can buy a better sword with which to beat your friends. This is known as pay-to-win. As gamers, how do you feel about this monetisation strategy” (Uys comment on Week 2 Open Forum 2020)?
The publisher’s win on that one (in 2019 EA made $2.8 billion on micro-transactions). I’m not a fan of pay-to-win and DLC’s personally but it depends on your funding model and business ideas.
My friend was a huge fan of Fallen London, which is based on this model of it’s free and then you pay to keep going. Some are more ethical than others. I feel strongly against gambling, especially if it’s targeted towards children. Good question! Source: $1B spent on microtransaction (Author comment on Week 2 Open Forum 2020)
Discussion on the ‘Free to play’ model.
“I think there is a differentiation between free to play with monetization and pay to win… I think there is also a differentiation, possibly even a dark pattern, between paying for a sword and paying for an elite loot box which has a 0.2% chance of having a sword in it. Both of which I dislike, but the latter is clearly worse for the consumer” (Lakin comment on Week 2 Open Forum 2020).
“It would take away from that rush of endorphins one receives when completing a level, task or challenge” (Cheesman comment on Week 2 Open Forum 2020).
“I like the no risk entry point: if I don’t like the game it’s not cost me anything so I can just delete it and move on. I also like (and appreciate) that the developers are in it for the long haul” (Thorne comment on Week 2 Open Forum 2020).
“For me as a gamer, it’s a horrible strategy which has been forced onto players and is unlikely to go away anytime soon, with big company’s like EA at the forefront of it’s worst practices – slowing down gameplay to a crawl, until you pay to make things happen quicker (Dungeon Keeper)” (Ward comment on Week 2 Open Forum 2020).
“I think one of the changes I’ve enjoyed least when it comes to the gaming industry over the past decade and a bit is the shift in monetisation strategy, especially from large game developers, towards the micro-transaction and DLC heavy models that are the norm now; many of my game purchases now are informed by the models employed by the developer. I have slowly started to move away games like Civilization, an old staple of mine, that have begun selling of one or two new civs as a £5-£10 DLC pack” (Handley comment on Week 2 Open Forum 2020).
Reflecting back on the discussion prompted research into the area of free to play and premium games. How much money is spent on both and out of the total amount of money spent on games is there room for Indie Games? Taking advantage of SuperData (2020) I create a Treemap in amCharts to display the amount of revenue for the top 10 games in both ‘Free to Play’ and ‘Premium’. I then totalled the amount of money leftover from the totals for both types of games.
Fig 1. Treemap for the Top 10 Revenue Free to Play and Premium games created using information from SuperData
The Treemap shows that there is a huge amount of money spent on games outside of the top 10. Opportunities are there for smaller indie gamers.
The revenue for ‘free to play’ games is 4 x the amount gamers spend on ‘premium’ games, which has made me re-evaluate my commitment to making a premium game. ‘Free to play’ is a popular medium, and as Thorn explains, there is a “no risk entry point” (2020). If the player doesn’t like the game, they haven’t lost any money. I have considered a model like Fallen London, a narrative-based interactive fiction game. Fallen London had a fanbase and funded Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies on Kickstarter.
League of Legends, Among Us and Genshin Impact offer a full game completely free with the option to pay to avoid ads, speed up gameplay and play on the console of your choice. A model of pay to remove Ads my suit an interactive story or adventure.
SuperData also shows that game video content is an industry that is getting bigger. “The audience for gaming video content (GVC) grew by 5% to reach 944M” (SuperData 2020). “Thanks to more robust monetization offerings, Twitch generated more revenue in 2019 than YouTube ($1.54B vs $1.46B) despite a much smaller audience” (SuperData 2020). While I do not have any plans to start streaming, it is worth considering how you will market your game. Sharing content on social media about your process might help you gain momentum on your project and as we can see there is a huge market for game video content.
List of Figures
Figure 1. Treemap for the Top 10 Revenue Free to Play and Premium games from created using information from SuperData
References
Among Us. 2018. InnerSloth.
CHEESMEN, Paul. 2020. ‘Week 2: Open Forum’. Falmouth University Discussion Board [online] September 27. Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/872/discussion_topics/17755?module_item_id=44803 [accessed 13 December 2020].
Falmouth University. 2020. ‘Week 2: Open Forum’. Falmouth University Discussion Board [online]. Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/872/discussion_topics/17755?module_item_id=44803 [accessed 27 October 2020].
Fallen London. 2009. Failbetter games.
Genshin Impact. 2020. miHoYo, Shanghai Miha Touring Film Technology Co
HANDLEY, Elliot. ‘Week 2: Open Forum’. Falmouth University Discussion Board [online] September 28. Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/872/discussion_topics/17755?module_item_id=44803 [accessed 13 December 2020].
LAKIN, Phil. 2020. ‘Week 2: Open Forum’. Falmouth University Discussion Board [online] September 27. Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/872/discussion_topics/17755?module_item_id=44803 [accessed 13 December 2020].
League of Legends. 2009. Riot Games.
Sunless Sea. 2015. Failbetter Games, Blitworks, Nephilim Game Studios Inc.
Sunless Skies. 2019. Failbetter games, Nephilim Game Studios Inc.
SuperData. 2020. ‘2019 Year In Review: Digital Games and Interactive Media’ [online lecture]. SuperData. Available at: https://www.superdataresearch.com/reports/p/2019-year-in-review [accessed 28 December 2020].
THORN, Gavin. 2020. ‘Week 2: Open Forum’. Falmouth University Discussion Board [online] September 27. Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/872/discussion_topics/17755?module_item_id=44803 [accessed 13 December 2020].
UYS, Juan. 2020. ‘Week 2: Open Forum’. Falmouth University Discussion Board [online] September 26. Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/872/discussion_topics/17755?module_item_id=44803 [accessed 13 December 2020].
WARD, Will. 2020. ‘Week 2: Open Forum’. Falmouth University Discussion Board [online] September 26. Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/872/discussion_topics/17755?module_item_id=44803 [accessed 13 December 2020].
