If the future of gaming is free, what are the issues the business model's foremost developers are having to overcome?
We’ve all become jaded cynics, and it’s easy to see why. While society as a whole tumbles ever closer towards a permanent state of eyerolling – one cleverly doctored image of a BBC news ticker at a time – it’s gamers in particular that are finding their trust egregiously chipped away by the machinations of the big publishers.
It’s hard to maintain your resolve in the face of faceless NPCs in Assassin’s Creed: Unity, of content torn from a game only to be fed back to us as pre-order bonuses and DLC or even of fullpriced retail games that find themselves dulled by the inclusion of a quiet open-palm begging in the form of needless microtransactions. Gamers are right to cast doubt over such blatant moneygrabbing schemes, but such criticism comes with a fault. Now it’s become hard to find much positivity, with some even arguing the likes of CD Projekt Red’s lauded approach to post-release DLC – namely a guarantee of a ton of free extras, and a couple of expansion packs worth paying for – has been met with scepticism: was this nothing more than a positive PR stunt to boost consumer confidence, and therefore the initial sales to go with it? Perhaps so.
Free-to-play suffers a similarly unshifting stigma, but again it’s not without merit. These days we’re able to point to a number of free-to-play games where we’re not always being nickle and dimed out of our cash – the likes of Team Fortress 2, Hearthstone or the behemoth that is League Of Legends as quick examples – yet for all the positive proof that free-to-play games live up to the definition, there are considerably more examples otherwise. “It’s possibly not helped by the fact that on mobile free games are kind of ostensibly money-grabbing,” says Chris Wilson, lead developer on the popular Path Of Exile and one of the co-founders of its developer Grinding Gears Games.
“The scepticism these days seems to be related to the fact that you get a lot of free games that offer advantage for money,” he says. “They have to sell something so gameplay advantage is the thing to sell.” But Wilson is critical of such a method, believing that a game can’t sustain a player base – something that online games like Path Of Exile sorely need – if it’s always locking players out of content when they don’t pay. “The example we often give is if you’re playing chess and one company is offering you the ability to reskin your chess set – you know, to spend a lot of money to get gold or diamond pieces – whereas the other company offers the ability to just repurchase your queen if she dies, the second one is corrupting the gameplay quite a lot more. And for our game being super competitive and hardcore, the players wouldn’t tolerate that.”
According to Todd Harris, co-founder of HiRez Studios, the developer behind third-person MOBA Smite, the concern surrounding free-to-play derives from the business model’s relative newness. “A lot comes down to what you grew up with,” he claims. “To many older gamers and many working within the game industry, free-to-play seems scary because it is disruptive. But look at the most popular games on PC: they are free-to-play. Look at the most popular games on mobile: they are free-to-play. I think that eventually top console games will be free-to-play as well. So the majority of gamers have already voted with their actions that they embrace free-to-play. As more quality free-to-play titles come out I do think even more gamers will be turned around.”
In fact, it’s only over the last few years that free-to-play has really begun to rise outside of the mobile gaming or the Asian markets, and so a lot of gamers are still only just beginning to understand what exactly free-to-play really means. Even so, HiRez’ Harris admits that there are some “awful free-to-play games out there”, adding that the competitive nature of Smite means the developer must avoid “pay-to-win or pay for power” elements. The problem with free-to-play games, it seems, is that it’s easy for developers – particularly on mobile – to hook players into its systems early on, coaxing those ingrained with the gameplay into paying once it finally unveils just how long a certain building might take to construct or how difficult a particular boss is to defeat. These games inevitably hit a barrier, and few are willing to pay to unlock the power they need to continue.
However, while this is the case in the West, in Asian markets – where the model has had many more years to standardise – free-to-play works quite a bit differently. “They kind of have their own separate economy,” says David Brevik of the differences in free-to-play between East and West, “because what is acceptable to sell and what the players want to buy there is very different than the situation here. It’s okay that they go out and they buy some of the really awesome items or whatever, it’s just socially acceptable.” Brevik’s work on Marvel Heroes 2015 has turned it into a significant free-to-play title, one that he and Gazillion were keen to ensure became an international game. “The important part is to separate them,” he laughs, “and make sure the two don’t meet – because then you’ll have a lot of irate players if they’re all on one particular realm!”
Brevik tells us that it was necessary to make Marvel Heroes 2015 a global product to enable as low a barrier to entry as possible; the higher the number of players, the more potential there is for revenue through microtransaction purchases. Much like Path Of Exile and Smite, however, Brevik insists that any kind of pay-to-win feature does not make for a good free-to-play title: “I’m very opposed to buying power,” he says, “that’s not something that I’m particularly fond of. So I felt like a lot of the stuff that we were going to do was maybe some time-saving things as well as cosmetic stuff.”
There’s an insistence among developers of free-to-play games that to help release the business model from its embedded cynicism there has to be a focus on making your free game fun to play in the first place. It might seem obvious but can be, especially in the mobile space, all too rare. Developer Firefly Studios knows this very well with the MMO-like take on its castle-building strategy franchise, Stronghold Kingdoms. Much like those derided mobile games, Stronghold Kingdoms relies on timed construction and limited resources to guide players towards its microtransactions – but differs in that it is not selling a considerable advantage, instead giving players the option to play for longer rather than earn any considerable gain. This is an online world, after all, and if a player could decimate all you’ve built up simply by paying for the glory it would infuriate more players than it would reward.
“We’ve tried to make a good game first and foremost,” says Simon Bradbury, one of the co-founders of Firefly Studios, “and then we kind of went ‘Okay, how are we going to make some money from it?’ and we did a lot more work with the strategy cards. That’s what we’ve done with Kingdoms and that’s what we’re trying to do going forward. I think if you’re doing anything else then you’re kind of not making a game, you’re making something else and trying to make a game out of a monetisation system – which is wrong.”
This is all well and good, of course, but if this was entirely the case why is there still such negativity attached to free-to-play games? The truth is that those “bad apples”, as one developer puts it, sully the business model for the rest, and players are automatically hesitant to try something that is advertised as free-to-play. “When people hear that the game is free, it’s offputting,” says Path Of Exile’s Chris Wilson. “We try very much to market the game as ‘this is what the game is’ and later on when they’re interested they happen to find out that it’s free or expected to be free, but we try not to shove the word ‘free’ down their throat as much as we used to.”
In fact, David Brevik agrees, but adds that if players hear that your game is free-to-play then you’ll need to convince them it’s not predatory about your cash, claiming that “in a sea of all these free-to-play games and these wildly different business models it’s important to try and tout your message and to make it as clear as possible.”
This means ensuring your players know – before they’ve even downloaded the game – that you’re not going to force them to reach for their wallet at any point. That’s a difficult message to get across when gamers – on the whole – refuse to acknowledge anything free-to-play. This is an especially important point for Jon Chey, one part of the team behind collectible card game Card Hunter.
“People don’t know whether they’re expected to pay or not,” states Chey. “And what I mean by that is that they don’t know whether the game has been balanced to work or not work depending on whether you paid. So for example we get people who run into some difficulty in the game, so they might lose a particular adventure, and they think ‘Ugh, this is the point where the game is trying to squeeze money out of me’”. Chey insists that Card Hunter hasn’t been balanced with microtransactions in mind and that a certain level of skill is required to survive the tougher portions of the game. In fact, he adds that the opposite is also true and that those who do pay can often feel that the game should become easier as a result.
As for the business model’s supposed greed, did you know that on average only 10 per cent of players will actually pay for anything at all? Each of the developers we spoke to suggested that between 7-15% of their respective player bases actually end up handing over some cash. But what is it that makes this small group pay, and is there anything that these developers do to help things along? “I think the thing to do is to get people to play the game and to get them involved in the game,” says Bradbury, “and to see it before you really need to spend anything. I think the way that we’ve done it in Stronghold Kingdoms is that you can go and play, and you get free stuff from tutorials and free cards and build queues are shorter so you can do quite a lot for the first few days before you’ve even got to the point that you like it or it’s got enough depth and gameplay that you might want to spend money on it.”
Yet what is surprising is how each of these developers insist it’s their community that makes the business model work; the way these developers talk of their communities, in fact, feels extremely personal. There’s a sense that to earn money in free-to-play takes a little more compassion towards the gamer, and such kindness is met with reward. David Brevik talks of how much Gazillion gives away in Marvel Heroes 2015 as freebies to its fans as “little thank-yous”, claiming that players will be more willing to be generous if the developer is also generous.
Path Of Exile’s Chris Wilson claims that the game’s players know “it’s a necessary thing”, and that if they pay to play the game then Grinding Gears will continue to make content for the game. Jonathan Chey adds that if players – paying or otherwise – are left with a positive experience from the game, the monetisation systems and the community, then those players are more likely to spread the word, essentially advertising to other gamers who may end up playing themselves. Then there’s Trion Worlds’ CEO Scott Hartsman, who is passionate about his company’s approach to those that are willing to pay. “We have actually named all of our optional subscription programs ‘patrons’ and that’s just part of our philosophy; it’s a term out of fine art and we would rather think of our generous supporters as patrons.”
With big name titles like Rift and more recently Trove under its belt, Trion Worlds has proven it knows a thing or two about the right way to monetise free-to-play. “We know we could make more money if we did meaner things,” he says, “but we don’t want to do that. We don’t want to be that company, we want to be in this for the long-term. We’re a publisher and a platform for many games and people will finish a game, and in PC – unlike mobile – players are far more aware of who the publisher’s names are and who they want to do business with again, and we want them to want to come back.”
It’s something of a revelation, then, that the very best free-to-play games – and that can perhaps only be measured by their popularity – don’t ever force their players into purchasing. It seems to be something of an accepted truth among the truly popular free-to-play titles that respecting your players, making a great game and avoiding pay-to-win monetisation is the only way to succeed in an admittedly difficult business to forecast. And that’s then where the real issue comes in; for all the determination to do right by the players, these developers are still unable to shift that muddied perception that surrounds free-to-play games. But at the same time it seems to be the cost that these developers are willing to pay.
From our point-of-view, free players provide most of the content for the game,” says Simon Bradbury of the player-driven politics of Stronghold Kingdoms. “They’re in there playing, and often free players acting together will do a lot better than the big paying players. They can actually be a political block that are working well together and providing a real challenge – much better than a challenge we could’ve provided with the AI in a single-player game.” There’s no frustration among these developers, knowing that only 10 per cent of players will pay, because they know that those that are playing – for free or not – will spread the word that free-to-play can be done right.
“I think that some people definitely are open to free-to-play,” says David Brevik, “the problem is that there are plenty of games out there where their philosophy is skewed, and it’s very much products that don’t care about selling power or don’t care about charging ridiculous amounts of money.” But he – as with all the developers we spoke to – is positive about the business model’s future. These developers might have an uphill struggle to prove their point, but they believe players will – eventually – understand the true value of free-to-play.
“You’re going to run through all sorts of weird scenarios and unusual games and all sorts of gimmicks,” says Brevik, “before you actually come to a stable state where free-to-play is more consistently what – as a gamer – I would like to see.” There’s a sense that, even now, the free-to-play model still doesn’t quite know its own value as developers battle embittered gamers, the often false expectations of a free-to-play title and even the greedy publishers on the wrong side of monetisation. It’s a price they’re forced to pay, and as the industry gradually changes to accept the model it’s becoming clear that it isn’t inherently manipulative.
As Chris Wilson puts it, “Previously the incentive was ‘Make a good box, do some marketing, make it sound really appealing’ and once the consumer has paid for it based on hype they’re stuck with whatever they get.” Free-to-play, he believes, is actually the best model for gamers, whether they know it or not. “With free-to-play, the consumer won’t give you any money unless there’s something good there,” he adds. “It encourages people to actually make good quality games.” It’s hard to deny logic like that, so maybe it’s time we tried to alter our own cynical perspectives – it won’t cost much, after all.