OK, so I thought I better write about this one because the news is getting a little on the stale side as it’s sat in my queue waiting to be unleashed on the web. That’s some nice imagery there — unleashed (its probably closer to a weak drip upon the web, but ya know). Anyway, game industry execs conclude that gamers like free gamers. In related news, the sky is blue. This is a superfluous statement because … well, it’s pretty self-evident. Most people like things that are free, provided that there’s value in the free. Major execs like Peter Moore are cited as saying this is the way of the future … blah blah blah. So for those of us with slightly longer memories — we remember these awesome things called demos - where you got a slimmed down version of the game to try out before the full purchase. It almost seems like this new “innovation” in games is based an older model of game sales that might have died out because companies thought they were losing money. Hmm…
Regardless, free-to-play is not exactly the same as a demo, but ultimately the end-goal is the same - to get you to spend money on the game itself. The core problem with Free-to-play games (or the F2P model) is that they don’t rely on a ton of small transactions to make money. That’s just the icing — they rely on a very small subset of players (like 1-2%) who spend far far more than the average player does on the game. I think most people have heard the story about the Facebook games that are profitable because a small subset of users spent $10,000+ in-game. Now that great thing is that the current market can’t sustain the deluge of free to play — that 1-2% of players that spend far more than the average player is a relatively small pool of players to work from—and will eventually be tapped out because the amount of free-to-play titles vying for their money will exceed the number of these players and the amount of income they have available to them…at least, in my opinion anyway.
It’s my perspective that we’ll find a much more balanced future in gaming - where there’s s moderate selection of F2P titles, and a smaller base of subscription titles. While everyone loves to portend the death of the subscription model, it’s effective and it’s not going to die out. There will absolutely be games that will do better in a F2P model than a subscription model, but both will be there. Despite what pundits would have you believe, we are not an all-or-nothing society. Alleged experts love to throw out absolutes to get the pageviews. That’s their perogative. I would rather provide a balanced view that less fraught with hyperbole to predict what’s coming.
