Is Free to Play games the future?

I just read an interesting article about the game publisher Crytek, who plans on transitioning entirely to the Free-to-Play model within the next five years. The CEO believes that this is the future of gaming, and will make the games his company makes better, and available to a larger audience. Do you agree?

Crytek to "Transition Entirely" to Free-to-Play Within Five Years

No.

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I believe Free to Play is the best thing that can happen to this industry.... When it is REALLY free to play. Not Freemium. Freemium sucks. HOW they manage to achieve that, is THEIR problem, but the day I have to pay microtransactions for every game I own, is the dya I seriously stop playing videogames.

Why? Microtransactions are a business scheme to earn more money in the long run, when consumers make basic financing mistakes. They are appealing to impulsive markets, where the average consumer sees: "Oh, only 6.99!" and eventually doesn't realize he's spent WAY more than a $60 dollar product.

If you notice the current freemium models, they all depend on graphical enhancements, couple with some statistic value added to gameplay (+2 sword that look AWESOME! but still +2). Graphic enhancement is NOt the future of games, processing and AI is. Current freemium models concentrate offer and demand on graphical products, not gameplay ones.

Crytek believes it is the future because they got massively kicked in the butt by pirates back when Crysis was unveiled. It is the reason why they focused Crysis 2 on consoles, it is the reaosn why Crysis 2 was subpar to Crysis 1. In a sense, Free to Play is the industry's ultimate DRM.

Free to play is only apparently free not actually free.

I believe Free to Play is the best thing that can happen to this industry.... When it is REALLY free to play. Not Freemium. Freemium sucks.

trolling? Ofc they are going to going to charge something...thousands of hours go in to making games. How long you think it will be until we have free gas and groceries also? NEVER.

"Giving all the games away for free is the best thing that can happen to this industry" is probably the funniest opinion I've ever seen about the gaming industry. And I've seen a lot of hilarious stuff.

But no, free to play is not the future. The future is a lot of stuff. I think subscription based cloud services tat stream games, like OnLive, will get more popular.

free to p(l)ay games and conventional old style pay up front games both have a market. problem is, when you charge 50 bucks for a game and don't sell enough copies, you're basically fucked. you invested a few years of manpower and probably a nice 9-digit sum on that game and didn't even break even. with f2p games, the risk is lower... you get money as you go, it's far easier to assess interest in the game and potential revenue... RoI is earlier and usually longer.

double post -.-

I was not trolling. I was DEAD serious. We are in the XX1st century (Roman numerals for style), and we think of business as though we were in the XIXth. We have the digital era in our hands here.

Businesses like Netflix are, in a way, giving you free movies. What you pay for, mostly, is the bandwidth costs of delivering those movies to your PC. Yes, it includes some licensing costs, but look at the difference.

Facebook is completely free. Google is completely free. Big ass companies that managed to think in a digital era. And trust me, they pour A LOT more resources and technology into those two services, for a single month of service, than what they do for months in the gaming industry.

Remember: Just because it is free to the end user (in this case, the players), doesn't mean it is free for everyone else. Do I have the business answer? No, if I did I'd be filthy rich, and I'd be financing CoH3 with no Brits from my own private island and including 12azor as Hal Jordan's successor in the new DC line of Comics.

My point is: Smart use of the free to play model is the future. Stuff like Cloud gaming for instance. Sorry for rant, but I guess explaining further was necessary.

No.

/thread

Yes. Decreasing willingness to pay for static internet products enforces a different business model.

RoI is earlier and usually longer.

The very opposite is true for the first part as the revenues for a fixed price game will have an early peak and decline in time, whereas the revenues for the alternative will reach its peak in a later stage, but remains somewhat stable, just like you stated.

I was not trolling. I was DEAD serious. We are in the XX1st century (Roman numerals for style), and we think of business as though we were in the XIXth. We have the digital era in our hands here.

Businesses like Netflix are, in a way, giving you free movies. What you pay for, mostly, is the bandwidth costs of delivering those movies to your PC. Yes, it includes some licensing costs, but look at the difference.

Facebook is completely free. Google is completely free. Big ass companies that managed to think in a digital era. And trust me, they pour A LOT more resources and technology into those two services, for a single month of service, than what they do for months in the gaming industry.

Remember: Just because it is free to the end user (in this case, the players), doesn't mean it is free for everyone else. Do I have the business answer? No, if I did I'd be filthy rich, and I'd be financing CoH3 with no Brits from my own private island and including 12azor as Hal Jordan's successor in the new DC line of Comics.

My point is: Smart use of the free to play model is the future. Stuff like Cloud gaming for instance. Sorry for rant, but I guess explaining further was necessary.

Well I guess you underestimated the profit Netflix makes, if what you said is true then there is no viable way they could pay for so much advertisement. And Facebook makes a TON of money from ads and games, enough to make Zuckerberg...

world's 2nd youngest self-made billionaire (2012)
Net worth- US$ 9.4 billion (2012)

They only way you could get a game for free is if you had ads on literally every screen, and most video games don't get enough traffic to be a feasible medium of advertisement. This concept of a nonprofit high quality video game is just as naive as a crime and huger-free world. If a company makes a good product, they are entitled to make money from it. Nobody is asking you to do your job for no salary, are they?

Bottom line is that many people are not willing to pay $60 for a game, mainly because they are not sure if they will get their moneys worth. But if a company says try it for free, anyone with even a casual interest will most likely download it and give it a try. The game companies are hoping many people will be having so much fun that they will have no problem spending money on these little micro transactions to further their enjoyment in the game. It is easier to spend $5 than $60, and just like someone getting addicted to drugs, they are hoping people will get addicted to playing their game, and will continue to spend a few dollars here and there, eventually spending more than the $60 they were unwilling to spend in the first place. I am sure they have had some success with this business model in order to be willing to completely take a big risk and transition completely to that.

I am sure many game developers will be watching Crytek's transition to the Free to Play model, and seeing how much success they have. If they are very successful I am sure more companies will consider also changing to this model. So only time will tell if this is going to be the future of gaming. I certainly hope it isn't.

The very opposite is true for the first part as the revenues for a fixed price game will have an early peak and decline in time, whereas the revenues for the alternative will reach its peak in a later stage, but remains somewhat stable, just like you stated.

sry, i was unclear... what i meant with that is, that often f2p games already rake in rather huge profits even in beta phases (remember how CoHO accepted money in beta?)... of course, with pre-order sales.... ;-)

Businesses like Netflix are, in a way, giving you free movies. What you pay for, mostly, is the bandwidth costs of delivering those movies to your PC. Yes, it includes some licensing costs, but look at the difference.

It costs them pennies for the bandwidth required to stream an HD movie, the vast majority of their costs are licensing deals. For example, they paid Disney $200 million for the right to stream their content for a year, and that's just one license.

Subscriptions are the future. Whether its for your Netflix, software, magazines, water, everything. They will give you the game but you'll have to pay to keep playing. That is the model of the future and its a shitty one for the consumer unfortunately.

They'd change it really quickly once we stop paying for all of these ridiclous DLC's.

I would post something but I might have to charge 10$ so you guys can see the rest of it.

They only way you could get a game for free is if you had ads on literally every screen, and most video games don't get enough traffic to be a feasible medium of advertisement. This concept of a nonprofit high quality video game is just as naive as a crime and huger-free world. If a company makes a good product, they are entitled to make money from it. Nobody is asking you to do your job for no salary, are they?

They are entitled to do whatever they want with their product, but the consumer is under no obligation to like the price, or to pay it. A nonprofit high quality videogame is MORE than possible, the fact that some people think its impossible is what is limiting it. Google was once thought to be a shitty idea: How can a glorifed phonebook be profitable?

It costs them pennies for the bandwidth required to stream an HD movie, the vast majority of their costs are licensing deals. For example, they paid Disney $200 million for the right to stream their content for a year, and that's just one license.

It costs them pennies... but multiply that by the amount of users they need to distribute that content to, the servers that need to be servicing those users, etc. It adds up. Of course, most of that money is put to licensing, but that's exactly my point: some of the movies shown cost 80 million to make, some of the series cost less than 1 million to make. That's the moviemaker's problem (the game company in our case). People want to watch movies, and they'll watch the cooler ones. If it takes more money, then it's worth investing it.

Cloud gaming WILL come. Its the ideal DRM for companies, it would destroy the whole PC vs Console war, it would destroy the PS3 vs Xbox war if done right. It could unify gamers under one service.

Think of it like this: would you rather earn your money in small, safe chunks over a long period of time, or do you want to wait three years, invest tens of thousands of hours of work, to see if you actually earn a penny (but perhaps get millions). The latter works for CoD, but the rest of the bunch are dying.

....wow, that was a big rant.

A nonprofit high quality videogame is MORE than possible, the fact that some people think its impossible is what is limiting it.

Who exactly is going to spend the money, time and energy into making a video game, and then not make a profit? How will they stay in business and pay the employees who developed the game? The whole reason a company make a game is because their is money to be made. It is a business after all, and businesses need to make profits in order to remain in business and be successful. Without the goal of making profits companies would not make games to begin with.

Think of it like this: would you rather earn your money in small, safe chunks over a long period of time, or do you want to wait three years, invest tens of thousands of hours of work, to see if you actually earn a penny (but perhaps get millions). The latter works for CoD, but the rest of the bunch are dying.

The Free to Play idea is a relatively new idea in gaming. To suggest that all the gaming companies that are not "Free to Play" are hurting and dying besides CoD is ridiculous. Ever hear of Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry 3, Skyrim or Battlefield 3? Four of the most profitable games in 2012, and none of them were "Free to Play".

This transition to the "Free to Play" model has nothing to do with companies surviving, and everything to do with making more money. Crytek thinks that they will make much more money this way, and that is the only reason they are taking a risk to do it.