The Free to Play business model is not only a way developers make money, but a key factor to how a game is designed. When creating a free to play MMO, designers have to decide how to get users to play their game with the intention of spending money on “uber weapons” or “sweet skins.” Facebook games like Candy Crush Saga and Farmville limit how much the players play due to time limits. This should cause gamers to stop playing the game, but the fun and reward for paying the developer counteracts the frustration. Even in free to play twin stick games have items that make the game significantly easier and thus, more fun.
I would say the more “Hardcore” audience gets turned away from free to play design because it is obvious that the game was built around the business model. As long as the game is fun, gamers will deal with it. Which leads me to the discussion of the Arcade genre and business model. During in the late 70’s to mid 90’s, the “Golden Age” of the arcade cabinet was the go to place for gamers. It wasn’t until the N64 and PSOne era that arcades started to die because we could gain the same experience at our homes.
Arcade cabinets with games like Blitz and Street Fighter, required you to pay to play until you lost or wanted to play somebody else. It was simple and made sense. These types of games were very fun to play and the ones that weren’t died and made no money. Then there were games I like to call “quarter munchers.” Games like BattleToads and NARC were “so hard” that they required gamers to keep putting quarters into the machine because they kept dying. Now don’t get me wrong, there were games that took a serious amount of skill to beat like Donkey Kong but a lot of these games were just near impossible. The design of arcade games became a standard and continued into our homes except instead of putting quarters in your NES or Genesis, you restarted the game. Super Mario Bros is a tough game that will require multiple playthroughs to get good but it’s possible to get through the game without losing a life. Silver Surfer for NES however, takes the quarter munching genre without the quarters giving you an impossible video game.
Both arcade games and free to play games can charge you extra for lives and continues. If you play the games long enough you will get better at the game allowing you to pay with your time. Of course, Candy Crush Saga and NARC are nearly impossible without some type of cash unless you have months to get past one level in Candy Crush. With twin stick games, I have seen the free to play design and quarter muncher design leak into these games even if they don’t have these business models. When they do, they can be very fun games because they were designed to fit that monetization model.
So what am I exactly trying to say? Well the free to play model and design is not that bad unless the game is clearly designed to eat your money. Arcade games of the past did the same thing and we shouldn’t give them a free pass. The developers intentions can be sinister but when done right, the design of these games can provide hours of entertainment and you may not have to pay a whole lot.
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