Minecraft dev says Free-to-play isn't very free

Free to play is cool it lets people be nice to developers (who give us a nice game) or if we just want the vanilla game we can be cheap as well.

In TF2's case they made money off the normal release and i didn't have money to spend at the time, and now they made it f2p and if i wanted to i could support them by buying loads of items and end up paying more then when it was released.

R400 straight out of your wallet is a big sum of money but R5 here or there over a year you don't notice it,
 
I generally don't like f2p, especially in MMOs. It becomes a question about who spent the most money on their items most of the time.

It doesn't take a lot before you've suddenly spent more than the ordinary subscription fee either, but that would be up to you to decide how much you want to spend, which I suppose is a good thing, if you can control it. I suspect many can't, it's a lot of small payments that add up over time.

I don't think f2p necessarily is a bad thing, I've just yet to see it implemented in a way that I think is good, except perhaps for TF2. Don't care about those damn hats.
Too bad I stopped playing it ages ago :)
 
Not sure what the article is getting at, no-one (unless they were being dishonest) has said free-to-play is FREE. It's just another business model, there is nothing inherently wrong, sneaky or underhanded about that model. The reason WHY it's so effective is because it lets people try before they buy. It lets people gage how much fun they have with the game before they are required to spend money.

Yes you get good and bad example of how to implement this system but I think most of the grief some people experience with it is mainly because it's quite a new model for the gaming industry so it's not always clear what you are getting into and developers are still trying to figure this out themselves. I would say League of Legends is a pretty good example of how to do this correctly, you can play 100's of hours without spending a cent but if you feel like it you can drop some cash and unlock some new heroes, skins whatever, also nothing is ever hidden from you, it's always pretty clear what the costs are for playing.

MMO's have had good success with this model because it drastically lowers the barriers of entry for a game AND it facilitates drop in, drop out playstyles. Many MMO's you only truly get a feel for the game maybe 2-3months into playing and you start getting to the end game stuff so by that stage you're already spent R300 on the game and typically R450 (R150/pm) on subs, so R950 on a game which you may decide doesn't really do it for you. This also lets you play multiple MMO's without feeling like you're wasting your subs and lets you spend in bursts if you want to focus on one game that you are currently enjoying.

I will say though, F2P isn't and shouldn't be for everything sometimes I do just want to pay X amount and get the entire product without having to worry about extras.
 
F3P is cool if you can get by without spending oodles of cash. When it comes down to the richest kid getting the most impressie items and pwning at the end of the day then it becomes a broken model in my view. I guess if they are making money off it though they don't really care.
 
I absolutely LOATHE the f2p model.
Completely and utterly LOATHE it.
My hatred for f2p seethes from every pore on my body!!!

Bad content. Bad support. Bad everything.

I would rather pay a sub and know what's coming.
 
Ok, so F2P is usually bad, but that is for people to decide to invest in the game or not. I was interested in World of Tanks, but put-off by the Premium Tanks, giving you bonus XP and credits, so just ignored the game when I saw that the advantages paying money gives you.

I still think F2P is better for gamers if done in a way not to give people advantages over people that pay for the item / upgrade content. Unfortunately there aren't many developers that are willing to do this. I have only faith in one, Guild Wars 2; buy the game and no subs, as Arenanet showed in Guild Wars for years now the paid-for content is not necessary to compete in the game, everything more for appearance, and extra storage space etc.

Guild Wars 2 is the ONLY MMO I have looked at for the last year and a half, I will wait patiently for it, even with its F2P model it looks to be the best new upcoming MMO with its new innovations. And add the F2P with it, and it certainly is a winning combination for me.

Everyone that wants their montly subs can go and enjoy their games :/ I have never seen the point of that tbh.
 
I think it has more to do with the concept of FREE.

The Free-to-play model of gaming isn't free. Simple as that. You can say that it's obvious, but htat's not really the case - sure, YOU know how it works as a business model - but most people simply don't.

You see "free" and your brain registers that hey, you're not paying anything.

While you may not be paying anything to access the bare bones of the game, the "premium" content has to be unlocked; and that's where most gamers feel cheated. Don't put "free" on something, if you expect payment for the full thing. It may not be entirely under-handed, but it's certainly deceptive. Most people can't see the full picture.

It's like downloading, say, a FREE AVI to MOV converter on the internet.

You have free access to the application, sure - but then you can only convert 30 seconds of the footage you want; or it appears with a big watermark over it - and you need to fork over $50 to remove it.

You're not getting what the name implies.
 
Very true. The term is very misleading.
Making a game "free-to-play" is of course to lure in more customers who'll pay for the extra content.

By now I think that most people know what f2p really means and it isn't as much of a problem. But if you don't already know the term it's easy to get tricked into trying out something because you think it's free.
 
qornea said:
I think it has more to do with the concept of FREE.

The Free-to-play model of gaming isn't free. Simple as that. You can say that it's obvious, but htat's not really the case - sure, YOU know how it works as a business model - but most people simply don't.

You see "free" and your brain registers that hey, you're not paying anything.

While you may not be paying anything to access the bare bones of the game, the "premium" content has to be unlocked; and that's where most gamers feel cheated. Don't put "free" on something, if you expect payment for the full thing. It may not be entirely under-handed, but it's certainly deceptive. Most people can't see the full picture.

It's like downloading, say, a FREE AVI to MOV converter on the internet.

You have free access to the application, sure - but then you can only convert 30 seconds of the footage you want; or it appears with a big watermark over it - and you need to fork over $50 to remove it.

You're not getting what the name implies.
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What you are talking about is hidden costs. Most high profile free-to-play MMO's and the good f2P games are VERY clear about the associated costs and show you exactly what you get for free and what you have to pay for. In your example the developer hid the true cost of usage and essentially performed a bait and switch, yes that does happen with f2P on occasion BUT it's a factor of the implementation NOT the model.

Being ignorant of the associated costs is also no grounds to call something deceptive, that would be like thinking that the price you pay for a car is all the money you will ever have to spend on the car and then calling the salesman dishonest because he didn't explain you would need to pay for maintenance and fuel.

For me as long as the costs are clearly presented up front I'm perfectly fine with f2P. I would argue f2P does NOT imply the game is free, else it would be labelled as such, instead it says exactly what it is, you can play the game without paying. Of course the particulars of how much you can play without paying is specific to the game.

The term F2P does however seem to get overused or applied to places that don't always make sense which suggests it possibly needs revising. Take Team Fortress 2 for example. You used to pay your $20 and play the game as much as you want. Then they changed it so you no longer need to play that $20 and called this free-2-play BUT for me that just makes it free. :) You get the entire game without restriction for free and can play as much as you want, surely that makes the game free?

For me Free-2-Play is a very interesting business* model and is really just part of the new trend of developers questioning how they do business and how games are priced.

* Notice I said business model, this is not done for charity.
 
qornea said:
Minecraft's notch: Free isn't as free as you think

“The reason anyone switches to ‘free to play’ is to make more money”
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HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAI nooit blommie :)

Even if it's buy to play (meaning you have to by the game fist) or pay per month after buying the game; those games imho is and always will better than just "free to play". The only real successor in this f2p is lotro, the rest tried to copy with some of them failing bad.

The Last f2p I tried had you buying items at up too R150 a pop, where monthly subs would have costed just around R100. FAIL. If you want to try the game just go trail it's really not so bad.

There is no such thing as a free ride, period.
 
MOnk said:
That is just false.

You may dislike the model and certain developers do it badly but saying that if it's f2p it's bad is simply untrue.
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Personal experience only.
I have yet to play anything from the f2p MMO models that wasn't an absolute piece of *BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP*
 
Have you guys tried evony? What makes it good for me is the wheel and one spin per day you get. Good insentive to be online each day. And if you know what you doing and have time to do it you dont need to spend money on it to be a top player.
 
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