You know what makes loads of cash? Free stuff. It’s a complicated concept, maybe, but not actually, according to Digital Chocolate’s Trip Hawkins.
“Well, I don’t care what category it is, any segment of the games industry on any platform – if you make it free-to-play with virtual goods it’ll be better, financially,” Hawkins tells GamesIndustry.biz, on the free-to-play launch of Chair’s megapopular Infinity Blade in Asia.
“You’ll get more people to try it, you’ll get more revenue from more customers, in the end.”
Describing the free-to-play business model supported by microtransactions of virtual goods as the “most important” factor to consider in the future market, he also addresses some of the more obvious conflicts between developers and players.
“I know in the MMO market this is where it’s most difficult for them to believe in it. There are so many customers – the personality of many hardcore gamers is that they want to feel better about themselves because they’re dominant in the game. They’re willing to put in hours and hours and hours to create a level 65 character in LOTRO and then they get mad as heck when LOTRO decides to go free-to-play and let people buy virtual goods. That drives them crazy, right?
“And yeah, there’ll be a small number of customers who’ll fight against it, kicking and screaming because it takes away an advantage they have – they can put more time in,” says Hawkins. “They’re still going to put the time in. They’re still going to play the game better than anybody else and eventually they’ll put some money in to make sure they’re still better.”
It’s not just MMOs, though – Valve’s Team Fortress 2 was recently rebranded as a free-to-play title, and predictably enough, not everybody is happy about it. A “Free2BeKicked” server plugin has been moving around ever since, dumping freemium players from games. As creator Asher Baker says, “A community needs a barrier to entry”. Or maybe some people should just stop being such selfish, elitist brats.
Is free-to-play a better business model? Lets us know in the forums
Loading ...
