Free-to-play games are “demos with monetisation stuck on” says Peter Molyneux

Business

June 13, 2012

Free-to-play is the new black, if you’re keeping up with hot industry trends – but how free is free, really, when free isn’t much fun until it’s not actually free? It’s something Peter Molyneux has been thinking about.

“[Free-to-play games] are more like demos with monetisation stuck on the end of them a lot of the time,” he told attendees at a BAFTA event last night.

“If proper monetisation is built in from the ground up – and not designed by some producer or some financially driven person – then I think amazing things can happen.”

“We, as human beings, love hobbies, we have different hobbies throughout our lives, and we love spending money on our hobbies. We love cooking for people and showing people our gardens. Why can’t we have that thought about a computer game experience? So that people would want to invest money, not just feel compelled, or forced,” pondered Molyneux.

The ‘Neux’s new studio, 22 Cans, recently launched its first of seventeen “experiments”, a free-to-play game dubbed Curiosity, that features a £50,000 DLC item. The idea behind it isn’t to make the money, but rather to see if somebody would actually spend it.

“In a way it’s testing the morality of monetisation,” he explained. “A lot of the time games monetise against cheating, if you’re playing in multiplayer. And there is the whole moral issue about getting people addicted and asking for money from them. There are very few checks in place.”

The whole point of Curiosity is to chip away at a gigantic black cube to see what’s inside it. The twist is, only one person will be able to find out, and the one-of-a-kind £50,000 chisel will help the person who buys it to chip away at the cube much faster than everybody else.

“Well, I know what’s in the middle of the cube. And whoever breaks in there, I promise you this, it is the most amazing thing,” he said. “It’s a big cube; what’s inside? Only one person will find out, and whether that one person then goes on to tell the rest of the world, I don’t know.”

I think I’d rather save that kind of cash for, you know, like, a house or something. But honestly, I can’t wait to see if somebody actually pays up for that thing.