This week, we covered how Free to Play impacts the install base and what that means for monetization, as well as what removing the payment cap means for both the company and the player.

Games as a service

I have mentioned in the past that Video Games as software exist in a strange limbo where they can be seen as consumable, but as time goes on more support is needed.  This support can be in the form of continuing to add features, adding content, providing service to consumers that have problems, fixing bugs, running events, and so forth.  When you take all of this into account, it can be appropriate to view a game as as service.  This doesn’t apply to all games, of course.  I doubt anyone would expect to get support from Sega for their old Altered Beast cartridge.

Sega support line from the early 90s… RISE FROM YOUR GRAVES!!!

Free to play games, however, are mostly clearly in the service side of things.  They have to keep players interested in the game and to do that they need to keep providing new content and/or new features.  This development keeps players engaged in the game, which keeps the player base up, and hopefully attracts new users into the game.  On top of that, it gives existing users something new they may be interested in spending money on.  The idea is that the development continues to add value to the game, and the player base is interested enough in the value to pay for it.

This continued payment is the only way for this whole system to be sustainable.  The player base must continue to be willing to pay to fund the development for the next piece that they will want to pay for.  this is the cycle, often called the content treadmill.  Create content, players consume it, create more for the players to consume.  This also has to be done quickly too.  If the pace of content development is too slow, then the high level players, which have a good chance of being spending players, could get bored and leave.

The exercise is good, but I think this is taking the term a bit too literally.

Accessibility vs. Fidelity and why F2P is well suited to mobile

Free to Play is a way to increase your software install base, and the mobile hardware install base is massive, so this is a natural pairing.  However, there is more to this that makes mobile ideal for Free to Play.

Consider this…  How many people have a home setup that can compete with a good IMAX movie theater, with comparable screen quality, sound system, and so forth?  Very few.  Even then, though, most people don’t go to the movie theater that often, preferring for the more convenient television.  Television is in turn giving way to streaming, a lot of which is on mobile devices who’s screens are too small to be considered equivalent fidelity.  Movies will continue to get nicer, TV will continue to get nicer, and mobile will continue to get nicer.  Each of them will improve their fidelity, but at certain levels, they will lose out to something that may be lower fidelity, but more convenient.

Mobile interfaces are easy to use, or at least there’s a lot of effort put into making them as easy as possible.  They are convenient and accessible.  They won’t offer the kind of experience you would get on something like an Uncharted game, with big budget visuals, writing, voice acting, and game design.  The hardware simply cannot compete with such a high fidelity experience.  People don’t require that all the time, though.  Quite often, people really do value convenience more highly.

What? I thought everyone had a den like this…

Free to play is also well suited to a lower fidelity, higher convenience presentation.  From a consumer standpoint, the initial price tag is very convenient.  You have the device, it doesn’t cost you any money to purchase, and poof, both pay gates to bar entry into the game are gone.

Pages: 1 2 3