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Tag: DOTA 2

  • Steam user data reveals the best way to do Free-To-Play
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    Steam user data reveals the best way to do Free-To-Play

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    If you want an intense and fantastic example of Real Games Journalism, I recommend checking out Kyle Orland's exhaustive analysis of Steam user data at Ars Technica. It shows some incredibly interesting trends on how Steam users are buying -- and playing -- their games.What I'm most interested in is what this means for free-to-play games and development in general. The top two games on Steam right now -- both in terms of total users and hours played -- are free-to-play. Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2 both cost nothing to play, are essentially multiplayer-only, and started out as paid games. (In the case of Dota 2, that payment was to get into the closed beta.)Ignoring Team Fortress 2 for a moment, I think Dota 2 is particularly interesting. About four thousand human years have been put into the game since it hit beta in 2011. My Steam profile says I account for nearly 400 hours of that, so I can hardly feign surprise.Steam is estimated to account for three-fourths of the PC gaming market so it's not surprising that a game by Valve, the service's creator, would have a top spot in downloads. Dota 2 gets understandably preferential treatment on Steam's front page just about daily. It's not surprising that a Valve game, according to Ars' statistics, makes up a fifth of total playtime on a Valve service.
  • Advertising as Art: Free To Play isn’t a documentary, but it is a fascinating experience
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    Advertising as Art: Free To Play isn’t a documentary, but it is a fascinating experience

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    If a documentary is meant to provide an objective view of real-life stories, Free to Play is an utter failure. It's a puff piece -- a bit of advertising meant to show the positive influence of a product.Free to Play is a "documentary" about Dota 2 made by Valve, the proprietors of Dota 2. As a result you shouldn't really expect it to provide a negative or even balanced depiction of their own product and, more specifically, esports.Snippets of match announcers and interviews with team managers constantly drive home just how big, how swift, how valid professional gaming has become. It may be true; I quite enjoy it myself, so I can't entirely deny that it's something worth exploring. However, it's a story that's perhaps best not taken at face value from the people who stand to profit most.Of course, that doesn't mean the stories on display are bad, or the film itself uninteresting. In fact, it's a quite well-put-together little piece that provides a fascinating, if not particularly fair, view of three young people exploring a new form of entertainment.