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Tag: Free to Play

  • Modern Combat 5 is Now Free-to-Play
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    Modern Combat 5 is Now Free-to-Play

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    Put on your war face. Modern Combat 5: Blackout is now free-to-play. Up until now, downloading Gameloft’s first person shooter would set you back $3.99 (and prior to that, $6.99 at launch). If you paid to fight prior to the …
  • Bandai Namco: Late to the Free-to-Play Party, but Incredibly Well Dressed
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    Bandai Namco: Late to the Free-to-Play Party, but Incredibly Well Dressed

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    Toward the end of a small group session at Bandai Namco's Global Gamers Day in Las Vegas, Director of Digital Games In Joo Hwang wandered in. He was ostensibly there to give some extra insight into the game on display, but instead, he did something unexpected: he admitted his company had made a mistake.Tilting the conversation toward free-to-play games, Hwang admitted that Bandai Namco had missed the boat and was now working hard to catch up. Stating that the only way to make up ground would be to deliver titles of very high quality, he also hinted at the difficulty in getting everyone involved to change mindsets from shipping products to delivering services.Hwang punctuated that last point by saying that he told employees to face the fact that "the most ugly form of your game is going to be the launch product."Though the event covered a lot of ground, the recurring theme of Bandai Namco embracing free-to-play games on all platforms was impossible to miss. It popped up in expected places like upcoming mobile games, but also in the revamping of established console franchises in F2P forms.
  • 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.
  • BREAKFINITY’s monetization is brilliant
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    BREAKFINITY’s monetization is brilliant

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    When developing a free-to-play game, there's one question every developer faces: how is it going to make money? In-app purchases are one way to go. Ad revenue is another. In many cases, you'll see a mix of both. Phil Hassey's BREAKFINITY is no exception - but it's the way he balances the two that makes it so compelling.BREAKFINITY is what would happen if Breakout or Arkanoid were an endless runner. Players will clear just enough blocks to see their ball move up to the next stage in a never-ending quest for points. You'll only get one ball, but - and here's where things get interesting - you can buy more with premium currency OR get a free ball by watching a video advertisement. You can get two free balls every game in this manner, but since it caps out at two there's still a sense of competition. Your high score is going to be based on those combined three balls alone, not upsetting the leaderboards (unless you want to buy more with premium currency, of course).Plenty of other games provide incentives for watching video advertisements, but the reward usually comes in the form of premium currency, and it's often balanced in a way that prevents you from exploiting the system and raising an infinite amount of in-game cash by watching an afternoon of commercials. BREAKFINITY goes in the opposite direction - watching a quick 15 second video is BREAKFINITY's answer to "insert coin to continue." The more you play, the more ad dollars Phil Hassey gets. It's a win/win.But is it working?