Free to play? - this is well worth a read

Stumbled across this article on the free to play business model:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322234515_The_Free-to-play_Business_Model

Whilst it is a little dry as it is written as a research paper, many of the points that it raises will be familiar to anyone who has played POE, particularly the section on deliberately inconvenient gameplay elements.

TLDR - the business model is designed to "milk" a small proportion of the playing population for money with the majority not paying. Games are not free to play, it's just that the free players are financed by the paying minority.

Well worth reading to help you decide whether to "support" the game (personal bias acknowledged by the use of quotations)


Wow - shifted to the off topic forum less than a minute after posting in general discussion!

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blindedbylight wrote:

it's just that the free players are financed by the paying minority.

Well no shit Sherlock.

What is a bit quaint at this point is how clueless corporatists ritually sabotage their own product for nothing. The "free to use" business model is everywhere now — think about Twitch and Patreon. And one need not go further than a livestream these days to see the f2p model at work, minus the deliberate sabotage.

Like literally all you have to do is take a moment to say "Thank you, [insert whale's name here]. Thank you so much." That's it. Well, and have content that's actually worth a damn. You don't need any stick if you have enough carrot.

I didn't read the tool's white paper because the abstract already shows a severe case of head up arse.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Like literally all you have to do is take a moment to say "Thank you, [insert whale's name here]. Thank you so much." That's it. Well, and have content that's actually worth a damn. You don't need any stick if you have enough carrot.

Sure. The thank you Mr X, Y and Z every 5 minutes is content. It is obscure privileged ads on how great their patrons are, reminding me why I don't like watching Twitch.

Thank you "blindedbylight" for eating food today !
You are one of my best supporters.

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awesome999 wrote:

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Like literally all you have to do is take a moment to say "Thank you, [insert whale's name here]. Thank you so much." That's it. Well, and have content that's actually worth a damn. You don't need any stick if you have enough carrot.

Sure. The thank you Mr X, Y and Z every 5 minutes is content. It is obscure privileged ads on how great their patrons are, reminding me why I don't like watching Twitch.

Shortly after I posted, I thought "actually, for the free-to-watch folks, sitting through the thanks is kinda like sitting through ads, and I should probably edit that in somehow."

Then I had an order come in and did real life stuff instead.

But it's worth noting that, in video games, you can make those thanks a lot less intrusive. You can put patrons in the credits. You can scatter portraits throughout the game, either obviously or subtly. You can create a Hall of Grandmasters map. You can have them be no-dialogue NPCs. There are lots of options, and I think the best ones are those that don't force free players to wait.