Free to play (FTP) games are somewhat of a curate’s egg. On one hand, you get a something that’s relatively good looking and may entertain you for a while, on the other hand, they’ll also drain your bank balance and ensure that your children get no inheritance – much like a virtual Anna Nicole Smith.
You see, Free to Play doesn’t necessarily mean free (gasp!). It simply means that the base game is free, however you may have to have to pay to use some of the content. If you’ve ever run out of moves on Candy Crush Saga, or been in the middle of village-pillaging on Clash of Clans only to be met by a screen inviting you to spend some very real money on some very fake arrows then you’ll be familiar with this business model.
These type of games will normally be found on the mobile market and they entice you by claiming the game is free, but then charge you for the content necessary to play it, which, in my opinion, is false advertising – if you can’t experience the product without having to purchase the extra content, then it shouldn’t be advertised as such.
Think of it as going to McDonald’s to buy yourself a McMeal, then finding out that you are simply given a McBun and have to pay extra for the McBurger, McLettuce and McWhatever else goes on them. What you really want is the entire burger, as shown in the picture on the menu, and if you want a side of onion rings or extra cheese, you know ahead of ordering that you’ll need to pay a lil’ extra
League of Legends is a good example of the hamburger in the picture. You could feasibly play it and never have to pay for the premium features unless you wanted to play a champion at it and have your ass handed to you. Understandably, there will be Cultured Vulture readers out there whose “thing” may be paying your hard earned cash for humiliation – which will make for a great article one day – if so, this may be the FTP game for you. If not, it’s still great fun and I would thoroughly recommend it.
Killer Instinct is also a great example of this. Microsoft have given us a fantastic fighting game that features – wait for it – cross platform play between PC and Xbox One, proving it is possible to have top-notch games available for free, and the only thing you’d have to pay for is additional playable characters. If you don’t want them, you don’t have to buy them but you can still immerse yourself in a visually impressive, highly rated title.
No doubt about it, there’s a ton of excellent FTP games out there to fit lovers of all genres, from strategy games such as World of Tanks to first person shooters to MMO games like Runescape which you could literally spend a million billion hours playing.
In my opinion, there is an obligation on behalf of the developer to make sure the free to play version is at least playable without the premium content. It’s one thing to offer a game where you can pay for extra features, however it’s very unfair on the user to charge for weapons, time or moves that are required to play the game.
It would be easy to criticize developers for doing this, although I understand that they need to pay the bills somehow, but in providing only the base of the game, nobody wins. The user doesn’t get a good experience of the game and will think twice about using a FTP game in future, whereas the developer won’t reach their potential audience as many people won’t want to part with their cash on an unproven product.
Steam have the right idea about this. The majority of FTP content on Steam is simply cosmetic – for example, if you want your character wearing a diamond encrusted goat skull crash helmet, you can pay to get it, however the gameplay itself will generally never change. I feel that this is the way forward for FTP games.
The market for these games is huge and without a doubt, we’ll see them increasing in popularity, especially with mobiles and tablets becoming more powerful. As long as the base product offered by developers has substance and is good value for money then we could see some excellent FTP titles being rolled out in the near future, and I for one can’t wait to see what lies in store for us.
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