A New Breed of Video Games
May 21, 2018
While video games have long been popular, a new trend in the video game market is the idea of making the game free. While this seems like it might not be the best tactic to gain revenue for video game companies, it has proven to be highly successful and has left the consumer satisfied. In recent years, the idea of making the consumer pay for a certain ability in a video game to give them an advantage has become unpopular among consumers. It is entirely possible for free games like Fortnite to surpass paid games like Call of Duty, which have not hit their stride in recent years. As the idea of free games has become more popular, more companies are exploring the possibility of making their game free.
Paying to win games is frowned on by the public. The consumer is not content with how they sometimes have to pay ten or twenty dollars extra just to compete with other players who spent the extra ten to twenty dollars. “Morally, it is rather questionable to require players to pay for the game, and then require them to pay additional fees in order to keep up with others,” said Henry Nichols, a senior at SSFS. He does say however that, “if you don’t want to pay, you don’t have to in order to play the game.”
Recently, the company, EA, came under fire when they introduced Battlefront 2 in stores. Buyers found that most of the stuff they thought they were going to get was not actually in the game unless they paid for it. This led to loyal supporters of the game protesting and boycotting the game, leading to a less predicted value in revenue. If video game companies do decide to make certain aspects of their game pay-to-win in the future, they should be more careful in how they execute it to prevent another situations like the one from EA.
Fans have become intrigued by the growing selection of video games, like Fortnite, Dota 2, Smite, and more. These games have attracted a large amount of people and brought high revenue to video game companies. Since the games are free, the consumer does not need to question whether it is worth their money and time to play this game. If they do not like the game, they can simply uninstall it. When asked about why some free games can gain more revenue than paid for games, Daniel Hooks, a senior at SSFS, stated, “because they often offer more in return for the money and get the player more easily into the game as they will try it because it’s free and then pay money.”
Once players download a free the game they can use small amounts of money being to get more clothing options or other exterior features. These are called microtransactions. Fortnite has heavily relied on these to earn revenue. Fortnite is also popular on ESports and the company gets a portion of the earnings from every event. When asked about whether free games will be more popular in the future, Daniel replied, “Free games might become more popular, but recently free games have had more in game transactions so it has the same effect as free games but sold at full price. Free games will definitely become more frequent, but for it to be successful like Fortnite they need to have a style of play that is relatively new and doesn’t seem to copy another game. Fortnite did copy other games but they did it in a style that is different.”
Will Savich • May 24, 2018 at 3:26 pm
I was a little bit disappointed to learn that this article was about free-to-play games and not the battle royale genre but I still think it’s an interesting topic. The history of price scaling in video games, particularly identifying the “best” price model in gaming, has always been a point of contention for the more active members of the community.
The traditional pricing model, originally developed for the sale of books, has always been paying a single price at the moment of sale. Even now, this remains the predominant price model for modern games, aside from the numerous tweaks made to adapt video game distribution to keep up with modern standards for game development and marketability. Now experiencing a fall in popularity, the type of video game about which a player can say “I beat it” has become rarer and rarer as the years have passed and the expectations of the consumers have evolved.
The goalposts have moved. As the big-name, AAA franchises have begun abandoning single player campaign-based games (see the Call of Duty Black Ops 4 [written in promotional content as IIII and, yes, that’s how they’re writing 4] announcement about the complete exclusion of a single player game mode in favor of multiplayer modes) so too will the larger game development community follow. The amount of resources that go in to the development of modern games and adhering to the standards thereof just isn’t as profitable enough for it to be worth it. People are buying fewer and fewer games and invest increasingly more time into single games and development studios are visibly responding to that. Finding ways to earn money after the initial purchase through microtransactions and downloadable content/expansion packs has become more important than having a strong team of writers and charming worldbuilding.
I’m actually getting kind of sleepy and I think I’m going to go home for the day but let me summarize/TL;DR the rest of my thoughts.
There are several different reasons behind the evolution of video games:
Online gaming has become more practical as internet access has become more available and more advanced.
Video game-centric content creation (“Let’s Plays”, reaction videos, gameplay streams, professional gaming) have become profitable careers for many people which, in turn, has had an effect on the market and the goals that game designers have to maximize profit.
People’s brains have changed. Everything has to be faster nowadays than it was back in the early days of gaming, casual gamers are a substantial targetable audience, etc
Hardware is different. If you’ve ever played an old game (namely two-dimensional platformers) you might notice that they’re a lot more difficult. This is because, in the earlier days of video games, games had to be fit onto devices MUCH smaller than what we have now, both physically and in terms of computer memory. The best way for developers to get people to play their game more was by making their game difficult, meaning players would have to play through levels many times before they could actually beat them. That kind of roundabout gameplay extension is neither needed anymore nor can studios get away with it. Audiences are a lot more perceptive about development practices used to benefit the studio rather than the consumer.
Sorry, I think all of my comments on the Wildezine (all two of them) have been mindless drivel. Pretty good article, though.
P.S. it’s eSports, not ESports
P.P.S. it’s DotA 2, not Dota 2 (acronym for Defense of the Ancients)
P.P.P.S. Sorry, I get really nitpicky about video games