Freemium Games

Why You Should Be More Wary Of Freemium Games

http://www.businessinsider.com/sean-plott-explains-why-he-thinks-freemium-games-are-the-best-business-model-for-both-players-and-developers-2015-3

 

Let me start off by saying that I hate Freemium games, I hate micro transactions, and I hate about 95% of games that have them. However, with the recent skyrocketing of popularity of free to play games like Fortnight, I’ve begun to wonder how these games came about and why they seem to be so lucrative and popular.

For those of you that don’t know, Freemium games are those where the base experience is free, but the game offers you things here and there that make it easier, less time consuming, or give you some sort of cosmetic improvement. All of these are purchased with real world currency.

But how does this work? It seems logical that people would just not pay money because they don’t have to in order to play the game, but clearly they do. This is because of the way these games are designed. Freemium games are typically designed in a way that draws the user in, then places some obstacle in their way in order to persuade them to purchase a power up or a loot crate. For example in a game called Score Hero, you start out cruising along and having a good time, but relatively quickly you hit a wall where the game becomes much more difficult  and you burn through your lives and the wait to get more is ludicrously long. This is the game encouraging you to throw some money their way by severely limiting your progress so that you can overcome these hurdles and continue your enjoyment of the game. This practice is the core of Freemium games.

Another strategy is to offer a level of exclusivity if a user pays money. This is usually a cosmetic thing and takes the form of weapon skins, outfits, or other cosmetic items that do nothing to improve your play or the game; they just look cool. This is made even more enticing through the use of loot crates. Loot crates contain all of the items listed above, and are either payed for directly or through the use of keys that the user must buy in order to unlock the crate. These crates drop items at random and draw the user in because of the chance that they could win something really cool.

Freemium games vary in their level of aggression when it comes to pursuing users and their money. Some are relatively harmless and just want to make a game and make money, but others can be pretty ruthless. Just read what this game developer said in an anonymous confession about how his team uses Facebook to hook users: “we take Facebook stalking to a whole new level. You spend enough money, we will friend you. Not officially, but with a fake account. Maybe it’s a hot girl who shows too much cleavage? That’s us. We learned as much before friending you, but once you let us in, we have the keys to the kingdom. We will use everything to figure out how to sell to you. I remember we had a whale in one game that loved American Football despite living in Saudi Arabia. We built several custom virtual items in both his favorite team colors and their opponents, just to sell to this one guy. You better believe he bought them. And these are just vanity items. We will flat out adjust a game to make it behave just like it did last time the person bought IAP.”

 

2 thoughts on “Freemium Games

  1. There have also been games that I have played similar to this but they have the “free to play, pay to win” feeling to them. This is similar to the games you were talking about but when you pay for things you could gain a slight advantage over the opponent you are playing online.

    Hearthstone is an online free card game that I used to play. Once I downloaded it I was quickly in love with the concept of it but once I climbed up the ranks I could never win because other people had better cards and decks than me because they would buy packs. Eventually I started spending tons of money on the game just to be able to be competitive and that is how Blizzard and other companies make money off of free games.

    When I played during my senior year Hearthstone was making 20-24 million dollars a month. This is due to the fact the eSports scene was beginning to rise and many people wanted to be competitive in the “ranked” play mode so they had to buy cards.

    What do you think about pay to win types of games? Personally I enjoy playing them but my wallet does not like them.

    https://mmos.com/news/activision-blizzard-reports-strong-earnings-hearthstone-revenue-up-20-yoy

  2. One of the posts below this was speaking about how Fortnite is making so much money. Fortnite its a free to play game that is available on PC, xbox, ps4, mac, and mobile. The post mentions how fortnite has pulled in $126 million in February alone. since the game itself is free all of the money they have made is from the fact that they provide the level of exclusivity that you mentioned through cosmetic skins and items. the best type of freemium games are the ones that offer a full and complete game and focus only on the cosmetic changes. Epic games doesnt seem to be too aggressive when it comes to making people but things. it seems like they just want to create cool content for people to buy and since the game is free people are more willing to pay for items in game.
    https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-freemium-1994347

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