♫[Intro music]♫
I know we've talked a lot about free-to-play in the last year
but as it becomes clearer and clearer that it's going to be one of the predominant ways that we pay for games in the next we pay for games in the next decade,
it becomes increasingly important that we both as designers and consumers explore the ins and outs of this model
and unfortunately something like 85% of the free-to-play games we see out there are just doing it wrong.
Now 85% may sound hyperbolic, a wildly high estimate.
But anyone who's seen our other episodes on free-to-play games knows that we fundamentally believe in the model.
Done right, we think it's better for everyone, developers and consumers alike, so we have no desire to throw the free-to-play industry under the bus here,
But after looking at all the free-to-play games he played or worked on in the list year,
James concluded that the vast majority were approaching Free-to-Play in a way that is detrimental for the player and the company alike.
And it all stems from one place: a complete lack of underlying design philosophy.
You see, too many free-to-play companies still conceptualize paying for a game and experiencing the game as two fundamentally different things.
When instead they should see monetizing as part of the experience.
So often very little high-level thought is devoted to how the monetization experience *feels* to the player.
It may sound silly, it may sound simple, but very often one of the first things James has to do when working with free-to-play companies
... is have them set an underlying design Philosophy that'll help them guide all decisions around monetization,
and the philosophy he goes with is this: The player has to enjoy spending money on your game.
This seems so basic, and yet the vast majority of free-to-play games currently on the market fall rather into one of two completely opposed camps
They are either A: games where it's actually far more enjoyable not to spend the money on the game
or B: games that try to force the player to pay money rather than giving them a reason to want to.
So let's talk a little about each of those.
First, games where it's actually way more interesting to not spend the money on the game.
You've all probably played one.
You know, games where the most interesting challenge is to see how far you can get without paying money.
Games where it's way more compelling to figure out all the ways you can get the fancy gear or compete with the paying players without spending a cent.
Games where all the challenge disappears when you pay.
Where a system that was before a crafty puzzle that you felt clever for solving just becomes dull and routine
because you bought a fast track to the finish line.
These types of games fail, not because they aren't good for the player,
but because the player by definition won't enjoy spending money on the game.
Why would they want to?
Working around the pay system is often actually a more engaging challenge than the core gameplay in these games.
And so the player never has a reason to monetize. In fact, it's in their best interest not to.
And while this may be a lot of fun for the player (at least for a little while)
It fails completely as a monetizing strategy. And that failure actually ends up having negative consequences for the players to.
Without a high conversion rate or a substantial revenue from their users,
Most of these games tends to fade away, or simply stop being supported by the company that built them.
Because the game isn't earning enough to justify the investment, the developers slow down the number of updates or simply cease adding new content altogether.
The developers slow down the number of updates or simply cease adding new content altogether.
Just letting the game continue to shuffle on and provide the last few drops of revenue [that] it can until it dies.
That sucks for developers and players alike.
And yet, it's the inevitable result of that underlying design philosophy
Because, while many such games are just the result of careless monetization design...
...many others were designed that way out of fear of being seen as the other type of free-to-play game:
The game that feels like it's extorting you.
We've all played that second type too - these are the pay to win games.
Or, the games that let you invest 20 hours and then hit you with a paywall that essentially requires that you pay up to continue.
These games stem from a design philosophy that doesn't really consider you to be a player so much as a source of revenue.
It's game design done by accountants rather than designers, and it's inevitably destructive.
It's the complete divorce of play from pay, and the worst thing is that *at first* this type of monetization appears to work.
Many of us have at some point grit our teeth and paid for some stupid thing we felt like a game was forcing us to pay for.
And we resented it. That niggling resentment stuck somewhere in the back of our minds and made the whole experience worse.
Until at some point, we hit yet another monetization squeeze and just threw up our hands and said, "Screw you guys. I'm done."
This is the worst possible experience
But because it forces monetization so hard it will get a comparatively sizable number of players to convert early on.
and so it will appear to be very successful.
Until a year down the line when it becomes clear how many players it's forced out of the game
and how much it's segmented its own community.
This is the method that Zynga went with in many of its games
and this arc can very clearly be seen in many of its products.
Unfortunately, because this method appears at first to work if you're simply looking at raw numbers
and because from a design perspective this doesn't require A great deal of effort or skill from the team,
the extorted version of free-to-play is something that much of the industry decided to emulate.
And this is what led to the bad reputation that free-to-play has gotten.
Which, in turn now, drives many away from the free-to-Play model entirely.
That's bad for everyone. We have got to find a way past this manipulative strategy,
,as it leaves us with nothing to build on from a business perspective.
And it's becoming less and less effective anyway as consumers are getting savvier.
So, how do we avoid the pitfall of making it more engaging for the player to game the free-to-play system than to pay money...
...while, at the same time not falling into the trap of making your player feel like the game is extorting money from them at every turn?
Well, it's different for every game
But it all comes back to the central philosophy of creating an environment where the player is happy to spend money on your game.
Think about when you back something cool on kickstarter or even buy something at a regular game store. You're excited.
You're happy to spend that money for something that you're just glad exists.
Sure, you might rather it be free. I mean, that's probably true about everything, but you don't mind paying for it.
In fact you're often very happy just to be able to buy that thing.
That's what a player should feel in a good free-to-play experience.
The best of these experiences feel like buying a toy or a model or something to treasure;
Something that you want to own just for the sake of owning it. And every time you look at it, It makes you smile.
For any of you who've played warhammer, or Maybe even Heroclix:
You know how that feels. Games like League of Legends really capitalize on this well.
But things to own aren't the only things we treasure: so are experiences.
Sometimes the experiences games can sell us are big things. Like a new {?} mystery in the secret world...
... which I would eagerly buy and then lose myself in like getting a new season of my favorite TV show.
But as a developer you can't always provide that new large-scale adventure or episode. So what else can we do well?
Just as an example that I particularly love, there was an item I saw once in a korean MMO called "The Money Bomb"
and it was this item where, when you used it, it exploded into goodies like a popping piñata.
Now, the buyer of The Money Bomb couldn't pick up any of the goodies that popped out, but everyone else around you could.
And people loved buying these things because someone would walk into town
and throw one of these babies down, and it would just turn into a party.
The person who bought The Money Bomb would get tons of love from everyone around them.
And often, other people would announce that they were going to go buy one too
and soon the town square just turned into an impromptu online festival.
People loved buying these things; they enjoyed buying them.
They didn't resent the money spent, or feel like they had to spend that money, and it wasn't actively more fun to not buy them.
*Fantastic* design.
So, when building a free-to-play game don't think about the money first; build a good game and the money will come.
And don't base your design around fear of being perceived as extorting players either
Instead, build your game around finding joy for the human beings playing your game.
What will make each purchase something the players happy to do?
What will make each dollar spent feel completely worth it?
What will make finally spending your money feel like buying that thing you saw in that store window and longed for every day for a year,
till you finally saved up enough to buy it?
That's where you should root your free-to-play design
That's what will make free-to-play a great model for everyone involved.
See you next week.
♫[Outro music]♫