10 Sins of Online Gaming

Free to Play:

Well, you may agree or disagree with this one, but let’s be honest here. The decision to go “Free-to-Play” has ruined a lot of good ideas and have also made some great games almost unplayable. Let’s take a look at Team Fortress 2. While this is a great game, even after it went free to play you may remember the horde of players who joined the game without even so much as a clue on how to actually play it. It also created a bit of a divide in some gaming communities. Maybe not so much as TF2, but games like SWtOR, and Rift certainly received some backlash after the announcement.

The reasoning for this is actually very simple too. If people pay upwards of $50.00 to play the game then all of a sudden a few months down the line everyone and their little brother is playing for free, getting all the same gear you are and fill the chat window with stupid questions.  Once you allow people in for free it takes that value away. It is no longer an “investment” of money and time, it’s just a time sink. Free to play certainly has it’s places and there are games that have been successful with it, but if you’ve launched your game as a paid for title, then roll out back out as a free to play title, people who actually spent money are going to be upset, that’s just the way it goes.