Hawken publisher Mark Long believes the free-to-play model will “change everything”, and the publishers and developers should be sure to deliver only what the players want.
“I believe free-to-play is like the MP3 of our industry,” Long said to Eurogamer. “It will change everything. You just can’t compete with free. Music unbundled albums, and it radically changed the way that music was marketed, although sometimes not in a good way.
“The games industry could do with that, though. We’re dominated by a couple of franchises – if Activision had their way they’d make three games a year until, well. We’d never stop playing.”
When asked what steps can be taken to make sure the F2P model isn’t discouraged due to the corporate nature of the industry, Long bluntly said: “I think our entire philosophy is don’t f**k the player over. Don’t do a Zynga. Only sell what they’d want. There’s customisation, a little bit of convenience in there and then eventually we’re going to sell clan tools, the ability to run your own server. But right out of the gate, it’s just customisation.”
Those are bold claims indeed.
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