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Kasz216 on 22 August 2012
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wfz said:
Kasz216 said:
wfz said:
With everyone wanting to get exclusively in bed with F2P and ditch paid products entirely...

I'm wondering, how would a F2P model work in a single-player game? (In an effective manner).

Well i can think of a few ways.

1) Auction houses like Diablo 3

2) Free game, paid server based DLC/items/content

3) Premium Classes

4) Pay for cheats

5) Kickstarter like meter for new content updates.   Like this game?  Want to see more of it?   Help by donating.

1) I see auction houses working for games with loot, but outside of that.. no. You are correct with this response, though, because there are definitely single player games focused around loot. I don't see many companies trying to monetize this route, but it is possible. It definitely takes more effort than other means.

2) isn't this what our boxed products already do, or do you mean making important weapons (weapons being one example) along the story-line costing money?

3) What do you mean by this? When I think of classes, I think of multiplayer. If so, you have a point here that I understand. But what about games with no multiplayer?

4) Unlikely to be a viable source by itself, but could add on to other means I suppose.

5) So you'd give the base game away for free, but rely on users to pay more into a kickstarter sort of deal to get more content? This could work.. only problem is you wouldn't necessarily be able to reach all of your consumers (unless you messaged this concept in-game) and they would have to pay knowing they have to wait months to see the content. Not sure this would work.

 

Every point you brought up was definitely a possibility, but I don't see any of them carrying a real high quality game to market profitably. Would you honestly use the above mentioned ways to monetize a Zelda game, for instance? I still don't see it working.

2) Boxed products do it somehwhat, not to a HUGE extent though.  People who play F2P games tend to buy a lot of stuff they wouldn't buy in games they paid for.

3) Imagine a Dungeons and dragons type game.  Something like a Battlemage, or a special race.  Or those extras you often see in mods like "Play as so and so" etc.

5) You'd be surprised how well it's worked in the past.  The Mount and Blade series was kind of like this, though actually the money came upfront.

 

A Zelda game?  Sure, i bet they could fund a zelda game pretty easy.  Zelda games aren't really THAT expensive.   Something like Crisis would be harder... but games like Crisis really shouldn't exist anyway, being far too risky and unprofitable more often then not.