Cevat Yerli believes so strongly in the future of free-to-play that he’s bet his entire company on it, but that doesn’t mean we’ve seen the end of story-driven, single-player Crytek games.

The Guardian asked Yerli how a traditional single-player experience could work as a freemium offering.

“We’ll figure out how to make a game like Crysis 3 work,” he replied.

“If the proposition is, the gamer gets the games for free, well, that’s better for the gamer. And what’s best for the gamer is best for the industry.”

The executive said going free-to-play will cut out a lot of hassle on the end user’s side.

“Customers have to put up with all this crap right now, legal notices, copyright protection. The best way to get rid of all that is go free,” he said.

“The gamers get what they want – free access – and if your game is good enough you can hook them in, whether that’s a single-player game, or multiplayer, or co-op, or an RPG, an RTS, or Fifa, or whatever, it really doesn’t matter.

“For every game you can find a solution. For every single one of them. It’s a creative challenge, nothing else.”

Crytek has launched a free-to-play social platform calle GFace; Warface is the flagship title.

http://www.vg247.com/2012/07/03/yerli-well-figure-out-how-to-make-free-to-play-aaa-work/

Crytek, Meet Valve.

... And learn. =)

I'm more confident in the model after playing Tribes: Ascend, it doesn't give any unfair advantages to people who've bought expensive gear and it has an unlock system that doesn't involve feeding it money, the money just gets you things much faster. But do I want it for a lot of games? No, I imagine if BF3 for example was F2P I wouldn't enjoy it as much.

Three huge poblems with F2P:

1. Bad game design. Rather than making a good game on its own merits the game will instead be designed so that the player will spend more money while playing it.

2. Pay to win is never good. It makes the low spending players feel unfairly treated and it makes the high spending players feel like they cheat. And neither will feel satisfied.

3. F2P increases the risk that people with disposition for addiction will become addicted and spend insane amounts of their hard earned money (called "whales" in the world of F2P).

Cevat Yerli you lier, F2P is not better for the gamer, it's only better for the publisher.

@bolded

Most recent F2P games aren't pay to win, the payed stuff doesn't give unfair advantages, they're just other options, like with any shooter.

It's hard to argue against the other 2 points though.

I like what Cevat Yerli is saying, but F2P is a little scary for those that are addicted. Mind you, if it isn't money, it's time, and time is money.

So true people lose their hard-earned cash when addicted, but so do they their hard-earned free time.

trudat

I don't think I have an addictive personality, but I know I'll end up spending too much if I really get into the game. I'm playing Tribes: Ascend right now, a great F2P shooter on steam, and I'm dredding the time when I get bored of what I have because I'll be so tempted to put money into it. On fifa 12 I ended up putting around £50 into ultimate team mode over about 4 weeks, that's when I stopped playing.

Free2Play relies on 20% that over spend on useless microtransaction crap within the game to fund the game for remaining 80% who just want to enjoy the core value of the game... for free.

Do we even want F2P AAA?

You bring up some excellent points of how publishers take severe advantage of the F2P model, but none of those are inherint problems of the F2P model as your post would suggest.