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Should F2P be renamed "Transaction"?
Sephastus
Member UncommonPosts: 455
Should games be categorized by how they are funded? For example:
Ad: Games where you pay no initial fee, and whose revenue is dependent on advertisements being shown to the player, before, during and/or after gameplay.
Transaction: Games where you pay no initial fee and whose revenue comes from charging players for in game items, and/or playtime extenders and other "fluff" or useful digital equipment or item.
Subscription: For games that you pay a monthly fee, and nothing is gated by a money barrier.
Pay: For games that you pay only an upfront fee and nothing is gated by a money barrier.
Expansion: For games that you pay for each additional physical, collectable “expander” (Skylanders, Disney’s Infinity etc.)
If multiple of the above items apply to a game, then the one which generates the most profit should be it’s main identifier, with the others listed as additional revenue.
Would something like this even fly, or would there be huge backlash from developers?
Comments
I've played F2P and never spent a single penny on them... there is no transaction unless you choose to make one.
To me, a cup of coffee is hot, no need to put a label on the cup warning me of this... and yet, there it is, telling me the obvious.
The reality is, the people whom such warnings are meant to reach, never read them in the first place...
You could flat out say this game will leech your entire savings from not only your account but everyone's account that you have ever met, and it will still would go unnoticed.
Common sense is common sense, but apparently it isn't so common.
Truth!
I did pay for SWTOR for a while, but my kids never paid a dime. Yeah, common sense is lacking these days. We should all know what it is now. My kids do. My 7 year-old does!! and he knew that since he was like 5!!
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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But if the coffee contains Hazelnut Creamer do you need to put a warning label stating "WARNING: Contains Nuts". And.. Yes, I agree, common sense is not very common.
If that coffee was sold as "Cool Coffee (tm)" then the warning that it's hot might be more necessary.
I don't think the games need to be specifically called with certain term based on their payment model. What I think is a problem is that games that are only partially free use the term free.
There needs to be a clear distinction between games with different models that are both called F2P by many people currently.
Dota 2: You can play for free and right from the start without any grind you compete with everyone else on equal terms. Valve earn their money from cosmetic character items, announcer packs and tickets to watch tournaments.
Hearthstone: You can try the game for free but right from the start you are at a disadvantage because there are many cards you don't have access to. It's possible to earn all the cards in the game without paying anything but it requires you to play for a long time while being disadvantaged against players who spend money to buy cards.
These two games both get called F2P by many players but there is a big difference in their models for earning money. The experience for people who try the game for the first time is also very different, in one you compete on equal terms and in the other you don't. To me free to play is a suitable description for Dota 2's model. I'm not sure what to call Hearthstones model but for it to be transparent I think it should be evident from the name that you don't play on equal terms for free, that requires you to pay or grind.
Yes yes, many people have seen that episode. Funny how the discussion has gone on for years but now that South Park mentioned it, they own it. DERP.There are two sides to the lie. One side has been pointed out in this thread. That is can you play any part of the game without spending money. IF so, then it is free. It is just the people who feel entitled to things without paying who claim that a game isn't free if all aspects of the game aren't free.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
You can play both for free... so the are both free to play. Playing a game and having full access to everything are completely different things. As long as you an play a game for as long as you want for free it is f2p. If the free time is limited it is not f2p but offers a free trial.
It's a balance between buyer beware and vendor take care.
There is common sense but there is also deceptive marketing.
It's the 2 sided coin thing. If everything was in balance, there wouldn't be a problem. But there is no balance. Consumers are anxious to find the next best thing and want to believe in it and companies want consumer's money and so they tell them what they want to hear.
I think in the end it comes down to one thing - fair business practise.
Lately I am seeing free-to-play games that are purely designed to rip you off every single penny. At the same time there are early-access games that are practically scams that make money and shut down any support as soon as they sell enough. You have classic "box" games that pack half of their content as paid DLC.
I think free-to-play is not actually a flawed or unfair model per-se. It's more the fact that developers are becoming unfair in general and really trying what they can get away with.
I am hoping people can only get scammed so many times. In my opinion it comes down to people to do their research - in turn putting pressure on devs to be fair in what they deliver (and how they charge their content).
P2P and F2P came about because of the cost at the register (at the time this was the primary method of sales). P2P games cost money upfront (purchase) and F2P games did not. Later when the initial (box) price was removed, P2P still charged for something (sub or timecard) before you could play, and F2P did not.
In the west, the #1 source of all revenue for F2P has been the monthly sub. Direct sales were actually more common for P2P for many years (expansions, then DLC) before F2P adapted and made them common as well. Today, many games are F2P (no initial box sale requirement) with a monthly sub, and direct sales. The remaining P2P games still require the initial purchase, but also have a monthly sub, and direct sales.
I see many good points, but just for comparison, if I give you a piece of candy and tell you:
"it is NOT toxic",
and yet in the wrapper it states
"not toxic as long as you only ingest small amounts, or if you pay for anti-toxins when you want to ingest more than 1 piece a day"
Is it REALLY non-toxic?
Sure, some will say: I ate the whole bag 1 piece per day, and never had to pay a dime... but that doesn't really remove the fact that the candy IS toxic. Same with games... you CAN consume these games for "free", but that does not MAKE the game free... they are either Ad-based, or transaction based, and imo, that should be the way they are described, instead of "Free to Play".
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Yes, let us all try that for the next new "f2p" game that comes out. No one spends a red cent on the game for any reason. How long does that game last? The point is, the reason YOU get to play for "free" is because John, Sam and Mary all are paying for things in that item shop over there. Key word is PAYING. So, someone has to pay for you to play for free. If no one pays, no one plays.
Let's party like it is 1863!
Imagine if the candy said, you can eat me or leave me. If you eat me, and enjoy the candy you can either a) have a small piece of candy each day, or b) pay for a lot more candy each day.
Now replace the candy with cigarettes.
I'm all for games taking responsibility and not purposely trying to rip people off with dirty tactics.
Though as a whole I believe it's ultimately up to the consumer to either have self control on games that have good cash shops, or their morality and intelligence to avoid games that are blatant cash grabs. But more often than not people want something now and they want something new. This paves the way for predatory behaviors with some companies.
It also means that we support predatory behavior whilst games with great options are left in the dust and not given anything. Which leads to more people adopting said tactics as a whole.
It's a cycle that is in our ball court, but we just don't have the discipline to bend it to our will as a collective group.
I dunno, leaving people to their own devices without any protection sounds like some form of Social Darwinism and we all know where that led.
As you mentioned predatory behaviour is an issue that needs to be regulated.
They are regulated, even more harshly now since they pulled the wool over the eyes of the regulators. I am not sure what your point is?
This is not entirely true. They have come up with systems that are deceptive. Like Labor Points. Oh sure, it's not a 100% blocked pay wall. Instead it's incremental. Sure you can play....but only so much per day. Then you are done until tomorrow. It's really not all that different than a trial. So now it's a gray area of is it a true pay wall vs not? but in the end, the player who doesn't spend money cannot play the game and they are being blocked on a daily basis.
But in the end, it's still free. It's the player who determines what they want their speed of progression to be. Sure, LP allow you to advance more quickly (from what I've been told, haven't played), and the same can be said of XP Pots, etc. However, there have always been external services for progression, you can buy gold, buy levelled characters, buy power-levelling. The emergence of cash shop items doesn't CHANGE that, it simply makes it less taboo, supports the game instead of sending money outside of the game, it removes or limits these "underground" markets by making it less profitable, and it levels the playing field, meaning any player can access that without risk of violating the EULA.
That being said, even with LP in place, someone could hire a team of international players to play their characters for them 24/7 and they'll still advance more quickly than the average player, free or not.
So I think that a pay wall has ALWAYS existed. If you paid to power level you'll always get there more quickly. However, some of these services actually serve to prevent or limit the viability of some of these services.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Just to address this. You're absolutely correct that this behavior has always existed, however when it's not built into the game, it's cheating. And people generally shun or disapprove of cheaters which is why people almost never admit to using those services (think of every new MMO launch when the gold seller/buyer banhammer comes out and all of a sudden all these "innocent" players get "mistakenly" banned).
Now, the problem that moving services to a cash shop creates is that the game eco-system must be built with supporting the cash shop in mind. So things like leveling speed are altered so that purchasing a leveling boost is an attractive option. Cash shops are impacting game design and potentially diminishing gaming experiences.
F2P, as a term, is too vague imo. It carries the implication that you are able to play the game without hindrance, and I'd say most people take it as such which is why it's a hotly contested issue. Also, companies know that it's interpreted in that manner, which is why they use the term. It's like pricing an item at $3.99 instead of $4. They know that people's brains are wired to find the $3.99 more appealing even though we objectively know there's essentially no difference.
Like others have pointed out, there are various F2P systems and it's a bit odd that they all share the same title of F2P. Path of Exile is Free to Play. You can play it, unfettered, with no money. That's literally what it says on the tin. The cash shop offers up extras that don't impact gameplay. So there are models in which F2P truly applies.
But we see more the more insidious effects of cash shops in games like GW2. Wait wait, I know that you can play the game without spending any money. But as someone who has been there since beta and has been through many patches, I would be completely disingenuous to say that ANET's decision making hasn't been influenced by their cash shop. They have increased grinds, nerfed drop rates of certain items, gold income is a trickle, and they regularly create content that is best consumed by playing the gambling box game. And this is my real beef with F2P. The game is made slightly worse each time someone at a meeting comes up with a way to nudge players just a little closer to the cash shop. Because they're not working on how to simply make a better game that makes people want to buy it and spend money on it, they just want to take their existing audience and monetize them.
An anecdote for anyone who might care (I find this stuff interesting). The woman who sued over McDonald's hot coffee won because McDonalds knew that their coffee was dangerously hot, and did nothing to protect customers.
She won because McDonalds' own VP of product safety had been warning the board of directors for months that, despite the warnings, they should not serve coffee that is 200 degrees. It can cause 3rd degree burns. We've already had reports of minor injuries, but it's only a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt by this.
Part of the law of warning labels (In the US, anyway) is that a warning has to say *what* it's warning about. "Hey, this crap is hot!" isn't a warning. "May cause severe burns" is a warning. When warnings are generic, they tend to be ignored. A company that knows its warning labels are likely to be ignored (evidenced by the track record of minor injuries being reported), the company has a duty to its customers to improve the labeling.
Now back to your regularly scheduled flame war.
Well.. it doesn't actually contain nuts, so .. no. :P
On topic:
I wish these posts would stop. I realize that I don't have to read them, but it's quite painful that so many people just don't use their heads. Just think of it this way, is it at all possible to play ANY aspect of the game without paying? Then it's free to play. Maybe not play everything or have everything. like the second poster said, everyone should know by now what they're getting into.
p2p = every players has to pay for playing
f2p = the community has to pay but each player can decide if and how much he spends. Just calling it "Transaction" doesn't hit the point.
Well, if you drink too much water, you can die of water poisoning and if you drink too little, you can die of dehydration. Last time I checked, no such warning label was printed on any container of bottled water that can see.
Apparently it is reasonable to assume that people will not poison themselves with water or refuse to drink water but it is not reasonable to assume that coffee ordered from a drive thru restaurant is hot.
Think about it... you package multivitamins as multi-flavored chewable gummy bears and wonder why children mistake it for candy... you wanted them to take their multivitamins so you packaged it in a way that they think it's something else. Yay, my children are taking their multivitamins! But then you find they've eaten all the multivitamins because it does taste like candy and you end up in the emergency room... because too much of anything is bad. Damn pharmaceutical companies, how dare they mis-represent their products.
Again common sense should have avoided all this, but we live in a society in which everyone is to blame but ourselves.