{"id":609,"date":"2014-03-09T23:59:08","date_gmt":"2014-03-09T23:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/?p=609"},"modified":"2014-03-10T00:05:20","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T00:05:20","slug":"going-free-to-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/going-free-to-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Going Free To Play"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Battle<\/a>We’ve spent the last few months working on a sequel to Battle Group, aptly named Battle Group 2<\/a>. The game is coming along well and the team is excited to be showing it off at GDC Play this year. Other than the incredible new visuals, deeper gameplay with satellite strikes and reworked rendering system we’ve decided to make the game Free to Play. This post is about the why, how and when of this decision.<\/p>\n

Free to Play, or Pay to Play?<\/b><\/p>\n

Free to Play has been growing steadily in popularity for the past year or so. When Battle Group 1 was released (end of 2011) the majority of games were paid. In the last 3 years this has flipped so paid games are in the minority and it seems like the only way to compete is to join everyone at the race to the bottom.<\/span><\/p>\n

The issue that many people have with this new style of game is that it\u2019s not free to play at all. It\u2019s free to download and <\/span>begin<\/b> to play, but once you get into the game you are either forced to wait for ever increasing periods of time between actions, or pay for the \u201cconvenience\u201d of playing the game. What\u2019s worse, is that there seems to be a cookie cutter formula to many of these games off the back of the success of games like Candy Crush and Clash of Clans. Below is a quick selection of six different games on the app store that have extremely similar gameplay and F2P monetization.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"clone1\"<\/a> \"clone2\"<\/a> \"clone3\"<\/a> \"clone4\"<\/a> \"clone5\"<\/a> \"clone6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Little Timmy No Money<\/b><\/p>\n

So why are we going free to play? The main reason is based on the success of the free version of Battle Group 1. It receives ~100 times more downloads than the paid version and has seen over a hundred thousand downloads across all platforms. The issue is that for BG1 we only allowed you to play the first few levels. With Battle Group 2, you will be able to play all the way through all levels, without paying a dollar. For a lot of players (like little Jimmy No Money) paying to play just isn\u2019t an option. I have no issue with Jimmy playing the game, even the entire game if he can\u2019t afford to pay. What he will miss is experiencing all the ships and he may need to grind a little if his skill level drops below the difficulty curve.<\/span><\/p>\n

The flip side to this is the middle aged gamer that has plenty of money but little spare time. These players (like myself) have little time for grinding and would rather drop a few dollars to experience the full breadth of the game instantly without any grinding or waiting for delay mechanics.<\/span><\/p>\n

Different Styles of Free to Play<\/b><\/p>\n

As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, we\u2019re also working on a turn based space game that we are super excited about. We\u2019ve put this on hold so we can quickly get Battle Group 2 out, however we\u2019re taking the lessons we learn from BG2 and applying them to the new space game. The biggest lesson I\u2019ve learned from BG2 is that Free to Play is an all encompassing label. Really, we have a number of different styles that all fit under this moniker:<\/span><\/p>\n

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  1. Pay to Play or Wait to Play\n