Mad about Free to Play Video Games?

angrysprite

Just a very interesting short-read post over at Re/Code on the recent Game Developers conference. Tune piece is called "Mad About Free-to-Play Video Games? Try Being Happy Instead." It's very short, but important discussion of the free-to-play business model and how it should be approached.

Source is here:
http://recode.net/2015/03/16/mad-about-free-to-play-video-games-try-being-happy-instead/

My favorite part of the entire article is the very last paragraph.

rollingonit

I like this part the best.

“Let’s make cool stuff that people WANT to buy, and then they’ll WANT to buy it,” he said.

Then this transition.

“I want to buy what I NEED, right when I NEED it,” Hines said.

“Anyone today looking for entertainment is a kid in a candy store where there’s no price tag on anything,” he said. “They only have to pay money if they have to emotionally commit to anything.”

I leave you with this again.

https://vimeo.com/48842811 - The century of self.

Mazur 1928, p. 24, 44, 47, 50, similarly read: "Any community that lives on staples has relatively few wants. The community that can be trained to desire . . . to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed yields a market to be measured more by desires than by needs. And man's desires can be developed so that they will greatly overshadow his needs. . . . Human nature very conveniently presents a variety of strings upon which an appreciative sales manager can play fortissimo. . . . Threats, fear, beauty, sparkle, persuasion and careful as well as wild-cat exaggeration were thrown at the American buying public as a continuous and terrifying barrage. . . . And so desire was enthroned in the minds of the American consumer, and was served abjectly by the industries that had enthroned it."

But I agree whales do help the games keep running. But I also do think they help drive what mazur said.