Dangers in Free to Play games

The name for this style of game development is self explanatory. Free to play games, which can be seen as Free-to-Play, are games that do not have to be paid for to play initially. This can be a great decision for a game designing company if they are testing their gaming style out.

There are two advantages to free to play development:

1. They are able to write the game off as a research and development cause. This will allow them to wash their hands with the game completely if the game does not do well. Also, they can ask for, or pay for the opinions of their players, normally this would be done during testing. However they may be able to save money this way.
2. They are able to produce a easier solutions by change from the Free to play style, therefore allowing players to play for free, as a beta. Then after all the research for the gamers is collected, they can make a portion of new released data to be available, per subscription only.

There are many disadvantages to this strategy however. To list two:

1.  The company may not have grossed enough revenue in its other ventures. This problem could cause the company to be sold, or dissolve all together. Thus the game may be altered by the new company, or the servers may also be lost and unmaintained.
2. The company may do extremely well, but lost an extremely large sum of revenue based on the fact that the game is free to play.

This can show to prove money can be the root of all evil.

Before, the option to buy in game data was mentioned. This can, and will lead to an extreme disadvantage to the younger, or less wealthy population. While there is no way to smartly add additional content without a fee of some kind, this causes an advantage based on how much you can contribute.

Free to play games are not truly bad though. It can be important to realize that at some point, a free to play game will offer items for those who will contribute. There for it is not a good idea to play one if you have no intention to add a contribution.

This Link has a list of most Free to play games. It also updates fairly regularly.

 

This picture is for DCUO, of Batman and Robin. Both are owned by DC comics.