Games: Pay Versus Free

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tienkhoanguyen
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Games: Pay Versus Free

Post by tienkhoanguyen »

You have games ranging from pay to free. Some games even have continuing support for new people. Support prices vary from pay to free. What decides whether a game is good enough to be "pay"?

When people receive something for free do they complain?

A little analogy! My mother buys me a pack of 100-blank DVDs for Christmas. I receive it for free. Of course that does not mean the DVDs are cheap since someone has to pay. In this case, it is my mother's hard earned money!!!!!!!!!!!! So receiving for free does not mean cheap.

In fact, all these years or times I have received free softwares online I really appreciate it. For instance, I really enjoy receiving EA softwares. Of 12 titles I received all of them except 1 for free. The 1 is also for "free" because my mom paid for it at BestBuy.

Remember, these producers spent hard time coding these games! Some people are gifted and can make these games like it is flowing from their mind to their fingers! haha
God, Jesus Christ, is number one!hehe
Jesus Christ!hehe
Bless Jesus Christ!
Then please bless my mom.
Honour to my mom Huong Thi Vu
Honour to my dad Thuy Binh Nguyen
Love to cousin Carl Anh Cuong Cao Vu
Thank you Jesus Christ.
DOS Wolf
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Post by DOS Wolf »

It obviously depends on the skills of the game maker. But I tend to feel that free to play are generally not as good as those you buy. Free to play and I am thinking of the overly produced MMORPGs that currently flood the market, are designed to get you hooked and hopefully pay later to get the better perks. In other words the games in that general category are bland and all the same. That is not to say they are not fun in and of themselves and you can not enjoy them, but I have played many and it is rare to find a real gem. To be the best you usually have to pay to keep up. It is rather rare to find a game that with just a lot of time and dedication you can be just as good or find just about all the good items.

Then you have those paid games that allow a free trial. It use to be a few days to a couple of weeks. Now it is up to a certain level, say 20. Then you have those paid games that go completely free. Not much had changed for them, they just simply became free either because not enough paid subscribers or the game makers went and worked on something else or they wanted a different model. Anarchy Online and Shadowbane come to mind at the forefront, although Anarchy Online only allowed for the first in the many expansions in the game itself. You were free to raise to what ever level, gain what ever equipment and or magic etc, that the cap at that particular expansion allowed for. And AO had billboards with real world advertising that helped pay for the costs of the game, including the US Air Force.

I use to play both pay and free to play games heavily. But have stopped due to my connection/laptop sucks and I do not really have the time any more that has to be dedicated to such an endeavor. From personal experience I would have to say my all time favorite MMORPG that was paid for was the original Trilogy of Everquest with maybe the expansion of The Shadows of Luclin. You had the perfect balance. All races had it's own niche and way of playing, with some even being able to be soloed if need be. You had casters who could only cast certain things thus they were all looked for to give buffs or sought after to cast spells against creatures. You had those that could create certain things, could transport people, could help find your corpse and of course those who could heal well and raise the dead.

But after those early expansions it all went down here. Now all the old towns are used strictly for being born and every one races off for the newer planes of existence. What once was so full it would lag and was made into a general area to combat the environment, was also it's own market place and arena is now a simple ghost town. What once took days if not weeks to acquire the complete and simplest and crudest form of banded or boiled armor is now on the character from the start of the game and you can gain even better stuff with in the first few minutes. What use to take a long time to sit and meditate or wait for your turn to fight a certain monster in hope to gain a certain object to complete a quest and or earn money, or sit in front of a dungeon asking for a certain class or getting a tell you are needed, is now much quicker. Although sitting and waiting was a bit of a pain if you look at it from today's standards, back then it meant you could sit and talk and gain a lot of online friends and it did not feel so bad. There was comradeship and a need for each and every person. Now a days in MMORPGs, even EQ people just rush to power level and beat everything as fast as possible.

But yes people can complain even if it is free. If they do not like something or spend a large amount of time on it and then something significant changes it could upset them even if they spent no real world money on it.
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tienkhoanguyen
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Thanks for your answer DOS Wolf!

Post by tienkhoanguyen »

I appreciate that quick response from you. I was tested two betas that were planned for release in stores. Some of them are flops simply because they were too strict. The graphics were just too confined. You had this all-too-perfect character set. It just felt unnatural.

However, it was fun to beta test because you got to blog and meet friends. I think that is half of the fun in life. The other half is your family!
God, Jesus Christ, is number one!hehe
Jesus Christ!hehe
Bless Jesus Christ!
Then please bless my mom.
Honour to my mom Huong Thi Vu
Honour to my dad Thuy Binh Nguyen
Love to cousin Carl Anh Cuong Cao Vu
Thank you Jesus Christ.
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Post by DOS Wolf »

Rubies of Eventide was a free MMORPG that had a very large count of both races and especially jobs. (Jobs per the wiki, although not all were in the final release was about 100 classes. Lets just say it had 50 upon release and that was still rather large.) Granted some jobs were just names with altered attributes of regular jobs, but it was fun. Not every game has to have every bell or whistle. But there has to be a fun factor, something to hook the player to keep people coming back. I am all for the f2p model, but I hate the ones where you have to pay money to keep up with others.

And I hate p2p where they cost $15 or more a month. I honestly think a game monthly should not cost any more than $10 period. I mean you already bought the game for $30-$60. On top of that you have to pay for the internet which is generally not cheap, not for a good one say another $50 a month and then you have to pay an additional $15 month for the game. (Not to mention an expensively decent rig or updated graphics card to keep up, an additional $500-$2000.) No thank you.
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Real Life

Post by tienkhoanguyen »

The thing I hate about RPG and such is that it takes you away from real events. You know full well that people in real life do NOT carry rapid fire ammos and such haha Maybe in the army, navy seals, and such. However, I am far from that. I don't have the slightest clue. The closest I came was at a gun range ONCE. And the only weapon I liked out of all that I was able to handle was the .357 haha I think I missed every single shot haha
God, Jesus Christ, is number one!hehe
Jesus Christ!hehe
Bless Jesus Christ!
Then please bless my mom.
Honour to my mom Huong Thi Vu
Honour to my dad Thuy Binh Nguyen
Love to cousin Carl Anh Cuong Cao Vu
Thank you Jesus Christ.
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Post by DOS Wolf »

Huh? :huh:
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tienkhoanguyen
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I even confuse myself at times haha

Post by tienkhoanguyen »

Don't worry about it. You are right. Anyways, that takes us out of the pay versus free subject. My games are free however it takes a toll on the pocket book. I try my best and give what I could however I wish I had spending money to give to my family. So as a produce
God, Jesus Christ, is number one!hehe
Jesus Christ!hehe
Bless Jesus Christ!
Then please bless my mom.
Honour to my mom Huong Thi Vu
Honour to my dad Thuy Binh Nguyen
Love to cousin Carl Anh Cuong Cao Vu
Thank you Jesus Christ.
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tienkhoanguyen
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God, Jesus Christ, is number one!hehe

Post by tienkhoanguyen »

Jesus Christ!hehe

As you can see, I talk weird when I don't use "Jesus Christ!hehe" and such.

That is why I have a mental disorder.

I need to use these Godly catch-phrase to make common sense and such!

Thank you Jesus Christ I do use such phrases before too late!!!!!

Thank you God for sending Jesus Christ to save me for the rest of my lives.
God, Jesus Christ, is number one!hehe
Jesus Christ!hehe
Bless Jesus Christ!
Then please bless my mom.
Honour to my mom Huong Thi Vu
Honour to my dad Thuy Binh Nguyen
Love to cousin Carl Anh Cuong Cao Vu
Thank you Jesus Christ.
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Post by DOS Wolf »

You actually make less sense when you use church catch phrases and actually is quite annoying at least to me anyway. I have only seen one post of yours make sense and I already commented on how nice it was and then you turned right around and spammed nonsense again. Just stay on topic or don't post at all. I mean I understand you started "this" thread, but that is the only way anyone is going to take you seriously or pay attention to your writings. I generally just skip over anything you write, because 99.99% of the time it is going to be off topic and make no sense.

And you do realize most people play video games to escape reality. Most RPGs are fantasy based anyway with magic, swords and crossbows. Some may be sci-fi, modern or even a mix. RPGs generally take time to play though, at least 20 hrs if not 60 or even 100. MMORPGs should be designed where to see and do everything with multiple characters it would take a life time to complete or at least a good year or two.

However, it is up to you if you want to make games f2p or p2p. Just be sure if it is p2p it better be good. I would suggest Ouya if you want something like that. The software to build I believe comes with in the system itself which is only $100 and they are simple games you can play on cell phones compared to the more beefy consoles or PCs. (Unless those same games are small flash games designed for the console and PCs.) Of course with Ouya it has to have some kind of freeness to it, which was the whole reason Ouya came out. It can be completely free, free trial or f2p but with micro transactions. But again, if it is not decent no one is going to bother with it.

Of course there are other free software to make games, but I think that generally goes for the PC market only unless they have ways to adapt to cell phones and such. It is not as easy as most people think to make a good game and it is a rare to make a decent amount of money on it. I know you already know about certain software and I know you make video games because you talk about it all the time every where (Hence why I don't bother reading most of your posts because it is rarely if ever on topic.) but just giving you ideas.
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These last few days?

Post by tienkhoanguyen »

Well, these last few days may be my last talking with you, DOS Wolf?

If so, I guess I give you a "Sir".

I really do not know much about the military other than my dad was in one.

He flew a helicopter from Vietnam to USA in 1975.

A little off topic however since I might not be on might as well say a few.

We grew up pretty much in a harsh environment.

In Vietnam, my father was rich, but lost it all when it was in America.

During our stay growing up we were able to make middle upper class.

My mother really pulled a lot more 2 to 3 shifts than she cares to.

Her feet were sometimes bruised because she stood too much.

She has vericose veins.

My father was a harsh man.

However the unfortunate thing is we worked too hard growing up.

These days like I say we collect welfare and disability income, but better.

These days are more peaceful than they used to be in the past.

Thank you Jesus Christ for a better life!

Although currently perfect as far as I can see, you never know!!!

So I count my blessings saying Jesus Christ this and Jesus Christ that#!!

Thank you Jesus Christ most if not all my families has made the "dream".

The so called "American Dream" of owning our very own home and such.

One of our own Vietnamese even goes to Harvard at one point!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have maybe more than a handful of prominent Vietnamese people.

So I wish I could be proud however I don't want to rest thinking we "win".

The Holy Bible says money is only temporary.

Even if you could be Mr. Bill Gates with billions, you could only buy...
............so much?

Anyways, I am running amuck with something haha
However, I hope you find it something interesting.
Maybe it would even build a solid relationship of camradeship? Hope.

Anyways, things like stealing from one another and such, bitter.

I am no innocent person.

I still have charged-off loans that I wish I could pull some strings...

I have "maybe" records that I wish would disappear!

However, the truth is I love my family and only want the best for them!

If I move like I promised my mom hopefully it makes her one step happy.

She always wanted to have a home of her own and I am the only son.

My sisters are both married now.

I am the only one left.

So I guess as the elder I have to take care of my aging mom.
God, Jesus Christ, is number one!hehe
Jesus Christ!hehe
Bless Jesus Christ!
Then please bless my mom.
Honour to my mom Huong Thi Vu
Honour to my dad Thuy Binh Nguyen
Love to cousin Carl Anh Cuong Cao Vu
Thank you Jesus Christ.
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Post by pseudocoder »

I've just finished playing (as in gave up on) a couple of F2P mmorpgs; both started out okay, but quickly became annoying. The most recent game had a bag to store items, but no way to discard or sell inventory that I saw. Of course, I could "purchase" another bag, but I uninstalled the game instead.

The so called free games aren't really free since you're giving up your privacy and are often required to install malware as per the TOS. I found some some suspicious junk app and googled it to find that it used my computer to compute and share results of some kind. Needless to say, I wasn't too thrilled and uninstalled it right away, which "violated the tems of service" for the free game.

In the end, I think I'd rather pay for a game since I can play at my leisure and do not have to worry about spam email and hopefully malware. F2P isn't really a model that I favor, and having a played about 4 such games now, I doubt that I'd bother with any more "free" titles regardless of how they're marketed.

Software developers have my sympathy; as a causal coder, I know that I couldn't last in that profession for very long. Nonetheless, as an off and on gamer, I feel more compelled to express my displeasure with crud than I do to praise things that I like... it's a character flaw that I cannot overcome.
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Post by MrFlibble »

pseudocoder wrote:In the end, I think I'd rather pay for a game since I can play at my leisure and do not have to worry about spam email and hopefully malware.
I wonder why a thread about free games has so far been only about free-to-play/freemium titles and/or promotional giveaways of commercial games, when there are plenty of genuinely free games (often open source) which come with no strings attached, and very often can boast nigh-commercial quality. Also there are quite a few formerly commercial, "liberated" games which were made free by the developers/copyright holders, and these in most cases don't involve any kind of "registration", secret installs of dubious programmes or the like.
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Post by Quadko »

only about free-to-play/freemium titles
Yes, that's why I stayed out of this one so far. I don't really play those games, just free or simple pay once games.

To the original question:
What decides whether a game is good enough to be "pay"?
If the developer can convince people to play for it (by putting a price on it), the customers decide whether to pay for it. But there are lots of games chasing people's money these days. Or the developer just lets it be free, for many reasons, but often if they are new independent developers, it's to develop credibility and followers of a game so that in future someone will say "yes, I'd pay for something by them". But what game is "good enough?" There's no real way to predict, otherwise big publishers like EA would never have a flop and wouldn't spend so much money on irrelevant parts of games, on the parts that make it "worth paying for"! The grand free market at work, messy but can produce some good things. At least it is easier to get our stuff "out there" now, even though that means there is even more competition.
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Post by MrFlibble »

I'm a little bit worried by the tendency that seems to have emerged in the recent years that online video game vendors like Steam or the like actively try to get the customers "hooked" on buying. Those services that demand the client PC to be always connected to the server have a very convenient way of keeping the customer always at the counter so to speak. And with the individual games being relatively cheap (as opposed to physical boxed version of the past at least, and even to the cheaper 90s shareware), this creates an effect known to psychology that the customers will more easily make a decision to buy another game, even if they don't actually intend to play it in any near future. This leads to the stack of shame phenomenon.

On the other hand, there's Steam Greenlight. One could say that this is a great way to promote aspiring developers whose projects wouldn't have taken off on their own. However, are all the games which are greenlighted really that good? There's at least a couple of reviews by TotalBiscuit of some really sloppy releases which got the green light from Steam, and there may be a lot more.

All of which leads to the conclusion that maybe today the success of a game is more dependent on proper marketing and advertising than ever before.
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Post by Quadko »

Good analysis. Perhaps some developers get lucky, but the only way to "do the work" to get noticed seems to do well at proper marketing and advertising, still.

Though, the entire Minecraft phenomenon from copying someone's nifty idea to selling to Microsoft for gazillions of buckazoids still blows my mind. OTOH, they did some cool marketing over the lifetime of the product.
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Post by DOS Wolf »

MrFlibble wrote: I wonder why a thread about free games has so far been only about free-to-play/freemium titles and/or promotional giveaways of commercial games, when there are plenty of genuinely free games (often open source) which come with no strings attached, and very often can boast nigh-commercial quality.
You have games ranging from pay to free. Some games even have continuing support for new people. Support prices vary from pay to free. What decides whether a game is good enough to be "pay"?

When people receive something for free do they complain?
Because that is how I took it when I replied to it. I am not aware of how many stand alone games have that in their pricing, unless for free trials or special bundles with promotional codes.

If you want to talk about mods to a game we can as well. Half Life 1 and 2 are the biggest ones I can think of and generally have the best mods all for free, although later Counter Strike and Day of Defeat went to be sold, but they still have their free versions. Mods are generally things that a major company would not take a chance on due to the uniqueness or ideas of a game. But modders are not worried about money. They make the games they want to make. It is usually that after an idea sounds and looks good that a major game company will copy for profit.

Games like Counter Strike was a big hit. Natural Selection that made a game like Star Craft into both top down strategy for the commander and first person perspective for every one else, with the upgrades and mutations of aliens, collecting resources, etc. Sven Co-op is a game that I can not even put into a category. People made maps of anything they wanted, from Resident Evil complete with mansions, zombies and Lickers/Lurkers, to Super Mario Bros themed maps complete with bricks, coin blocks and tunnels, to puzzle maps that virtually was a mind bender and you had to traverse it a certain way, sometimes with multiple people to reach the end or die again and again and again (Portal any one...) and both Zombie Panic and Brain Bread and possibly No More Room In Hell, although by that time NMRIH I have never played. But they were zombie games the first ZP being where there is only one zombie and every one else are humans and each time a zombie kills someone or the other person perhaps falls to their death, that is another person on the zombie side. It was interesting to see how some greedy people would hog what little weapons and ammo there were and see others struggle to survive before they were slaughtered. (Even funnier when one person would hog all the weapons and the other hog all the ammo... if Friendly Fire was off, the guy with the weapons could never reload... Hahaha!) And BB had everyone a human survivor and fighting hordes of NPC zombies that would literally come out of the ground at you. You blew pieces of body parts off before they died and even had a big white farmer hick zombie like a boss. (Left 4 Dead anyone... and both Portal and L4D were both made by Valve... just saying...)

And there are many more. I forget all the names, but Hostile Intent had you where it was as realistic as possible. A very slow paced game and you had to use your iron sights, you could not just run and gun as it is in other games. Battle Grounds was a game about the Revolutionary War and the whole deal about the one shot rifles and pistols with long reload times and close bayonet fighting was a great thing when you got bored of all the other fast paced games. And even The Trenches was a WW1 remake and was decent as well. Pirates, Knights and Vikings was hilarious.

A real shame I can not play HL2 on my laptop or I would be playing all those mods as well. Empires was a sci-fi World War type game with upgrades for both armies. And there was a space combat game where you could also land on opponents bases and go to FPS and kill. There are many more of course with even more being made, the last I checked anyway. I tend to not pay attention any more since I can not play them even if I had.
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Post by MrFlibble »

DOS Wolf wrote:If you want to talk about mods to a game we can as well. Half Life 1 and 2 are the biggest ones I can think of and generally have the best mods all for free, although later Counter Strike and Day of Defeat went to be sold, but they still have their free versions. Mods are generally things that a major company would not take a chance on due to the uniqueness or ideas of a game. But modders are not worried about money. They make the games they want to make. It is usually that after an idea sounds and looks good that a major game company will copy for profit.
A while ago I tried to collect info on games that started off as modifications but then went on to become stand-alone titles (preferably free but commercial are also interesting). The resulting list, found here, is probably missing quite a few titles, so you're welcome to drop more suggestions if you have any :)
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