MMORPG.com's Justin Webb, a developer who has worked for both F2P and P2P studios, uses his column inches this week to talk about why F2P exists and how it operates as a system.
There was lots of F2P news this week. First, Sony announced a kiddie Star Wars game, and then Turbine decided to make LoTRO free to play. In this article, I’m going to hopefully give some insight into this ever-expanding subgenre, and talk about some things that F2P games “do” and some things that they “don’t” do. In the spirit of full disclosure, before I begin, I should mention that I work for studio that specializes in F2P games and microtransactions. And, conversely, that I’ve also worked for a studio that made subscription-based MMOs. I’ve designed on both sides of the fence. Let’s begin…
F2P seems to be a dirty word in our forums; the mere utterance of which evokes violent palpitations amongst many readers. This is understandable. Compared to subscription-based MMOs, not that many people play them. There is an awful lot of misinformation and misunderstanding out there. And many players think they understand how they work, when really they only partially grok the nuances.
Read F2P: Relax... Breathe.