Square Enix just rolled out a new online service. It’s called Core Online, and it takes a slightly different approach to offering you games through your browser.
Basically, for every minute-long ad you watch, you rack up twenty minutes of play time. You can bank an hour of play time and then watch ads. And, of course, you can buy levels or the whole game for dirt cheap. Hitman: Blood Money, the flagship, is available for $5.
I freely admit, the idea of playing a game and getting interrupted by an ad is incredibly annoying. It’s a “broadcast TV” model. So why do I hope this is the future of gaming?
#5) The Clock Is Ticking On Boxed Games
Steam is invading your living room and likely soon Android. OnLive may be struggling but cloud-based games are undeniably on the way. Sony owns Gaikai and will be using it seemingly everywhere.
Gamers tend to be technologically connected and they like digital downloads. Making discs and packaging them is expensive. Used games are a nightmare to publishers and developers alike. This is only a matter of time. The problem is that publishers and developers are also convinced you’re a thieving bastard.
#4) Way Too Many Publishers Are Convinced ‘Free-to-Play’ Is The Future
Pretty much every major publisher has admitted they find the concept of nickel-and-diming the crap out of their audiences to be totally awesome. EA’s Peter Moore has called it “the future”. Ubisoft says that the percentage of people who buy stuff in F2P games is the same as people who shell out for boxed games.
To them, it’s great: it stops piracy and it makes them just as much money. One problem, though…
#3) Most Free To Play Games Suck Due to Balance Issues
The basic problem with free-to-play is that nobody designing these games seems to realize that it’s not just an in-app transaction: It’s an actual gameplay mechanic.
Seriously. Offering your player more advanced tools is a gameplay mechanic, and you have to design a game so that it balances those who pay and gives them a good experience against those who don’t and who can also get a good experience. It’s baffling that something so blatantly obvious isn’t clear to more publishers and developers, but there you go. It’s game design as customer service, but that’s still an important thing to take care of.
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I totally agree, F2P scares me because it just makes me want to stop playing the game if I have to either pay or farm for ridiculous hours to move forward.
Horrible. Ad supported, then when ads stop being effective it’ll be down to 1 Ad for 10 minutes.
Also the game software can’t and will not be downloaded to your local computer. I figure with all your railing against Blizzard for the always online factor of Diablo 3 you wouldn’t support a system that requires you to always be online to play your game.
To quote a previous post by you “If a game is not an MMO, it does not need to be constantly online.”
You might want to check out section 2.6 of the Core Online ToS.
Would I prefer to download a game? Absolutely. Do I think that option will always be there for gamers?
No.
That option will always be there. Will it always be legal? Probably not.
Man, remember when you used to own a game and actually own it? Those were the days. Almost every game now has a limited license agreement in the EULA, which basically says ‘yo we’re letting you play our game until we decide arbitrarily that you cant.’ Now sure there are some reasons to have that in there. MMOs are a good example, but tons of other games are including that.
The move from physical media, to digital games brings with it a whole new question of ownership. There should be no question about it, but most companies will happily fuck you over. I play one or two F2P games, I haven’t bought a physical copy of a game in a while (Starcraft 2), but the move from digital downloads to not even having the game on your own system does not appeal to me in the slightest.
This is a terribly jumbled post. But there you have it. Sorry I’ll go back to being a quiet nerd now.
No, no. Be a loud nerd! We like loud nerds!
To be honest, I don’t like the shift away from actual ownership, either. But since it seems inevitable, I’d rather have a system that drives quality.
I’m getting tired of Game publishers squeezing their costumer base. All these new pay structures they are coming up with have NOTHING to do with improving game quality. It is ALL designed to bilk more money out of customers and control their experience.
Anything to stop every company from becoming Capcom.
Hey, Capcom put out Dragon’s Dogma, which is probably the best open world game I’ve played so far this year.
I think Capcom make some great games, but I also am one of the guys that they have nickle and dimed for over 20 years straight when it comes to Street Fighter. 2 decades of that leaves you a little sore, especially after figuring out what they were doing.