THE AFFECT OF FREE GAMES

05/09/2019

The popularity of free games have seen definite increase in the last couple of years. Take the game fortnite for example. A vastly popular free game with over 250 million players or even apex legends which hit 50 million players in a month (admittedly largely through very aggressive marketing from the respawn team) (mention in other article). These 2 games alone can show that there has been a trend in free games especially in their popularity; however will this trend last, what does it take for a free game to prosper and is it a positive occurrence for the gaming industry?

Free games often have a linked problem with smaller games in general that they have to become popular in a crowded environment of games to play. There are approximately 780 million registered games on steam with very large releases from major publishers such as bethesda, ubisoft, ea, rockstar, square enix etc... This can lead to free games, or even just smaller games in general, lacking on popularity and being vastly overshadowed by bigger publishers with a much larger fan base. In fact out of the 781 million registered games on steam only 490 million have been played. This means that 36.9% of games on steam have never been played and makes it harder for smaller games to survive. This issue of smaller games surviving however has not actually been an issue really affecting most of the bigger and most popular free games and despite smaller developers still finding it hard to find players this is much less of a problem for bigger developers and publishers. For example epic who released fortnite have already made a large name for themselves and have sold and continue to sell vastly popular games such as metro exodus or The Division 2. Or even take apex legends, published by the widely known EA and delivered by respawn and with a very aggressive marketing scheme to make as many people buy it as possible this game definitely did not lack an initial audience. Therefore these major games show that free games have definitely not bridged the gap between smaller and large developers. In fact the entire future of free games seems to be resting on whether or not major developers decide to support them or not. This can be a difficult desicion for major developers at this point. This is especially due to the fact that free games have to be fun in order to generate revenue through micro-transactions and relies completely on the player enjoying the game enough to buy these throughout rather than just paying to have access to the game. This means that a game could easily not generate enough money if it does not properly hook players. On the other hand however if these games are successful they can generate huge amounts of revenue. Take fortnite for example which earned a staggering 2.4 billion dollars in 2018. A report by Nielsen's SuperData even estimates that fortnite generated more digital revenue than any game in history. This is a massive statistic and shows the incredible amount of profit a free game can make if it attracts a large enough fan base of which it can encourage to make purchases. It is important to remember that fortnite does also have the paid save the world gamemode however even the sucess of this is largely brought around by the widespread success of the battle royale.

Money brought around by recurring purchases - people spedning more then they realise

how is it this good despirte worse graphics...

as big buissnesses possibly move away is the future of free to play bright for smaller developers and can it continue to attract attention. More risk free for smaller developers

Affects - free to play - enable more people to play who wouldn't otherwise - easier to play with friends as game is easier to get

games based around being more fun/addictive rather than good graphics e.g.

Not long term

No paid dlc if there is dont have to pay for full game at least

The history of battle royale

GAMING 4U
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