Recently crytek, the developers of the crisis series, have announced that all games developed after crisis 3 are switching to a free to play model. To back this up crytek announced that they already started developing their first free to play game, called war. And now with EA talking about microtransductions being the future for all games, it looks like the future is set in stone. The real question is what will that future be like and will there be anything I can do to stop it? The free to play model is a very hypocritical model, mainly because its anything but free. It could be argued that there are completely free IOS and browser games, but these are games lack any substance which would allow them to be considered proper games. Instead youll have to look at games such as tribes ascend and management games found on IOS devices, e.g smurf village, restaurant story, and theme park (not bulldogs masterpiece). Without going into gameplay details, these games can be played without spending a penny. But, especially with the mobile games, they usually have a mechanic which can make them unbearable to play. Take smurf village as an example, the aim of the game is to build and manage a village full of smurfs. Buildings are constructed in real time and can take hours, possibly days, to complete. To get around this you need smurf berries, an in game item which can be purchased for real money and is used to speed up construction. Of course by speed up I mean instantly build a building. A few smurf berries cost 69P, a price of most full games, while thousands can be bought foe £60. In my opinion this is insane and I would rather pay full price for the game with instant building.
Tribes ascend gives a more accurate look at how free games could turn out. After downloading this game is fully playable, no gimmicks like limited ammo or spawns per round. Classes and weapons are all available to the player but they have to be unlocked with experience points, earned by playing the game. For the impatient gamer, however, these can be unlocked instantly by paying for them. Along with this players who make a paid transaction are granted an experience boost. So how does this game get as unbearable as smurf village, well in truth it doesnt but it can get frustrating. Theres always the chance that when you log into a game you can be the only player who hasnt paid for early unlocks and, if you are a newcomer to the game, you can easily get killed over and over which for a while will sour the experience. But this happens all the time in games like call of duty, or any other game with online multiplayer and through persevering you will soon improve and playing will become fun again.
So back to my original question if future free to play games turn out like smurf village, then I would suggest taking your pitchforks to crytek and destroying their studio before they can carry out their master plan. If future games turn out like tribes: ascend then the future will be a bit more bearable, although without a doubt nearly all free to play games will be first person shooters. What do you think, will your crystal ball show you the future of the games industry and will you let you tell me what it has shown you?? Your thoughts below please.