Valleywag's wrong: games want to be free, too

Valleywag says that videogames, unlike music, can't be made free because there's no sideline business in which to make money, like music's concert tour or merchandise sales. Oh really? What about advertising? Or land? Or additional levels? Or clothing and furniture? Or the various powerups, gold, armor, characters and other upgrades options that allow all these online multiplayer games to be free?

That's to say nothing of the dozens of demo games I get free every month, between Xbox Live and the DVDs that come free with games mags. A demo doesn't count because it's not the full game, even if it's got hours of gameplay? That's like saying Skype isn't really free calling because you have to pay for the premium version that allows you to call regular phone lines.

The points is that digital distribution lowers the marginal cost of putting games into the hands of players close enough to zero to encourage every pricing and business model possible, including free. This is, of course, nothing new--Doom started this in 1993. Says Wikipedia: "Released as shareware, people were encouraged to distribute Doom further, and did so: in 1995, Doom was estimated to have been installed on more than 10 million computers. Although most users did not purchase the registered version, over one million copies have been sold."

Comments

[Neil Cauldwell]

Not only do games want to proliferate via different business models (free & ad sponsored being one of those) - the game developers themselves are also willing to break away from the tradition of two/three year development binges, e.g. smaller episodic releases via online distribution networks are gaining in popularity. I bet that's an avenue the newly independent Bungie are looking into.

However, console gamers tend to react unkindly to post disc purchase micropayments for in-game items. The Oblivion Xbox 360 'horse armour' add-on pack was a disaster. Halo map-packs have scraped through thanks to Xbox Live peer pressure (Facebook F8, anyone?).

[Casey O'Donnell]

The previous poster is dead on.

Even beyond that, game development wants to be free too. XNA Express is a step in the right direction, and Sony supporting Linux on the PS3 is a step in ... some direction. WiiWare is interesting, but doesn't really change the name of the game.

XNA Express locks you into C#/DX10/Vista/360. Linux on the PS3 doesn't get you any access to the tools/libraries made for making games on the PS3. WiiWare still requires forking over $2500+ for a dev-kit, and you're then covered by NDA. (Actually giving a talk about this on Friday at AoIR in Vancouver.)

Better support for cross-platform languages (C/C++), standard libraries for the basic sorts of things, and the ability to communicate and share code. Seems without these sorts of basic things game development will never be free, and nor will games.

[christopher]

"Although most users did not purchase the registered version..."

nope. but man did they ever purchase doom2, quake1, quake2...

[Jim]

Ahem, yes the valleywaggers are obviously not gamers or they'd be following the whole boom in free to play virtual item games like Puzzle Pirates, Maple Story, and...um...just about every one of the 100s of games in Korea and China right now. Not only are they dead wrong, they're obscenely misinformed for folks in the media biz. Shame, shame.

[Scott Macmillan]

It's hard to underestimate how much the brick-n-mortar distribution impacts your average 3rd party developer. Using that kind of distribution, if a developer strikes a good deal they can end up with 15% royalties off the box price... royalties that only kick in after you've earned out the developer advance that constitutes your milestone payments.

Routes to market like Steam, Stardock, and Manifesto Games are starting to change this scene... but then, once you've cut out your big publishers, you have a lot of game developers who need to start looking at marketing, PR, and other things they wouldn't ever need to worry about previously.

It makes for interesting times. :D

[maths]

The Valleywag article generalizes too much both about the music and gaming industries and fails to take into account different intellectual property situations and cultures in various markets around the world which give rise to the very models that the Valleywag author debunks. China is a good example of a market where publishers have rolled out a basic free to play model on a large scale. An examination of Shanda and The9 of China might be necessary for the Valleywag author as part of their gaming education starting here: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/92ff2e4c-0989-11dc-a349-000b5df10621,dwp_uuid=9c33700c-4c86-11da-89df-0000779e2340.html

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