Why critics are up in arms over (not quite) free-to-play games
Written by Jason Tocci at 7:03 pm on January 5th, 2012
Original illustration by Glenn Thomas
Critics decry their methods as insidious, perilous or just plain evil. Designers blame them for the death of video games. Their target demographic faces unflattering comparisons to marine life.
What’s so bad about freemium games?
Ultimately, the criticisms facing these games have less to do with the concept of “freemium” in and of itself, and more to do with how some of the most successful games in that space got so successful in the first place: exploiting human psychology, appealing to the lowest common denominator and subliminal Satanic messages.
Well, probably just the first two, but you never know. Let’s focus on those for now.
The purest example of psychologically manipulative game design comes from the casino industry. Gamblers at slot machines don’t keep playing because of the compelling lever-pulling mini-game mechanics; they’re playing because they want to feel like a winner. The blinking lights, spinning fruits and occasional spill of coinage makes it marginally more engaging than scraping at a lottery ticket, but it’s essentially the same game, with the same losing odds.
Gamblers don’t keep playing slots because of the compelling lever-pulling mini-game.
Arguably, games like FarmVille and Tiny Tower work the same way: they just let you click, wait and click again, like pulling the lever of a slot machine, waiting for the next nominal reward. And the problem with such nominal rewards, as Chris Hecker suggested (with some fancy psychology words) at one Game Developers Conference, is that when “you add extrinsic motivators to make your game better, [...] you’re destroying intrinsic motivation to play your game.”
In other words, you play Minesweeper, Solitaire, or flOw not because you “level up,” but because the actual act of thinking, relaxing or exploring is just fun. And when the game is practically nothing but meaningless rewards, what’s left to love?
Okay, so maybe making games that work like slot machines is bad game design. How is that an ethical issue? Depending on whom you ask, it’s a matter of what games cost you: your time, your money or both.
Jonathan Blow, designer of Braid, suggested to MTV Multiplayer that offering “scheduled rewards” instead of more meaningful gameplay is just “deceiving your players into wasting their lives playing your game.” Adam Saltsman, designer of Canabalt, writes for Gamasutra: “this is extortion of the time we have left until we die, the sole resource of consequence for human life. Developers who deliberately engage in this kind of design should be ashamed of their creations.” And Ian Bogost, author of Persuasive Games and designer of A Slow Year, further suggests that free-to-play social games lead us to stress over missed opportunities and wasted time, and even to cynically use our friends for our own purposes. (You do know they were getting cool points with the Goodfellas every time they sent you Mob Wars spam messages, right?)
…there’s more than one way to part players from their money.
Others, meanwhile, are more concerned with how psychological manipulation techniques dovetail with monetization schemes. Nels Anderson, one of the designers behind DeathSpank, explains on Above 49 that the whole reason such lucrative free-to-play games are so easy and pointless is that their revenue model depends on it. By appealing to the lowest common denominator in the audience, they can attract as many users as possible: “The strategy is to identify which of your users are the ‘whales’ and get them to empty their wallets early and often.” Only a fraction of a percent of players are willing to spend huge sums on free-to-play games — but a fraction of a percent of a bazillion is still pretty good money.
Some maintain, however, that this doesn’t necessarily mean that freemium models are inherently morally bankrupt. “Freemium business models are not evil,” writes Nicholas Lovell, consultant and founder of Gamesbrief. The issue, he suggests, is not in offering some content for free and other content for pay, but exploiting “people whose personalities make them easy marks” for psychological manipulation. But there’s more than one way to part players from their money.
So where does this leave us, players and game designers alike? Well, consider this a primer on some ongoing discussions that aren’t so tidily resolved in just one feature. Here at PocketNext, we’ll be addressing some of these additional issues in the coming weeks, from the use of “pointless” games to the problems with wait-to-play gameplay models. In the meantime, let us know in the comments what you think. After all, as players, the matter of ethics ultimately comes down to you.
You can contact Jason Tocci at the following address : jason@pocketnext.com
