The sad thing is, it's not even social games anymore.
TF2 and Heroes of Newerth both became free in order to sell more premium "can't wait" for it goods.
Valve even has job listings for economists and psychologists now.
TF2 and Heroes of Newerth both became free in order to sell more premium "can't wait" for it goods.
Valve even has job listings for economists and psychologists now.
Valve is now a platform provider, more than an actual game company, so they need to understand these things.
"We need to hire an economist, because we keep bumping up into these issues. You're starting to look at weird issues like currency and inflation and productivity and asset values and liquidity of asset categories. We just wish we were smarter about this stuff. We're reading frantically. We're brushing up, and all we're doing is convincing ourselves that we're more stupid. Half the time people are saying, oh, well, illiquid assets inherently have a penalty, so this argues for trade-ability, that we're essentially becoming a Russian currency model in the 1970s. Everybody races off to try to read papers on the implications of that."
[1] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-25-valves-gabe-new...
*Many games that have gone F2P (in a generally benign way) report increasing revenues, e.g., Lord of the Rings Online, D&D Online, etc.
Since they made it free and added a thousand new items, there are vastly more new (less skilled) players, many games are spammed in both text and voice chat with offers to trade, and every game is a circus act of ridiculous hats.
With the exception of private clan servers, there's really no way to make sure you're joining a game with focused and skillful players.
* The hats break the usability of the game: characters used to have very easily distinguished silhouettes. Now it is harder to tell what is going on in the game.
* The hats visually and thematically damage a game that once had very strong art-direction.
* The variations in weapons makes the game harder for them to balance and harder for the player to find an optimal strategy.
* Allowing players to individualize their avatar encourages people to devalue the team aspects of the game.
It's still fun, but I want to play in classic mode.
Other than the (rather common) offers of trade from people wanting my earbuds [1], I'm finding that I'm coming across players who are as skilled or more skilled than I am. I'm actually learning how to better play the game.
My enjoyment of the game has increased since TF2 went free to play.
[1] http://www.teamfortress.com/macupdate/earbuds/ My response to offers of trade for my earbuds is to ask for $600 in return, which is about the cost of a new mac mini.