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Weekender: Farming your players

What are the risks of the free-to-play model and how does farming your players affect them longterm?

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"There's a lot of power in free-to-play. And by the way, for what it's worth, free-to-play is anything but free."

Two words are those of EA CEO John Riccitello in an interview with CNBC the other week.

Free-to-play was met with a lot of scepticism by core gamers when it first arrived, but lately the reservations have been swept aside and we're seeing a wealth of quality experiences in the free-to-play segment. But there is still that other side of free-to-play, that model where you bring in players to try and convince them in any way imaginable to part with their money. It's a bit like walking through a market place down in the Mediterranean, playing some of these games.

There seems to be two major ways of successfully using the free-to-play model; a) you make a great experience and offer a quicker route to success with purchases (or more variation) b) you farm the players. I recently got the free version of Draw Something for my iPhone, brilliant concept at its core, but the perfect example of the latter. Even if I enjoyed the core of the game, the experience was so bad that I had to make the decision to stop playing or buy the full version to do away with glitchy ads and allowing for more colours (and not like the colours I bought with coins in the free version that were taken away after a while). This second method relies heavily on vast numbers of players and a constant influx of new players (as older players drop off, having been farmed barren).

This is an ad:
Weekender: Farming your players
Images like these are difficult to create if the game robs you of some of your colours. But you get what you pay for...

It's hard to see how the second model would be sustainable over time, and perhaps this is what Zynga is now experiencing. A few years back there was an untapped market of potential gamers, who were attracted by the low barrier to entry and who didn't mind being farmed a bit to further their experience. The question is if there are still more of these customers out there, and if those farmed will continue to play longterm.

Zynga's current problems may, however, have more to do with trying to transition from a Facebook model to a more multi-pronged approach, than problems with the business model as such.

EA are also heavily invested in free-to-play. Picking up Playfish, who have developed The Sims Social, and the booming Sim City Social, but also through their Play4Free division.

This is an ad:
Weekender: Farming your players
Sim City Social - our current free-to-play/social addiction.

Earlier this year, I visited the EA Play4Free head quarters, and it's easy to see that there is serious money, and that what's perhaps most lucrative about this market is the ability to penetrate new markets or previously barely tapped markets (such as Russia, for instance).

Below is my interview with EA Play4Free director David Nordberg from earlier this year.

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It may get a bit meta, when players are farming games for resources, gold, or experience, and companies take the same approach to their players trying to nurture the relationship in such a way that we end up parting with our hard earned money.

And who are these "elephants", the players who spend £10, £20, £30 (or even more) per month on a game that can be enjoyed without cost? Aren't they aware that they could be spending that money to buy a new full retail game every other month? But what we're seeing here is something a little different and spending money in a game you have already invested your time and effort into is different from just spending money on entertainment.

Weekender: Farming your players
Managing your microtransaction and making money without alienating your players is key to success - as evident in World of Tanks.

It's not really openly talked about, but the key to success in the free-to-play field is to track player actions and buying behaviour and continously adapt your game to facilitate spending. There are nice ways to do this and there are not-so nice ways to do this - and all along the way you're walking a knife's edge, where you risk frustrating and pissing off too many players and damaging your product. Zynga has a method of launching new products with similar models that tend to cannibalise their previous games. Then there are more traditional products where you're given most of the game up front for free, but if you spend much time in it you're probably going to be better served with a premium subscription.

As it stands there is a lot of money being made in the free-to-play segment and social gaming. Yet, it feels as though the model is still in its infancy and if it does not evolve it runs the risk of scaring potential longterm gamers away from a form of entertainment where they feel as though their constantly being asked to spend more money to further their enjoyment.

Novarama's Daniel Sanchez Crespo feels there's a tendency to jump onto this new business model and that a lot of hearts risk being broken as a result.

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