How much can a F2P Game earn?

[garb811]

This is kinda absolutely nuts, it's like a license to print money if you have a hit.

I play a few free to play games, and have dropped some real life money on them (who can resist that cute E 25?) but the amounts being talked about are staggering.

Fortnite is generating more revenue than any other free game ever

Fortnite: Battle Royale has brought in more revenue in a single month than any other game of its kind. The free-to-play game hit a new revenue record of $318 million in May, according to SuperData Research.

That puts Fornite well ahead of other breakout games like Pokémon Go and Clash of Clans, and it’s all the more spectacular when you realize the multi-platform game launched on consoles just eight months ago and on iOS just three months ago.

Since then, Fortnite has brought in more than $1.2 billion in revenue, all of which comes from nonessential in-app purchases, for stuff like clothing and dance moves.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

I hate F2P games.  They aren't really F2P though, they are P2W (Pay to Win).

It's the death of actual good games.  The worst part is actual good games are becoming harder and harder to come by. 

The only benefit of this is I don't play many games anymore because most of them are crap now.

F2P games and games with in-app purchases trigger the same responses that gambling does.  These games are terrible for people with addictive personalities.  I had a roommate that was fully addicted to World of Warcraft.  Would stay up all hours of the night playing, spend all his money on dlc and purchases to make his character stronger. 

Pretty much neglected everything else in his life and became a fat slob. 

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Skyrim, WOT and WOWS for me, I have Steel Beast Pro which is very challenging, but I don't have enough free time and free brain cells to devote to it as I would like. The 15-20 minute battles in in WOT/WOWS works for my current lifestyle, Skyrim I squeeze in 1/2hr in the morning or night when everyone is asleep.

 

[Furniture]

I spend money on WOWS and WOWP because I don't spend much on entertainment in other ways. The short battle time allows me to pick it up when I have free time, but I don't have to put in hours at a time to get something accomplished. I find the $15 a month for premium time with the occasional premium ship or airplane is still cheaper than cable to sit in front of the idiot box passively watching TV.

I found most AAA games had become garbage before the true rise of the F2P games, COD, Assassin's Creed, Fallout, etc. are all just a rehash of an old game with maybe a new more gimmick mechanic thrown in. The last AAA game I liked was The Division(after all the updates and fixes), before that Skyrim, and ME3.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

I spend money on WOWS and WOWP because I don't spend much on entertainment in other ways. The short battle time allows me to pick it up when I have free time, but I don't have to put in hours at a time to get something accomplished. I find the $15 a month for premium time with the occasional premium ship or airplane is still cheaper than cable to sit in front of the idiot box passively watching TV.

I found most AAA games had become garbage before the true rise of the F2P games, COD, Assassin's Creed, Fallout, etc. are all just a rehash of an old game with maybe a new more gimmick mechanic thrown in. The last AAA game I liked was The Division(after all the updates and fixes), before that Skyrim, and ME3.

That's because all AAA games are becoming P2W essentially.  COD and Battlefield are two of the worst offenders.  Both games allow you to spend money to buy weapons and upgrades that give you significant advantages in the game. It's a model that works because people get hooked to the games.

I played the original Battlefield and original Call of Duty.  Battlefield 1942 was a true masterpiece and actually had somewhat realistic physics (bullet drop, vehicle mechanics, realistic damage) and real life tactics like vehicle jockeying, suppression, fire and movement, etc actually worked.  The gameplay was also incredibly balanced and you had a plethora of well designed maps.  New Battlefield and COD games go something like this:  "Dump entire 30rd clip in to player in order to kill him, or give us $30 additional dollars which will allow you to unlock the super duper gun which will give you one shot kills every time"

The last Assassin's Creed I played was Black Flag and every game since then has pretty much been a re-skin.  Fallout 4 is good in some ways but worse than it's predecessors in others.  I think New Vegas with Mods is probably the best Fallout game and stays true to the original games the most.

The problem is programming competent AI is hard and costs a lot money which is why Singleplayer games are dying.  Studios would rather make everything multiplayer because they don't have to spend money on AI programming.  The trend is better and better graphics because it's cheap and easy to do with less investment.  The only games I play now are games by Paradox Interactive, Civ 5, NHL, Rugby League Live 4 and smaller games like Verdun on PC (True WW1 Shooter).

I'm presently playing through a Campaign of Victoria II on PC as the United States.  Paradox games are amazing, there is very little in the way of graphics (other than a few coloured tabled and a gigantic world map) but the gameplay is immersive and the AI is challenging. 

 

 

[garb811]

I used to love Paradox games, it is a love/hate relationship for awhile now. 

I love them because they keep updating and fixing their games well past when most other publishers have moved on, but I hate the fact that the last several AAA games they've put out have seemed to be Beta tests and it's been months until they were actually playable. Throw in the DLC conundrum, great...expansion packs keep coming, I love you! Oh...look...a feature that should have been in the base game, I hate you!

As I've aged I find it harder and harder to get as deep into games as I used to.  As a young guy I played some pretty massive games, like Gary Grigsby's War in the East and War in the Pacific all the way through multiple times; now I have a hard time getting past 1941 in HOI4...

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

I used to love Paradox games, it is a love/hate relationship for awhile now. 

I love them because they keep updating and fixing their games well past when most other publishers have moved on, but I hate the fact that the last several AAA games they've put out have seemed to be Beta tests and it's been months until they were actually playable. Throw in the DLC conundrum, great...expansion packs keep coming, I love you! Oh...look...a feature that should have been in the base game, I hate you!

As I've aged I find it harder and harder to get as deep into games as I used to.  As a young guy I played some pretty massive games, like Gary Grigsby's War in the East and War in the Pacific all the way through multiple times; now I have a hard time getting past 1941 in HOI4...

War in the East is awesome.  I get the frustration over unfinished games, it's becoming a big trend in PC games because it's really the only way a company like Paradox can make any money off their games due to the already small fanbase and costs of developing on PC.

I was a big Total War fan but their last couple of games have left a lot to be desired.  Shogun 2 was a masterpiece and I've played through six full campaigns (two in base game one fourin fall of the samurai).  Since then, CA has sold themselves out, Rome II was junk and Thrones of Britannia is crap.  They have simplified the games to appeal to a wider audience. 

Still, Paradox and a few others, namely Slitherine, allow me to play PC variants of tabletop strategy games I would otherwise be unable to play due to lack of interest from others.

 

[garb811]

I suspect our game catalogues would have a lot of overlap.  lol

I never played Shogun 2 or Rome 2 because I'd gotten sucked into WoW for awhile (ok, a year or five) but really enjoyed Shogun: Total War and Rome: Total War that preceded those by a decade or so.

I cut my teeth on board games and AD&D before it was cool to be a geek, hence the grand strategy stuff.  Was lucky enough to be on basic and language training with a guy who was as well and we used to pull out Rise and Fall of the Third Reich when the weekends hit.  Long weekends with a stand-down at noon while on language training were golden.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

I suspect our game catalogues would have a lot of overlap.  lol

I never played Shogun 2 or Rome 2 because I'd gotten sucked into WoW for awhile (ok, a year or five) but really enjoyed Shogun: Total War and Rome: Total War that preceded those by a decade or so.

I cut my teeth on board games and AD&D before it was cool to be a geek, hence the grand strategy stuff.  Was lucky enough to be on basic and language training with a guy who was as well and we used to pull out Rise and Fall of the Third Reich when the weekends hit.  Long weekends with a stand-down at noon while on language training were golden.

I suspect you would like Shogun 2, particularly Fall of the Samurai, which is set during the Boshin War (the time period Tom Cruise's cheesy Samurai movie is set in).  It's strangely satisfying going first-person mode with a gatling gun and mowing down thousands of charging samurai:

Not to mention the game is actually super hard.  If you get it, you will definitely rage quit a few times as just when you think you are doing well, some ******* backstabs you,  and sneaks an army in behind you and sacks your capital while simultaneously raiding your trade routes and putting a naval blockade on you.  Oh and also assassinating your top general who you've leveled up with one of the many agents in the game. 

Oh, naval battles are also a treat, again it's strangely satisfying flanking an enemy fleet with torpedo boats while he is decisively engaged with one of your fleets:

Bye bye super expensive Mercenary British Ironclad, no match for my fast attack ships. 

Oh, there are mercenaries from the Great Powers as well  ;D

 

[Xylric]

Hey, a question I'm actually qualified to speak with authority on. I've mentioned elsewhere that I run a rather sizable digital business. Currently, I'm the Business Director for Missing Worlds Media, the developers of City of Titans (still in development). While it's a comic book MMO title, and not a FPS, we are very much looking at a hybrid revenue model focusing on F2P - a subscription would get you 20% more in store credit than if you bought it directly.

90-95% of what you could buy in our in-game store would be obtainable simply via game play - some would be tied to achievements, others would be tied to particular content, but the general idea is that we'd completely avoid two things which are absolutely irritating about free to play games - "Pay to Win" mechanics, and those psychological traps called "Lockboxes." Before we developed the financial model we'll be using, I spent eight months researching game addiction and methods of minimizing its risk.

The most clever feature we've come up with (which is the subject of our next update) is that we're enabling an in-store tracker so that people can see how much they're actually spending in game each month, and considering we have a system of parent/child accounts, we're also enabling parental controls so that an account can have a hard cap placed on its purchases. Having seen the horror stories of parents finding out their kids have spent $200 on what should be free games, we're extremely keen on making sure that doesn't happen.

Of course, since the vast majority of our store content will be costume sets and pieces, it goes without saying that as a comic-book MMO, we're completely anticipating up to 30-40% of all playtime being inside our character creator (and later, our base creator).

That being said, I love Paradox titles too - Stellaris especially, because it's an almost perfect cross between three of my favorite space 4X games - Space Empires, Master of Orion and Stars!.