F2P games are subsidized by a small minority who will throw a hundred dollars a month into the game to obtain and max out whatever FOMO event or item/character is on rotation, and by an even smaller group of obscenely wealthy (or mentally ill) players who will spend tens of thousands of dollars just to say they own everything.
I’d honestly be fine with this model if the ones funding it were treated like patrons of the arts or something, but instead the industry hired a bunch of psychologists to run incredibly unethical experiments to create literally addictive design patterns encouraging the weak-willed or mentally ill to spend more.
Modern F2P game design is predatory and downright evil in the way it’s carefully cultivated to be just fun enough to continue playing, while constantly dangling the promise of more enjoyment if you’d only spend a tiny bit more (with that ‘bit more’ often only granting a small chance at getting what you want, with ‘pity’ systems only guaranteeing the desired drop if you spend the equivalent of around a hundred bucks in premium currency). But since it’s obscenely profitable, I don’t foresee it going away without legislation banning those practices.
Yeah, that’s what I hate about Genshin Impact most - the predatory gacha and FOMO-exploiting business model ruining what would otherwise be a peak game I could recommend to basically anyone.
Roblox screws over both the players and the creators who attract and keep them there, both of which as you said are mostly children. It’s actually kind of impressive how scummy the devs are. They’re the poster child for rent-seeking parasites.
It depends, it’s certainly inaccurate to describe all F2P games as doing this. Runescape, at least back in the 2000s, was F2P or a monthly sub. That was it.
Miniclip, Newgrounds, and similar felt more like mini games.
For free and in browser with some actual progression, I can think of RuneScape and those Artix Adventure Quest series games. I played both, but Runescape definitely felt like more of a complete game with 3D models and all.
God, I had forgotten how bad those Artix games were til I remembered them just now.
I played the bejeezus out of Runescape until I picked up Minecraft as a teenager. The free to play section certainly had its limits (only like 30 quests, about a dozen skills and only like 1/4 of the map) but you could absolutely access many, many hours of content purely in free to play. Compare that to another title from around the same era, Disney’s Pirates Online, which gave you an initial 3 days of free premium membership on account creation, you’d largely run out of free content and find everything gated to membership within a couple of days so it was hard to enjoy past those first 3 days unless you could convince your parents to buy you membership.
There’s also other projects like 2004scape, 2007scape, Darkan, Open RSC etc. depending on your preferred era of Runescape to relive, but ORSC and 2009scape seem to both have the most active development and most active communities by far (and ORSC is early enough to be hard to enjoy if you aren’t deep into vintage gaming)
I played during the height of it’s Runescape 2 popularity in middle school and I don’t think I’m that antique yet. 😭 Minecraft released while I was a high schooler playing alpha and the kids still like it!! I’m not old!
RuneScape’s age shows more I think because it was entirely playable in a browser window (which came with its limitations). Aside from having a hefty chunk of free content, this is what I credit its success to.
My poor self was happy to be playing anything on the, even at the time, old family PC. A choppy fps low polygon RPG on a java game, because that’s all I could afford, was quite swell after school with my friends online. Anyone could just pull it up on theirs, no DL.
It was accessible and didn’t require a lot of machine power. It’s got a player base today not because it’s a fantastic game, but because there’s a lot of people who are nostalgic for it.
I said vintage in reference to Runescape Classic, so the version of Runescape that was live from 2001-2004. When I played RSC (back when Jagex stood up an RSC server around the early 2010s) it really reminded me of trying to play DOS games in terms of the lousy UI, lack of QOL fixes, general jankiness and unforgiving gameplay. It felt like a game that was about a decade older than it actually is because of that.
Personally as much as I enjoy playing various older games, I’ve found there’s absolutely limits to what’s still enjoyable and for me it’s around the mid-90s where before that point the gameplay is too unforgiving for my taste, and the controls and UI tend to be way too janky
F2P games are subsidized by a small minority who will throw a hundred dollars a month into the game to obtain and max out whatever FOMO event or item/character is on rotation, and by an even smaller group of obscenely wealthy (or mentally ill) players who will spend tens of thousands of dollars just to say they own everything.
I’d honestly be fine with this model if the ones funding it were treated like patrons of the arts or something, but instead the industry hired a bunch of psychologists to run incredibly unethical experiments to create literally addictive design patterns encouraging the weak-willed or mentally ill to spend more.
Modern F2P game design is predatory and downright evil in the way it’s carefully cultivated to be just fun enough to continue playing, while constantly dangling the promise of more enjoyment if you’d only spend a tiny bit more (with that ‘bit more’ often only granting a small chance at getting what you want, with ‘pity’ systems only guaranteeing the desired drop if you spend the equivalent of around a hundred bucks in premium currency). But since it’s obscenely profitable, I don’t foresee it going away without legislation banning those practices.
Yeah, that’s what I hate about Genshin Impact most - the predatory gacha and FOMO-exploiting business model ruining what would otherwise be a peak game I could recommend to basically anyone.
And Roblox does it by exploiting kids.
Roblox screws over both the players and the creators who attract and keep them there, both of which as you said are mostly children. It’s actually kind of impressive how scummy the devs are. They’re the poster child for rent-seeking parasites.
Not to mention that in one country the game is being allegedly used as a platform for spreading edgelordism.
https://www.onenews.ph/articles/pnp-terrorists-grooming-kids-through-roblox
It depends, it’s certainly inaccurate to describe all F2P games as doing this. Runescape, at least back in the 2000s, was F2P or a monthly sub. That was it.
Runescape also was a free game at a time when those weren’t really common. I honestly can’t think of any others with the scope of RS.
Not only was it free, it ran entirely in a browser window.
That’s how it managed to build its player base, and it coasts on that nostalgia to this day.
There were loads of free browser games back then
Miniclip, Newgrounds, and similar felt more like mini games.
For free and in browser with some actual progression, I can think of RuneScape and those Artix Adventure Quest series games. I played both, but Runescape definitely felt like more of a complete game with 3D models and all.
God, I had forgotten how bad those Artix games were til I remembered them just now.
I played the bejeezus out of Runescape until I picked up Minecraft as a teenager. The free to play section certainly had its limits (only like 30 quests, about a dozen skills and only like 1/4 of the map) but you could absolutely access many, many hours of content purely in free to play. Compare that to another title from around the same era, Disney’s Pirates Online, which gave you an initial 3 days of free premium membership on account creation, you’d largely run out of free content and find everything gated to membership within a couple of days so it was hard to enjoy past those first 3 days unless you could convince your parents to buy you membership.
Of course, both have extremely healthy community-run revival projects in 2009Scape and The Legend of Pirates Online respectively.
There’s also other projects like 2004scape, 2007scape, Darkan, Open RSC etc. depending on your preferred era of Runescape to relive, but ORSC and 2009scape seem to both have the most active development and most active communities by far (and ORSC is early enough to be hard to enjoy if you aren’t deep into vintage gaming)
Vintage gaming?? Runescape??
I played during the height of it’s Runescape 2 popularity in middle school and I don’t think I’m that antique yet. 😭 Minecraft released while I was a high schooler playing alpha and the kids still like it!! I’m not old!
RuneScape’s age shows more I think because it was entirely playable in a browser window (which came with its limitations). Aside from having a hefty chunk of free content, this is what I credit its success to.
My poor self was happy to be playing anything on the, even at the time, old family PC. A choppy fps low polygon RPG on a java game, because that’s all I could afford, was quite swell after school with my friends online. Anyone could just pull it up on theirs, no DL.
It was accessible and didn’t require a lot of machine power. It’s got a player base today not because it’s a fantastic game, but because there’s a lot of people who are nostalgic for it.
I said vintage in reference to Runescape Classic, so the version of Runescape that was live from 2001-2004. When I played RSC (back when Jagex stood up an RSC server around the early 2010s) it really reminded me of trying to play DOS games in terms of the lousy UI, lack of QOL fixes, general jankiness and unforgiving gameplay. It felt like a game that was about a decade older than it actually is because of that.
Personally as much as I enjoy playing various older games, I’ve found there’s absolutely limits to what’s still enjoyable and for me it’s around the mid-90s where before that point the gameplay is too unforgiving for my taste, and the controls and UI tend to be way too janky
Oh yeah, I didn’t think RS was very popular before RS2 so I wasn’t aware they made an original RS server later on.
Regardless of whatever fraction most of the revenue comes from, they still draw absolutely massive amounts of players.