Free-to-Play Games: Professionals’ Perspectives

Abstract

This paper investigates the free-to-play revenue model from the perspective of game professionals. To court larger player audiences and to address their wide willingness-to- pay spectrum, game developers have increasingly adopted the free-to-play revenue model. However, at the same time, worrying concerns over the revenue model have been voiced, deeming it as exploitative and unethical. We investigated this contrast by conducting an interview study. We employed thematic qualitative text analysis process with the data containing 14 interviews with game professionals about their views on the model. The results show that the free-to-play model is something that developers view favorably while it was felt that the public writing about the games can be negative, even hostile. Relatively few ethical problems were seen that would address the whole model while for instance the combination of children and free-to-play was seen as problematic. Even with some concerns at the moment, the future of the free-to-play games was seen bright.