Free to Play Games and Getting What You Pay For: Gaming Log 7/10/2018

I was recently checking out the Switch store and noticed a few free to play games.

Now, I generally don't have a high opinion of free to play games bit it’s not like there is much on my Switch’s hard drive so I checked some out.

First was Pokémon quest, whose art reminded me of Minecraft. Unfortunately the game play reminded me of everything wrong with free to play games. It’s a game of and for grinding, with the option to spend money to do less grinding. If you buy stuff instead of grinding you can focus your time on . . . grinding. It might look 3d but it has less depth than Pokémon red and blue.

I'm not holding the controller or pressing anything. The game is literally playing itself.

The next game I tried was Fortnite. I had seen it on YouTube where it looked fun, and it is. You airdrop onto an island, hide, hunt other players and run from the storms. Most of all you try to stay alive.

Now it’s a fun game, though I don't love the building mechanic, mainly because I am horrible at it, and of course the game still tries to sell you things.Thankfully most if not all of them appear to have little or no impact on the game play, so I don't really mind. In fact its basically the model I think all in game purchases should adopt, at least in most cases.

Fortnite is probably the best free to play game that I have touched in a long time, mostly because it does not revolve around poor RPG mechanics like most of them do. I love RPG’s but in the case of most FTP games the grinding is designed to be fun at first but quickly frustrating enough to convince you to spend money to speed the process up. That leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I would much rather play a small subscription fee every month than deal with that. At least with subscriptions they are up front with the costs, which is probably why so few games do that anymore and instead try to lure you in and then sell you stuff. That probably works better but it certainly does not engender any fawned feelings on my part. I hesitate to use the word “exploitative” because at this point most of us should know what we are getting into, but it does leave a bad taste in my mouth. 

But I don’t generally mind games that sell bonus content through DLC and purely cosmetic stuff. If game companies want to keep making more content and selling it as an expansion pack then more power to them. There are caveats to that however:  read exactly what you’re buying before forking over the money cause some of that DLC can be pretty pointless. I also hate when stuff like blood and gore or popular factions which should just be in the game is labeled DLC. That’s just cruel, I don’t even want to fork over the money even if I want those features because it’s just seems so greedy. 

Of course I’ve read the other side of the issue, games cost more to make but haven’t raised prices, and they need some way to bring in more revenue, yada yada. There might be some truth to that, but the most profitable solutions might not be what is best in the long term. Consumer revolts are real, and it can be hard to guess when and where they were successfully emerge. It might be wise to go for slightly reduced profits that will not leave customers feeling like you’re fleecing them.

There was hardly a moment I didn't feel like the game was trying to sell me stuff.

Free games aside I am still mainly playing Pokémon White 2. I’m more than half way through the nuzlocke now and I have to admit the game is better than I remembered. Maybe it’s because the last time I played it was towards the end of a Pokémon binge and I was getting sick of it. Unfortunately I am not getting all the Pokémon I want but I’m having a good time nonetheless.

The fan project I’ve been working on also looks like it might finally have its first part posted this week, in addition my new video on Censored Gaming is also out. It’s about loot box regulation and it was a doozy, so please check it out. In the meantime, more Pokémon.

 -Gedaemon

If you enjoyed this consider following me on twitter. You can also read last week’s log here. I would like to also thank the people at Censored Gaming for all their help and the work they do. Till next time friends. 

edited 7/10/2018