The value of free

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Original post by Obscure Lots of people claim that "people don't want to pay" (especially kids) and yet my favourite games are the ones I have paid for

Well when I was a kid I wasn't able to pay for games (except about once a year) but did have access to a LAN that served as a distribution point for pirated games...

So at the time my favourites were games that I *should have* paid for :/
Fortunately, these days my favourites are ones that I did pay for though ;)

Lots of games that I've really enjoyed are free modifications for paid games - where do these fit in?
For example, I played Half-Life for almost a decade due to freely developed mods, not because the original paid game deserved that many years of play.

The games I play the most are all free: Freecell and Minesweeper both come with Windows and I often play sudoku online. The games I think of when you ask me what my favorite games are are all paid.

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Original post by Obscure Is your favourite game (or even your top 5) out of all the games you have played paid or free?

Paid.

Hedgewars is a good free clone of worms though. Maybe, and I say *maybe*, as more people gets into game-development (specially artists) free games will become more enjoyable in the near future. "Hedge Wars" and "Secret Mario Chronicles" are examples of well polished free games.

[Edited by - Zahlman on September 2, 2009 3:03:06 PM]

I like casual games I can pick up and play quickly so most of the games I play are flash based. However, the games I play for the longest time period tend to be the ones I pay for. Then again I just played spelunky for a long time and that's free to play. Basically I'll play anything independent of the price.

There are some great free games. Some of my best gaming memories are playing free MUDs and online games. However, I would never consider them my "favorite" games, because the quality is usually replaced with convenience and social interaction.

I tend to play free games the most. I check indie/freeware game sites daily and I've played and beat a lot of great platformers like Lyle In Cube Sector, Cave Story, Within a Deep Forest, Alex Adventure and many others (Spelunky too, recently).

That said, there are games I play which I will buy. Street Fighter IV is a good example. Blizzard games are others. Part of that is because I respect their quality. But the other is for online play.

Mostly paid... but there are exceptions.

Cave Story had a huge impact on me not only because it's an awesome game and my favourite platformer ever, but also because it inspired me to stick with game dev and take a shot at being successful as an indie developer when I was working at EA and my soul was in the process of being sucked out.

Then I played a free Geometry Wars knockoff called Grid Wars almost non-stop for my entire freshman year at university (to the point where some profs actually expected to find me playing it in class). Liked it a hell of a lot better than the original, to be honest.

And if I think about games with a serious message or emotional impact, Passage is always one of the first things to come to mind.

That said, as someone who develops free games let me tell you that price certainly does affect people's reception of a game. The very second someone runs into the slightest obstacle or annoyance in a flash game they just stop playing, rate you 0 and give you a nasty comment saying how stupid you and your game is. They have no investment in the game therefore they consider everything an "annoyance" that is "wasting their time", whereas if they had paid $60 for it they'd try real damn hard to figure out how to play.

Paid.

But I think thats just because so much more work and quality goes into a 50$ game versus a free one. I think the main difference is that with a free game, its typically a single hobby-ist who spends a month developing it, where as with a paid game, its a team of 40 expert professionals who have spent 5 years making the game. That obviously translates into an enormous difference and theres no comparison.

That being said, I play a LOT of free online flash games, and some of them are REALLY good. They just dont compare in terms of length, depth and graphical ability. Its like comparing apples and oranges.

I don't think I've ever personally paid for a game. :)

My favorite games usually come from small independent game developers who have a decent amount of free games, and only a limited number of pay-to-play games. Of those I especially the ones that let you "Pay what you want" it's the nicest way of saying "I will do this for free, but if it's okay can you please give what you can?"

My two favorites are Konjak and Free Lunch Design. Their game's have the perfect balance of playability, graphics, audio and the all important replay value.

It depends on how you define "game".

Many of the games I enjoyed most were $0 third-party content running inside non-free games. If you'd count $0 third party content as a "free game" even though it requires a paid-for product to use it, then I'd say my favorite games are evenly divided among $0 and paid-for. Otherwise, none of my favorite games were $0.

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Original post by Extrarius If you'd count $0 third party content as a "free game" even though it requires a paid-for product to use it, then I'd say my favorite games are evenly divided among $0 and paid-for. Otherwise, none of my favorite games were $0.

I would consider them to be paid for.

Thanks for the various responses folks. It does seem that even those people who play a lot of free games have a paid for game as their favourite. I am thinking that part of this is to do with the (sometimes) higher quality of paid for games but that part of it is that we justify our financial investment (as well as our time/effort investment) into paid games by liking them more than those free games. I guess there is probably some research on this matter out there somewhere.

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Original post by Obscure It does seem that even those people who play a lot of free games have a paid for game as their favourite. I am thinking that part of this is to do with the (sometimes) higher quality of paid for games but that part of it is that we justify our financial investment (as well as our time/effort investment) into paid games by liking them more than those free games.

I cant speak for anyone else, but I certainly dont fool myself into thinking I like a game more just because I payed for it. Yes, I'll force myself to finish it if I paid for it, but thats as far as it goes.

I just got the Summer 2009 edition of the Casual Connect Magazine, and there's an article which is very similar to your topic (Monetizing Users with Alternative Payments - page 64).

The basic points of the article:
-Offer alternative payment methods
-You can have advertising supported games. Example: you could team up with a company and offer a 2 week subscription which goes with their advertisements.
-In game advertising (kinda new)

Survey: "If you could play a fee based game online for free, simply by completing another offer, would you?"
15~20% - "No, I'd rather pay full price"
60% - "Yes, if the other 'offer' was something I needed, or if it was from a store that I shop with regularly"
30% - "Yes, without a doubt!"
src: 2008 alternate payments survey, 525 respondents

I think there might be something worth considering here... imagine going to safeway or some other grocery store, and getting a code on your receipt to add a few hours of game play to a favorite game...every time you go shopping there. The store gets customer loyalty, pays the developer $0.50 per receipt even if its not redeemed, and the developer gets free advertising and a hook on the player, and the player gets more time for their game by getting something they already needed (food). The player/customer will choose to shop at this store over other stores because they get an extra bonus as a reward. A win-win-win deal for everyone :)

According to my friends I have weird gaming taste. In current my top 10 favorite games there are 3 free games,I wanna be that guy, Battle of Wesnoth , Dwarf Fortress. I am also a big fan of Touhou windows games, though they do not make my top ten list.

With a few exceptions, not paid. The top five ranking would be:

1. Half-Life 2


2. Dungeon Crawl (free)


3. The Space Game (free)


4. Armor Picross 2 (free)


5. Colony 2 (free)

I haven't owned non-free games in ages (certainly don't remember buying one since the Half-Life Orange Box), although I'm looking forward to Episode 3. Most of the games I play are free Armor Games flash games.