Hi,

I'm in the process of building up a small team of 6 people to build a game.

The purpose ofcourse is going to be monetary as it wont just be a bunch of friends making a game in their free time and am actually setting up a company and gonna have people on a payroll. I can make the initial investment (which should be enough for a year and a half based on wages in my country and given that I wont be taking anything) but wanted to know whether developing a pay to play game with a story would be more profitable or should I focus on developing a free to play game with micro transactions as the source of income.

Vilem Otte said:

This is entirely based on your marketing, you can be successful with both … or unsuccessful with both.

Keep in mind that initial investment just for wages (work) is not enough, as marketing the game is most likely more important than making it (there are some bad games due to good marketing ending profitable … yet there are many good games with poor or no marketing ending with no profit at all).

Marketing will not be an issue, as i'm already in relations with game magazines in my country which can help spread the word and am bringing in a business partner who has got the marketing plan sorted down (he suggested going the pay to play route as we've never developed a game before, however i have worked on games from an art perspective). On the other hand I'm in talks with another person who also has little game dev knowledge but is adamant on the F2P model, but his advertising strategy is advertising the game at his own events (he hasn't even done one event yet)

My conundrum is that I am of the view that a F2P game is more costly in the long run, and releasing it on my own is difficult and added costs of server maintanence staff and constant updating will require me to endlessly fund the project. I dont mind that as long as I will be able to fund it from returns from the game. Am I overthinking it? As in is a F2P game as easy to develop as a Pay to Play game or is it more expensive to keep it functioning? In my head in the simplest terms I feel a F2P game is like a movie set in one location, you invest in it once, and make it once, and hope for the best. but a F2P game is like an endless TV Show based in multiple location, where you pretty much have locked a huge staff in for several years.

dhruv990 said:
As in is a F2P game as easy to develop as a Pay to Play game or is it more expensive to keep it functioning?

This depends entirely on the game, and details about play rates and payment rates.

At the most obvious extreme favoring F2P, for games with tremendous replay rates that can attract a large number of whales, being able to get money from many players many times over a long time will get more money.

And at the most obvious extreme favoring payment up front, if there is little replay value and no reason for people to invest more money over time, getting the money up front will get more money.

In both models, frequent updates to an active player base can be profitable. In F2P the profit comes from a small percent of players who buy (and gift) a ton of content. In P2P it comes from paying for expansion packs and episodes that get added. Neither set of content is cheap to produce.

What gets the most money, and what provides the most value to paying customers, is all up to details of the game itself. Both models have been successful. Both models have been failures. Some games lend themselves more to one or another, some games can work well with either.

Ok thanks to both of you for your help. Could you also guide me as to what all resources I would require to build a f2p game with micro transactions? Say I'm making something like brawlhalla but adding power ups and leveling up systems which are available for free. But if you want to get them early you can buy the resources to level up.

frob said:

dhruv990 said:
As in is a F2P game as easy to develop as a Pay to Play game or is it more expensive to keep it functioning?

This depends entirely on the game, and details about play rates and payment rates.

At the most obvious extreme favoring F2P, for games with tremendous replay rates that can attract a large number of whales, being able to get money from many players many times over a long time will get more money.

And at the most obvious extreme favoring payment up front, if there is little replay value and no reason for people to invest more money over time, getting the money up front will get more money.

In both models, frequent updates to an active player base can be profitable. In F2P the profit comes from a small percent of players who buy (and gift) a ton of content. In P2P it comes from paying for expansion packs and episodes that get added. Neither set of content is cheap to produce.

What gets the most money, and what provides the most value to paying customers, is all up to details of the game itself. Both models have been successful. Both models have been failures. Some games lend themselves more to one or another, some games can work well with either.

well, in-game purchases would solve the issue of discouraging certain unfairplay gamers from even trying to play it. but myself, as a gamer, i'm still waiting for the next mass effect like game with aliens, invasions, good story… so why not make a hybrid? if it's a very good looking game people might pay small amounts for stuff they need.

still, the triple A dead space3 game didn't sell very well even if it had everything, was a third in a very well known and apreciated franchise, professional level design, real voice actors... and on the other hand, studios from ee like poland developed games that ended up on steam and it wasn't such a bad bussiness in the end. "Lords of the fallen" is so good.