Tag Archives: free-to-play

Train2Game News: Valve on free-to-play – “It’s making a new, different thing for talented folks to explore”

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Free-to-play is as good thing for game developers and consumers, because it allows both to try out a wider variety of things. That’s the view of Valve Director of Business Development Jason Holtman

“The neat thing about our industry now is you’re going to have all of those things happen and customers will have, not choices among them as if, like, I’m a free-to-play player and therefore I don’t play games like Counter-Strike and Skyrim and Minecraft. That’s not true.” he told Eurogamer in an interview at Develop Conference 2012.

“Everybody plays all of those. People play their RPGs. They play social games. They play F2P games. That’s what’s exciting about it. They don’t have to replace each other. It’s making a new, different thing for talented folks to explore.” Holtman added.

The huge interview is definitely worth reading, giving readers a massive insight into the business behind Steam and life at Valve.  Read it over on Eurogamer.

There’s more on the growing trend of free-to-play here on The Train2Game Blog, while be sure to keep reading for the latest news from Valve.

What are your thoughts on free-to-play? Do you agree with Valve in it offers more avenues for exploration?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: Console gaming “a wrong turn” for the industry says American McGee

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Game designer American McGee believes that digital distribution and free-to-play are the best models for game developers, with traditional console gaming representing a ‘wrong turn’ for the industry.

“It feels to me that with the rise of mobile gaming and ubiquitous networking (social, multiplayer, cloud) alongside pure digital distribution we’re seeing significant change for the first time in 20 years.” the Alice: Madness Returns creator told Game Informer.

“I look back to the era of online, multiplayer PC gaming (DOOM, Command & Conquer, Ultima Online days) and see an absolute fork in the road with the rise of console gaming – a wrong turn, in my opinion.” he continued.

“We’re now back on the right path with developers being able to create and distribute directly to their audiences, with console development (in the current mode) having reached a critical peak and the traditional publishing model making way for a multitude of new paths.” McGee added.

His latest project is free-to-play multiplayer combat title BigHead BASH.

There’s more about the free-to-play distribution model here on The Train2Game Blog.

What are your thoughts on McGee’s comments? Do you think consoles represented a wrong turn for the industry? Are digital and free-to-play the best ways for developers to earn income?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: Free-to-play games take four years to reach peak revenue

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Free-to-play titles take four years before they reach their peak revenue from players. That’s what Managing Director of Reloaded – the studio behind APB Reloaded – Michael Boniface told the audience during his presentation at Develop Conference 2012.

The session, From Triple A To Free-To-Play examined the failures of Realtime World’s APB and what Reloaded did to bring the urban combat MMO back as a free-to-play game.  Boniface emphasised that “the most important thing for free-to-play is to be fun,” revealing how the development team regularly consult the community about aspects of APB Reloaded, which launched in December 2011.

And while blockbuster console titles make most of their revenue through day one sales, free-to-play games don’t maximise their revenue until four years after launch, said Boniface, as he discussed future plans for the MMO.

Free-to-play has has arguably been a success for APB Reloaded, with a user base of 647,000 players, compared with the 140,000 players achieved by the original, boxed version of APB Reloaded in 2010.

The Reloaded Managing Director described the process of going from triple A to free-to-play as the “most exciting, stressful, heartbreaking, rewarding experience of my life.”

Keep reading The Train2Game Blog for the latest news from Develop Conference, while there’s more on free-to-play here.

What are your thoughts on the idea a free-to-play title takes four years to reach peak revenue?

Leave your comments on The Train2Game Blog, or here on The Train2Game forum.

Train2Game student Diaries James Bouckley week 15 and 16

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Week 15

This week we discussed targets for the game.  When should it be finished by and when would we have a demo ready.  We tried to have a demo ready by Friday but unfortunately we failed.  Despite the game being interesting and very fun to develop, the support cases have to come first and a surprising abundance of them this week and Rob still being on holiday meant we just didn’t have enough time to work on it.  It came as a bit of surprise to me this week when I discovered we needed desktop controls because the game was going to be multi-platform and the dual-joystick imitation controls for keyboard I had made (purely for testing purposes), weren’t going to cut it.  After a bit of stressful week, I have to admit that being told this didn’t find me well.  Ben spent some time going around the office with the iOS version of the game, which was finished, getting as many opinions as possible so we could polish the demo.  Meanwhile I struggled to finish the PC controls and failed.  Not a great week in all, but still a fair margin better than any week I’ve ever had in any other job… ever.

Week 16

Unity 4.0 has been announced!  It was announced this Monday and boy does that make for a lot of support cases!  Rob is now back with us and good job too because I think without him Ben and I would have struggled.  This again meant another week with not as much work done on the game as I would have liked.  The desktop controls are finished now, but buggy and I’m not happy with them.  Also, one of the major things that people noted about the game when Ben showed them last Friday was that they didn’t like the linear mapping between finger-joystick position and player speed.  What that means is that there is linear dependence between the distance of your finger and the centre of the joystick and the speed the player moves at.  People would have preferred a relationship that meant when you’re near the centre you move slower but then you accelerate faster as you move further away.  When I heard this my reaction was “Okay, that’s doable but it’s going to be expensive.  We’ll have to do a square-root operation every frame.”  God bless Unity though because they have already thought about it.  Mark showed me how to sample a curve and apply it to a script and the iOS controls are now far more user-friendly.  Another thing that came up is what happens when the player moves behind something.  Currently we have a shader that highlights the player so you can still see him.  This however sometimes makes it look like the player is on top of the object instead of behind it.  So instead I have started to implement a script that will make the objects see-through instead of the player being highlighted.  I was having some difficulty with this and with some help from Cat, we nearly got their.  I’m confident I can finish this myself early next week.

www.train2game.com

Train2game Student Diary Craig Moore – What an incredibly exciting week it has been!

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Craig Moore – What an incredibly exciting week it has been!

Student Diary , Week 30

Unleashed on to the world like a penguin in a paddling pool! My Sea Park hit the unsuspecting world head on yesterday and it’s been an incredible experience, and this was only day one!

We had already seen the beginnings of the social media pushes, by our publishers, earlier in the day but it wasn’t until we got word of My Sea Park creeping in to the charts that things really got exciting. There was the hope it was doing well but the visibility wasn’t really available.

That was until around 5pm, while we were in the meeting with the publisher we heard word it had crept in to the top 50! Of course everyone became very excited, but by the end of the meeting it had already, again, crept in to around 37!

Of course this continued throughout the day, admittedly it wasn’t the most productive of days but it was a really lovely reward for all the hard work.  Of course, being a free title, there is now the hope it will actually monetise well.

That was pretty much the key moment of the week, the rest of my week has been spent illustrating and working on the concept document for the next title, which is going incredibly well. I am waiting on feedback from a few of the other guys here, but fingers crossed it will get some approval; It’s a really exciting project!

-Craig

www.train2game.com

Craig Moore

Student Diary – Week 31

What an incredibly exciting week it has been!

Suffice to say, with My Sea Park being released, the entire office were glued to iTunes watching our brand new game slowly work its way around the charts.

It was great watching it go up and down, and really muscling with the big boys, I got in to the habit of checking it with a stupid regularity, but seeing it in the same space as games like Angry Birds, Infinity Blade and Temple Run was such an amazing feat I can’t help but feel proud.

I think everyone in the office is pleased with how it has done, but the fun isn’t even over yet! With version 1.2 of My Sea Park put into submission last week we are hoping for the first update to drop either today or Monday. With that we should hopefully see a load more faces in the door, as well as hopefully some of the older ones who perhaps didn’t get chance to play as much as they would like or simply didn’t give it a good enough try.

I think it does highlight how competitive the market is at the moment, particularly for My Sea Park’s genre. We have to simply keep working on it, while also working on the next project, to ensure it stays fresh for customers both new and old.

This week I have been getting deep with Unity, finding my way around it and putting time into learning the way the UI systems work, it’s been a great learning experience and so far and I’m finding Unity incredibly pleasing to work with.

-Craig

www.train2game.com

Train2Game News: Nintendo Wii U supports free-to-play

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Nintendo will support free-to-play games for their upcoming Wii U console. That’s what president Satoru Iwata told an audience of analysts at a Q&A session during E3, report Digital Spy.

“With respect to the Wii U system, when we began working on it, one of our goals was to have a variety of purchase options and additional e-commerce options available at its launch,” said Iwata.

“And because of that, we have prepared a Digital Rights Management system. We have designed the system from a technical standpoint to allow developers to freely take advantage of things like free to play and micro transactions.” he added.

While free-to-play has become a popular model for PC, it isn’t as popular on consoles. Ghost Recon Online, a free-to-play version of Ubisoft’s tactical shooter is one of the game’s following the model that’ll be arriving on Nintendo Wii U.

As reported by The Train2Game Blog, One analyst believes the Wii U will be the “Swiss army knife” of gaming.

There’s more about free-to-play and its benefits here on The Train2Game Blog, while be sure to keep reading for the latest news on the Nintendo Wii U.

What are your thoughts on Nintendo introducing free-to-play to their console? Will it be a success?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: Dota 2 officially confirmed as free-to-play by Valve

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Dota 2 will be free-to-play with a microstransaction store allowing players to buy community and developer created items, Valve has announced.  Steam Workshop will be the way in which players submit items to be used in the game.

“The opening of the Dota Store is a big part of our final push to launch,” said Dota 2 lead designer IceFrog.

“With support for the Steam Workshop, the majority of the items made available on day one were created and being sold by members of the community. By making the game Free to Play, we hope to give gamers the ability to decide how – and how much – they want to invest in the game.” he added.

The significance for Train2Game students is that, potentially, items they submit to the Dota 2 workshop could become a full part of the game.

Valve a targeting a full release of the RTS/RPG hybrid before the end of this year, with a Dota 2 closed beta currently underway.

Dota 2 follows in the footsteps of Team Fortress 2 in both allowing users to submit items to the Steam workshop and being free-to-play.

For the latest news from Valve, keep reading The Train2Game Blog.

What are your thoughts on the decision to make Dota 2 free-to-play, with the ability to contribute items to the store?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: American McGee’s BigHead BASH enters open beta

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BigHead BASH, a free-to-play multiplayer game from Spicy Horse and American McGee has entered open beta.

Train2Game students may know American McGee as the creator of the Alice and Alice: Madness Returns, as well as working as a game designer for classic titles including Quake and Doom.

BigHead Bash is described as “a fast-paced, multiplayer online action game with console-quality graphics using licensed content. Among the content licensed includes bands, brands, comics, and games.”

“BigHead BASH is designed to bridge the gap between social-online and hardcore action games – targeting the magical ‘mid-core’,” said McGee

“Set in a toy shop, the game offers up an impressive collection of virtual toys and weapons for players to collect and fight.” he added.

You can sign up to take part in the BigHead Bash open beta here. The trailer is below.

There’s more beta testing news, and information on how it’s useful to developers andTrain2Game students, here on The Train2Game Blog.

What are your initial thoughts about American McGee’s BigHead Bash? Will you take part in the open beta?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: World of Warplanes closed beta begins 31st May

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Train2Game students can apply to take part in the World of Warplanes closed beta which begins on Thursday 31st May.

World of Warplanes is a flight combat MMO from Wargaming.net, the developer of the popular free-to-play title World of Tanks.

World of Warplanes”will feature a wide range of warbirds, each of them unique in their effectiveness and behavior. Virtual pilots will choose from three main warplane classes — single-engine light fighters capable of engaging enemies in close dogfights, heavy fighters with their deadly straight attacks, and ground-attack aircraft, the fearsome threat for ground targets.”

Train2Game students interested in applying to take part in the World of Warplanes closed beta can sign up on the official website.

Get a taste of World of Warplanes in the teaser trailer below.

For more on beta testing, how it’s useful for Train2Game students, and opportunities to get involved with it, keep reading the Train2Game blog.

Will you apply to take part in the World of Warplanes beta? Are you a fan of World of Tanks?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: Firefall developer diary reveals importance of community feedback to Red 5 Studios

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Train2Game students can get behind the scenes of free-to-play multiplayer third person shooter Firefall in a brand new developer diary from Red 5 Studios.

The developer diary sees VP of development James Macauley and lead designer Scott Youngblood discussing changes that’ve been made to Firefall after feedback from the community. These include getting rid of levelling, changes to gameplay and more.

Watch the Firefall developer diary below, right here on the Train2Game Blog.

Interested in Firefall? You can apply for access to the beta on the official website.

What are your thoughts on the Firefall development diary? How important do you think it is that Red 5 are listening to community feedback?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.