If anything, the gold-miners from Wow/Diablo showed that there is a market for "digital goods you could get for free if you had the time". It didnt took much time till game-devs figured out to cut out the middle man.
I hate the concept of micro-transactions, but I simply blame the players for beeing so desperate in the first place.
If anything, multiplayer online games with persistent worlds have shown that there is always a small minority of people that are willing to pay exhorbitant amounts of money in order to get in game equipment, consumables, vanity items, convenience items, etc. with the least effort possible (buying "in game" money or items versus playing to get them).
From my memory this first started happening with UO and Everquest 1. Although Everquest 1 made it extremely popular. I knew people that bought cars and houses with the money they made selling characters, items, and in game currency to other players.
It is going to happen anyway. I see no reason why the company itself can't do that rather than letting their players be exposed to "gold sellers" who may or may not steal their credit card info.
Eve-Online has been doing this for years on years via their PLEX card system (players can purchase a PLEX card with real money which represents one months worth of playtime, they can then sell those in game, give them to friends, or use it themselves if they wish).
Microtransactions represents another method via which companys attempt to tap into that small minority of players that are will to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a game in order to get things with little to no effort.
Whether the company does it or not. If there is a way for players to trade items in a game. There will always be people in those games paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for items or in game currency or even your account. Diablo 2 is a great example of that. There were lots of people that spent thousands of dollars for in game items and characters. Hence, Diablo 3 attempted to give those people a legitimate way to do that without having to resort to sellers who might steal your CC information. And in return they were unfairly blasted for it. Yay, try keep your player base safe from online scams and make a bit of profit off it and you are now more evil than the gold sellers stealing people's credit card info.
Anyway, that's starting to ramble a bit. Those things aren't intrinsic to the F2P model.
And keeping this on topic, of Crytek want to do that and it works, they can. I suppose the big questions are whether they are or are not pursuing F2P, and if they do, will they fall flat on their faces?
Any tried any of their F2P games?
Yes. Crytek do have at least one F2P game on the market. It is extremely popular in Russia, but hasn't caught on to nearly the same degree elsewhere. The few "let's plays" that I've seen view it as a very solid sometimes very good multiplayer FPS shooter. The main gripe that I've seen is that they had to play on Russian servers to get full games more easily. As well, it doesn't really do anything ground breaking.
I'm not sure if they have other F2P games in developement. I'd be willing to bet they do.
I think in the future more games may follow the Warframe model. They are consistently releasing new content and items. It's like a trail of bread crumbs. As soon as you feel you are running out of things to do/collect/level up they introduce new shiny toys to keep you interested. Impatient people pay money to get those things right away, while the vast majority of people are far more patient and just collect the items in game via time played.
Another thing to keep in mind is that a few of the largest PC gaming markets and potential PC gaming markets don't have a negative view of F2P as some here in these forums do.
F2P is the dominant PC gaming distribution method for games in Korea. Hell, PC gaming absolutely dominates everything else gaming related in Korea. And F2P just dominates that.
F2P is also rather huge in China. Not surprising as F2P basically sidesteps the whole piracy issue completely. And the same goes for Russia, IIRC.
It would not surprise me at all if the cash infusion for Crytek came from a Chinese, Korean or Russian source.
Regards,
SB
