How much is free-of-charge?

(03.07.2007, 17:17:09) Lots of games use the term ?free?, ?free to play? or ?free-of-charge? within their web pages or advertisements. But this doesn?t really show us whether a PBBG is totally free of any sort of costs, or if features like ?premium accounts? (or whatever you want to call them) or ?item shops? are implemented.

The term ?free to play? or ?free-of-charge? has brought us several more or less interesting discussions in forums and on websites all over the world. Should a game still be allowed to advertise with ?free to play? if it is also trying to sell premium features or premium items to its players?! The main argument which is used by players and developers, is also the one I agree with - As long as you have the choice whether to pay for a game or not it should be allowed to use ?free to play? as a selling point.

Well, as there are still lots of people out there disagreeing with me, what I?m going to try to do here is to create an image that can hopefully help other people understand my point of view.

So let?s imagine the National Rail system was actually any good and we would like to use one of the millions of rail providers to get from Manchester to London (I?m talking UK stuff now^^). And to add to my imaginary journey, let?s imagine there were free tickets and monthly premium passes.

There would obviously be some differences between free ? and premium travelling. While the premium user travels straight from Manchester to London, one stop only and furthermore gets the opportunity to buy newspapers, a tour guide for London, snacks, drinks & much more (as well as being located in a nice and modern wagon with luxury leather seats), the free user has to sit in an old muddy wagon with old wooden banks, stopping in towns that you never heard of, there is no service staff and the train is completely overcrowded (so kind of like Virgin trains compared to Arriva Wales). Moreover special pillows are given to premium customers that feel a little sleepy.

So the first class train takes about 3 hours and all the customers get off the train relaxed and are dropped off next to the sites of London. About 4 hours later a bulk of free travellers arrive, most of them with slight back pain, but never the less - they arrived in London.

But let?s come back to the general question: Even though it took them longer and the trip was admittedly less comfortable it was still free, wasn?t it? Or is the journey not free anymore, because it takes longer to get to your destination and you can?t buy special pillows? I think everybody agrees that the trip is free and this is not affected by premium customers willing to pay for it. We furthermore have to consider that the free tickets will only exist as long as there are people paying for the trip and newspapers or other special offers because there wouldn?t be any money to keep the service running otherwise.


And the National rail system is also trying to expand by opening a new route from Edinburgh to Manchester, using some of the money they made from their premium users. And this route will also allow free tickets.

Transferred back to browser based games this would mean that the free travellers are now complaining about the duration of the trip and are angry because the premium customer had more time doing sightseeing. They furthermore blame National Rail for being obsessed with money and nobody is thankful for travelling for free.

I know that this image might appear slightly absurd, but I liked the general idea, that?s why I translated and adjusted it for this platform (no pun intended!).

Autor: Redaktion

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