Today’s chat bubble focuses on the different ways you can pay for your games. What’s your preferred method of purchase: free-to-play, buy-to-play, or subscription?
A subscription game, obviously, is one that has a subscription attached to it, usually an initial outlay to purchase the game itself, then an ongoing subscription. While there are often cash shops selling vanity items associated with subscription games, it’s pretty rare that there are shops selling things that are useful or even required for gameplay, as these are offered to the player as a grind within the game, or at least, within what they get for their subscription.
Buy-to-play is the next step down, where there’s an initial outlay, but no subscription cost. These sorts of games might have some manner of cash shop, and might charge for any additional content they add to the game, but they don’t charge a monthly or periodical subscription fee. And free-to-play games, of course, are free to play, no initial outlay, no monthly cost and the like. But the companies that make them have to recoup their costs somehow, so will often introduce either paid elements that allow a substantial boost in the game, or links out to advertising, or some other method of recouping their funds.
I explain my opinions at length in the video, so I’ll keep it short here, but I have never found a free-to-play model that I didn’t find at least a little annoying, one where it seem that at every turn the player is faced by another thing locked behind cash shops or tokens that need to be bought for real money, or advertisements to click. My optimum game purchase method would either be a subscription or buy-to-play, with a free trial before it became necessary to pay. If I like a game, I’m more than happy to pay for it, but I’d far rather do so in a lump sum than in small payments for little things like guns or tokens. I’m not a fan of free-to-play for that precise reason, but you never know, in future I might find one that I love!
What’s your take on this? What’s your preferred way of paying for a game?
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