Zynga ABANDONS ALL HOPE of opening US gambling operation Zynga has decided to give up on trying to get a gambling licence in the US, the new revenue stream many investors were banking on to lift the gaming firm's fortunes. The makers of "Farmville" and "Words with Friends", which recently hired former Xbox boss Don Mattrick to replace founder Mark Pincus as CEO, said it now believed …
Items purchased in game are decorative, and do not improve your chances of winning. There is no requirement to spend any money, and in fact it is possible to sell for real money virtual items that the game randomly gives to the player.
Sadly, that is the opposite of the way it is usually done. In fact in many cases it is only possible to enjoy a freemium game if you regularly spend money.
I think I can guess which approach Zynga will take.
The other option would to be to implement some sort of in game advertising along the lines of the side ads FB itself runs. Or maybe a combination of the two.
But the critical element would be to make the games playable again. Between the server issues and the number of "friends" you needed to be able to play the games they were completely unworkable. I sort of enjoyed a couple of the 'ville games, but gave up simply because it became impossible to play in intermittent bursts. The scamming got in the way of the playing, which is always a recipe for disaster.
TF2 is hardly a free to play model anyone can emulate. The reason it's free to play to begin with, after its initial period of being a pay to play tack on to the gold box, is that it was a loss leader to get people to download Steam.
Valve don't give a damn if TF2 makes or loses money, their money is from the commission they rake in from every other game on Steam.
Don't you mean the Orange Box? And while it's true that TF2 spent a number of years as a paid game (albeit the price dropped eventually to $10 before a premium pass became optional), the fact that many people actually paid for it says they got something seriously right about it and simply altered the pricing model to better reflect the times (the game went F2P about two years ago).
DOTA 2 has only just come out of beta and that is free to play as well.
Pay to win or In game advertising are not acceptable to me. (Didn't mind the Brands in the Original Crazy Taxi).
(Don't buy any game with DLC until I can buy the complete thing. Or anything that uses 3rd party DRM there is enough games that I haven't played that I should never need to change my position on this).
Good point!
Rather than it getting lost in the comments, it's probably worth you sending email to lpage@theregister.co.uk, reminding them about that for the future!
El Reg is never normally shy of repeatedly kicking tech companies in the teeth to make sure things like that are never forgetten!
As I'm sure Mark '...Bitch' Zuckerberg would attest!
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