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Battlefield Play4Free Rep Says $60 Games Are “Exploitative”
Do you ever wince when you throw down 60 smackeroos on a new game? Ben Cousins, general manager for Easy Studios – the company behind Battlefield Heroes and Lord of Ultima – thinks charging someone that much scratch for a game they haven’t tried is preposterous.
"I can't think of anything more exploitative than gating all of your content behind having to pay someone $60," he said in an interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun. "That's a really harsh business model if you think about it objectively."
In contrast, Cousins says one of the biggest benefits of about free-to-play games is that it's a “try before you buy model,”. He explains that the Western execution of free-to-play isn’t set yet, and that there was a lot of talk at GDC about the different pay structures. “You've got people selling advantages, you've got people selling content, you've got people selling energy that allows you to play as much as you like. That's more of a case of each game trying to work out what's best for its audience and mechanics," he explains.
He also believes that Easy Studio’s technique allows players to figure out if they enjoy a game before investing money into it. “How many times have we all bought crappy games for $60, right?,” he asks. “And the majority of people in our game spend less than that ? the cost of a full-priced game. So what we're selling is a cheaper than full price game that you can try before you buy. If you choose to buy at all.”
Fortunately, Internet users like us get the benefit of demos for most games, so we rarely have to go into experiences completely blind. Maybe Cousins should try them out sometime.
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