Joshua Bycer - Game Design Deep Dive: Free-to-Play

Game Design Deep Dive: F2P

Game Design Deep Dive: Free-to-Play (F2P) continues the series focus on examining genres with a look at the history and methodology behind free-to-play and mobile games. The genre is one of the most lucrative and controversial in the industry. Josh Bycer not only lays out the potential and pitfalls of this design but also explores the ethics behind good and bad monetization.

This book offers:

• A comprehensive look at the practices behind the most popular free-to-play and mobile games
• A detailed talk about the ethics of F2P, and one of the few honest looks at it from both sides of the argument
• A perfect read for designers, students, or people wanting to educate themselves about the practices of the genre

Joshua Bycer is a Game Design Critic with more than seven years of experience critically analyzing game design and the industry itself. In that time, through Game-Wisdom.com, he has interviewed hundreds of game developers and members of the industry about what it means to design video games.

Game Design Deep Dive

Free-to-Play

Joshua Bycer

First edition published 2023
by CRC Press
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and by CRC Press
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CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

2023 Joshua Bycer

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ISBN: 9781032207629 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032207612 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003265115 (ebk)

DOI: 10.1201/9781003265115

Typeset in Minion
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Welcome to the fourth book in the Game Design Deep Dive series. Im very proud of this book, not only being my longest design piece to date but also the chance to share my thoughts on ethical game design a topic that is sorely needed in the industry. With each entry in this series, I feel that Im improving at analyzing designs and I hope that people are getting something useful out of them.

By talking about ethics in this book, I also hope to expel the myth surrounding stupid game designers. The notion that because a game is designed in a specific way, that its the developers who are being dumb for making a game like that. Theres a tendency when joking about systems or design to ignore the meaning and methodology about it. Part of the reason for the breakdown and exploitation with mobile games was that developers and parents alike were ignoring the impact of the market. Mechanics and systems are not inherently good or bad, or smart or stupid; its all about the implementation and why understanding game design matters.

For each one of my books, I run a donation incentive for acknowledgments in my books. Here are the people who helped support me while I was writing Game Design Deep Dive: Roguelikes:

• Michael Berthaud
• Ben Bishop
• D.S
• Jason Ellis
• Jake Everitt
• Thorn Falconeye
• Puppy Games
• Luke Hughes
• Adriaan Jansen
• Jonathan Ku
• Robert Leach
• Aron Linde
• Josh Mull
• NWDD
• Rey Obomsawin
• Janet Oblinger
• Onslaught
• David Pittman
• David White

Email:

My YouTube channel where I post daily design videos and developer interview: youtube.com/c/game-wisdom

Main site: Game-Wisdom.com

My Twitter handle: Twitter.com/GWBycer

If you enjoyed this entry and want to learn more about design, you can read my other works:

• 20 Essential Games to Study A high-level look at 20 unique games that are worth studying their design to be inspired by or for a historical look at the game industry.
• Game Design Deep Dive: Platformers The first entry in the Game Design Deep Dive series focusing on 2D and 3D platformer design. A topto-bottom discussion of the history, mechanics, and design of the game industrys most recognizable and long-lasting genre.
• Game Design Deep Dive: Roguelikes The second entry in the Game Design Deep Dive series focusing on the rise and design of roguelike games. A look back at how the genre started, what makes the design unique, and an across-the-board discussion on how it has become the basis for new designs by modern developers.
• Game Design Deep Dive: Horror The third entry in the Game Design Deep Dive series examining the philosophy and psychology behind horror. Looking at the history of the genre, I explored what it means to create a scary game or use horror elements in any genre.

DOI: 10.1201/9781003265115-1

With the previous entry Game Design Deep Dive: Horror focusing on horror design, I spoke about how the genre was one of the hardest to write about due to its focus on psychology over mechanics. With this one, Im now taking an eye toward a more recent genre: one that has attracted many developers and publishers with the allure of a huge payday, and one that is hard to talk about in its own way.

Free-to-play (F2P) design is the first genre Im covering for this series that has a lot of negative connotations surrounding it due to many developers building exploitative and unethical systems. The term pay to win (or P2W) has become synonymous with the dark side of F2P, leading many consumers to automatically forsake a game (). When the mobile scene exploded in the late 2000s, there was another backlash toward mobile games and consumers from people who felt that they were just abusive systems and not a real game.

Besides examining the elements of each genre, another goal of the Game Design Deep Dive series is to explain that mechanics and systems are just tools that a developer can use. Free-to-play design is not automatically unethical or evil; its all dependent on how the systems are used and built.