I've recently seen a lot of videos from Hearthstone creators about the game The Bazaar created by an ex-hearthstone creator. They are selling closed beta access for around $30 for the basic pack, which gives you and a friend access to the game, as well as enough premium currency to unlock the three currently available heroes.
The value proposition isn't terrible in the gaming industry right now. Open beta is supposed to start in December (and totally check the game out. It looks pretty fun!) I'm just so tired of competent QA people being replaced with pay for early access to a "free" game.
The monetization of the game is very odd, but let's discuss how the monetization of a game affects what the developers are incentivised to put effort into. A free to play game is often monetized, similar to League of Legends, mostly through cosmetic overrides for in-game models. This is why most LoL patch notes are new champions that come out with a few skins, new skins for Lux and Ezreal, I mean existing champions. The incentive for the developers is to only make new skins, and on top of that, only new skins for very popular champions.
The Bazaar has a casual mode where if you get ten wins (like Hearthstone Arena), you get a ticket to play a game of ranked mode. You also get one free ranked ticket every day that is use-it-or-lose-it. And if you get enough wins in a ranked run, you are rewarded with treasure chests, which will contain a cosmetic.
The plan is for these cosmetic items to be tradable to other players. For a free to play game, this sounds like a paradise for botting. But also having a "ranked" mode just be the normal mode, but with the possibility of rewards is very silly to me in general. But having a ranked queue that costs money seems terrible. The incentive is for the developers to funnel as many people into paying for ranked runs as possible, but the rewards will decrease in value the more people receive them.
I don't have access to the game due to not wanting to spend on beta testing the game so close to Brighter Shores coming out and Oldschool Runescape Leagues later this month. But I'm not sure I would continue to play this game, considering I don't expect the game to succeed.
What other free to play games have monetization models that incentivise the devs to create the best possible gaming experience for the users? Or is that not sustainable in our current market?
I quite liked the concept a few years back when Apple and Google were talking about a Netflix-style subscription model for iOS/Android... a bit like Xbox Game Pass. The subscription would give you access to a bunch of games, and developers were paid royalties based on a mix of metrics like the game review score, number of downloads, average total time spent in game etc. It seemed like a good idea in that it aligned developers and players in the desire for genuinely good games, regardless of the game style or genre. It threw away the need for each game to find a way to monetize their players (which nearly always ends up in multiplayer endless cosmetic MTX nonsense).
Apple Arcade is still going and getting plenty of releases. I don’t know anyone buying it specifically but including it in Apple One (competitively priced subscription for most Apple services) means lots of people have access to it. Me and my partner use it a lot. It’s very nice knowing that those games won’t try to shove microtransactions down my throat.