If all video games were free what would people really play? – Reader’s Feature

Most free to play video games are online shooters but a reader asks what would happen if every game was free and anyone could play anything they wanted.

Video games are weird when it comes to prices. The average cost of a game has barely increased at all in 40 years and consoles only a relatively little amount. Which sounds good in theory, except they’re still expensive to most people and not the sort of thing you really buy without either a lot of research or a good sale.

People don’t want to pay more but publishers desperately need them to, because the cost of making games definitely has gone up over the years. The solution to this has been free-to-play games where they make their money, not on the game but the microtransactions, with skins and other cosmetics that seem utterly worthless to me but are apparently highly desirable to some people.

A couple of million people paying £70 for a game is nothing compared to tens of millions paying £7 for a skin every other week and so we arrive at a place where Fortnite is virtually a video games industry in itself, and half of all games that people play are the same 10 that have been out for the best part of a decade.

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Almost all of these free-to-play games are online multiplayer games, mostly shooters but also things like Rocket League. This is because competitive games are the most universally popular, that anyone can understand in an instant, but also because you’re competing against other people you’ve also got a lot of reasons to buy skin and gear, to show off to other people.

But what if all games were free (just by magic or whatever, I’m not suggesting this is a real thing that could happen) and microtransactions weren’t a thing or were also free. What would people play then, if their personal preference was all that mattered?

When I first started this thought experiment, I imagined all the obscure genres that I love, like real-time strategies and space combat simulators, that would come back, because people would be free to pick and choose and experiment. Money would no longer be an issue, and so people would be free to follow their whims and discover all sorts of weird and wonderful things they had no idea they’d like.

And then I realised I was being naïve and that in reality almost nothing would change. Even if games didn’t cost money they take time and most people aren’t interested in spending it learning something new when they only sat down for a game for a quick blast or to relax (which is perfectly fine, I’m not dissing that).

In fact, we’ve had very clear evidence that nothing would change with Game Pass, which is free at the point of use. Instead of sampling lots of previously unknown games and taking a chance on weird indie titles, people just stick to what they know, either because they’re not interested or are literally paralysed with choice.

I’ve also heard of people flicking through a dozen or more games at a time and playing them only for a few minutes and writing them off instantly. Not just because of time but also because they don’t have any faith that they’ll like anything they didn’t already know about.

That, I’m afraid, is human nature. You see it on Netflix and other streaming services too. It’s not the avant-garde shows that are popular it’s the dumb as rocks ones. And what kind of movies do Netflix make for itself? Other than a few that are specifically meant as Oscar bait, they’re usually incredibly stupid action films that sell themselves as having an actor you’ve already heard of in them.

I just don’t think there’s anyway to make a substantial number of people interested in gaming the way fans are. That should be obvious – most people have their own hobbies that they’re more attached to – but I think the high cost of gaming makes us think that if only they were cheaper people’s tastes and wants would radically change.

I don’t think they would though. Maybe they’d expand slightly but the further you go back in time, when there were more genres in the mainstream, it’s not just because games were cheaper to make back then but because the majority of people were gamers and they were looking for something new and interesting.

Now the majority of people that play games don’t consider it an important hobby to them. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s the price of being successful, but it also shows why Xbox’s goal of having three billion players was always nonsense. There aren’t that many people in the world that will ever like games that much and we just have to accept that.

By reader Heckler

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