Why EA Made the Most Awesome Move with Free 2 Play

[Sonic 293]

In a new blog posted at GameReplays.org called Why EA Made The Most Awesomely Awesome Move With Free 2 Play, AgmLauncher sees many positives with the shift to the Free to Play concept. Many good points are made in this blog. Here's part of it.

 

 

EA’s announcement to shift Generals 2 to a multiplayer-focused free-to-play service called “Command and Conquer” has been met with vitriol from C&C fans. The singleplayer “community” (if you can call singleplayer gamers a community) is irritated for obvious reasons, and the multiplayer community is conjuring up images of an unfair pay-to-win online experience. The fear, which is perfectly justified, is that people who spend money on the game will have an unfair advantage against those who do not.

 

While that sounds terrible, let me paint another picture for you: EA could have spent too much time and budget on a singleplayer campaign, while neglecting good gameplay fundamentals - ultimately releasing a product with a story that barely rates above B-movie quality. Meanwhile the people who wanted singleplayer will spend 6-10 hours pretending they enjoyed it, and will subsequently shelve the game because singleplayer offers little, if any, replay value (they’ll “use it and lose it” so to speak). The multiplayer crowd then loses out because the core gameplay is underdeveloped.

 

That rosy little picture describes with exacting precision, the approach EA has used to drive the C&C franchise into the ground. It simply does not work anymore (unless of course it’s your goal to drive an RTS franchise into the ground...). Given that we have had almost 5 years of EA blowing development budget / bandwidth on singleplayer while neglecting gameplay and multiplayer, a free-to-play multiplayer-focused game suddenly sounds like a whole bunch of yes please.

 

You can the rest of this blog by clicking here.

[Inferno 22]

I feel this man has a bit of a superiority complex.

[mirza044 4]

I feel this man has a bit of a superiority complex.

 

Yes. This guy trolling for years about how SP content (and everything what is not related to competitive MP) is not important in RTS (C&C) games.

[Inferno 22]

Yes. This guy trolling for years about how SP content (and everything what is not related to competitive MP) is not important in RTS (C&C) games.

And how the hell does it make sense that SPers can not have a community? I'm beginning to doubt the existence of a functional brain with this one.

[PurpleGaga27 37]

This time I don't absolutely agree with AGMLauncher. This new C&C idea by EA could wind up what Westwood did to C&C Sole Survivor. All I know is that this new F2P game is too similar with the gameplay ideas of what Trion/Petroglyph did to EON.

[Golan 6]

A shame to see this quoted here. I don't understand why his frequent insults towards SP gamers are tolerated without a word and even actively spread.

 

Anyways, like so many of AGM's article this one too only focuses on an ideal picture and blatantly disregards the problems of the issue.

1. F2P only attracts players. It doesn't keep them. With a ratio of only 0.6% competitive players per unit sold for the single best MP C&C ever (according to AGM's numbers, no less), attracting isn't the problem at all.

 

2. F2P also doesn't work for all games. Notably, none of the games listed are RTS. They are all team based, low scale tactical games. That is drastically different from a 1vs1 focused RTS game. The most likely conclusion is that they will seriously rework the C&C formula to appear to a much more casual player base with fancy game modes, flashy and gimicky gameplay and quick games.

 

3. The base game is free. With the additional content however, which are likely going to be additional factions, maps and other non-cosmetic stuff (also judging from the info available so far), you are simply buying a similar sized poke of smaller but more pigs.

 

4. This is utter and complete bull****. EA has sold series with lacking gameplay for years, it's one of the prime reason AGM's so riled up against SP. People never care. They want fun stuff, flashy stuff, fancy stuff, whether the gameplay is good or great in any way the article would rate it doesn't count ****.

 

5. Well, basically the same as 4. People have proven they will stick around as long as EA just promises to do better next time very, very hard. The entire article is prove of how they just have to make a fancy promise and they have vocal PR without actually doing anything of worth.

 

6. Optimism. After all this, optimism. Seriously. That's the reason why they can go on seelling not-quite great stuff: this naive, blind optimism. It's not the SP gamers that AGM should loathe. Both in the MP and SP crowd, it's people like him that make sure EA can keep going.

Edited August 16, 2012 by Golan

[Chimas 7]

I'd like to know something, because I am alienated right now.

Does he or anybody else have a good example that a GAME-PLAY ONLY will beat a competitor with good game-play and a story?

 

If I'd be EA I would start as an MP project and the extensions could be single-player campaigns taking advantages of the initial release.

I don't think this is about MP x SP. It seems to be about enlarging the modding army in face of the gamers army, not necessarily being bigger but more influential.

 

You know, the game is over, but the fun stands still.

Modders can be seen as the "early adopters" of the gaming industry, not focusing the game-play alone but the subsequent development. They are not short on players, but on modders, even if it is a superficial one. Maybe the game will be easier to mod and the gamers or players will spend their money on virtual gadgets.

 

It's really a perception, haven't gather enough info on this, sorry.

My taste is for SP, in case you wanna know, but I try often to think about the MP case. It's not a matter of preference, it's simply something missing in MP and we tend to say "STORY".

 

\Edit: Didn't change anything but I've watched Zee's take on this issue, after writing ...

Edited August 16, 2012 by Solo

[[NE]Fobby[GEN] 10]

I don't understand why he acts like a good singleplayer game cannot have a good multiplayer. He makes it seem like it's a tradeoff; that teams who make a good singleplayer do not spend enough resources to make a good multiplayer. It does happen in some cases, but there are plenty of examples of games with both. I mentioned SC2 in the other thread, which has both a high quality single and multiplayer. C&C3 was relatively good in both besides some issues. The original Red Alert had both too. Lots of FPS with good single and multiplayers as well.

 

I personally play RTS more for their singleplayer and backstory. I understand that they need to please the multiplayer audience because they're what keeps the game alive long after release, but not at the expense where they ditch the singleplayer for a game series (C&C) and label (Bioware) that are famous for their stories. As for the points on F2P, maybe I'm stuck in my ways, but I prefer spending the 50 or 60 bucks upfront (or much cheaper on sale) and getting the full game, rather than having to constantly make small transactions online and end up spending 100 bucks over a period of a few months.

 

Anyway, it's still early to be judgmental; the quality of the game looks good and I'd be interested to see what exactly you need to pay for.

Edited August 16, 2012 by [NE]Fobby[GEN]

[TheBlackOut 6]

Blizzard somehow creates a wonderful and great SP campaign all the while maintaining a good MP. So it's possible, I just don't think EA really knows what the hell they're doing and why.

 

I agree with Fobby after reading his post.

[Sonic 293]

Some off topic posts have been deleted from this thread. One post was moved to http://forums.cncnz....king-for-buyer/

[klandri 2]

Tl;dr AGM proves once again that he is a pretentious, arrogant [redacted] that can't write while accidentally stumbling on some good points. And some bad ones, do not be fooled.

[dodgevipergts 0]

I must admit that after playing Lan and Multiplayer on any c&c game i stuggle to play singleplayer or skirmish for over 5 minutes without getting bored but thats just my opinion and will not be for everyone (especially C&C fans) but what i don't like is free to play, get ripped off to enjoy system. I was looking forward to playing Generals 2 but now i've found out there making the game like this EA can only dream of getting me to buy it this is why i hate most modern games you pay silly money for the game then you find out you've only got about 5% of the game it's like having a demo if you want the other 95% it'll only cost you a few hundred pounds

Edited August 19, 2012 by dodgevipergts