Influence on the game type

The free-to-play model has spread widely to cover various games, genres, and platforms. Still, there are some game types that seem to work especially well with the model, and this is seen in typical design features. Four design types are presented here, with an emphasis on casual design, shallow narrative design, strong social design, and never-ending progression.

Emphasis on casual design

As free-to-play games receive revenue from a minority of players, it is important that the audience of the game is as large as possible. Due to this, the games often follow casual design values (see Kultima, 2009), being easy to access and relatively simple, offering flexible playing styles and including widely accepted themes. Casual design is especially connected to mobile free-to-play games and social network games, while computer free-to-play games can differ in this aspect considerably.

The casual design can be seen in how the games are taught to the players. According to the results studying mobile free-to-play games in Article III, the initial experience can be very different depending on the type of the game, but the most similarities can be found among the top-grossing free-to-play games. These games taught the game mechanics in a restrictive way, making the player follow instructions with no control on what to do next. The actions done in these tutorials were very simple, sometimes focusing only on the one move the player could make, disabling other actions, or even blocking the visibility of the rest of the screen. These kinds of tutorials may feel frustrating to more advanced players but are helpful to newcomers. While the tutorials teach the basic mechanics of the game, they also try to teach the player to use hard currency. In some cases, the player is forced to use a small amount of hard currency for instance to skip a short timer. This can be thought to lower the threshold of the next use of hard currency and might eventually lead to the use of real money.

Shallow narrative design

The nature of free-to-play games as never-ending experiences influence how the stories of the games can be built. The mobile games studied in Article III typically featured a background story or setting, but no deeper narrative structures. For instance, in The Simpsons: Tapped Out (EA Mobile, 2012), the player is rebuilding the city of Springfield after it has been accidentally blown up by Homer, linking the thematic story to The Simpsons animation series. This creates the setting and the reasoning for the game, explaining the destroyed blocks and the need to rebuild. Furthermore, the missions in the game draw their inspiration from the animation series, but do not tell full stories. This makes it easier for the game to expand and keep adding content frequently.

In Article V, this lack of deeper narratives was noted to influence the immersive experiences the games can offer. This is true not just with mobile free-to-play, but

also with computer free-to-play and even story-driven free-to-play games, such as Star Trek Online (Cryptic Studios, 2010):

Even though [Star Trek Online] is supposed to be a roleplaying game, the role-playing aspects are quite small. That Witcher 3 [a non-free-to-play game] is kind of a completely story-driven single-player experience in which at least I get immersed completely. (Article V: paying player interview, ID 5)

Strong social design

Sociability is central in free-to-play games. In Article III, especially the top-grossing mobile games included a high number of social features. The more competitive games where players directly played against each other such as Clash of Clans and Game of War - Fire Age, were especially social. These games featured guilds, chats, and messaging systems, and allowed directly attacking other players and guilds. In the case of Game of War - Fire Age, the game supported stronger connections between guild members by allowing resource sharing and re-locating next to other guild members on the server map. In this way, the connections are not formed just through the communication channels of the game, but also concretely by sharing resources and sending troops to attack or defend other players, and uniting members against a common enemy.

In Hearthstone (Blizzard Entertainment, 2014), one of the central features of the game is matching the players against each other and advancing in ladders. The functionality of the matchmaker assures that the players get to play against others roughly on the same level as them, giving regular experiences of success even for less experienced players. While Hearthstone also includes single-player content, the multiplayer nature of the game with the regular addition of new card extensions make it easier not to run out of content.

Even games that do not feature direct competition include some social aspects. City and farm building games such as The Simpsons: Tapped Out and Hay Day allow visiting other players and helping them out, while Candy Crush Saga includes rankings and sending and receiving extra lives and moves from playing friends.

Social features were also seen as an important part of free-to-play games in the interviews in Article V. This is especially true for the more competitive, group-based games, and showed in the memorable experiences of the interviewees. When asked about the strongest positive or negative feelings while playing free-to-play games, players described situations connected to playing with or against other people, with alternating feelings of frustration and achievement.

Never-ending progression

As free-to-play games continue to receive revenue while the players continue playing and paying, it is important that playable content never ends as long as the game continues to be profitable. More content is added constantly, and the speed of progression is limited.

The feel of progression was at the center of the top-grossing games in Article III, but could vary between games. For instance, The Simpsons: Tapped Out progressed slowly, allowing only a few actions in a relatively long time and thus keeping the sessions short, while Game of War - Fire Age included a lot of smaller upgrades and actions with short timers, making the sessions longer or more frequent and the feel of progression faster. The city and farm building games included simple quests or missions to guide the progress. These types of activities give the player a lot to do, but can cause the game to be repetitive as described in Chapter 5.2.2.

In puzzle games such as Candy Crush Saga, the approach leans into solving an ever-increasing amount of puzzle levels. The progression is slowed by adding more challenging levels and a life mechanic, which is depleted when the player fails. As there can only be a limited amount of levels, this type of game can more easily temporarily end for a player if they finish all the levels before the developer implements new ones. The number of levels is typically high and actively updated, and reaching this state requires constant active playing. Possibilities for additional progression are given by high score lists, and levels can be replayed with this additional motivation.

In competitive games such as Hearthstone, the continued progression is against other players, and never ends as long as there are other players to compete with. Progression in Hearthstone is also about collecting cards and building decks. The game offers a starter set of cards, and the player can acquire more cards by playing or buying them with in-game currency or money. Hearthstone includes a meta-level of play, as players actively create and share decks that best work at any given moment. New generations of cards are brought into the game periodically in order to keep this meta-game ongoing.

According to Article V, the never-ending nature of the games has an effect on the feelings of achievement. As the games never finish, the ultimate feeling of accomplishment similar to some one-time payment games does not happen. However, these games do offer several smaller, although not as memorable, feelings of achievement.