Free to play or Pay to win?

As a student in college I don't have a lot of money to spare for games. Alone time to play lot's of games.I have recently been playing free to play games and discovering a new world of fun. There is a lot of free to play games out there because the companies think they can make more money with in game purchases than just the game alone. I can agree and give an example Fortnite battle royale. This is a very popular game where you would spend your money mainly on cosmetics but cosmetics make you feel/play better. A lot of free to play games do this make make a lot of profit. This is more a a game that doesn't give a major edge over the opponent but games like clash of clans could get you to max level if you spent a lot of money on the game like many others have to become the best. This makes the game a pay to win and makes the other players feel discouraged and not want to play. Phone games are just the worst at pay to win aspects because it's more convenient to pay for extra stuff in the game. I know companies want major profit for their game but I hope that in a couple of years this changes to something better such as only cosmetic items or the premium currency is easier to get and not feel ashamed of not buying important items in the game.

Business side

Onyett, Charles. “Separating Free-to-Play and Pay to Win.” IGN, IGN, 13 Aug. 2012, www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/13/separating-free-to-play-and-pay-to-win.

In this source it states that pay to win games are in a different category than free to play games in china where it's part of game marketing. I understand you can make tons of money off of games that are free to play because players will spend money on games that a free to play rather than spending money on games they already had to buy. It states that we should separate these categories rather than labeling them free to play.

Carter, Marcus, and University of Sydney. “Pay-to-Win Features in Video Games Look a Lot like Gambling.” ABC News, 28 Nov. 2017, www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-28/pay-to-win-gaming-features-look-like-gambling/9201386.

This relates to my last topic "loot boxes"(go check it out<3) but also pay to win aspects of the game in how they created this world of consumers. This causes problems around the world because more and more streamers and youtubers play games online and put of videos of spending money to get 'better' at the game. This creates content for the user but also makes the pay to win aspect more normalized and bad for the community because it can lead in to other problems this article states.

-A fun video to see more pay to win games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O97Ctjby1c

Discovery

Terms

1.pay to win a game where to pay to win at the game

2. free to play games that are released free so everyone can access and play them.

I found my source on ign because they tend to have great sources and less bias in my eye because they try to lay down some facts and information.

Observation & Reflection

The first ign source was informational about pay to win games and I think the are a reliable gaming source for many aspects. I would say this is a scholarly source because ign does reviews and videos on video games for years. They become an expertise in these situations over the years. The source communicates that free to play games should be seperate than pay to win games. The audience which are all free to play gamers out there who would agree on this article. This article relates more towards the audience I was trying to go over as well making this a perfect fit for this blog.

The next source I chose was ABC news which is more on the reliable side but of course they are not perfect by all means. It is hard finding good material on video game topic professionally since most of the complainers are the gamers themselves and talk in threads. I would want to consider a thread one time because they bring up great points but ABC had some major points that needs to be reiterated. This article was to inform that loot boxes/pay to win is bad for the community. They got the message across to parents as well since this was more of a well done article.

These entries had made my point without me having to repeat the topics a lot. I agreed with some of the ideas of it's a different category and needs to let the player know what they are getting into.