The difference between AAA and Free to Play

Travian's Jan van der Crabben is in an authoritative position to speak about the differences between triple-A and free-to-play game development. The University of East London journalism graduate worked at both Firaxis and Creative Assembly, as a tester on Civilization IV at the former and as lead campaign designer on Napoleon: Total War at the latter. He then moved to work for free-to-play game maker Travian, which is based in Munich, has over 200 employees, and has made games such as Travian, Remanum, Imperion.

There are a number of important differences between AAA games and free-to-play games, according to van der Crabben. First of all, as a designer, you need to reduce the skill difference between good and casual players--to keep the high-level players playing longer and the less-skilled ones feeling like they can compete. This ties in to the fact that there is a much smaller willingness to give a game a chance at the lower end compared to a premium AAA product--player goodwill diminishes fast when moving from a AAA game to a free-to-play client game and finally to a browser game.

One point that van der Crabben touched upon is that of user interfaces. In AAA games, he claims that gameplay systems are presented not only in a simple manner, but in some cases, quite beautifully as well. In free-to-play games, however, the information tends to be less streamlined and pretty. This can come down to skill or budget on the part of the developer, but it can be intentional--free-to-play games are traditionally big in slow Internet areas such as Latin America and the Middle East.

The single most important thing for free-to-play games, though, is social engagement. Put bluntly, multiplayer equals monetization according to van der Crabben--giving up a game is easy, but giving up a friend is hard. "Multiplayer is the number one reason for player retention," he said, through behaviours such as conquesting, interdependence, trade, cooperation, and shared victory. People will pay money if it will give them an advantage over enemies, a compensation for time, or the opportunity to be generous or get revenge. In free-to-play games, though, the incentive should never be "invite a friend or pay money" he warned.

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