I follow @notch (author of the near legendary independent game Minecraft, where I have spent more than a few hours). I think Minecraft showed considerable creative thinking, and tapped into a need for a kind of gameplay that wasn’t well satisfied by other typical genre games. I’m following somewhat eagerly his postings about his new venture: an Elite-like hard science fiction game entitled 0x10c. It’s got a number of interesting ideas, not the least of which is a computational sub-component: players will interact with virtual computers that control their spacecraft and provides other mostly hinted at capabilities. Intriguing! I’m working on my own DCPU-16 implementation as we speak.

He recently tweeted a pointer to his unofficial FAQ, which gave some other hints to game play. It included this interesting statement:

No price decided yet. But there will certainly be a monthly fee for playing on the multiverse since even when you will not be connected trajectory and your ship’s computer will still be simulated.

Followed up by the statement (found first in this tweet), that F2P (free to play) was a scam.

@KiiLLBOT f2p is a scam.

— Markus Persson (@notch) April 3, 2012

I’m not a commercial game developer, but I kind of bristled at this. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why a player might say it’s a scam. Most F2P games make their money by selling in game items (for real cash) that provide a richer game experience. The players who play for free are really only playing a small fraction of the game. If one wants to unlock the full experience, one needs to shell out the coin. The trick of the game developer then becomes to provide the most manipulative incentives to try to get those dollars out of their marks players.

I can see why @notch might not like that. He does genuinely seem to want to create innovative game experiences.

But here’s the thing: pay to play is a bit different than traditional games. If I want to play chess, or checkers, I just get a chess set and play. Heck, I could even make a chess set if I wanted to. Unlike most other forms of entertainment we have, traditional games like chess, checkers, cards are games that you buy (or even make) and then enjoy without further financial concerns. One of the truly innovative features (but perhaps overlooked) of Minecraft was that it was more like those games: because @notch released the multiplayer game server software as well as the client, even casual gamers could pick up and enjoy minecraft. If one of your friends set up a server, you could all continue to play. Minecraft was a limitless horizon.

But it appears that 0x10c is going to be a different kind of game: a pay-to-play game. It does have one major advantage: you can’t simply buy your way to the end (although given the popularity of F2P, perhaps that is actually a disadvantage?) But it does mean that while you play, you are shelling out money. In that sense, it’s more like going out to the movies, or playing games at a casino. It may be cheap as casino games go, but I submit it fundamentally changes the nature of play. And, of course, the game only lasts as long as the casino remains open. If they decide in the future that running this particular kind of casino isn’t what they want to do, the game ends, and nobody gets to play any more.

Are (virtually all) F2P games scams? Absolutely. And I applaud @notch for refusing to crassly exploit gamers. But pay-to-play seems to also have some cynical downside as well. Given that a game like 0x10c will likely need centralized servers to provide multiplayer capability, perhaps it’s inevitable, but I wonder if other business models could be successful. I think @notch did well to innovate game play. Perhaps another innovator will create a different kind of business model for games.