Peter Molyneux understands why many gamers are cautious of touch, mobile and free-to-play gaming, and has warned designers against “burning through” their audiences in pursuit of a quick buck.
Speaking to USGamer, Molyneux said he’s not going to let the negative reception to free-to-play stop him – he’s just going to try and do it right.
“Us gamers have been abused by Facebook gaming and mobile gaming for so long, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it,” he said.
“There’s been a lot of negative push-back from people saying they’re scared that Godus is going to come to mobile, and we’re going to turn into these analytics-driven monsters.”
Molyenux said new kinds og gaming like mobile and free-to-play are “creating millions of new gamers a year”, but these new gamers are only exposed to “very caustic free-to-play models that are abusing them”.
“I want those gamers – we all want those gamers. This industry has dreamt of being a dominant entertainment industry for decades,” he said.
“The ridiculous thing is there are people designing games around less than 5% of the audience, and monetizing them so harshly and cruelly that we’re burning through those people.”
Despite these failings, Molyneux said the industry simply must embrace new business models, because the way consumers relate to digital media is changing.
“The world’s a changing place, and we in this industry cannot ignore it. We can’t say that paying for something up-front is the only way to consume something. That’s a short-term way of thinking about it,” he said.
“Fundamentally, being able to play and tempting people to spend money, in the same way that a supermarket tempts you to buy more than the cigarettes you came in to buy, that’s really the art that we need to focus on. If we get it right, then people will not do the very thing we’re doing with free-to-play right now, and saying I’m not going to spend any money, and spending money is cheating. That’s obviously destructive.”
