So about that free content, huh?

Lots of things are free. Tons of things. Like the main website, this blog, the Neptunia Wiki and most things I do. It’s not because I don’t have money, I don’t want spend my money on things that aren’t needed or required. Sure, I’d love to support people on their business ventures, or even help some people out with donations, getting them out of terrible situations.

But that comes with a cost, that I’ll have nothing to help myself with my own business ventures or situations that have happened or will happen to me. A balance needs to be achieved, always.

The problem is, I feel, on the paid content itself. Sometimes they are simply not worth buying, having, owning.

“Why should I pay if it’s free?”

Convincing people to pay you money for their things is something I lack. I’ll admit that I’m not a good salesman, and I don’t think I’m fit to sell anything to anyone by words alone. I like to have something to base myself upon, and even then, it’s not easy. Looking at others trying to be salesmen to me however, and things go completely crazy.

Since I like games and tech, I’ll talk about those. There’s enough games out there, probably one for you, even if you don’t like them. The issue is that idea of paying for a videogame is getting less and less desirable, due to the fact that many systems exist now, enough to make your head spin.

Free To Play (F2P) have gone up (and down) many things, but the proposition is that you only need to make an account (and that’s for pretty much all systems nowadays) and then just download it. That’s it, no additional fees are asked of you at the start. This is quite comparable to going to a theme park, where they either charge for the entrance or charge for the rides and the entrance is free. The key difference between that is both can be updated to include more content overtime, and depending on the business model used, and that alone can create a real challenge for paid content.

As much it pains me to admit this, the formula of being a gacha worked very well for Genshin Impact. A free-to-play game that only requires you to play it, and even if it has gacha, if you want to experience it, you can somewhat avoid it, or if you can’t, you can avoid spending money on it. It’s an almost non-paid experience… So why should you pay for games, if you can get a consistently updated game overtime (a live service model)? Not saying that this game in particular gets this, but many games followed its example and they can offer you crazy good experiences for free, meaning that paid content has to ‘fight harder’ to justify itself.

This is one of the challenges that paid content has to justify itself, because what would be different than playing a game that’s free? Sure, they might do different things but free content beats paid content in the customers’ minds.

Tech is also very interesting because you can get away with FOSS (Free Open Source Software) and in fact, there are plenty of things that are free that you can use. ExplorerPatcher, one of my favorite programs to fix Windows 11’s start menu and its shenanigans is free. The Windows 11 Debloater tool I use is also free. Several apps that I use are also free. Why should I pay for Start11, if I can get most of its functionality (the one that matters, at least) for free?

You see what I mean?

Once Free Now Paid

Another challenge is when stuff is generally free then it turns into paid content. It has happened to everything you can imagine, related to software.

Examples:

• Game studio makes something so good that the developer makes it officially part of the game, ‘robbing’ people from the free version.
• Developer of a program makes the program free for a time but licenses are paid for or worse, the next update has a price tag and you can’t undo it.

There might be more but you get the point. This causes a couple of issues, the first being ‘is it really that good that it needs to be paid for?’ and the second being ‘is it actually worth the price?’

The first issue is the one that gets hit immediately. ‘It was free one time, why is it paid now?’ is a question that comes up whenever this happens. Is the additional content made as good as the original to the point that it should stand tall with the same content as the paid one? It’s a worth question. Usually the answer is ‘no’, resoundingly too.

The second issue is almost like the first one, but it gets to do with the actual pricing. Having a price tag versus what’s the price tag. If a formerly fan-made 2h content map mod for a game gets a price of 1 USD, it’ll get asked why is it paid in the first place, but for a 1 USD for a price is reasonable. If it’s 20 USD, then it’s not.

Getting You to Pay

Another thing to not leave out of this talk: Free content isn’t really free. They might have a free entry cost, but they’ll make sure you fork over some money to enjoy it on the long run.

It has been said before that if something is free, you’re the product instead. This is true in multiple ways, since making an account to play a gacha game will get that information sold to advertising companies in general. Take me for example, I have my private Gmail account, which should be easy to figure out. I’ve never used or even accessed anything related to Lindt, that company make chocolate-based products. Yet, I’m constantly spammed with their marketing campaigns, because my e-mail was certainly sold to some ad campaign. Ugh.

Worse still, that happened without me doing anything different than the usual, imagine for those that sign up to play Fortnite, or PUBG Mobile or Free Fire! or whatever.

The system gets worse when you actually engage because free things aren’t exactly free, as I said. They will make sure that you’ll pay at some step. You’ll hit a wall for your team composition in a gacha RPG, or unable to save what you took from a battle royale/extraction game. Maybe there’s a character that is only behind the paywall that is utterly broken and the devs aren’t not gonna balance it because it’s meant to be broken. Maybe a custom skin for a character you like.

Some of the most egregious examples of free-to-play asset flips and clones on mobile stores will ask you money to do anything, even stealing cars in a GTA-clone, while the shadier examples are games that let you play for hours and you can keep playing for more time, but if you want to progress to a certain region, your team composition or weapons, or magic skills, something will be lacking and unless you drop money on it, you’ll never progress. Essentially both of these gate your progress until you pony up and pay.

Not Really Optional

I mentioned before in ‘Non-Optional Optionality‘ that nothing inside of these things are optional, not just game related stuff but in general. If it’s in there, it’s meant to be used somehow. And this is another challenge that Paid Content has, they are fighting directly against things that do this: offer you ads for things inside the thing you’re using.

Many paid upfront games got a lot of backlash for asking for money upfront and then again for more stuff. With free-to-entry/play it’s more understandable, you get to enjoy as much as you want without paying, but if it has a cost to do so, people are gonna be annoyed that you’re already asked for it.

In both cases, you’ll be paying to enjoy something out of it, making it not optional.

Closing Words

The challenge that ‘Paid For’ Content has is unique in a way that is hard to describe. How can you ask for more money if I had to pay to get in? Imagine a restaurant that charged you for entry and once inside, everything else was also paid. Or a theme park, that charged you for the entrance AND for the rides, and the bathroom.

In order to justify its pricetag, the content needs to be at least engaging or decent, people won’t mind if it’s paid for, but once everything else around gets capped to be turned into a possible financial vehicle for the creator or owner, the content also gets capped from its true potential, meaning that unless you pay up, you won’t see everything.

I find that view objectively desperate, considering that if you confident you have a good product, you don’t need to ask for additional funds. And this also feels like you’re trying to chase trends, and if you are doing this, you are already behind everyone and are playing catch-up.

Mind you, people are willing to pay if they like the content, but forcing down throats is not the way.