It’s an interesting time to be a gamer. What was once considered a relatively niche hobby has ballooned to become the world’s largest media market but quite some margin.

Activision-Blizzard’s Call of Duty franchise, for example, generates more revenue alone than the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. We’re presiding over a moment where games are bigger than ever, but also more costly to develop, and these costs often end up getting passed down to the consumer.

But the old certainties around how people buy and access games are also changing. It’s true that if you want to play the latest triple-A games you will still, in all likelihood, need to front the bill for a new games console or gaming PC, and then drop $70 on top of that for the game you’re eager to play. But a growing number of gamers are taking advantage of interesting alternatives to this classic “pay to play” approach.

When smartphones became a popular part of the gaming world in the 2010s, the titles on offer lacked ambition in most cases, and represented more than casual diversions. Everyone knew – or assumed – that “proper” gaming remained the province of legacy platforms.

But as these devices grew more powerful, and developers similarly became more adept at working on mobile architecture, the lines between what constituted a true console game, and what was only fit to become a smartphone app, began to blur.

Next Generation Smartphone Gaming

Now it’s not uncommon for games to enjoy simultaneous release on both PC, PlayStation 4 and smartphone, such as 2020’s well received and graphically sophisticated Genshin Impact. In fact, current estimates suggest that new smartphones have about as much gaming power behind them as 7th generation home game consoles like the Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. Now too shabby.

But this development goes both ways, with aspects of the mobile gaming world coming to impact the wider industry. We all know what a freemium game is – those, normally mobile, titles that are free to download and play, but feature restrictive paywalls that block off content and the possibility of progression without paying up.

And while these justifiably have somewhat of a bad rap, they have proven enormously lucrative – so much so that the mobile sector has come to account for over 50% of the industries $300 billion in annual revenue.

Free-to-Play and Microtransactions

Naturally, game developers across the board are eager to get in on the action, but it’s not the freemium model that has proven so vital to the new context we find ourselves in, but a related concept – microtransactions. These are small DLC items that can be purchased in-game in many mobile titles, and they have since then found their way into almost every major console and PC game.

What this makes possible is the proliferation of a new game type, called Free-to-Play. Now, let’s be clear – free games, in of themselves, are nothing new. In fact, certain sectors, such as the global iGaming market, have long offered free slots and other table games to prospective patrons. This makes sense as only a small number of players are required to convert to real-money bets to make this service viable as a means of promotion. But Free-to-Play games are somewhat different.

These are full, triple-A grade titles that are available to download and play instantly without spending a dime. This is all made possible by microtransactions. It turns out, if you give gamers a full game, and they begin to enjoy it and participate in its adjoining community, they will in most cases naturally want to customise their character to express their personality or affiliations.

And this is no mere money-spinner – Free-to-Play games have proven remarkably successful. Fortnite, for example, posted that the game had made over $9 billion in microtransaction sales in its first 2 years alone.

These kinds of numbers are remarkable, and it’s easy to see why everyone from Activision-Blizzard with their CoD: Warzone battle royale spin series, and even 343 Studios – the team behind the Halo games – is eager to incorporate free-to-play into their flagship releases.

The Future

In the coming years we can expect to see free-to-play become ever more integrated into the core fabric of game design, so much so that it’s feasible to imagine it one day supplanting pay-to-play.

Elsewhere, other modalities are in the ascendant, such as the play-to-earn (P2E) model which goes a step further in enabling gamers to earn money – in the form of crypto assets – from playing the game in question.