@PeterN_UK a old business partner and I were talking about gaming and we both agree that it is very possible to make a truly free game. While he is into developing on PvE games (his last project was New World) I like the simplistic aspects of PvP. Did I lose you there?
Coding on PvP games, such as this, is pretty much all movement and weapon mechanics, while he has to work on character attributes, skills, and spells. That isn't as simple as line of sight targeting. Whereas they have to account for a wizard casting an area of effect spell and how that is going to affect all 15 people inside the radius... etc. Short story PvE is much harder work.
Where was I going? You said; "...paying out of goodwill to support developers..." many games are created these days by contract workers. He left to work on the next project, as did 80 or 90 percent of the other contractors. Those that remain are only there because... they either couldn't find a new job or they chose to sit still for a while.
So the BIG question, how do you make a free game and still make profit? We think the answer lies in product placement. For example; instead of seeing fake billboards in games for fictional drinks, imagine how immersive your game becomes with real ads for real products. I am not talking about making annoying ad breaks like YouTube. Imagine if your character picks up a magazine in a store and a coupon for 50% off RedBull drops out. A real spendable manufacturers coupon. The user spending said coupon would then tell the company where they found it. The company would toss more revenues at the game.
The problem we both agreed upon, while this would fund the game, the game publisher would still get greedy and soak the players for items in an item mall anyways. It is too bad about human avarice, but there is no way to get away from it.
