Segunda metanarrativa: masculinidad, poder y resistencia

The most fundamental characteristics of free-to-play monetization are the lack of a starting fee and the inclusion of voluntary purchases during gameplay. There are many ways to implement what the paid content is, how it influences the game, and how aggressively it is tied to playing and advancing.

In the most simple terms, paid content can be divided into two categories: those that influence gameplay or are functional, and those that affect the appearance of the game or are decorative (Oh & Ryu, 2007). Vili Lehdonvirta (2009) further divides these two main categories into sub-categories. According to him, functional attributes can be divided into performance which gives a numerical advantage, and functionality which gives new abilities and options. He divides hedonic attributes into visual appearance and sounds, background fiction, provenance, customizability, cultural references, and branding. In addition, Lehdonvirta adds a third main category of social, under which he categorizes rarity, which can be used to distinguish oneself from the crowd.

In another attempt to categorize paid content, Will Luton (2013, pp. 76–81) divides in-app purchases into four categories, giving special focus to functional item types. These are content which can include for instance more levels or new abilities; convenience, which allows players for instance to skip boring content such as grinding;

competitive advantage, which gives the player an edge over other players; and customization, which allows personalization and showing creative expression.

Lehdonvirta’s (2009) functional attributes and Luton’s (2013) convenience and competitive item categories can be further divided to capture some essential differences. Functional content is criticized for creating fairness issues between paying and non-paying players. Especially in competitive games, content that gives players power over others is frowned upon, and games that includes these items are called pay-to-win. However, content that makes a player advance faster gives an advantage by leveling up and becoming more powerful in an indirect way. Skipping waiting and grinding can be seen as a more accepted way to use money compared to direct power content, such as weapons or boosters. A third, most accepted form of functional content includes content designed for convenience, which makes playing more pleasant or less tedious. This can mean a larger inventory that helps to decrease item management, and typically gives the least amount of competitive advantage. Furthermore, I would argue that while Lehdonvirta’s social category is important to include, especially in recent games, social content has included shared content and access to social features in addition to the rarity factor mention in the original study. Therefore, following Luton (2013) and Lehdonvirta (2009) and these considerations, I divide paid content into five categories: cosmetic, convenience, advancement, power, and social content.

In-app purchases can be further divided on their effect times. Paid content can be consumed on use and give a timed effect, or it can have a lasting effect and provide permanent content (Oh & Ryu, 2007). In addition to consumable and permanent content, some games have voluntary periodic fees, which give benefits only while the player pays the fee. Therefore, content can be further divided roughly into three categories depending on the effect time involved: namely consumable, subscription, and permanent content. Table 3 gives examples of different in-app purchases from each combination of these categorizations.

Table 3. Examples of different types of paid content in free-to-play games

Consumable Subscription Permanent

Cosmetic Limited time costume Premium portrait Permanent costume

Convenience Easier harvesting Premium inventory Inventory upgrade

Advancement Energy refill Premium XP Level unlock

Power Booster Premium ammo Weapon upgrade

In cosmetic items, permanent purchases are common. Players can buy, for example, different types of costumes for their characters, new avatars, furnish their homes, decorate their farms, and get new commentator voices. Some games offer non- permanent cosmetic items, such as the limited time costumes in Maple Story 2 (NSquare, 2015) or premium portraits for subscribers in Lords of the Rings Online (Turbine, 2007).

Consumable convenience items make the game easier for a limited period of time. For instance, in FarmVille (Zynga, 2009), the player could buy gasoline that could be used to “drive” a tractor. With the tractor, the player had to click fewer times to harvest their crops, as it would harvest a larger area with one click. Permanent convenience items are, for instance, inventory upgrades which allow players to fit more items into their bags without constantly removing items and maintaining the inventory. Inventory upgrades can also be subscription-based, where the player receives the advantage as long as they keep paying the subscription fee.

Especially in social network games and mobile free-to-play games, having consumable advancement purchases is a popular way to ask for money. These games often include offline progress mechanics (Paavilainen et al., 2015), which mean the player needs to wait for a period of real time to pass before the task advances. By paying money or in-game currency, the player can immediately finish a time-based task and so progress faster. In energy-based games, the player can refill their energy bar, making more actions possible without waiting. Similarly, with subscription, the player might receive more experience points from battles or tasks than without it, making leveling up faster. Advancement purchases as permanent effects are rarer but still exist. For instance, in Angry Birds Rio (Rovio Entertainment, 2011), the player can buy an item that allows them to skip levels. After the purchase, the item can be used as many times as the player wishes.

Power upgrades can be bought in many forms. A typical consumable item is a booster that makes the player more powerful or skillful for a short period of time. Subscriptions can also offer power upgrades, such as premium ammunition in World of Tanks (Wargaming, 2010). Permanent upgrades can also include items such as new or upgraded weapons.

In the social category, players can send each other gifts that can be bought with real money or in-game currency. The gifts themselves are typically consumables, such as boosters in Candy Crush Saga (King, 2012). Players can also use shared boosters, such as the lures featured in Pokémon Go. The effects of these boosters are available for all nearby players, even though only one of the players uses them. In the subscription category, players can gain access to premium chat channels or access

to the world chat (such as in Maple Story 2), allowing more socializing and cooperation. Permanent upgrades can include upgrading or modifying the guild, such as in Game of War: Fire Age (Machine Zone, 2013).

These categories are not clearly cut, and one in-app purchase can belong to several categories. For instance, a special item can both be a power item by having better qualities than the basic item, and also have unique visuals, making it cosmetic content as well. Convenience content is often (but not always) simultaneously content designed for advancement, as it can help the player advance faster by skipping tedious tasks such as grinding. Similarly, shared or gifted social items can simultaneously belong to other categories.

In the majority of free-to-play games, the player rarely buys items directly with real money. Instead, the player can buy in-game currency, which can then be used to buy the actual items. This currency is called hard currency and is highly valued. Depending on the game, the player may get some hard currency while playing the game as rewards. Many free-to-play games also feature one or more forms of soft currency. This currency can typically be accumulated more easily while playing, and can be used to buy some, but not all of the items available within the game. Usually, real money can be transformed to hard currency or soft currency, and hard currency can be transformed into soft currency, but not vice versa. This is called the double currency or multi-currency model (Alha et al., 2014). By using the game’s own currency, the game developers have a better control of the game’s economy and can for instance prevent inflation and adjust their prices more easily. Using in-game currency instead of directly using real money can also be a way to blur the real cost of the purchases. Furthermore, by giving the player some hard currency, the player can learn how to buy in-game content without first using real money, so lowering the threshold for them to do so later.

Some games sell items in randomized packages where the player only knows the content after having paid and opened the package. These are called loot boxes. Each time a player opens a loot box, they have a small possibility of receiving rare and valuable items, and items they are still missing from their collection. The gacha game mechanic is similar to loot boxes. In gacha, a player cannot buy items directly, but rather by taking their chances in a mini game that resembles a capsule-toy vending machine (gacha in Japanese). To get the rare items, the player typically has to try many times and consequently spend money. Sometimes, special items can only be collected within a certain timeframe, building pressure on the player to spend money to get them before the time runs out. Loot boxes and gacha mechanics have been the target

of criticism and have even been banned in some countries, as discussed in more detail in the last part of this chapter.

In addition to in-app purchases, free-to-play games use advertising as a means of monetization, as mentioned in the previous subchapter. Advertisements can be shown at certain intervals and are typically unskippable for a certain amount of time. Sometimes the player can pay money to get rid of these advertisements. In another approach, the player can choose to watch an advertisement in order to continue playing the game, to improve their rewards, or to receive some in-game currency, for example.