Free to play game design

Module title:

Free to play game design

Module overview:

Free-to-play is the most successful game business model. Currently, 80% of all game revenues come from F2P games. While highly profitable, the F2P business model relies on optimal implementation of in-app purchases, which are fully incorporate into game design.

The objective of this module is to enable students to learn:
• How F2P business model works
• How to create a game design that is aligned with F2P business model
• Technical architecture required to make F2P model feasible
• Player motivation and reasoning behind spending
• Monetization design

In this module, students will learn why is F2P the most popular business model for games and how to create an effective game design that will engage players and create revenues.
This module is a natural progression from the Foundations of Mobile Games module. The F2P business model is dominant on mobile platform and understanding how mobile games work will provide students with necessary knowledge to fully understand what is required to make successful F2P games. We will learn in this module everything we need to be able to design financially successful F2P games, regardless of the platform.

Literature:

Required readings:
1. Luton, Will (2013): Free-to-Play: Making Money from Games You Give Away: Amazon Kindle


2.Lovell, Nicholas (2016), Design Rules for Free-to-Play Games: Amazon Kindle and https://www.gamesbrief.com/rules/


Supplementary readings:
1. Bycer, Joshua. (2023), Game Design Deep Dive Free-to-Play: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Grou
2. Seufert, Eric Benjamin (2014), Freemium Economics: Leveraging Analytics and User Segmentation to Drive Revenue (The Savvy Manager´s Guides), Morgan Kaufmann

3. Hodent, Celia (2017), The Gamer´s Brain: How Neuroscience and UX Can Impact Video Game Design: CRC Press