Why Overwatch Will Eventually Be Free to Play

Or, “Follow the money.”

Like many people that enjoy Blizzard games I got the token invitation to pre-order the “Origins Edition” of their new title, Overwatch. If you haven't heard of Overwatch, you must be new here. Welcome: This is Gamespot, one of the premier site's for game coverage. Blizzard is a relatively successful game developer that makes a few little games you might have heard of, like “Starcraft,” “Diablo,” and “World of Warcraft.”

Overwatch is notable for being a completely new franchise for Blizzard with novel content in a genre Blizzard previously has had zero experience in: First-person shooters (unless you count Starcraft: Ghost, which you shouldn't). If you haven't seen Overwatch, check out some Gameplay footage from Gamespot's own Danny O'Dwyer (some language NSFW).

The big news is that Overwatch will NOT be F2P (Free to Play). Blizzard has generally done a great job bucking the trend towards F2P, successfully pushing its new Starcraft and Diablo titles via the traditional retail sales model. So it might not be surprising that Overwatch would have a retail cost given Blizzard's traditional pricing models.

But Overwatch is an online FPS (first-person shooter). Because an online FPS is so heavily reliant on having a sizable playerbase – so you can actually get into a decent game with players of similar skill level – the quickest way to do so is to give the game away and charge for incidentals like character skins, access to premium items, and other perks. To charge full retail for a new FPS guarantees that you'll only get the hardcore fans and FPS gamers in, limiting your playerbase. It's also more difficult to justify retail pricing for a game without a substantial single-player campaign.

This is why most aspiring FPS titles of note are going F2P from launch: Loadout, Firefall, Blacklight: Retribution, and the current king of F2P online FPS Team Fortress 2. Even Unreal Tournament is going F2P with their upcoming release. You need that playerbase to ensure that there is always a game ready for anyone wanting to play. There's nothing worse than logging in and not being able to find a game to join. So why is Blizzard launching a new FPS with a retail sales model?

The answer is: Follow the money.

Blizzard has a huge, HUGE fan base. The company probably has one of the best reputations for producing high-quality games of any major gaming company in existence. World of Warcraft has been (and continues to be) one of the most profitable games of all time for good reason. Ditto to the other Blizzard franchises. So Blizzard knows that no matter what game they make, there's going to be a core fanbase that will throw money at it no matter what. Charging retail for pre-orders gives hardcore fanboys and girls an excuse to throw.

You might think it sounds crazy, but it is absolutely true in all forms of entertainment from movies to music. Hardcore fans always buy the latest film/album/comic/etc. of their favorite media producer. Just ask any “Juggalo,” the name for fans of the Insane Clown Possie, or anyone with “Bieber Fever,” or Dr. Who fans, Trekkies, etc.

Further, Blizzard further monetize its fans through cross-sales with its other games. The firm has already introduced cross-game items to great success. Now, buying into Overwatch early gets you a cute pet in World of Warcraft, a card back for Hearthstone, and more. Players in those games will preorder just to get the in-game perk in their title of preference.

So Blizzard launches said game and fans go nuts. Overwatch sells a bunch of preorders and, shortly afterward, many more copies at regular retail pricing. The game will almost assuredly get strong reviews, based on Blizzard's history and what we've seen thus far. But once the game launches and establishes itself among the core fans, what happens then? Blizzard faces five main problems:

1. Blizzard cannibalizes their other titles' player population with every game launch, just like Pepsi introducing a new soda. Every time you drink a Mountain Dew or a Mug Root Beer you're not drinking a Pepsi. Video games are no different: If you're playing Overwatch you can't play World of Warcraft at the same time. Blizzard has a LOT of fans, but even their playerbase is not infinite.
2. If you're gaming on a console, you won't be able to play against PC gamers. Lack of cross-platform gaming will make maintaining a perpetual online FPS playerbase ever more challenging by spreading players across multiple systems that cannot interact.
3. The average FPS player is no longer accustomed to paying retail. It's a time-honored tradition going back to the shareware release of Wolfenstein 3D, and it's the reason all those aforementioned FPS titles (Blackwatch, etc.) have started out as F2P.
4. The Online FPS is a saturated market. Getting a sustainable group of twitchy FPS games to log in reliably enough to maintain a perpetual matching system is a huge challenge. Does anyone play Super Monday Night Combat anymore? What about Titanfall?
5. Overwatch is imitating Team Fortress 2 in many, many ways. It's hard to justify buying a new class-based online FPS when there is a very good, comparable alternative that happens to already be free.

But fear not: Blizzard always has a plan! Blizzard is a very, very savvy company: They hire the best people, and every title gets the white glove treatment. So once the initial excitement dies down post-launch and sales taper off, Blizzard will transition Overwatch to a F2P model to inject new life into the title. They'll introduce new items and skins with the switch to F2P, and paid players will have the benefit of retaining their premium cosmetics. The game will get its second wind, and enter its long-term cycle of support with the same model that has worked so well for Team Fortress 2: New cosmetics, new maps, and new game modes.

Really, it's all quite brilliant, and a model that other game companies would assuredly replicate if they had a fanbase as devoted as Blizzard's, a company so popular it has a dedicated annual fan convention that regularly sells out. But so far as Overwatch is concerned, its life as a retail game will be assuredly short.

Or maybe I'll be horribly wrong and Blizzard will go on to establish an amazing and new successful 500lb. gorilla in the online FPS genre. It wouldn't be the first time they entered a new genre to great success. Either way I'll get to play what looks to be an awesome new game.

Yaewn ti overwatch. It sad that Blizzard want small scale games and seemly given up WoW.

Free to play doesn't work for certain game types. This is one of them. A skill-based FPS will not benefit from non-cosmetic microtransactions. Unless everything is open to be earned in-game like in TF2 (that's how it works AFAIK, I haven't played in years) then it's just going to segment the community and kill it off really quickly (people with lots of money will do all the winning).

My interest in it is low, since any multiplayer game requires a significant investment of time to get good at it, and I honestly don't have the time for that anymore. I'm more interested in something like Warhammer End Times: Vermintide since it's co-operative PvE and I have a couple real-life friends interested in playing it (I just need a computer that will run it).

So what you saying is, I shouldn't preorder overwatch?

I think you made a compelling argument and overall a great post but your logic has a lot of holes and it's especially clear you're perspective is only PC. You say first-person shooters need to go the way of free-to-play? Why isn't Call of Duty, Halo, or any other major first-person shooter going free-to-play? If it's because they have already established audiences, that diminishes the credibility Blizzard has as designers. Blizzard has Activision money behind them. Blizzard will make Overwatch as successful as they want it to be.

It's also a possibility that Blizzard will turn this into a F2P game after some time as a priced game but it's also not unheard of to include microtransactions into a game with a base price.

I also don't think Blizzard is cannibalizing their other games in the way you're perceiving it. Yes, if people are playing Overwatch, then less people are playing WoW. But WoW's numbers are already in decline. Blizzard won't even report them anymore because they don't show the company in the best possible way anymore. But they're releasing another expansion for WoW and creating Overwatch? Then who is Overwatch targeting? Fans of FPS and fans of Blizzard. Personally, I have no desire to play WoW; never have. But I have lots of interest in Overwatch. I'm sure many others feel the same way.

And if Overwatch is compelling enough, it doesn't need to be free-to-play. People play good games no matter what the business model, so long the business model is fair (i.e. Team Fortress 2).

What I don't understand is your third point. Where do you get that idea? Who's "the average?" Millions buy Call of Duty. Millions bought Halo. Millions will buy Doom. Millions will buy Battlefront. I'd consider many of those millions "average." If by average you mean "one who plays FPS a lot," then what playerbase are you looking at? People play Destiny all the time. That's a full retail package; and a mediocre one. It's also on consoles. People play TF2 a lot but your point is assuming that's all they play.

Lastly, Titanfall on PC is dead but it's still going on Xbox One. It's not thriving but it's certainly not dead. Making it F2P wouldn't change anything. Again, if the game is good people will play it no matter what the business model assuming it's an ideal model.

Wow- looking back I was horribly, horribly wrong!

Of course I say that and watch it go F2P, now.

It's not doing very well from what I hear. Nobody I know still plays it (myself included) and I know a dozen people who were hardcore into it.

OWL is still attracting advertisements from outside of the game industry, has a bi-weekly 3 hour slot on Disney XD and stage playoffs on ESPN and ABC. Twitch audiences seem pretty stable from last year, but that was last time I checked.

As much as this second season has been terrible thanks to Blizzard totally losing control of the meta, it's hard to describe that as not doing well, especially when most other game leagues are relegated to back pages of youtube and Twitch, including the CWL (CoD). Pretty bored of the game myself, but then, I can't wrap my head around how any of these mp shooters stay relevant as long as they do.

@Ish_basic: I'm only goping by what people have told me: it seems the hardcore fanbase has been disappointed with the game for a long time now. They still play it and watch the leagues and streamers because, let's face it, these games are a life commitment, what else are they going to do?

from having viewed some of the videos, I honestly think its a case of being bored, yet being attached to the community around the game (or dreams of a spot on a league team). Whereas most MMOs would at this point move to the "i'm going to stand in this well-trafficked hub with my shiny, ultra-rare skins and spam world chat all day," Overwatch in being a shooter lacks any such option. And so people are forced to actually play the game in order to interact with said community...and that makes them angry/impatient.

There's always this sense of "if the devs would just do this," but the reality is, there's nothing the devs can do, the game can't find that gamer g-spot anymore, the thrill is gone. All the streamers seem to say the same thing - no one cares about winning in ranked like they used to care - but they always seem to stop short of the obvious conclusion. No, instead it's because Brigitte ruined everything or because the next Diablo is mobile or some ridiculous shit. Get bored like a normal human being and move on.

@Ish_basic: Personally I am perfectly happy not understanding why "Brigitte ruined anything": I always was blissfully oblivious to the meta and content with playing quickplay and arcade modes where people don't make a disease out of the game and where you don't hear venom coming from their voice chat if your barrier or healing came 0.1 a femtosecond later than expected.

i definitely get it. Ranked play naturally leads to toxicity. I'm guessing it's part of why so many games avoid even offering the feature. Pretty sure Seagull, former OWL player that now full time streams, doesn't play ranked on his streams much.