Having worked within the industry for 30 years, you might expect BioWare Mythic VP and studio general manager Eugene Evans to be reluctant to embrace relatively fresh trends such as free-to-play.

In Evans' view, however, the industry has long been moving towards a 'free' price point, and it's not something studios should resist.

Indeed, it's a factor that, in the long run, is likely to inform game design, rather than corrupt it.

Blockbuster move

"Blockbuster essentially revolutionised the industry when it started doing one thing: renting games," said Evans in his keynote at Develop in Brighton.

"People could play a game for a couple of bucks, find out that it sucked, and never have to actually buy it."

As a result, he claims, the "lower the price of your game, the better it needs to be."

Lessons learned

"If you want people to pay to play on, then the game has to be good," he added, describing free to play as the long awaited "democratisation of game pricing."

 

"Game prices in the industry have been coming down and down for years," concluded Evans, who started his career in games in Liverpool in the early 1980s.

"It's inevitable that we've reached this point and it's only going to get bigger."