Sponsored By

If the car industry also had free to play

What if the car industry also followed the free to play business model?

Find out, here is what might happen...

Teddy Engel, Blogger

December 15, 2014

3 Min Read
Game Developer logo in a gray background | Game Developer

This is a post by Teddy Engel also published on his blog. It's purely fictional, of course.

Free to play



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What if the car industry also had the free to play business model?


Here is what might happen (let's hope not):

  1. You could get a yellow car for free.

  2. You could only drive 10 miles every 2 hours, unless you purchase an extra mile for 10$.

  3. A banner ad would show up on your car windshield every 15 seconds. Touching the windshield would add 1 mile to how far you can drive.

  4. You could upgrade the car colour at the car store, and pay 100$ to make the car white, 450$ to make it blue, 5000$ to make it red and 50000$ to make it black (most people would buy red).

  5. Keeping the car more than 1 year would qualify you to upgrade the engine to a level 2 engine for free. 6 more years would get you to level 3.

  6. You could upgrade the colour to red, engine to level 2 and get a free bike in one premium one-time offer pack that would cost 5000$ (until tomorrow only).

  7. Some people would stick to the original car, and never ever get any upgrades, then boast about it on car forums.

  8. Some people would buy the best car engine, colour and seats and tell their friends that they never paid anything.

  9. Legacy car makers would keep making paid cars, and complain publically about the free car model killing the car industry.

  10. Free car makers would keep making free cars, and complain that they do not earn anything with the current model.

  11. New car makers would make free cars, and car stores would put their brand new cars amongst 100,000 other new free cars.

  12. Big free car makers would make small free car makers advertise about their better / bigger car (and reassure the small car makers that they can still attract customers, really).

  13. Customers would complain whenever they see a paid car model: A paid car? No chance.

  14. Customers would also complain whenever a paid car requires a payment to get a better or faster paid car.

  15. Some car makers would make you pay to see a car concept and the engines / colour that the car might have...

  16. ... In which case, you could also choose to pay more to visit the car factory and have a vip car t-shirt...

  17. ... Before changing their strategy and making the car free anyway.

    Get in touch with Teddy by E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, or on his Website

Read more about:

2014Blogs
Daily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inbox

You May Also Like