Breach & Clear: Bowling warns against forcing free-to-play into games

Breach & Clear developer Rob Bowling has stressed that free-to-play models cannot be forced into games without sacrificing in quality. If you're going to go free, it has to make sense he says.

Having just released Breach & Clear, a paid mobile strategy game, Bowling told PocketGamer, "I think the free-to-play model is a great model, and the game experience that you're going for really has to fit that model. There's no way to force it.

"What we had to do was we had to make the decision to either try and force it down the free-to-play path, or fall back on making a really solid premium game. I think if you don't force it, and it really fits with the type of experience you're going for, it has been proven that it can be wildly more successful than a premium game."

Warning against the pitfalls of show-horning free models, Bowling added, "If our aim was 'let's go for the most profitable model we can with the game', I would suggest we would probably use the free-to-play model,"

"Because you're going to get a lot more users in the door, and a lot more ability to monetise that userbase. But we would have had to make certain sacrifices in favour of that profit that would have hindered a better gameplay experience."

What do you think of free-to-play models at present? Can they harm the quality of a game, or can they be applied effectively if given care? Let us know what you think below.