Is it possible to play all year round for free?
At the beginning: it's not about free to play games or junk games produced on a mass scale with Unity. I mean AAA productions and decent indie. Is it possible to play for 365 days without spending a penny? Conducted research confirms this thesis. However, before we go into the results, a few words about the methodology...
I assumed that the average player plays about an hour a day, only popular good and very good titles will be of interest to him. At the same time there are no requirements for the genre - he will play everything. I missed out on free weeks, weekends and similar actions. The length of the game is based on data from howlongtobeat.com. I downloaded data from lowcygier.pl about the distributed games. The study covers the date from September 2017 to today.
| Game Title | Estimated time to complete the game in hours |
|---|---|
| For Honor | 7 |
| Orwell | 5 |
| Insurgency | 12 |
| Shadowrun Returns Deluxe | 13 |
| Layers Of Fear | 4 |
| Ziggurat | 14 |
| Xenonauts | 40 |
| 12 is Better Than 6 | 6 |
| Whispering Willows | 3 |
| Flame in the Flood | 14 |
| GRID | 25 |
| F1 2015 | 18 |
| Mini Ninjas | 11 |
| The Witcher I | 46 |
| Eador. Masters of the Broken World | 106 |
| Crusader Kings II | 150 |
| Furi | 7 |
| Spec Ops: The Line | 7 |
| The Darkness II | 8 |
| Amnesia Collection | 14 |
| Dungeons 2 | 17 |
| Dead Space | 13 |
| Watch Dogs | 33 |
| AC: Black Flag | 40 |
| Company Of Heroes 2 | 21 |
| Homefront | 6 |
| The Bureau: XCOM Declassified | 14 |
| Brutal Legend | 13 |
| Killer is Dead – Nightmare Edition | 10 |
| Starcraft II: Wings Of Liberty | 21 |
| Outlast + DLC | 9 |
| Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine | 16 |
In total, we have 32 titles with a total length of 723 hours. This result allows you to play for free for twice as much time as we assumed in the introduction. However, this is largely due to two titles: Eador and Crusader Kings II. After removing them, there are still 467 hours left, which is more than the assumed number of 365 hours.
However, let's reject typical indie games because they won't suit everyone's taste. Our list will then look like this:
| Game Title | Estimated time to complete the game in hours |
|---|---|
| For Honor | 7 |
| Orwell | 5 |
| Insurgency | 12 |
| Shadowrun Returns Deluxe | 13 |
| Xenonauts | 40 |
| GRID | 25 |
| F1 2015 | 18 |
| Mini Ninjas | 11 |
| The Witcher I | 46 |
| Spec Ops: The Line | 7 |
| The Darkness II | 8 |
| Amnesia Collection | 14 |
| Dungeons 2 | 17 |
| Dead Space | 13 |
| Watch Dogs | 33 |
| AC: Black Flag | 40 |
| Company Of Heroes 2 | 21 |
| Homefront | 6 |
| The Bureau: XCOM Declassified | 14 |
| Brutal Legend | 13 |
| Killer is Dead – Nightmare Edition | 10 |
| Starcraft II: Wings Of Liberty | 21 |
| Outlast + DLC | 9 |
After deleting several indie games, the game time has shrunk to 403 hours. Still not bad. However, let's try to throw away small producions completely, leaving only bigger titles.
| Game Title | Estimated time to complete the game in hours |
|---|---|
| For Honor | 7 |
| Shadowrun Returns Deluxe | 13 |
| GRID | 25 |
| F1 2015 | 18 |
| Mini Ninjas | 11 |
| The Witcher I | 46 |
| Spec Ops: The Line | 7 |
| The Darkness II | 8 |
| Dungeons 2 | 17 |
| Dead Space | 13 |
| Watch Dogs | 33 |
| AC: Black Flag | 40 |
| Company Of Heroes 2 | 21 |
| Homefront | 6 |
| The Bureau: XCOM Declassified | 14 |
| Brutal Legend | 13 |
| Starcraft II: Wings Of Liberty | 21 |
| Outlast + DLC | 9 |
After this procedure there are two games I was wavering about. Dungeons 2 and Outlast. I left them because the Dungeons game is adapted to a casual audience, and Outlast was developed by people known for their productions such as Prince of Persia. Eventually, after such a procedure, the total time of the game is 322 hours, a bit too little compared to the assumption. It must be taken into account, however, that only 18 games out of 32 that took part in the study remained.
Well, these are just facts, but it would be useful to comment on them somehow. In general, the last year is very good for players. Publishers have released a lot of their games for free. Add to this time actions and bundles (about which there will be a separate article), and it will turn out that you can have fun for a few dollars per year.
Playing for free is possible under several conditions:
- We are not selective, the games presented here included both FPSs and RPGs, as well as hardcore strategies and races. Personally I prefer more casual positions.
- We have to hunt for bargains. Distribution actions usually last day-to-two. So we have to follow the promotion pages practically non-stop in order not to miss the opportunity for a free title.
- We play a few years old games. Let's not expect any news. We distribute those games that are no longer selling and are intended to promote a new part or advertisement for a studio or shop. On the other hand, we don't have to have a strong computer so it's a good method for people with a small budget who don't want to pirate anyway.
- It's good if we like multi. Some of the titles I've mentioned have extended multiplayer mode or it's their essence - Insurgency, Starcraft. Network gameplay may cause us to get stuck to the computer for long hours, which I didn't take into account in the study.
- We play little, accepted hour a day is basically not much, if someone is an avid player, it will be 2-3 hours (the question, however, what about a real life?).
As you can see there are advantages and disadvantages of playing for free. For the majority of people it will be just an addition, but in fact there are no contraindications for it to be the main source of entertainment. Personally, for two years I haven't bought any game. I don't remember when the last time I had a title for the premiere. Yes, there are games that I would like to play, but I don't need it that much.
More and more games, less and less time, and the publishers will probably soon have to pay us for playing their games (as is the case in Steemnova)