In a brilliant post on developers' perceptions of free-to-play, Jesper Juul linked to a study on players' perceptions of gaming and game ownership within free-to-play games. The concluding paragraph to this paper states that:

Compared to pay-per-play session users, renters have a stronger sense of game and game community ownership, with all game aspects viewed as objects to be experienced and enjoyed. In contrast, the sense of community among free game players is weaker, since their participation is closer to that of consumers. This explains why they generally ignore complaints about game legitimacy and fairness... The idea of “take it or leave it” is gaining strength under the influences of free market logic or player-toconsumer identity transfer.
Free players are less likely to complain, and more likely to move on to some other game instead. I think that this has startling implications, and not for the reason that immediately comes to mind.

Free players don't give feedback

I've heard this statistic before, referring to players of APB Reloaded, but the other way around - that players who complain in the forums are more likely to be paying players, indicating that complaints should be taken with a pinch of salt - not ignored, but not taken as a sign of failure either, since complaints signal a certain level of engagement with the game.

The first problem that comes to mind when hearing the statistic posed in the other direction, is that free players don’t give feedback that might have been very valuable. While it’s great to be able to track when players exit the game to look for a reason why that might be happening, it is still a problem if developers and publishers aren’t hearing any feedback from players who didn’t monetise - they don’t hear much about what prevents monetisation, and even more crucially, they don’t hear what prevents free players from becoming active participants, evangelists and community members who add value to the game world. But this isn’t the main issue.

Consumers are zombies

If players identity is shifting to that of consumers, as the writer of the study suggest, and their behaviour out-of-game is shifting as a result, it is likely that their behaviour in-game will change as well. Play will change. If games were comparable to shopping malls before, they will be even more so if players are reduced to pacing around passively, waiting for objects of interest to appear.

Players delve deep into a game to search for whatever they are interested in - social interaction, competition, things to collect etc. - but if consumers aren’t even interested enough in a free game to bother complaining about it, it’s not a stretch to say that this close manipulation of play experience is also less prominent. Games are not being played.

Now, I could argue that there is a largely ignored groundswell of people who have grown up engaged in gaming culture and yet have always been passive players rather than active participants - secondary players, who have spent a long time watching the play of others and helping them to succeed in the game. Yet they were still invested in getting as much out of the game as possible, and they shared a common goal with the primary players they were aiding - seeking out social interaction, competition, things to collect etc.

IAPs are initiation rites

This completely changes the meaning of making a purchase in a game. In-app purchases are not just gameplay enhancements. For many players, they are the initiation into playing rather than passively consuming - a shift created ironically through completing a consumer transaction. Consider that the whole point of IAPs is so that players pay as much as they like, based on their level of engagement and fandom. That relationship between fandom and purchasing is perhaps even deeper than previously thought.