One thing I’ve learned from the all the fliers I’ve had thrown in my face at Speaker’s Circle is that students like free things. It can be free food, a free t-shirt or even a free movie.
Instead of “if you build it, they will come,” the phrase has evolved, at least for college students, into “if it’s paid for, they’ll consider coming.” All those tangents aside, that phrase can be connected with games, too. (See, I actually did have a point.)
I love games, but what I love even more are free games. Gaming is an expensive hobby, that’s for sure, so whenever I come across a game that’s free and fun, I get strangely happy. It might just be my inner coupon-collecting/money-saving fiend, but whenever I stumble across a free game my wallet breaths a sigh of relief.
For me, free games also come with lower expectations. When I purchased Mass Effect 3, I wanted my $60 investment to be justified. So when I arrived at Mass Effect’s substantially terrible ending, I felt cheated. Like Diet Coke, the game left me with a nasty aftertaste. While my feelings towards Mass Effect have returned to adoration, in that moment the game didn’t hold up to it’s price tag. With free games, that doesn’t happen.
I look at free games in an entirely different way from games that I actually pay for. For a while now, the Apple App Store has been offering a free game every week. With each of these apps, I have had a blast playing. It may just be that they are great games, but I think I enjoy them because I never feel cheated like I did with Mass Effect 3. I have no amounts of actual money invested in the game. I didn’t choose a game over a sweater, which is something that I actually did a couple of weeks ago and regretted last Friday. I just tapped install.
Even when I don’t like a free game, which to be honest has happened more often than not; I can just toss it aside. I can shove it in my recycling bin or delete it with a tap of my finger. I don’t feel that same ownership I do with my purchases from GameStop. This past week, I downloaded two free games, one for my iPhone and the other for my journalistically-required MacBook.
These games are great. Like beyond great.
The first, for my iPhone, is called Cytus and it’s basically Dance Dance Revolution for my fingers. It’s a simple touch the dots as the come on the screen to the music type of game, but the music is great. While the music won’t be for everyone’s taste considering it’s dance music from Japan and South Korea (sorry no Gangnam Style!), it’s really catchy. Plus, it’s free.
The other game I downloaded was for my computer and is called Super Crate Box. Although the title is just as obscure as Cytus, it too offers a lot of fun for free. The basic premise of the game is to survive a never-ending amount of monsters while collecting crates that give you different weapons, like a shotgun or a ray gun. The art style is incredibly cartoony and only adds to the childish delight I got from playing the game. There isn’t any real objective except to collect as many crates as possible before you perish at the hands of one of the aforementioned monsters.
Like I said, I got both of these games in the past week and they are just as fulfilling in my mind as some $60 games. Sure, they don’t have visuals that will blow minds with their likeness to real life nor do they have incredible stories, but what they do have is a fun factor that rivals games from huge companies.
Are free games the future? Probably not, but they are something that I hope sticks around for years to come because they make loving games a little easier on the bank account.
