Hah, as honoured as I would be, I don’t really like F2P either. I’ve made it no secret that mobile is not my primary gaming platform, but I do game on my phone from time to time. I’m more or less like you guys though. I play premium games (I usually wait to pick up something cheap and never spend more than say £3 on a game). I’ve dabbled in the odd F2P thing, some ok, some largely trash.
I think it can be done well, and PT has covered those games as and when they appear, but they are few and far between because being “done well” in the context of a premium-preferring audience doesn’t seem to be a sustainable model either, otherwise more devs would try it.
As I’ve alluded too in the past, I’m hoping games like Fortnite will lead to a salvation of sorts. That’s one of the most popular, most lucrative games in the world right now, and the primary way it monetises itself is via harmless skins and content passes. You don’t have to like Battle Royale itself, but say if they apply that model to the board game or strategy game genres - say you can buy customised playing pieces or meeples or whatever, it’s probably the best premium audiences can hope for, and it’s not all that intrusive IMO.
As far as editorial goes… losing the Apple revenue was annoying, but not as apocalyptic as TA made it sound for them. Now all we really have is ads and any other applicable affiliate schemes we can try to hitch on to. The sponsored content was helpful though, so like I said we’re going to be open to more if companies feel like they want to target our audiences directly.
I mean we probably weren’t going to cover Langrisser normally, since it’s F2P, but I can label the content as an ad and it can be treated as such, and who knows maybe someone did learn something or felt like checking it out (there are plenty of people who enjoy FE: Heroes and it’s targeting that audience after all). Every little helps and no harm was done from my point of view. It gives us the space to then invest in content on more important things.