Former Dragon Age chief thinks the free-to-play microtransaction model is "doomed to collaspe"

Former Dragon Age chief Mark Darrah doesn't think the microtransaction-fuelled free-to-play market has a place in the future of video games.

As reported by Tweak Town, in a recent Q&A stream Darrah, who worked as an executive producer on the Dragon Age series, discusses the topic of free-to-play games, saying that the microtransaction model on which their built will ultimately come crashing down. 

"I personally feel like it is doomed to eventually collapse," Darrah says, before recounting his own experience with free-to-play games. "The first mobile game I played that was free-to-play, I think I spent $80 on it. I thought, 'I'm going to play this forever; it's worth the money.' And then I quit within a couple of months of spending all that money."

He then says that after spending roughly $20 on the next free-to-play game, he "quit that even faster" and now basically doesn't spend anything at all on this type of game. The developer doesn't think his experience with free-to-play titles is unique and sees a time when the majority of players will part with little to no cash, ultimately making the model unable to sustain itself.

"I actually think that story is going to start playing out with more and more people," Darrah says. "So what you're going to end up having is more and more people who spend little to no money, and it will become more and more concentrated on the whales and, at some point, those of us who were playing these games for free, will realize that we are content and we'll reject that to some degree. That's my feeling that eventually, it's going to become unsustainable, and something else will have to come along."

Still, Darrah doesn't seem to think the downfall of free-to-play games will happen anytime soon, acknowledging that "it hasn't happened yet, and it's been around for a while", so at the moment, he "wouldn't place any bets upon the timing".

After nearly a quarter of a century at Bioware, Darrah left the company in 2020 along with general manager Casey Hudson. Following the news of his departure, Darrah wrote a letter to the community saying, "Dragon Age will be in good hands."

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