The third-person shooting game “Last Flag”, co-created by Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds, originally announced that it would increase the price. However, the manufacturer suddenly changed its tune and announced that the game would be free to play every weekend. For an independent work that has just started, this rhythm of first charging and then freeing makes many players’ first reaction is: has the development team encountered some problems?
Is the point of the free weekend for you to impact other people?
The community discovered that the saves and progress of “Last Flag” during the free weekend will not be retained! This means that it is not a standard free-to-play model, but more like a transition strategy of trying to attract new players and then leading to buyouts. For developers, the real goal of the free weekend is not welfare, but “let more people know about this game by copying archives.”
The cross-border status makes this game controversial
The community’s evaluation of “Last Flag” is divided: some players like its “shooting + narrative” rhythm and think it is a sincere sketch; but others point out that based on community feedback, the game still has significant room for improvement in terms of content richness and shooting feedback.
If the game does not receive enough discussion on social media in the early stage, free weekly is indeed a means to quickly introduce new users to the product. The problem is that if the original reputation and content experience do not keep up, the new players brought by the free weekend may not be retained.