How Can You Compete With Free?

Using the iOS dungeon crawler Undercroft as an example, Games Brief’s Nicholas Lovell editorializes on Gamasutra on whether it’s possible to compete against completely free titles. It’s a brief and fairly interesting article, so I’d really recommend to give it a read. Here’s a sampling:

Undercroft is just one example of a game that is free, with no expectation that it will generate any direct revenue at all. It is a good game with relatively high production values. If you are charging for your game, you are not competing with rubbish, no matter what you would like to believe. If you are charging for a game, you are competing with:

‘¢Advertiser-funded games like Barclaycard Waterslide Extreme
‘¢A funnel-filling game like Undercroft
‘¢Free-to-play games that can make a successful business if only 3 percent of users spend money (like Tiny Tower, on track to make over $3 million a year)
‘¢ Pirated games

Do you really believe that your game can stand out when there is so much quality content available for free? If you were making Legends of Grimrock, wouldn’t you be a little concerned about how large a percentage of your potential audience might be satisfied with the free dungeon crawling experience of Undercroft?