NPR.

In the

In 2012. In 2012.

In 2012,

In 2012, Rebecca Ford was part of a team that had spent years making a video game.

Problem was, they couldn't sell it to a games publisher.

We were desperate. We had to make a paycheck for our

team that month and if we didn't have a way to support ourselves it was all going to collapse.

Rebecca is a creative director at the games developer Digital Extremes,

and the company was kind of like a band that had spent years toiling away

on a beautifully orchestrated album. And now no labels wanted to have them.

So digital extremes went indie.

They self-published this game called Warframe.

And with this new found freedom,

they released it in a type of way that was gaining steam in the games industry.

Instead of selling a one-off game to purchase, this game would be free to download.

And if you like it, you can buy some in-game currency and you know we'll update the game as

often as we can to make it worth your investment. This sort of thing is known as the live service model,

a game that's like a living creature. You play online

often for free and the game gets constantly updated funded by in-game purchases

that in-game currency. Fortnite is one particularly successful example. Now almost

every major game maker is doing it. This is the indicator from Planet Money, I'm

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