The whole freemium IAP senario and concept is really been wieghing on me, and my thoughts on gaming with my two iDevices .... For years I have been behind our iOS gaming culture to the fullest extent..have heard every slander about controls , piracy and jailbreaking (im not jailed), small screen size, and how mobile gaming are not "real" games and that the casual "angry bird" industry is setting a new breed of "false gamers" to pave the way for the future of gaming... I literally heard it all in my forum which Im a mod as well as other mainstream and smaller gaming forums ......yet still I fought the good fight and stood behind our culture and indie developers... NOW with the onslaught of big name companies which are almost all IAP monsters (EX. gameloft and gamevil) it seems that in the "IOS mobile VS big Corp. handheld and platform consoles" a nuclear bomb has been given to the opposing side... It not only frustrates me but saddens me that we have come to a point which our iOS gaming culture is almost always labeled as a pay or wait....or pay to pass society. What happened? We have always been known as the 99 cent full game console genre ...and now this? I'm no expert on iOS gaming,... games ....or theory ...Im simply a hard working father who has been gaming for a long time who loves handheld gaming with a passion....and who dumps his earned money into various different areas while doing so. What I'm basically saying in this post is what you already know..... And mainly want to hear that I'm overreacting ....because I love our iOS gaming community...and lately I feel like I need to put down the 4s and iPad2 and play the 5 other handhelds (DS, 3dS, vita, Psp, Psp Go) which I been putting aside for awhile now....due to my love for iOS gaming..in any event I have been able to deal with the BS IAP slaughter and know in my heart that I will never stop buying and playing games for iOS...but the slew of so called free casual games has brought me to loss of time from real gaming with good core titles that SHOULD be played...with me it's always "damn that looks good...EFF it , what the hell it's free ...why not " ....1 hr later and 5 freemium/pay or wait MMO games later it's time to go to work and I could have been grinding in chaos theroy 2 or playin Mortal Combat on the Vita!!!! ....lol anyhow thx for letting me rant and let me know what you think, all comments are internally digested good or bad ! Always here ....tappin away Trev1
To me it usually just means avoid, I really think most companies are just making games/apps as usual then working out afterwards what they can pull out of it to charge for later. I also think unfortunately we are at the stage on IOS you can't even trust updates it's very common lately for functionality to be removed in an update so you can be charged again to get it back with a Pro version. To be honest it's the reason I've stopped purchasing things on the app store altogether I think the last thing I actually bought was Pocket League Story.
IAP takes a big sh!t on games that could possibly be good if they weren't free. Unless said game is made by nimblebit. It's like the dev made the game, than smudged poop all over it in the form of IAP.
IAP 'could' be okay but it seems some games basically force you to use the IAP's, when used 'lightly' its not that bad at all, its like a modern day cheat system. But sadly at the moment games are just overloaded with IAP's I blame all of us, if we bought games when they come out instead of waiting for price reductions - i mean come on when a games the price of a burger or two come on ! Theyre so cheap ! You try being a 12 year old in the 80's and buying games when they were $10 each. But way too many people wait for games to be free or have a price drop, these gaming companies need to make money, they see IAP's work for other companies and they'll do the same, just obvious. So we've created a monster, companies looked for other ways to increase their profits and have found that with IAP and more and more will follow.
Boy, what a tough question... For me, it honestly depends, although I'm starting to get more and more jaded. One of my all-time favorite IOS games, Bullet Time HD, has IAP right up front and center, and you know what? I love the game, IAPs and all. Honestly, they could have charged more than nothing for the game and I might not have even seen it, let alone fallen in love with it, but as it stands, as an IAP title, you play it, like it, buy something as a way of saying, "I like your work, please continue," and all is right with the world. OTOH, another of my former favorites, Dark Meadow, started out as one of those, "Premium price, support the devs" games, costing $5.99. The game has since gone basically free + IAPs (there's a "Premium" version, but don't get me started on that), and it's the last game I will ever purchase from the developer. No hyperbole, no polemic, no name-calling, I just won't buy anything they do from here on out. That's not to say I won't download anything else, but I will most surely not pay for anything else they offer. Seriously, how many more devs am I supposed to support when the result seems to always be the same, something I paid for ends up Free+ IAP? There are games out there right now that I am actually hoping never go Free+ IAP, if for no other reason than principle. Further, I'm getting tired of the feeling I get when I "update" a game, only to find that the "game" has turned into an ATM. I guess my feeling is this: IAP, done right, is not a bad thing. Done wrong? It's a very bad thing, and quite possibly threatens the long-term stability of the market, but what do I know? What I would like to see is some kind of accounting or rating based on how much the game is actually going to cost you to play, but I'm not even sure what that would look like... Regarding "premium" or "full-featured games vs. IAP games, what really troubles me is the trend toward charging for games and then having them "evolve" into IAP games. In all honesty, I can count on one hand the number of games I've paid money for that are now not free+ IAP. The best part? I now have to pay again for things that used to be free for me, you know, because I already paid for the included content. This, I do not appreciate. While I'm at it, you know what really sickens me? Achievements tied to IAP. I'm not going to name names, but there are games that award achievements for spending ever-increasing amounts of real-world money. The achievements are not suggestive or interpretable, they're verbatim. That, quite frankly, is disgusting. DBC P.S. Before anyone comments, no, I do not mean games going on sale, sales are a normal part of life. I'm talking about games that start out paid and go Free+ IAP...
I don't hate all games with IAP. I'm cool with it in games to get expansion packs and unlock a few new things like costumes etc. But I don't like it when it's a requirement to progress in a game- which is pretty much how most freemium games work. Some games that are freemium do things right IMO- like Jetpack Joyride. What's worse than fermium games that require IAP to progress are paid games- that crap pisses me off (I've only encountered that once- can't remember what game it was. Just know that I deleted promptly).
You're of course referring to the newer, freer version, as opposed to the older, more paid-for version... that eventually became Free+ IAP... Not that I'm bitter. lol DBC
I have mixed feelings about IAP... I am sort of an advertisement-resistant personality to start with. I don't like the feeling that I'm being manipulated or subtly cajoled into something. I feel like a lot of IAPs are just that. However, the fact for almost a year, I'm extremely tempted to buy a special fancy Disc in Disc Drivin' tells me that if the game is good enough IAP works. Judging by how many people I play with who have fancy discs, it's working pretty great. I hate when IAP is dependent on winning a game or when the game is trying to sell you stuff every five seconds. I like the "one IAP unlocks everything" concept, kind of takes me back to the old 'shareware' days, which I think is a very fair way to distribute a game.
