The problem is that it's cyclical. The reason we are faced with freemium and disgusting IAPs is due to the public being unwilling to pay full price for games. The App Store started out premium, ala the vita and DS shops, and the games were also mostly crap with a few diamonds. Now, the App Store is as crowded as a walmart on Black Friday (look at my timely reference!! ) and great games with fair prices simply don't sell. Pandemic, this, ugh I'm not going to list them all, because there are just too many. The biggest issue is that when the App Store began to start getting packed, developers started to figure out ways to get noticed. How does one get noticed and get catapulted on the App Store? Free or cheap, that's it. What does a developer do when their app was released and doesn't chart enough to feed anyone on the team? Drop the price. There's no way to stop the freemium/IAP train, but the reasons for that are clear and mindless consumers who don't want to pay full price for a good game are often content at spending 10x the price on boosts and power ups in games that are honestly barely worth a dollar. Simply put, it sucks for everyone. I am as guilty as the next when I wait for sale drops, and I also sometimes get angry when I do pay full price and see a drop almost immediately. It's completely fair to wait for a price drop, but it's also fair to support developers who we appreciate and trust. For me, developers like PlayDek have earned my support, as do many of the board game companies. Pandemic, for example, I paid a premium price and even bought it for another member because it wasn't available in their country. The game is literally an impeccable translation of the board game that is a 5/5 in every aspect, but it's iPad only and doesn't support online multiplayer, ergo it likely didn't sell that well. So yes, am I bummed that I could have spent $6 instead of $14? Sure. But then my additional $8 ($6.whatever after Apple takes their cut, which is crazily good in comparison) might have done SOME good for them... But again, the issue is that because so many refuse to pay full price, but happily grab free games and pour money into IAP. Developers see this, they know how fickle the App Store and customers are. Our actions, the waiting and refusing to buy games that are brilliant and worth well more than their asking price, are why the App Store is what it is. There's no coming back from it, the free/IAP route is just too lucrative and far easier to invite in customers, so why would developers want to do anything else? Simply put, we are living the "Fifteen Million Merits" episode of Black mirror (I STRONGLY urge everyone to at least watch that episode) and that is our future. As someone who grew up playing Atari, NES, etc - if someone told my 10 year old self that on day we would play games 10 times as good on our phones, but would have to sink money into a lot of them to actually get to play competitively, I'd probably have slapped the person to such a terrible concept. Yet here we are. Enjoy this, it's only going to get worse.
I'll take my sales. Considering I have 2 apps that, cost a combined 100 bucks (NOT including iap purchases), I feel I'm doing my part. I have a feeling Chris1a, Lazer_Kat, and possibley Habakuk couuld guess the apps in question .
Whoa. Thanks I couldn't decide if I were a buckhole or a freehole. And, not sure where everyone lives, I'm in the US. And here business men will do ANYTHING for an extra dollar while making billions. So Im going to get whacked for trying to save wherever I can, so I may eat?
Thanks for the heads up about this going free. Even if I never get around to playing it (bought a psp go and have been having fun with it) it's nice to add some oddball games like this to the library that I'd never buy normally. As for the old "state of iOS gaming" debate. I give up caring about the iOS community since Apple doesn't really care about the state of it themselves. I gotta be selfish and buy what I want to play since there's no guarantee the games I buy today I'll be able to play tomorrow after a bad update. There's just no quality control and too many "get rich quick" scams. Still, if I like a specific game series or dev then it's likely I'll give that dev my money. But the list of devs I trust is very short. When there's so little trust it's hard to support a platform. Look wha happened to Atari. We are deep into the mess the 2600/VCS created due to everyone wanting to cash in on the gaming fad of the early 80's.
I know this is digging up a slightly old post, but it just intrigues me to think that basically the core audience for iOS gaming - i.e. the kind of people who post on TouchArcade - have little or no idea how premium gaming is actually doing. From the Edge UK article earlier this month (March) on their next game, found here.
Freemiums are killing the gaming industry on mobile devices. Quality games are going by the way side with fly by night Freemium titles, the market is flooded with them. Try 100's of "free" titles until you find one you like. Developers are putting out freemium like clockwork until they find one that is successful. Then everyone jumps on the band wagon to copy that game model to cash in on its success. Sad for a true gamer to see.
