You can be successful without staying in the charts forever, though. I know for a fact that MH2 made a considerably higher return on its investment than was expected. The costs of porting were minimal, so Capcom pocketed a nice profit on it. They were very happy with its performance, and I got that about as direct from the horse's mouth as you can get. Still, it doesn't disprove what you're saying. That Capcom sees modest and desirable profits from low-cost ports of existing games doesn't mean they're going to roll out bank on an original premium title. I think you have a very skewed view of the overall games industry, though. You seem to have the idea that it's "go big or go home", when a lot of publishers are content to just make low-risk profits. Basically, there are plenty of different audiences out there, and as long as you're scoping properly, it can be a lot more sensible to serve a niche than to try to throw in big against competitors who will level you. It's always been that way and it probably always will be. Perhaps no one will talk about the newest Etrian Odyssey game 10 years from now. Certainly an order of magnitude fewer than will talk about CoC. But I guess the part I'm missing is why I should care about that, so long as *someone* is putting out games I enjoy.
No, it is called embracing the definitive 2015 business model and a promising game as freemium is still a promising game. Instead of clinging to the past that will never return, accept the reality that everything is newer and better in 2015. If the game is single player, whether you spend money to speed up the process is up to you. Imagine if old school Contra was free and you could buy lives. How many people would have called 3 lives a pay wall instead of actually learn to beat the game with it? Paying money in freemium single player games is just like entering up up down down left right left right AB in old school games. Except the game itself is free. If the game is multiplayer player, any worth while multiplayer game would match you with players of similar strength anyway. Why does it matter if someone who could afford to spend $1000 or 1000 hours is stronger than you?
Go back and read my other comments (and other people's) if you want to know why paywalls bother me. I'm not going to rewrite it all again.
Free games are great! They are a way to filter through all the crap apps out there which helps save time.
The best freemium mobile games are simply better than best paid mobile games Exactly. Ditto. Spot on, and all that. And I enjoy plenty of freemium games, and probably more so premium games or ones I have dropped cash for in some way (pay for chapters/content etc) but who cares? This argument is sense incarnate in this argument of opinion with no real fact other than gross income numbers, which equals nothing but that. Not fun or even efficiency; games like radical that could have taken virtually no time and money and been say 25 cents (I kno not really possible bu for sake of argument) been more efficient possibly? I dunno, but the point is better described in the above post; as long as people make games I like I'll still use the platform, and the niche will still exist, and the Devs will still see it as a consumer base. Done.
I've also noticed that he only takes excerpts from our responses to make them seem unfulfilling or inadequate. It honestly seems like he's someone made to try and burn us down and break our will so that we, one of the last sources of disgust towards freemuim gaming, would fully support it. Or it's seemly someone who once again, refuses to be wrong where they are wrong.
Unfortunately, the Internet has grown into this. Everyone with a smart phone is an expert, I think they should rethink the term smart phone, as it is not always true from the users perspective
Since the thread shifted to business and commercial viability, actually I think this opinion reflects the mentality of a couple years ago. Most of big investors have thrown themselves in the freemium market and a lot got burned because of the bottleneck. Also, the smartphone market is getting closer of maturity and we might see the rate of new users going down drastically. In addition, we'll keep seeing the average gamer 'matures' from casual to mid-core as his gaming needs change. Because of all that, it will probably keep getting riskier for investors looking for their place in the freemium sun. The bidding war for user acquisition puts tons of pressure on freemium games that are having a long term value per user high enough. A couple of days ago, Supercell canned a soft launched game, probably because it did not perform well enough (if it's tough to release a new freemium IP for them, imagine for the others). Ironically, it's the long tail of smaller developers which benefits from the user acquisition war by selling ad spots in their game, so in some way the fate of everyone is linked. The king of the freemium hill will enjoy insane profits but it will walk on the head of tons of other freemium developers. My impression is that right now, it is much less risky to invest in a strong niche brand rather than going in an overcrowded most-games-look-the same freemium market. And while the market is difficult (for everyone, not only premium game makers) there's a bunch of successful (indie or bigger) developers, even if they're not crazy rich. Vlambeer just to name one. And for the crazy-rich, Minecraft. Those successful developers don't need crazy profits to develop their game the way they want to. Anyway, even for a super-profitable game, the dev will probably have his hands tied by his investors and won't be able to re-inject a significant fraction of his profits into the game. This means that from a certain point, the difference in profit is not even going to make a difference in its production value. All-in-all if someone has, let's say, 10 millions to invest. If he's willing to lose it all for a chance to become a billionaire, he should invest in the standard freemium model. If he'd like to build a stable and steadily growing business, I don't think he should.
We've always had an hybrid approach about all that and we're not included in that list but in the light of this discussion, it is interesting to note that the latest games collection from Apple is called 'Pay Once & Play'. In all honesty, I think that the trend from 2-4 years ago sprung back a while ago and that things will settle down somewhere between the freemium and premium market.
Just to illustrate that point, I just stumbled about a post on Gamasutra from the maker of Geometry Dash. It just shows that making great money (and not crazy money) is more than enough to justify pumping resources to boost the production value of a game.
A stable and steadily growing business IS a freemium game. There is nothing stable and growing about paid games. It is the opening weekend + ad campaign and downhill from there. If freemium games are having problems with user acquisition, guess what happens to premium games? If you don't spend money on user acquisition you sell what 100,000 copies of a 99 cents game (and I am being super generous here) with a team of 2? Congratulations you just made McDonald money once you convert it into hourly rates! You have to compare apple to apple, Minecraft vs COC, most successful paid vs most successful premium. LOL if you think Supercell doesn't have dramatically more resources with their billion dollar / year franchise. Did you forget that Minecraft has investors to answer to as well? Let's take a look here #1 freemium vs #1 paid, US app store alone (keep in mind COC is much bigger internationally as well) https://thinkgaming.com/app-sales-data/1/clash-of-clans/ https://thinkgaming.com/app-sales-data/6/minecraft-pocket-edition/ Do you really think a company making 40 times the money will not have a significant edge in development resources? This is US only, internationally the gap is even bigger.
This is the #7 paid game at the moment, do you know how difficult/lucky it is to get that high? There is no difference in me saying a solo developer can make a niche freemium game like Trivia Game and do 10x times better. Geometry Dash is the #229 on top grossing chart by the way, that shows you the vast difference in financial power between the two models. https://thinkgaming.com/app-sales-data/6692/trivia-crack/ VS https://thinkgaming.com/app-sales-data/5644/geometry-dash/
Again, a tiny fraction of freemium businesses make it through. Premium and freemium promotions are completely different animals. Premium is much easier to self-sustain from an organic downloads point of view because it gets supported by medias and by core users used to dig through games looking for what they want and evangelize them afterwards. For games we see frequently in the top charts, I bet there's a good proportion of premium games barely doing any users acquisition, and that it's not the case for freemium franchises based on the standard model (not talking about viral hits like crossy roads). I did not say they did not have more dollars, I said that since their goal is to make huge profits, most of it will go back to investors. And Markus Persson sold to Microsoft by choice. In order to do what? Smaller original projects!!
The top grossing charts data is skewed because so much money get invested for user acquisition. For every game, we'd have to subtract what is spent on acquisition/development. And in order to have the big picture, we'd also have to consider the big losers. It is pointless to argue that the top grossing is populated by freemium games if only 99% on the money invested to get there get lost on the way. I'm pretty sure that Geometry Dash is pushed by next to no acquisition. And since we were talking about successful businesses of any size, making about 10k$ a day for a small development team can certainly be called successful. And I'm sure that they're pushing way enough content to satisfy most of their user base.
Some soap operas have been on the air longer than I've been alive. The Bachelor costs less to produce and is therefore likely more profitable than most scripted shows. Are you going to tell me that Days of Our Lives and the Bachelor are better shows than Breaking Bad? Was Breaking Bad not worth watching because it didn't last for 20 years? Why am I still responding to this thread?
Yes, they'll have more money to produce, yet Supercell will continue to make unoriginal city builders that sheep like you will continue to idiotically adore.
COC is played at a much much more competitive level than Minecraft because it has far more depth and strategy. There are countless strategy articles about how to lay out your base at each town hall level, people easily spend as much time adjusting every single trap and wall tile as they do building minecraft worlds. Then there is the combat portion, since you will always be matched against equal level opponents it is a lot of skill to 3-star a base for your clan. One mistake and your troops are wiped out. There are simulators that top clans use and they will practice against a specific base layout with different troops combinations for hours before the real clan war. That is how hardcore COC is. It is the starcraft of mobile phones in skill level. I am no longer active with either because they are too hardcore and after a long day you just want to relax with more casual offerings, but you do not become the #1 mobile game of all time without depth.
hitmantb, if you really think that freemium is the way forward, then how do you think the next Metal Gear Solid, Batman, etc. games could be improved by being free to play? (I'm using PC/console games here because it'd make more of a difference there)
