I dunno why I can't just walk away from this... Ok, hitmantb did make one very good point, but kind of ignored the second half of it. It's true that console games don't all work with touch controls, that not all games can or should be ported to a mobile device. But you're missing the whole gigantic area between "over-complicated controls" and "automated gameplay." The reasons games like Threes, Monument Valley, The Room, etc, win awards is because they are created for touchscreens and they do it amazingly well. I don't like games where I'm battling the controls, but that doesn't mean my only choice is to let the game play on auto. Find games that are built *for* the touchscreen and support those, not non-games.
4 million dollars to a company earning 1 billion a year is something they earn back in a day. It is called having an actual marketing budget. COC does not have to rely on that ad when it is #1 grossing in so many regions. You saw #1 grossing in America alone is 1.6 million dollars a day and America is hardly a top spending region for freemium games. It was more or less a "we have arrived" statement, pride of the mobile community.
Did any of the traditional final fantasy games have skill? No it was more about knowledge of the games. This character is overpowered, this skill sucks, this dungeon gives a great ring, this boss has a special attack etc etc etc. If any of the FF's had PVP it would be just like BF, whomever with the right team, gear and levels will win. Just look at square's own freemium games. Here is their #1 commercial success on any platform in recent years. http://www.appannie.com/apps/ios/app/doragonkuesutomonsutazu-suparaito/ And Brave Frontier captures all of that, the hardest bosses in BF can not be beaten with money alone, you have to build the right team and use the right skill at the right time, just like FF. Same thing with Heroes Charge, just because they have auto-combat to help you farm easy contents with eyes closed doesn't mean they have less depth/skill than the FF ports. People on these forums spend countless time debating which character is better for what team, how you beat a specific bosses and that is what makes these kind of games fun in the first place. X-COM is a great game most people will never finish on mobile. I had Puzzles and Dragons and X-COM installed on my phone for more than a year. Here is what freemium games do much better than premium games: the stamina meter (and quick high stamina dungeons like super metal dragons which allows you to spend them) made me log onto PAD at least once a day to spend it. I can play X-COM any time I want but I never had a real reason to log on every day and the missions were so long, tedious I just didn't feel like logging in after running into the same UFO mission more than a few times. I can log on and play PAD for five minutes and give a character a couple of levels. I don't feel like opening up XCOM unless I have a full hour which, I rarely do with a phone. I was 1/3 through the game after a year before I deleted it, and this is coming from someone who played XCOM 1 and 2, Jagged Alliance 1 and 2, and all the classic turn-based games of the past. The XCOM formula has no chance to be successful in mobile beyond earning niche/nostalgia dollars.
Did you just say stamina bars/timers are good? And XCOM earns niche/nostalgia dollars? Who's giving you this information?
First of all, I just think it is worth pointing out the following every few pages: 1. You cannot judge the quality of the game based on it's income 2. You cannot generalize all freemium (same goes for premium) games However, we stumbled onto a completely different topic here (again). He didn't blame the controls as far as I can tell. He blamed the lame mechanics. And I completely agree with hitmantb on the point he makes about combat mechanics, though I might have different reasons. One of the reasons is I can't stand digitalized turn-based games (unless they are completely strategy based, independent of any equipment/skills/currency/timers clutter, ie. chess). The combat in those games is definitely only depending on preparation (knowledge + items), so surely the dulness of button mashing can be avoided and the combat can be compressed into "pure" strategy to offer faster gratification. Same goes for badly made real-time combat. But this doesn't apply to all games. You can't compress games where combat is a mechanic around which the whole gameplay revolves and the purpose of playing is for the combat itself. You can't compress games which are about world exploration either. Also, I had never any trouble with controls of ported games. Touch screens can handle a lot of different control styles and if done right (and if you are willing to spend a bit to adapt to it) all genres can be played just fine.
He did mention porting console games to touchscreens and their controls. He said he likes those games on console but not on his phone. That's what I was responding to. I wasn't saying that they can't work, jeez. I was merely saying that your options aren't limited to console ports or automated battles.
Yes most of the people who purchased XCOM were ones who played XCOM 1 and 2, word of mouth gave it a bit more marketing but at end of the day, in 2012 people are not exactly looking for TBS games, a genre that is already deemed too slow in pacing. There is a reason we haven't seen say, sequel to final fantasy tactics games. It is a niche taste at best. And again, this is coming from a huge XCOM / Jagged Alliance fan who also appreciate modern era and understand why this type of games are not popular anymore. http://www.vgchartz.com/game/70978/xcom-enemy-unknown/ http://www.vgchartz.com/game/70979/xcom-enemy-unknown/ http://www.vgchartz.com/game/70980/xcom-enemy-unknown/ 0.5 million copies per platform is the pinnacle of genre's success, considering the development, marketing and support cost of each platform, it is still a niche at best. It did better than the developer expected, they did not lose their shirt for making this game, but it is not going to win over the mainstream players who grew up with COD, Starcraft, etc.
To be fair, they are often a good thing in spite of this forums mob screaming to the contrary. IF a game actually hooks you in the good way for the long term, the limited energy is just one more limited resource in the game and provides just as much strategic choice and depth as any other limited resource in a game. This is either incomprehensible or intentionally ignored by many. The biggest mistake I often see from the rabid anti-freemium crowd is the insistence that a game must play like a premium game or it is flawed. Look at this forum's near universal bitching about Zeptolab's newest King of Thieves. Pay wall! Worst freemium system ever! What are they thinking! All I'm doing is watching ads! Meanwhile, I've had a great time picking it up for 2-3 minutes at a time, because it's painfully obvious that's what the game is designed around. Little bite sized "adventures", not sitting down and grinding out 50 thefts in a row. Didn't even notice there was an option to watch an ad for free keys until I looked for it after seeing so much complaining about it in the forums. When I got low on keys, did other stuff. If you keep trying to put square pegs in round holes, it doesn't work so good. People who truly can't stand timers, stamina and other energy systems should not play such obvious pick up, play, go about your day type games, they're not your thing, but they actually fit the game design when they're done right. The goal is NOT, as is so often misconstrued around here, to keep you from playing the game unless you pay, the goal is the exact opposite, to give a little bite here, and a little bite an hour from now... the games keep you nibbling throughout your day for weeks to months to years. They were never meant for anyone to sit down and play for 3 hours straight, that's not why they exist. As a rule, you don't pay to get around the energy system, you pay because the energy system keeps you playing over a much longer period of real time and creates a deeper bond with the game than the majority of traditionally paced games.
Ask yourself if those games would even exist if all their players played it as you say it's intended to be played, and none paid to get around those timers/energy bars. Of course they're there to get people to pay. That's their entire purpose. A game can be played in bite-sized chunks without forcing it on its players. And I don't see how they fit around your schedule, either. That'd be like your TV shows incentivizing you to tune into the shows live instead of DVRing them and watching on your own time. They want people to watch live so they can charge more for ads. But obviously DVRing is preferable for those with busy schedules. Same goes for anyone who has only specific times they can play. Why in the world would you want your game making you stop during the short window of time you have, and then get you to check in to collect your resources or lives or whatever when you're in middle of a business meeting? You're making excuses for these games, but the truth is that they would simply be better games without those paywalls. But then they wouldn't be as profitable. And this goes for any games with those timers, even paid. Since we spoke about Infinity Blade on this thread, I'll mention that when IB3 came out, I would wake up in the middle of the night to swap out equipment in the forge so I wouldn't have to waste time when I'm awake and want to play, waiting for those weapons to finish up. I hated it. I only did it because I liked the rest of the game, and it was either that or pay to quicken the forge. I would never in a million years say it improved the game.
You are very close to being put on ignore as you're just one more zealot. These games wouldn't even work without the mechanic. Anyone who writes what you just did just want to be "right", you don't care about being correct or accurate because you just throw out assertions without any f'ing clue what you're talking about. Might as well argue Starcraft would be a better game if it didn't require vespene gas.
Final Fantasy Tactics has two sequels. It doesn't have more because the creator of the series had a nervous breakdown and quit Square Enix while he was working on Final Fantasy 12, a job he was given largely due to the success of Final Fantasy Tactics. Again, I encourage you not to refer to situations that you aren't familiar with. It invariably leads to making mistakes about the topic matter, which makes you look either misinformed or deceitful. Neither one helps your case. As for successful turn-based strategy series, you're forgetting Fire Emblem (13 installments with a 14th on the way), Heroes of Might & Magic (6 installments with a 7th on the way), Romance of the Three Kingdoms (12 installments, countless spin-offs, more on the way), Civilization (5 installments, many spin-offs), Super Robot Wars (40+ installments), and Total War (8 installments, 9th on the way), all of which have sold very well, are active franchises today, and have enjoyed strong sales on their latest installments. The genre is niche relative to FPS. It's also niche relative to the biggest sales outlier in RTS, Starcraft, but actually fairly comparable to RTS outside of that. More popular, recently, in fact. The genre is also more popular than the racing/fighting genres nowadays, so I'm not sure speed of play is as strongly correlated to success as you're trying to make a case for. As an aside, VGChartz's numbers are not accurate. They never are. Anyone with access to legitimate sales data can get a barrel of laughs just by looking up any random game on that site and seeing how its numbers check out. Here's hint 1 about their XCOM numbers: they have no clue what digital sales were. The game sold overwhelming majority of its copies in the PC digital format. XCOM: Enemy Unknown sold very, very well. It didn't bring in CoC money, but you'd be surprised at what it did outsell. (Enemy Within, on the other hand...)
Let me give you a great example of a paid game I wish was made freemium. Street Fighter IV Volt is a great touch screen fighting game. I grew up with SF in the arcades and love the franchise to death. I even got used to the touch controls and because Capcom simplified supers into a single tap on the meter, I can do combos on touch screen that I could not do on an arcade joystick. But like all competitive games, once I got to top 20% of the ladder or so it was very very boring. There is nothing to play for, a simple ranking number without reward is meaningless. And unlocking cosmetic upgrades is . . . pointless to most of the population. Then I came across Injustice: Gods Among Us. I did not love its characters, I did not even really enjoy its combat system as I find it to be over-simplistic combined to SF4V, but I ended up spending way more time with it because it has the freemium model. You are building up a roster of heroes, you farm for their skill upgrades, gears, stars and when you buy the daily booster pack and get a super rare card it is exciting! You have timers and limited resources to manage and when you run into a player who has spent way more $$$ than you and beat him, it is a great, great feeling! With SF4V everyone has access to the same resources, skill is the only factor, but like an all-you-can-eat buffet, when the whole menu is laid out in front of you, you end up overstuffing yourself, burn out and quit. With freemium model you are given bite sized portions and resource is never equal between players, and you end up gaining a much stronger sense of progression. I guarantee SF4V would gain way more game modes, new characters if it was on the freemium model. I am still waiting for Capcom and/or SNK to make a freemium version of their fighting games. SNK did a great job with Metal Slug Defense but the tower defense thing is not my cup of tea. Timer helps you from burning out of games too quickly. There are very very very few games on any platform I can play for a few hours straight and definitely none on mobile. Spending long timer/stamina is ENJOYABLE and keeps the player coming back for more! It is the exact same reason WOW introduced daily quests with great rewards. You log on, play a short while, gain great reward versus the time you put in, you move on. It adds slope to an otherwise flat user experience curve. Imagine you are grinding for an item in a premium game that takes 2 hour of playing time to get. Now imagine the same item would take you 15 minutes of playing time to get on a freemium model, but you need to split that 15 minutes into 3x5 minute sessions across 3 days. That is what the timer is for, it really makes the 15 minutes of playing time more enjoyable than the 2 hours which feels like "work". When I log on and play 5 minutes I get the (however artificial it maybe) satisfaction that progress was made when I am not playing the game! The emotional attachment of the player and the game is stronger as a result.
I find in Injustice multiplayer, money isn't a factor at all. The game tries to match you with another player based on the strength of your team, so if you roll three low-level bronzes, you should in theory face three low-level bronzes. What *is* a factor in Injustice are the hackers, who have made the multiplayer mode pointless. I agree that Injustice is a much better game on mobile than SF/KoF, though.
Every successful freemium game will match players based on character/base/gear score. Injustice developer released it as a mobile-tie-in, never expected it to make more money than the console game! They had the boneheaded decision to make everything local, freemium games are very difficult to hack when data is stored on servers. And yes I stopped when hacking was too annoying to deal with. To me both SF/KOF both play as good if not better than Injustice on touch screens with simplified controls, it is Injustice freemium system that I got addicted to.
I'd say that while great freemium games are bound to do an amazing job at integrating the monetization in a way that makes sense and fit well with the gameplay, it is also true that all those techniques produce an alteration on what could be be a premium experience. As a simple example, if you make a game more grindy in a freemium version of, you do change the player experience. (we did not do this in the freemium iOS version of Don't Run With a Plasma Sword and we've paid the price, since there's nearly no IAP purchases) I don't remember from which conference it was (I think it's on GDC vault), but I remember a designer mentioning that one goal of monetization design is to put the player in a frustratingly fun place with both aspects working in tandem. Fun is necessary to retain the player, frustration is necessary to monetize the player. A premium design obviously does not include 'frustration' at its core. Edit: A premium design does not need 'frustration' at its core and does not try to provide relief in exchange for monetization.
Mmm, I'm not sure I agree with that last statement. Premium games often include frustration. Not sure what other word can describe losing hours of progress in an SMT game because a random enemy cast an instant death spell on the MC. Or Ninja Gaiden's brutal final level set. Or Battletoads, just... Battletoads. Or any game with perma death. Frustration is frequently found in games all through history, and while players tend to be split on whether or not they enjoy it, most would agree that games that incorporate it into their core design feel like they've been neutered if it's removed - see the many debates on perma death in Fire Emblem, for example. To me, the differences come down to perception and the existence of an escape hatch that the player can pay for.
Yeah that's right, I should not have been so categoric. Frustration can be part of a premium game design, unintentionally or intentionally. Yeah that's what I've meant: adding a frustration in association with a way to relieve this frustration through a monetized action.
What? The ability to play the game at all... is a resource? You aren't managing anything at all when the game is on a timer, it just flat-out isn't letting you play it. That's all that's happening! And people defend this? Nothing is happening! That is "incomprehensible" as you said. If a game wants you to come back, it should be fun. Not letting you play is the exact opposite. It makes you play something else. And people defend this. Timers are nothing but harmful to customers. They are un-fun. Games are meant to be fun. Timers are illogical. It makes no sense. You shouldn't have to manage how often you get to even play the game. Real life already does that, you know.
My article on six things every developer should learn from Heroes Charge: Three games had a superbowl commercial, this was one of the three. What looks like a garbage auto-attack game managed to hit top 20 grossing in US, UK and top 10 grossing in China/Korea, making it one of the few games to manage do well across multiple regions. How? 1) If you see a unique top game from another region/platform that has yet to release in your territory, don't be afraid to copy it Heroes Charge is a replica of DOTA Legend with different graphics, a game that ruled the #1 top grossing spot in China for most of 2014. Similar to how Castle Clash developer took Google Play top grossing before Clash of Clans was released there, UCool took advantage of DOTA Legend's focus on home region and went global with exact same hero skills, stats, items and play mode. This created a funny moment in Korea where the official DOTA Legend and Heroes Charge are both top 10 grossing: http://www.appannie.com/apps/ios/app/dotabjeongi/ http://www.appannie.com/apps/ios/app/heroes-charge/ But success is success, the end justifies the means! Don't be afraid to borrow iconic character design from other games. Heroes Charge has most of WC3/DOTA's iconic heroes with redrawn graphics and different names, but a death knight with a death coil that heals your team and damage enemy? It is unmistakable where he came from yet there is nothing Blizzard can do about it. 2) Auto-attack and ability to farm old contents with a single click Most team based RPG games offer auto-attack these days. When you are farming easy contents for specific items, auto-attack helps the player to skip boredom. DL/HC took it a step further by taking away manual control of skills except each character's most powerful "ultimate" ability and it speeds up the pace of the game a lot. How many RPG's we have a pre-defined attack/attack/ability rotation yet player has to manually press buttons to control each character which leads to fatigue and burn out? In addition, to farm any content you already cleared with 100% rating ten times you just press a button and you get the loot on a silver platter. This allows the player to spend a day's stamina in a few clicks if he is busy and still get the same reward. This reduces boredom dramatically and keeps the game fresh. 3) PVP is king, and here is how you can mix it up DL/HC has a daily quest called "crusade" where player is taking on 15 other players on the same server one after the other, each time winning a chest with random rewards as well as coins that can be used to redeem characters and equipment. The first of 15 opponents start out with lower gear score than the player and last will be stronger than the player, so most players will be able to go through first a few stages no problem and get some daily reward either way. It is a really innovative game mode and once you throw in typical arena, duels, raid damage competition on bosses (where players of a guild take turns fighting a boss and get rewards for being the highest DPS, but everyone also take turns in a queue for boss drops) and guild war options, PVP and the great reward that come with it always make people spend money! 4) Say no to fodders DL/HC is one of the few team building games where the first character you get is still powerful in end game after you evolve her to 5 stars. Every 1 star hero can be leveled to 5 stars so the player never feel they have a "fodder" character they are wasting experience and gear on, only to be fed to more worthy characters later. Also whenever a hero is low in usage you can expect buffs coming. This is a far cry from Summoner's War, Chain Chronicle and Puzzles & Dragons and it builds far greater emotional bond between the player and his box. Same with items, your character will never waste an item, a bronze sword it is needed for him/her to evolve to the next level to equip a gold sword etc etc, and best of all the bronze sword's stats is added to the character as part of the evolve. It is never wasted. 5) Lottery based loot with guarantee of success In DL/HC you are given a premium chest every 48 hours. Each chest you get from the crusade mode mentioned before also has a small chance for epic loot. However if your luck is bad, you are also earning coins that can be used for redeem later. You have a chance to win loot the equivalent of three month's coins if you are lucky, but you are also always earning something so you don't feel like you are wasting your time. Same with dungeon drops, instead of offer 5% chance to drop something and make people burn out in frustration after they waste 10 trips without getting anything, DL/HC offer character/gear fragments. You can get the whole thing from aforementioned crusade if you are super lucky, but if you are not you still feel you make progress every time you go through a dungeon! 6) The monthly subscription and VIP model for monetization DL/HC offers a monthly subscription option where a player pays $3 to get the equivalent of $30 in premium currency, except that premium currency is divided across 30 days and distributed to the player one day at a time when they log on. It is a great way to get people to do a no-brainer payment to get started and log in day after day. It is something every freemium game should include because it really makes people cross the line with a lot less conflict. You not only improve the % of people who will be paying significantly, you also increase stickiness and many of them will end up spend way more if they are hooked. In addition a VIP model is also offered where once a player spend say $5, $10, $50, $100's worth of premium currency they move onto the next level with permanent privileges. Like double guild coin rewards, ability to control 4 gold mines instead of 2 etc.
