But that's you, we were on the whales that spend 200$+ on the game every year, or the kids that spend like 20$ a month on FIFA for example.
You want iconic? GTA III was the most iconic game of its time, setting the line for what people could really put in their games, and how far you could go. The game was one of the most known, most played open world games. Your Clash of Clans will be DONE as soon as the new fad comes out. Before Clash of Clans I'm pretty sure something else dominated the AppStore in terms of INCOME. Let me ask you this. If all of the sudden Clash of Clans became unpopular, people stopped playing it, and started making a max of 500$ a month, would you still worship it like you are doing now?
To be fair, judging an MMO game without it's "Massive" is unfair. We already established that this thread's opening statement is silly for many reasons, so I though't I'd just say that I feel violated in so many ways when seeing the following Battle Camp screenshots:
http://www.twitch.tv/directory Twitch requires a separate computer to stream and quite a bit of hassle to set up for iOS/Android, basically taking away COC's biggest advantage as a mobile game. Everything you see on Twitch are PC/console versions of games, including Hearthstone(which is freemium btw) and XCOM (not as many viewers as Clash of Clans at least when I am browsing the directory). COC is the ONLY 100% mobile game to break through and build a following, in a hardcore PC/console community that laughs at mobile games. If you ever watch some of the top COC streams you will see the game is much deeper than any of the paid mobile games you listed. You can have the exact same set of troops, watch a top player 3-star a 10-base and still not be able to pull it off. It is pure skill and micro management, at least as much as you can have on a mobile device at the moment. It truly is the starcraft of phones and tablets. The technology behind it, the way every clan globally in such a massive population can compete against one another on a single server with little to no hacks/cheats is out of this world. There is national pride when a top Chinese clan takes on a top Japanese clan and the game really broke all the cultural barriers with its top grossing performance in every single country. There are other freemium games that may be able challenge it, Hearthstone being one (although I think they missed the boat with tablet-only release, even Shadow Era had phone support and I think their window of opportunity has closed, also the lack of guild/clan support kills its long term potential) but the point is, no paid mobile game will ever build enough of a community to be anything more than a cult favorite/niche game from here on. To have a massive community dissect every single balance change, exploit every strategy, compete at the highest level, you need to be freemium. That is why the million dollar E-Sports game on ESPN is freemium. Paid = one time money = obsolete model unless you have a franchise like GTA/COD or you are playing Blizzard games in South Korea, but even their revenue/profit is beaten by COC and it is just a matter of time before kids outgrow them. Also just a quote from Peter Molyneux, one of the respected old school developers from late 2013: http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/gta5/news/gta_5_sales_are_not_impressive_says_molyneux.html "The newly released Grand Theft Auto V is a game that's everywhere, you can hardly avoid it," Molyneux said, speaking at Mobile Entertainment's Top 50 Mobile Innovators project last night. "It will achieve around $1 billion in revenue on consoles in just one month. "Sounds impressive, doesn't it? No. That's not impressive." Instead, Molyneux believes that the revenue some mobile developers are pulling in is far more exciting. "What is outstandingly impressive is the success of mobile companies like Supercell, who has released games including Hay Day and Clash of Clans," he continued. "Those games, which were released 18 months ago, are achieving revenue between $3 million and $5 million each day. That is impressive." 18 months later, COC is still #1 and growing even bigger and bigger. Embrace the future of gaming, there is no going back! P.S. Screenshots mean nothing, when I look at screenshot of GTA vs Gangstar on mobile for example they all look similar, heck I think Gangstar even looks better! Once you play it with a bit of time it is obvious which game started it out and spent the time fine tuning every detail.
Did you really just back up your argument by quoting the guy who's the biggest laughing stock at the moment (not "respected")? Yeah, Molyneux knows how to milk a game -- Kickstart it and then make it Freemium so you can double-dip into players' pockets. I guess that should be the model every new developer should follow?
Okay, I will try this again. I see your point. The thing is, in any type of game other than those MMO games, timers are not a resource. They are a prevention of gameplay, and nothing more. That is the problem. For example, well, any single player game. Nothing is happening in the game while the timer ticks away because you are the only player, as far as the game cares. ...Except for online high scores, but everyone is going for high scores independantly of each other. Everyone has the same amount of time to try again for a high score whether there's a timer or not (other than the temporarily paying the timer away thing, which is bad...). So that's it. Timers are doing nothing except preventing play.
I'm pretty sure Clash of Clans doesn't require the amount of skill he is using to describe it. I mean unless you are at the top of the leaderboards you just build your city and occasionally attack others!
Its funny he keeps quoting Molyneux who like you say looks a joke at the moment. Again SOME people like freemium, others like premium. What i wouldnt do is say what ones are 'simply better' than the others and which ones arent. Everyones got such a wide range of taste. But saying Clash of Clans is the best game of all time (practically) due to just sales/revenue alone is a complete joke. Again that means the Spice Girls are the best band of the 90's and One Direction 'must' be the best 'band' this decade for sure. A joke. Thing is we're all feeding the troll as hes coming out with more and more crap to wind us up
I finished Dungeon Hunter 4 without spending a penny. I didn't find timers intrusive at all. If anything the potion timers gave the game more excitement because death meant something. Instead of trying same stage 100 times and delete the game in frustration, if I spend my potions and can not beat a stage I just come back later. Or farm a slightly easier area for loot, do the weekly challenge etc. When the timers are ready I have motivation to login. When they are not I still have something to do if I want to play a bit more. I didn't find it any worse than Battle Heart Legacy which I actually never finished. Because you can play as long as you want it was easier to get burn out. I don't remember where I ended, just didn't have any reason to login because the developer already got his money and can careless if I play the game or not. None of the mobile games can compete with pc/console for the hours at a time feasts. Freemium games excel around the "many small meals a day" factor and I no longer crave for feasts. And that is what freemium games do best. Short and sweet sessions, shower me with gifts, new contents etc so I actually have a chance to login.
And now this guy's defending timers because they make you take a break. That doesn't work. With no timer, you can take the break yourself, or continue if you want to. That's the point, the game is meant to be played. Maybe I want to play now... If you don't, then don't. A choice.
It is a choice to enjoy a free game with timers or a paid game without timers. The majority chose free game. Just look at toucharcade.com traffic on alexa. This very site is declining in the face of all time high apple share price and iphone sales. Because the games it cover are not the games people actually play in real world.
Not game that people play in the real world? LOL I don't know which alternate universe you are in now but an obvious troll is a troll. Now he's bashing Touch Arcade!
Did you just say that Battle Heart Legacy isn't good because it doesn't restrict you from playing after a certain time? THIS ENTIRE COMMENT IS A JOKE LOL you quit playing because of your short attention span obviously. If mobile games could not compare to console games then what about ports Mr. Freemuim is Best? You just said you prefer free small little "meals" people make to generate a source of income than actual games? I mean there are good freemuim games out there such as Asphalt, but admiring Candy Crush and Clash of Clans the way he does is simply ridiculous. This is why the to games make so much money, because people nowadays just aren't sensible with money or are completely bonkers... EDIT: BTW the only thing good Peter Molyneux is known for is Fable, which was ruined by the third installment in the franchise...
I am saying the lack of timers for Battle Heart Legacy wasn't enough for me to actually finish it, despite it having better core game play mechanisms and one of the most innovative mix-and-match skill systems. I am saying Dungeon Hunter 4's freemium elements, whether it be notification of potions ready, gem removal ready, gear upgrade ready, new daily login rewards, weekly damage competition rewards, you name it, made me log in enough to actually finish the game. Believe it or not there is a level of satisfaction that your character progressed while you were sleeping, even if it was artificially created. I am saying Battle Heart Legacy with full freemium would be a much much bigger/better game, with guaranteed contents updates. This is real world folks. You can not expect indie developers, even the most successful of them to work off shoestring revenue. I am saying even the greatest game of all time in my book, WOW had weekly dungeon timers for 40-men raids. You have to wait for 40 people to log on from home, get on Ventrilo, start the raid, you do it once a week and rest of the times you are just doing mining/herblism. How is different from COC where if I start a 3 day upgrade, I just need to log on enough during this time to collect enough resources, raid enough bases to have ample resource in hand for my next upgrade? With the clan war there is more than enough to do.
Despite it being better...? You aren't serious. Being notified "hey we are letting you play again"? Take your own breaks, instead of... *tries to think of a metaphor* For lack of a better, less potentially insulting metaphor... Let's just call it mind control saying "You can play now. Play now. You have to stop. Stop. Play now. Stop." Now let's flip this around. Why didn't this "mind control" make you play that timer-less game when you had time to, until you won? "You can play now. Play now. What? You don't want to? Okay. Why don't you want to say no to timer games that literally make you say no? Doesn't make sense. Why don't you want to choose when you want to play?" You should get a timer app to simulate timers if you want something telling you when to take a break. (That is a serious, non-sarcastic idea.) Don't need timers to also be given daily rewards and such. You said it had better gameplay mechanics, but you're saying it would be better with full freemium, making it worse but bigger. (Meaning more padded out with the "you can't play now" timers. And paywalls.) That's not good. You've got people convinced you aren't serious. If you're actually serious, it really doesn't sound like it. It sounds more like a parody of freemium supporters, spouting nothing but praise for everything about freemium. Everything about it, bad and all. I'm sorry, this is too much.
That's why we post shit like this now- http://toucharcade.com/2015/02/18/candy-crush-soda-saga-beginners-level-guide-levels-1-through-20/ It's amazing how much the core iOS gamer demographic has straight up vanished. We don't have the Alexa stuff installed though, we report data to Quantcast- https://www.quantcast.com/toucharcade.com The dips and recovery you start to see in 2013ish were when we started to switch to seriously covering free to play stuff.
