The best freemium mobile games are simply better than best paid mobile games

To add to my point...
A premium game without IAP is designed the way the developer imagined it would be fun, and that people would want to pay for it so they can enjoy it like everyone else who's playing it. (Obviously there's the occasional scam that looks good in the screenshots but isn't really what's advertised.)

If a developer of a premium IAP-free game decides that they don't need to make money anymore (maybe they won the lottery?), they simply drop the price down to free.

*Most* free-to-play games with IAP (there are a few exceptions, like Crossy Road), if the devs won the lottery and decided they don't want to monetize anymore, they can't simply remove the IAP. The game would be broken, because the game is designed with those walls that get people to to drop money so they can keep playing. Without the option to pay to continue, people would be forced to just stop playing. Or, the developer could tweak the game so IAP is no longer necessary.

I have tried to make the argument with pro-F2P folks several times, but no one ever takes me up on it. They always come back to "but it's profitable." Again, that doesn't make it (more?) fun. People like the fact that Freemium games are free -- they don't like the IAP. Only a tiny tiny percentage of players actually buy IAP. Most just try to play for free.
TA even has plenty of "how to play ___ without spending any money" guides. You think that's because people love buying IAP? No, they just like free games.

Edit: Just some more thoughts: If all games on the App Store were free (maybe through some deal Apple offers to justify their $600 devices), there simply wouldn't be a place for broken games with timers and artificial walls.

 

Only in some rare cases. The average is still like $3 or something.

re: burning through users. Well that assumes people leave f2p and aren't interested any more. The UA costs are effectively like marketing and advertising a new movie. The users re-circulate. Most stay, some leave, and new ones enter the market every day.

Retention is key and no matter how much you spend on UA if your game isn't legitimately good enough to retain users you're going to go broke.

 

'Best'? You are joking right?

Actually yeah sorry you're right, highest grossing = best. Therefore Transformers 3 and Transformers 4 are indisputably in the top ten best films of all time.

 

Your synonym to the word "best" is making a lot of money and many people playing it. However this doesn't mean that the overall quality of the freemium game is better. A guy addicted to a slot machine doesn't make the slot machine a awesome game, does it?

South Park explains it right:

Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel

 

No, they're successful because they're Skinner boxes that keep people addicted, always allowing them not to spend money but always reminding them how much better it would be if they did.

 

There really is nothing wrong with F2P, there are just some publishers abusing the model.

This should not be news. Electronic Arts has been abusing customers in every medium for decades now. Any good idea, DLC, F2P, etc. has been exploited, abused, and beaten to death by Electronic Arts. They are not the only one, they've just been doing it the longest.

Of course, EA has struggled in the past, may still be struggling, as their reputation for mediocrity and no long-lasting recognizable IP has ever come from them.

Are F2P games "the best"? No, not by a long shot. It's too broad a category. That's like saying Indie games are made with more heart, as though there aren't Indie Developers who would see their creations for millions of dollars in a heartbeat. I'm ok with that, these companies need money to survive and I work in the private sector myself.

There have been paid games that were successful. Unfortunately, there is just too much stuff out there and getting discovered is a real hurdle for anyone.

I think one of the big problems with mobile gaming and the reason F2P has been so successful is that customers balk at mobile game prices. Someone on a $500 iDevice will crap their pants over a $5 price tag and anything more than that is reacted as though you just asked to have sex with their wife. Seriously, people will drop over $100 on a console game (After you buy the base version, season pass, premium extras, etc.) and that game may just be another iteration of a popular series that you essentially played already but you must have this next sequel because...it's new?

There are some really good games out on tablets that have deep play experiences. I can find excellent gaming experiences now on consoles, the PC, tablets, and phones. It's crazy. The only game I used to be able to play on my phone was a pretty decent version of Tetris.

If you really really really hate the concept of F2P, don't play them. I mean don't even login because even if you don't make a purchase, for the publishers more traffic means more potential business. If they have a conversion rate of say 5% paid to 95% free, then that just makes you another 1 of 19 free players that tells them when they'll be that much closer to the next paid customer. Stay away from F2P. Don't just vote with your wallet, vote with your time.

Whining about F2P but then giving them any amount of business is just hypocrisy. Or maybe, just maybe, there are some decent F2P games out there?

 

I definitely agree that top grossing does not equal most fun. However, to say that F2P games aren't fun is silly. Personally, I'm currently enjoying 6 F2P games that I consider a lot of fun and well crafted. Of course, they aren't all for everyone. I tried but could not get into Clash of Clans, but I'm rocking it at Candy Crush Soda Saga.

On another thread, I posted something about how I realized I just don't care that much about story driven games on my phone anymore. I bought like 6 games over Christmas that have 3-10 hours of story driven content each. And I deleted 5/6 of those without finishing because I really just like quick and simple games on mobile.

In conclusion, do what you want. Enjoy whichever games you want. I don't know. I feel dumb for posting a comment here. If you haven't before, check out Slay by Sean O'Connor. That game is awesome.

 

One of my most played games on IOS is Injustice. That game hooked me bad! I spent some decent money on it too because I liked it so much. Not sure if this pertains to this thread that much but oh well.

EDIT: Actually looking at my games now I barely even notice if they are free anymore. If I like them I buy some IAP if I dont I just delete it.

 

Wow, that is the most depressing thing I've read all year.

I'm not going to deny the economic force that free-to-play games have become, but as a player, not a developer, the move to more and more free-to-play is honestly depressing and it's making me less excited about mobile gaming. Not saying all F2P is bad; some developers seem to find a good mix (Vainglory, Crossy Road), but these are F2P gems are rare. More often I find myself in state where if I see the game advertised on TV, I know to steer clear of it. If I see an ad in your game, I delete it (thankfully, Crossy Road gives you the option of whether you want to see the ad, and gives you a direct benefit for doing so). Nor am I going to spend much time with a game that is or even feels like it's "pay to win" (looking at you, Hearthstone).

I respect that I, and a lot of the gamers here on this site, might be in the minority when it comes to mobile gamers. But few games in the past year have swayed me from the belief that premium games are a better value (fun versus cost) than F2P.

 

The point of this entire thread is rendered completely null and void by loosely confusing the terms "best games" with "most profitable games". I'm sorry, but if you think Clash of Clans is a "better" game than GTAV, then I'd like to know what you're on, and where I can get some of it.

 

I view this argument the exact same way as I view the "console war". People will argue that something is better than something else, for whatever reason, but the truth is that better is subjective, and personal to the user. Instead, we should strive to play what we like, on whatever platform (or price point) that we like, and not be concerned about another person's differing opinion.

If a game is free to play, and I want to play it. I'll play it. If it ends up having barriers to my enjoyment as part of its model, I'll stop playing it once I reach my irritation threshold. I would do the same for a paid game, if I was equally irritated by its game mechanics. A game is fun for as long as it remains fun, and is good if you perceive you got an appropriate amount of value for the price paid or time invested.

Whether a game sold more than another game is simply not something I'm concerned with when talking about if a game is better or not, when fun is my metric.

 

We could really do with an upvote system in the forum. +1 to the above.

Side point, most people don't seem to want to talk about how maybe for mobile, free to play and limited experience is best. Hitman mentioned it, but over time I think the market will realize that *almost* no one is sitting down for 2 hours at a time to play a premium game on iPad. Gripe all you want, but this is probably all well end up seeing in mobile.

 

Pack it in kids, might as well close the thread after this perfectly-worded reply.

 

Can't argue

I can't argue with freemium stats, and I'm not fully against free to play if it is handled correctly. For example, I don't mind paying for more content on a game I really enjoy. MMO's for example, and candy crush, I get paying for more content as we are paying the devs to constantly expand the play.

Your point on the Infinity Blade franchise is an opinion, which basically means nothing to me.

Battleheart legacy - if they added IAP for new content unlocks, would be a great route. We all bought Battleheart Legacy because it is a good, fun payed title, speaking for myself, I have no problem paying the devs for new content.

I don't know about GTA controls (fault the dev on that) but the point about XCOM is ridiculous. XCOM is/was worth every penny and is a quality "you get more than what you pay for" experience. Games on my XBOX are sometimes shorter than XCOM and I'm still playing XCOM on my ipad. I think the same could be said for most hunted cow games / Dragonfall, why waste time making a list of great "premium" games.

Further, I feel like some developers, say gameloft going freemium on their premium titles is crap. They aren't expanding the content so it is only certain category of freemium titles we are discussing.

But it's true, based on app store stats and the opinion of certain players and superbowl ads, only freemium titles are the best. IF you have to pay for a game on your mobile device, it probably sucks due to (fill in the blank's) opinion.

 

I agree with both of these responses. I think the original poster said some intelligent things about why CoC and similar games are fun and sell suited to mobile gaming. However I don't buy his "top grossing" = best formula at all. Lots of movies (Transformers), music (Taylor Swift), food (McDonald's), books (anything by Danielle Steele), etc are extremely popular, yet I wouldn't consider them anywhere near the best in terms of quality in their categories. I think of CoC and similar games as the McDonald's of video games -- I sort of get why they're popular, but I don't think it's because of quality, and I generally avoid them when there are other options available.

 

My main fear is that these people will make the premium games extinct...and then the new era of freemium will begin where premium is long gone forever.People seem to enjoy all this sh%t,I wish we could see what would happen to the AppStore if premium was gone.

It's just I think that premium will not be gone simply cause eventually majority of players will realize that playing freemium games every time is not fun at all.

Why cannot people make both premium for NORMAL PEOPLE and freemium for these(sorry I have nothing else to say)brainless abominations that I cannot even call a human kind who enjoy waiting for energy,grinding and wasting their precious time on such games when you can just play a premium game with an END?

 

I saw a posting last week for the game Axe in Face. I had a ton of fun playing that game awhile ago on my itouch. I pretty much completed the game. So I was kind of excited to re download it on my iPad mini just to play it again today. It is not universal but it's perfectly fine on the screen. So I started out and everything was going fine until the third scenario in. As soon as an enemy encroached on my cornfield a prompt to watch a video came up so I could continue!The original game would keep going until three enemies encroached and then game over. My initial excitement about playing this game quickly vanished and I promptly deleted the game. I'm so tired of being asked to trigger videos to carry on. I'm not a monkey or Pavlovs' dog. It's enough to watch a video on YouTube that has a pre ad before the video starts. I'm working for some unknown entity making money for them. This is the state of things we have to operate in

 

I think ads are the lesser of two evils, and I'm honestly not sure why Free+Ads with IAP to remove ads is not the standard for most games. That way everyone's on the same footing, but if the ads annoy you, you can pay to remove them. Obviously, pay-to-win is still more profitable than that, or it wouldn't be dominating the top-grossing charts.

I think our only hope is that the masses eventually come to their senses, so pay-to-win becomes less profitable and the trend turns away from it.

Games that were paid and then inserted ads or IAP later...that's a whole other story.

 

It is gonna happen when there will be less brainless people in this world.I myself gonna try dungeon hunter 5 when it's out but if it will have the same pay2win model,I will loose the hope in gameloft forever.