I think the best recipe to a F2P game is; one premium purchase, and small IAP that doesn't seem to be essential for Premium users for those not committed to an actual purchase or huge players who want to be the very best. There doesn't seem to be much fault in this model as makes people who think $1 is super expensive and people who will pay anything for a great game. It can also let anyone in the world play with who they want to play with without complications.
Whenever a game's mechanics are contorted by monetization, the try, fail, learn, succeed formula is replaced by try, fail, pay/wait, succeed. And though this doesn't apply to all free-to-play games, it certainly does apply to 99% of them. And yes, instant gratification is the name of this game. Freemium games may always be more popular and profitable then Premium games, but the design quality of Freemium games is hardly the reason. To me the reason is really quite simple: Freemium games are free to download and free to start. The perfect combination for the 5 minute casual gamer that has thousands of equally mediocre freemium titles to choose from. An impressive quantity with very little lasting quality. The profit comes in the form of "captured" whales and unwelcome advertising.
It depends on what kind of gamer you are casual or do you like a game with a story, a goal and an ending and to play for hours? I like my games to have an end game, a good story and an ending and that usually comes with premium. Freemium are meant to never end. Just endless milking of $$ for no end game. When I want to play just few a few minutes I usually will play something like Subway Surfers, Injustice, Avengers Alliance but I play premium when I want immersion and to play for a long time and 'without restrictions'. But for me there's nothing like a full game with a plot and great characters and a 'save the world' thread through it. I like to get the $$ out of the way and not be bothered or pestered anymore for money. Also, most games which have IAP have manipulated gameplay to make you 'need' to buy at some stage. That ruins games for me. There's nothing so awesome for me than a Final Fantasy or a Dungeon Quest. I played DQ5 for hours and hours the other day. Journey Down another excellent title. Don't mind paying for chapters though. That's added content not consumeable. With Freemium so many things are manipulated to force purchases. The energy system. Upgrade system, better characters, removal of ads for $$ which I think is fair but so much of Freemium games is manipulated that you're not playing the real game but competing against a paywall. I hate consumables. You can't restore them and they are a complete waste of money. Also timers like in Candy Crush & Real Racing made me delete them. The real, unadulterated gaming experience non manipulated gaming experience for ME comes with mostly premium because you get the 'real game' untouched. But with Freemium you get the IAP version which may or may not be to your liking and is most certainly manipulated to force payment. I believe all games should simply be pay once and play. No slot machines, no lotteries just pure gaming. In game unlock of full version is a good option for devs to have more people download. But I will always pay $20 upwards for a game like Final Fantasy but very little if anything for most Freemium games I try out. I loathe premium games with IAP. It's greed and double dipping. Either have IAP or one price for the full complete game.
I enjoy both premium and freemium games. I have made purchases in games like Spider-Man and SongPop, there are other games I check in on to claim daily rewards. I also really enjoy paid games like Hero Emblems and Baldur's Gate. I don't mind paying for games up front, but when I do, I don't like finding IAP's for coins or timers in those games. I don't mind paying for IAP's for things like extra content (Monumental Valley, Tiny Thief). I like games like Glyph Quest where I am able to play and try a game before purchasing it, I had really hoped that pay model would work well, but it didn't seem popular. Most reviews for games like that were negative, stating things about free games that really aren't. I have paid for games or removed ads from multiplayer games like Dice With Buddies and Square Shooters, which brings me to Square Shooters being shut down. It was a premium game that became 100% unplayable after the servers were shut down. Some games now advertise that you can keep playing parts of games if he servers go offline...I remember people really upset when games like Ultima Online (PC) shut down, I wonder now how people will react when they turn down the Clash of Clans servers. That's when the people who,paid for the free app will realize that the money they spent in the game is completely gone. Most of the premium titles I own are "mine" and will continue to work until I delete them. Or until Apple does another iOS upgrade...
Guys just stop,everybody.Let's just live in peace,screw both freemium and premium,don't argue because of that. There is only 1 thing that everyone should know-freemium games will extinct without premium games because people will die of boredom eventually.You cannot get rid of freemium JUST LIKE premium. So both freemium and premium are not going to disappear.
Most of the points in the original post are factual (except neglecting to mention Minecraft is the top 100 as a premium game), and yet there is one cardinal sin made here: you're conflating "better" with "makes more money". If this argument was being pitched to a room full of VC execs deciding which companies to invest in, I'd agree 100%. But that's not the audience here. The audience here is gamers. In my opinion, an argument about which games are "better" is meaningless without talking about which games are more fun. Which games are more thought provoking. Which games provide the most memorable experiences. There is more to art than money, and games are art. I'd argue too that the artists themselves aren't just interested in money. Sure, your Zyngas and your EAs are only interested in which type of games make the most money. But part of the beauty of the App Store is it enables a whole new class of indie developers to make something they believe in, something that says something, something that means something. It lets them create games as art. And when you're making something for more reasons than just the money, you aren't shackled to defining better by that one sole metric. The real question is: can an indie developer make enough money from a paid (or non-freemium) game? It isn't "can they make ALL the money?". It isn't "can they become the next Clash of Clans?". It's "can a developer create a piece of art that they are proud of, and still earn enough to feed their families?". I think so. Apple could be doing more on this front, but I think we're still living in a world where developers can make a living making games that are "better" in a whole lot of metrics other than revenue.
Well-said, and kind of what I was saying earlier. The devs of Monument Valley set out to make art. Turned out people really liked what they made, so it was profitable. But they're not upset that it doesn't make them as much as CoC or Candy Crush. They got to share their vision with the world and make a living off of it.
Very true, while many developers/companies are all about the bottom line, not everyone developing IOS games thinks they're playing "Who wants to be a Millionaire?" Though all games may be art, not all developers are artists. So thank god for the true indie devs in IOS gaming. Without them we'd be at the mercy of a King.
I'm gonna go ahead and leave this here. While the video doesn't describe every type of game, casual or otherwise, it definitely hits on the diff between F2P vs what a REAL game is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGU2B-_Foy8
This is an interesting discussion indeed. I will agree with OP that those free games mentioned are the most lucrative but I will have to disagree that pure economic success makes a game great. I realize companies need to make money and on mobile a Freemium hit is the best way to do that. We must keep in mind though that so many games, both Freemium, and paid don't make any money. The mobile market is fierce and so competitive that it becomes increasingly hard to make a financially succesful game. I have to say that the OP characterization of IB is way off base. I am biased as I built my (small) YouTube channel on the Infinity Blade Franchise but those games are made for a more hardcore fanbase than Candy Crush. The IB franchise ushered in the Console Quality games and broke the mold when it came to hardcore console experiences on Mobile games and spurred knock offs of its own. Without The IB franchise you wouldn't have the plethora of Unreal Engine games on mobile that we have today. There is space in the mobile sphere for succesful Freemium and premium games and I still feel that as a whole the premium games offer a deeper console like experience than the majority of Freemium games. I play CoC and IB and love them both. Both franchises are commercial successes but one company had a more modest financial gain than the other, but you didn't hear countless horror stories of parents finding thousands of dollars charged to their CCs from kids playing Infinity Blade. Many Freemium games are irresponsible in their monetization and prey on the same types of personalities that casino gaming does. I personally choose not to codone such irresponsible practices and will pay for a well crafted premium game over pouring my time into a casino style slot machine designed as a playful mobile title (yes candy crush I am looking at you). I will end my post here and I have enjoyed reading through all the viewpoints in this thread. I am an older gamer so I hold on to the hope that real console style games on mobile will eventually prevail over the Freemium shovelware we see pop up on the appstore and Google play daily. Tywin
OP is either a troll or has some serious delusions. 1. Your title is facepalm-worthy already. Um no, the best mobile games are paid, not freemium, fact. Is any GBA/DS/PSP/Vita game free? Are any of the critically acclaimed games like Infinity Blade, World of Goo, or Cut the Rope freemium? Freemium = crap for suckers who'll spend endlessly on IAP because they are unable to make an actually great game that can sell itself just from title price 2. Higher profit = better quality? Lol. What grade are you in again? Some lousy crap that asks you to pay real money every 10 minutes or spamming "friend codes" is high quality?
One of his previous threads a few years back was why devs should abandon Android ! And another where he thought Gangstar Vegas is a better game than GTA Vice City I wouldn't take him too seriously Again he seems to think sales equates to the best games. Like I said before. Are n-sync or Miley cyruss or lady gaga better than The Rolling Stones then ? They may sell more records and have more number ones at some point. Does that make them better?
Surely games are to be played. The reason they are played is that people enjoy playing them. Whether people like to pay once and play the game whenever they like or pay to win and have to wait until the game tells them they are allowed to play is, surely, up to those people. I am a member of the old school who likes to pay up front and nott be badgered to play when it doesn't suit me, but enjoy the quality game I have chosen at my leisure, never worrying that I missed my daily reward or missed my Free Company assignment. If Gameloft and all those other guys make piles of cash by making people game slaves do I worry? I do not. I wonder, by the way, how many man hours are being lost because workers are catching up with Clash of Clans or Candy Crush before they catch up with Twitter, then Facebook, then email...
This is stupid That's a big giant WRONG. Your facts are correct, but your statement is not. Freemium games are garbage that people download because free content is involved. You're basically saying that the number of users determines the quality of the game. There isn't one freemium game that is better than Baldur's Gate 1 or 2, any Kingdom Rush game, etc. The best mobile games have a price tag. Idk why this post got any attention at all. That's the dumbest conclusion I've heard in a while which is saying something since you come across a lot of dumb garbage on the web. Most freemium games are greedy creatures created with a paycheck as their top priority. The quality of the game comes some point after
That's a big giant WRONG. Your facts are correct, but your statement is not. Freemium games are garbage that people download because free content is involved. You're basically saying that the number of users determines the quality of the game. There isn't one freemium game that is better than Baldur's Gate 1 or 2, any Kingdom Rush game, etc. The best mobile games have a price tag. Idk why this post got any attention at all. That's the dumbest conclusion I've heard in a while which is saying something since you come across a lot of dumb garbage on the web. Most freemium games are greedy creatures created with a paycheck as their top priority. The quality of the game comes some point after
Gaming is a form of entertainment, my personal judgement of whether a game is worth my money is based on the benchmark of a movie ticket price. I catch movies regularly, to entertain myself of course. If I am willing to shill out 8-10$ to be entertained for 90-120 minutes, then I sure would fork out money for a game that can entertain me an hour a day for several days or weeks. In this sense, in response to an earlier post by @Eli , would you say you had paid and gotten nothing after coming out of a cinema after the show has ended? Was that 90 minutes engagement not something worthwhile? Likewise, as many has argued, addiction aside, one who had paid in a f2p is likely one who had enjoyed the game, even if the server closed down eventually, he would have paid for all those hours enjoying the game experience. If a person didn't like the game, when he reaches the point where u he realize he should be paying (for any reason), he should be irked by that and be even more reluctant to continue the game. No one forced anyone to buy IAP at gunpoint. Of course this statement disregards those cases whereby young kids were misled into clicking the buy button. I might have digressed, but I think you cannot label any game or any kind of game as being "best". It's subjective. Like how you cannot vividly define "fun". But if OPs claim is that f2p is most popular or profitable, then there would be no argument.
Can I just say that I'm jealous that you can still see movies for $8-10? Here it's $15 for a regular movie.
World of Warcraft is still going strong as a paid game after 11 years. Clash of Clans has been #1 for 18 months, it is not going anywhere even when it eventually gives up the top spot. I am pretty sure the server would be open for a decade or two, even if it will see a decline at some point. Most people on this board truly underestimate the difficulty it takes to make a game like Clash of Clans. It is honestly much much much more difficult than the so called "console quality" premium games like Infinity Blade. You have people who will spend thousands of dollars and you have people who will not spend a dime, how do you keep both interested month after month? The amount of contents and balancing in COC is staggering when a single balance change will hit millions of people, some are paying, others are not. Making a game like COC is far more than milking the "whales", you have to create a compelling experience for everyone playing your game. Yet they somehow rule the chart month after month after month. COC provides a much more competitive experience than Infinity Blade and has far more strategy as well. It is the most profitable and the single greatest mobile game ever made. The so called premium titles with a dozen levels and done after 10 hours are all indie jokes in comparison.
