Why would anyone enjoy getting beaten up by the whales? I don't understand that. Why continue playing a game in which you know you have no chance of competing without buying your way to the top? You don't see people lining up to get beaten up by the biggest kid in school. It's just against all common sense.
You probably should avoid Indie Game: The movie. It did not explode the box office so its an irrelevant non-factor movie made by indie film-makers about indie devs, with lousy special effect and 103 minutes! This inspires me a story about a guy who traded a scooter for a car because it was bigger. Then he switched to a mini-van. Then to a truck. Then to a Hummer. Then to a bus. Then to a double-trailer truck. Then to a caterpillar 797. He was last seen installing pedals on the moon. This is going to be the subject of our next game. There will be pixels and 20 levels in it.
How is this different from playing World of Warcraft and people pay money for raid spots to get best gears in the game? Or players who can afford to spend 10x the number of hours /played and grind for best possible gear? There will always be whales in every competitive game, freemium just makes it easier for whales to be whales, because whales tend to have more money than time. The "wow I just beat someone who spend 10x the hours or 100x the money than I do" is a huge part of the popularity of these games. I don't see the difference between kids who can afford to spend 1000 dollars buying gear vs kids who can afford to spend 1000 hours grinding gear. In fact as a parent, I think 1000 dollars is the lesser of the two evils if I must choose between them.
i find it amusing that coc's success makes it the best game ever made. talking about real gamers it also odd because most "casual" games are just not real gamers. if i put a precooked meal into the microwave does that make me a cook? its instant gratification within 5 minutes instead of chopping vegtebales into a salat and frying a steak. I play coc for now over to years and i would like to put "play" into quotes because waiting 14 days for a defensive structure to update is not playing a game. For me "real" gaming was always about the experience, something you'd remeber a year down the road, 5 years or longer. You won't such experience in generic timer based games that are stretch 2 hours of "actual" game content into years of grinding. Why did EAs Dungeon Keeper flopped? Not because it was really worse than other games like it but just because it was alot more agressive with it timings. Where other games let you progress further for "free" and without huge timers they throw that stuff at you after the first hours "into" the game. The CoC clan i'm in is like 95% pure non gamer. They play Coc and maybe 1 or two other F2p games but thats it. While they are nice guys ans gals which some i meet in real life they are not gamers. They have iOS devices and thoose free games are they way of wasting some time and get suckered into spending money for it. Its a convinient way to waste some time because its running on a device they already own. The instant gratification of spending 5$ to finish the 14 days timer is used plentifull and associated with "gaming fun" by thoose users but in reality they just spend 5 dollars nothing more nothing less. Its highly unlikely that in 10 years someone remebers how he did the unachiveable and upgraded his arrow tower from lvl 10 to 11 by spending 5 dollars. I still remember sitting under the window to catch some light to finish my first "speedrun" through super mario on the original gameboy as a child and they joy of beating the game and then being able to restart it with a higher difficulty. Todays mobile games are usually throwaway experiences you spend some time with and exchange it with the next batch of timewasters. Is this "real" gaming, i would say no, its not. Does it belong to the gaming industrie, yes it does. Its the "casual" things of things Like todays kids don't even know how real vegtables taste but can tell you the mc donalds menu from a to z. Its here to stay and our globalization of gaming. With all its pros and cons.
Reading the OP to this thread gave me a nice mixture of depression and embarrassment for human kind. Freemium games are a cancer to the game industry, and their exploitative practices are being imitated by AAA developers now. As for "Are they better?" Hell no! Waiting for timers, grinding, and being beaten by people who value their money less than I do. How could you compare that garbage to a real game? EDIT: And I just want to say that I play the mobile Trials game daily, and it's the embodiment of why I hate F2P with so much intensity. They implemented timers and upgrades in a game that is designed to be competitive at its core! Sooo much grinding required to unlock the last 4 upgrades out of 40 (and there is 9 bikes, with 40 upgrades each), and after you do buy the upgrade, you get to wait (up to 12 days, yaaay!). So now I'm competing with people who have more upgrades because they are stupid with their money! Does it feel good to beat people with faster bikes? Not really. I know my ability, and beating randoms doesn't make me feel good about myself. What feels good is knowing that everybody is on an equal playing field.
Here's a question for this viewpoint: For most gamers, are there games where we have a consistent chance at the top? Does it really affect our enjoyment by that much? Does the fact that we get beaten by others who have invested more into the game really detract from the enjoyment? For example, I've been playing fighting games in the arcades consistently since Street Fighter 1. In the past, I put in a lot of hours but outside of a few titles, I don't have a chance in hell in being a competitive level player. Part of it is because I'm not naturally a quick thinker - I just don't think on my feet that well - but otherwise, it's just because I don't have enough time and money to sit in an arcade practicing. As a student, no matter how often I could sneak off to an arcade, it wasn't as much as some guys who would sit there after work until bed time every night, with buckets of coins from their salaries. This was the original pay to win scenario. But yet, here I am, 25 years later and I'm STILL playing Street Fighter. With online fights, I've opened my eyes even more to how infinitely mediocre I am, despite having played the genre for decades. And? I'm still here. I'm still putting in my $60 per installment, still buying fight sticks, still waiting eagerly for my chance to get beaten down again and again. Let's face it, there's thousands and thousands of Street Fighter players out there and probably only a few hundred that are really any good or have any shot of being competition level players. But that's not why I play. Ultimately, I enjoy the game enough that even if I'm only winning 40-50% of my matches, I'm having fun. A close match, a friendly rivalry or knowing putting in a couple more hours got me a higher rank than I was yesterday... these give me enough enjoyment to continue and I'm good with that. And for many genres - from FPS, to MMORPGs, to sports games, to driving games, to board games, to even card games like Hearthstone and Magic - I'm mediocre at best. I'm well aware of my limits as a gamer. And yet I love this hobby to death. I've been beaten down not only by big kids, but average kids and little kids who insist on teabagging my corpse everytime I die. And I'm sure I'm not alone. Obviously if winning and being able to achieve the top is the primary criteria for enjoyment in video games, most of us wouldn't even be here. I don't even remember the last time I reached the top of a leaderboard - premium, freemium or otherwise. Not that I enjoy losing or like being mediocre but the existence of whales shouldn't simply matter to any of us that much.
I was just about to post something along these lines. While it seems really silly that we argue whether or not someone is a "real" gamer, the division into "casual" and "non-casual" is becoming necessary as games are becoming more and more accessible. Unfortunately the games that reach the widest audience are casual, which makes perfect sense. The point is, even my mom plays solitaire once a week, for 20 minutes (on the easiest difficulty). Does that make her a gamer? Well, according to everyone who is against the division of gamers into groups, she is. That is why we need the term "casual". Luckily, anyone who takes the time to register on a gaming discussion forum and posts something is most likely not a casual gamer. But when this happens (like it did in this thread) we can not have a proper discussion with them. That being said, "freemium" is not a cancer of the mobile industry. The developers just adjust their payment system to get the most out of the market. Unfortunately, most of the mobile market consists of casual gamers. The games and their payment systems are just a reflection of the habits of the causal player. But as long as there are still "non-casual" gamers on this platform, we will still be getting "non-causal" games as long as we support those developers who make them, no matter what payment system their game has. I would even go further and say that freemium games that are clearly not meant for the causal player are far from cancer, as those games are the only ones that can fish "non-casual" gamers from the "casual" pond. So please, don't go around with all your confidence and ignorance calling all freemium games cancer.
Freemium games aren't cancer, if anything it's games who's gameplay is based around excessive grinding or waiting/paying money not to wait that are cancer. When the main element of a game is to prevent you from playing or progressing in the game, then that's probably not a game I'd want to play. However Free To play itself isn't a bad thing, I think we just see less successful examples of Free to Play done in an unobtrusive way in F2P games designed specifically for mobile. As someone mentioned earlier I think the AppStore and Play Store probably need to do a better job at highlighting games people think are good rather than just what is successful (for example via something like the steam curators system). There needs to be a way for people to customize what these stores highlight based on what kind of games people like. Perhaps there should also be some way for more expensive games to be more visable in the charts, for example by having different charts for different price points (So there'd be Top $0.99, $1.99, (...), $10.99 - $14-99, $15.99 - $19.99, (...) games charts), that way more expensive games would be easier to find and because of that also have a higher chance of being successful. Anyway, For those that think Free to play is bad in general, I leave you this screnshot:
Many F2P games are designed to take advantage of or exploit a player's psychological weaknesses. Like with slot machines, everything is perfectly designed following psychological findings, from the, the flickering lights, the sound effects, the frequency of the payouts (all some sort of reward), the speed and easing of the reels. In mobile games this is even amplified by the analytics you can get. It's no secret that aggressive monetization, which catches the players in moments of the biggest emotional / psychological weakness, is generating the most revenue (think continues in CCS, P&D, endless runners) while "ethical" IAPs like the removal of ads make nearly no money. In CCS you might have spent RMT boosters on a level and "just" failed it, so it's only 99ct to salvage the investment, right? In P&D, you gained lots of treasure in a dungeon run only to wipe at the boss, and it's only a diamond to keep all the gains. Not without reason gambling is regulated in most countries, and regulation is on its way for F2P as well and most people wouldn't consider casinos to be the pinnacle of entertainment, because it's a multi-billion industry. I'd really like to see a statistic if the "whales" are really the much touted affluent people who have more time than money and therefore spend lots of it on "gems" for their F2P game of choice after an exhausting day in the office of a renown corporation. I suspect most whales are rather comparable to the addicts who spend the little money they have on slot machines in a run down arcade or casino. Someone who gets lots of recognition in real life doesn't need to improve her ego through outspending and beating namless opponents in a video game. F2P games have their place, but their monetization needs are often incompatible with what I'd consider good game design. Millions of people enjoy them and their amusement isn't worth less than the joy core gamers have with premium titles, the OP is also right about the longevity, social aspects, perfect design for mobile use and also the possibility to invest in new content because of the cash flow, but as many said, like a burger is certainly an achievement of its own, because you get quite a good value for the money you spend, it's surely not the high point of human cuisine.
Throw in dinosaurs and its a day one buy for me. If you can deliver a memorable game that gets praises sung and is spoken about with reverance then I garuntee that those who played it will be ready to throw more money at you. I personally appaluad the developers who take the time to make a premium work because to go out in the appstore like that is a big risk these days. There are good freemium devs. I'm not going to demonize any aspect here. The fact is, folks see bad things on the horizon because of countless IAP-laden clones and wanna be heard about it now. There are good free games. It's just that we see so many "2048"s and "Clash of Soldiers" or some such. Ultimately this post is probalbly not that well written to be honest, but we can't simply praise things because of popularity. Pretty much all of Hitmanb's arguements amount to "lol 20 levels!" Yeah Clash may have "Infinite" gameplay. But is it really praiseworthy when all that is just cow clicker?
I'm surprised that fathers with limited time are the ones praising Freemium here. Several mentioned WoW. While I never played WoW, I did play other PC MMOs in the past, as well as a few iOS ones. When I was a teen, I spent waaaaaaay too much time on Runescape. And when Gameloft came out with Order & Chaos, I was ecstatic. I spent tons of time in that game -- until they started selling the most powerful gear for real money and ridiculous raids for other powerful gear. That's where the game lost me. I checked in once in the last year just to confirm that it's really not for me anymore. These days, I much prefer playing various different games and getting different experiences. As Xperimentalz said -- those 100 people working on CoC might otherwise make 100 unique games that offer a much better experience than playing the same game ad nauseam. Sure, I still like games like Threes! that are about improving your high score. I have several that have a permanent place on my phone. But I don't think lots of content in itself makes a game great. Are the pro-F2P folks here really unwilling to admit that they would enjoy their favorite Freemium games more without the timers and limited lives, etc? Those who enjoy paying vs playing, I guess there's not really much to argue with. Those people probably enjoy slot machines, too (as others stated). I do not. I spent 5 bucks on some real slot machines once and it was the emptiest feeling. I didn't even get a bucket of quarters, because they had digitized everything by then. As for competing... I've rarely gotten to the top of leaderboards either. The point is, I like to feel as though I have a chance if I just improve my skills. If people could just buy their way to the top of the leaderboards, it makes it hard to even figure out if you're skilled. Are you at the bottom because everyone else threw some money at the game? Or are you at the bottom because you suck? How do you know whether you even have a chance of getting those scores if you can't tell whether anyone is doing it without paying? Yes, you can still try and beat your own score -- but it still makes the leaderboards a joke. (Hackers are a different issue -- you can usually spot them a mile away.)
In a game like Runescape, someone becomes a whale by spending 10x - 100x more hours than you do, the hours spent even if converted to McDonald wage would dwarf what most whales would spend on freemium games these days. That is why third party services came out selling MMO gold, characters, gear, you name it. The only thing freemium ever did was to legalize this and provide a first party solution. Exact same reason why Blizzard provided real money auction house (and when they shut it down, I took it as a sign of their inevitable downfall because like many people on this board, they hold onto the past too much). And yes, I actually genuinely welcome the presence of timers! Most modern MMO's have daily quests where if you log on once a day and do a few small quests, you can capture say, 60% of the benefit of playing all day. In COC if I need to be away from the game until the next clan war, I put in the big upgrade timers and I can effectively disconnect myself from the game for a few days while still making good progresses. I don't see this is any different from daily/weekly quests. Heck in Warcraft 3/Starcraft when you upgraded a building didn't you have to wait a few minutes? If these games were persistent the upgrade timer would be much much much longer once you get past the initial levels. In fact, I firmly believe timers and stamina for that matter is part of the addiction of today's best freemium games. Everyday you have a real reason to log on for a few minutes, spend your stamina and reap the reward. The paid games without timers, the vast majority you play, either beat in a week or get stuck/bored somewhere, never a reason to log on again. Finally, these of you comparing the depth of COC to any of the paid games on app store is a joke. There are millions of posts discussing build layout, offense/defense set ups, and how to read the defense and get 3-stars. No, you can not blindly deploy your troops and hope for good results, the same troops played by a top player will get 3 stars, played by a mediocre player would get wiped out against the same base. Clan wars is played very seriously at higher rankings and some of the most memorable gaming experiences anywhere when you have a tied game going into the final minutes. It builds strong bonds between players and requires a ton of coordination as a team to win. THERE IS NOT A SINGLE PAID GAME ON APP STORE ANYWHERE NEAR AS COMPETITIVE AS COC AT ITS HIGHEST LEVEL. And the only thing money gets you is quicker progress to the end game. There is nothing in COC you can not obtain with time. Does it really matter if you are against someone who built up his base over 12 months or 1 month with $$$? The match making will always try to match you against someone of your level to begin with. Even in Clan Wars you will usually have weaker targets to go after and leave the tough cookies to stronger players on your team.
I haven't played Runescape in over a decade, so I'm not sure what it's like these days. When I played, it was more of a social experience bc I played with friends. I don't think at that point anyone was selling fake gold for real money, but I could be wrong. I guess I've moved beyond the point where I enjoy a game that requires tons of grinding/time *or* money to enjoy. There are games on the App Store that I likely would have loved at one point -- huge roaming action RPGs. These days that feels like such a time sink. And I'll reiterate, CoC doesn't bother me. What bothers me is this IAP model taking over, leaking into games I would very much enjoy playing without all these godd*** paywalls. Look at my review a few pages back for Gemcrafter. It could have been a solid game if they didn't model it around getting people to keep paying paying paying when they get stuck. Smaller devs are only doing this because they see bigger studios getting filthy rich off it.
I am now done following this thread seeing people compare CoC to WoW.... Haha it's clear that we have entered the point of no return. Spending hours farming and paying gems to speed up timers are in no way the same, and those who think they are, are in fact delusional and I have no need to rationalize with them
Now this is funny. I'm trying to remember where I could have leaked information... I wonder if someone will remember this conversation in a month or two when we make an announcement .
Well, you make some very good points and all that but I do find it a bit strange that you talk about timers, iap, paywalls, dual currency and time ultimately when isn't Infinity Blade 3 really Freemium dressed up as Premium? I've visited your site many many times, read your Chair forum posts and generally been entertained and informed by both places, so importantly do not take this as any form of attack or anything of the like. It most certainly is not, it's just a counter point with an interesting example that we can both relate to because I know both of us have played the hell out of it and enjoyed it immensely but it is one that walks a very thin line between premium, freemium and paymium. It also serves to exemplify the problems developers face when trying to both have a fair model, engage players repeatedly and earn for their work on top of that. As Eurogamer said in its review (and they were not the only one to reflect this opinion) "some of the more unwelcome aspects of mobile game design start to bleed in. Crafting and potion-brewing use a cooldown mechanic that would feel more at home in a craven free-to-play title than a premium-priced game like Infinity Blade. Countdowns can last anything from five minutes to 24 hours, and all can be skipped by cashing in the crystals that, along with more traditional gold coins, form the game's intertwined currencies." "There are "prize wheels" that can be purchased which bestow random loot, a mechanic that crosses from quirky diversion to dispiriting lottery once you're paying for them with real money. The game is obliged to keep teasing you with stuff you don't really need, but almost always want, like the chocolate bars placed at the supermarket checkout to ensnare parents with truculent children into an impulse purchase. You can also buy expensive keys to unlock tantalising chests; you'll be forced to leave behind dozens of potentially lucrative treasure troves if you don't fork out, because the game only hands out free keys for the really good chests sparingly." "As such, Infinity Blade 3 feels awkwardly adrift between the hard-earned progression of a traditional RPG and the 'have it all now for a price' mentality of freemium, actively undermining itself at the player's whim in order to flog some virtual coins." http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-09-20-infinity-blade-3-review Wasn't the series always just Paymium anyway really? http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/10/move-over-freemium-paymium-is-the-new-game-in-town/ It's all well and good to be on the side of premium or freemium or whatever but ultimately (as the linked Guardian article below put it and is particularly well worth the full read through) "Is a bad F2P game so aggressive with its demands for payment that you uninstall it after half an hour's play so much worse than a paid title that bilks you into paying 69p or more based on misleading screenshots?" Or "Is an awesome paid game that you just want to play and play and play some more, then tell all your friends about, so much purer than an awesome freemium game that you just want to play and play and play some more, maybe pay a little (or a lot) and then tell all your friends about?" But finally "it's a pricing debate, a publishing strategy debate, an app store evolution debate. It's not a religious war" So, you know, let's not really get too bothered about the whole thing. It'll all level out in the end just as arcades transformed to PC, PC transformed to console and so on and so forth. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/appsblog/2013/mar/18/free-to-play-games-perspective Oh and really finally this time, keep up the good work on the site. IB may be over but it still hasn't stopped me popping in for a look every now and then to see what's going on in the Appunwrapper world of games. Be sure and give us a good look at whatever Chair or the IB world does next.
Can we just close this thread lol? It's clear the OP is just a huge CoC fanboy. He loves his CoC so much it has blinded him. As a side note, play Midnight Star for a fun arcade style shooter. It's F2P but I still like it, timers and all! #
If you look a few posts back, I actually said that Infinity Blade is a weird game to put on the premium side of this debate (as many were doing). I don't want to turn this into a whole discussion of IB... But I was actually really surprised when the original IB came out and you could BUY EXPERIENCE. The game was unique in the way it forced you to play with every weapon if you wanted to continue earning experience and leveling up. Remember the Ruin with, what? 1 Attack point? If you wanted that experience from it, you had to use it instead of your most powerful weapons...well, unless you threw money at your screen. I mostly just ignored that, since I could play the game without buying experience and actually enjoy the game more (I would think) than those paying. Those paying just took away the challenge. Now....skip over to IB3, and I was 100% against the timers and the limited battle chips (ugh two currencies). I was probably one of the most vocal against it. Over lots of updates, they've definitely improved the situation, but I agree it's still laced with IAPs and timers. God those timers. Yes I still played, and yes I still enjoyed it -- but not as much as I would have without those timers. So I say again...timers are not fun. If you like a timer because it lets you take a break from the game, doesn't that mean you don't really enjoy playing the game as much as you tell yourself you do? You know why premium games don't last as long as those with timers? Because people play them instead of *waiting* to play them. A good game should reward you for effort and skill. For instance, a puzzle game. If you are allowed to keep working at it, you might eventually find the solution on your own. But if you're forced to quit or pay up every time you get stuck, it's not even allowing you to try and win on your own. It wants you to give up and pay to win. And thanks for visiting my site. Means a lot.
Mobile games premium or not are good for Dads who only have a few spare sessions to get in and out. Thats all I am saying
