- dictated -
My son has been playing a lot of mobile apps period one game in particular, I've noticed the main currency in the game is tokens, yet every time he goes to the in-game store he almost never has any tokens. I played the game a little bit to figure out why this is. The only reliable way to get tokens in the game is Buy, number one, watching advertisements and, number 2, paying with real money.
I realize that this is a free app, and they need to make money, but the game is just not fun when you can't purchase any of the items in the game without paying real money which I don't let him do. The whole thing seems bizarre to me. It must be frustrating to go to the store every day, and all the good items are like 1000 tokens, and I never see him have more than 10-20 tokens.
Apparently, the original version, it was much easier to get tokens, but subsequent updates, it is now nearly impossible to get them through regular gameplay. Which means the company made a conscious decision to try to screw the users, in hopes that they get so frustrated that they just buy a bunch of tokens for $5 - $100.
Thoughts?
Yep. This kills the fun.
Yet worse, games are (intentionally or not) constructed around the transaction/watch ad-mechanism, so the options for game design gets limited by that. Not only must the game constantly lead you to this mechanism, but it must also try and manipulate your incentive to actually use it. This overshadows all other aspects of what the game is about.
The honest way to make a commercial game is precicely to sell it on terms on what the game is about, not the other way around. This holds true even for coin-ops.
Where have you been the last 5+ years?
To be honest though, I'd much rather watch a dumb add than constantly have to shovel money. It would be nice if mobile developers would make a version of their games where it's just a one time payment and you're done. Maybe they think they won't get as much money this way, but as it stands, they're getting $0 from me.
I'm going to program a mobile app. It's called 'Ad Watchers'. Here's how you play... You win points by watching ads. You get more points by sharing your score on Facebook. If you get enough points, you unlock the super-ad, which is an even better and cooler advertisement, that only the coolest, best gamers get to view.
(Must have Wi-Fi to play).
They don't have much of a choice though, the consumers have spoken. Nobody will pay fair prices for mobile games, everybody expects them to be 0.99 or free.
dougeff wrote:
Apparently, the original version, it was much easier to get tokens, but subsequent updates, it is now nearly impossible to get them through regular gameplay. Which means the company made a conscious decision to try to screw the users, in hopes that they get so frustrated that they just buy a bunch of tokens for $5 - $100.
As someone who works for a 3-person company developing on a mobile/tablet game, I can talk a moment about this.
In the mobile market, the two common types of income models are:
1) F2P (free-to-play), specifically ones classified as "freemium". These are games you can download right off the App Store or Google Play and bam, you're in the game playing. These games are
specifically designed with microtransactions in mind. It varies per game type/style (let's not get into a discussion about that aspect), but in most cases, you can play the game as much as you like without spending a single cent..... however, it might take you (making up numbers here) 6 months to get as far a player who spent US$5 to buy a bunch of upgrades (tokens, gems, diamonds -- it varies per game, but it's usually some kind of "currency"). An alternate way is to watch an ad (usually 15 to 60 seconds) which can get you a little bit of something, but not as much as actual cash.
2) Traditional, a.k.a. pay-to-play. You pay a flat amount for the game itself (say, US$10), and you get everything right then and there. There are no microtransactions. A good example of this would be the puzzle game series The Room (which you should check out, BTW. Wonderfully done, worth every cent).
Right now in the mobile market, F2P is the common go-to choice, because it's the cash cow. It really depends, though, on what the demographic is your game is trying to cater to. I hate to generalise or categorise, but there's a lot of market research that shows "soccer moms" (30-somethings with kids who like Candy Crush), avid competitive game players (ex. Clash Royale) and upper-middle class people have no problem shelling out a few dollars here and there (hold that thought). Companies like King, Supercell, IGG, Machine Zone, Zynga, etc. have figured out the formulae and apply it. You should
look up King's annual financial reports: the numbers will blow your mind. I am not joking when I say I cannot comprehend how much money people dump into F2P games. I say this honestly, but a little tongue-in-cheek: it's like the average IQ is dropping. The mentality seems to be "eh, who cares, it's just 99 cents" but they never think about *how often* they're doing that. I've heard of people having $500+ charges in things like Niantic's Pokemon.
I am ***NOT*** a fan of F2P. Yes, there are a couple games I have where I've spent money to help accomplish some goals (I think I've spent maybe US$15 total in Digfender, simply because I was getting really stuck on specific levels and the walkthroughs on YouTube for those levels showed the person just having complete/total luck in how they managed to beat it, i.e. it was pure RNG). I might download and play an F2P game on occasion, but in ~95% of the cases, I've uninstalled it within a week because I "figure out" how their game mechanic works. One of the WORST was Clash Royale, which I actually had to play for a week at the request of my boss and then give feedback/a write up on what I thought. That game rewards the people who shell out money for upgrades early on, and because of how the game model/mechanics work, it's literally impossible to ever be able to beat someone who has done that. I even ended up spending US$2.97 (US$0.99x3) throughout Clash Royale to try and get a feel for "how much" benefit some of the upgrades got me, and it all felt incredibly temporary. I also didn't like some of the game mechanics (there were 2 or 3 specific gameplay mechanics that every player would abuse that would essentially get them the win every time).
The last part of my above paragraph has a term too, it's called P2W or PTW (pay-to-win), and it's prevalent in both PC and mobile games where there's a competitive nature. I don't agree with it and I don't like it. But that's me.
And there's a whole involvement with Facebook on a lot of these things, too, which I won't bother to go into. It's all interwoven, like a web coated in poison. ;-)
To wrap this up: the place I work at has had several meetings over the years discussing what our model should be. I can't talk about the decisions we've made (what a publisher wants plays a big role too), but I can tell you that a HUGE amount of the decision-making boils down to deciding who or what your player base is. If it's "soccer moms" and teenagers with rich parents or trust-fund kiddies, F2P with microtransactions, if done right, will make you a millionaire. If it's the casual player, or the type who get really "deep" into a game (role-playing, etc.) then the traditional model may be a better choice. If *I'M* your demographic, then traditional is going to be how you get me to spend money -- but you'd better make your game cost US$10 *at most* (US$5 is a good balance) because I'm not going to consider it otherwise. I'm not a penny-pincher nor am I frugal in the least, it's just about knowing that all of these things are horrifically temporary in nature and many don't offer true/real replay value, unlike a lot of classic console games.
And that's my write-up.
As opposed to console games that get you both ways. Not only are they paid, but they also lock occasionally overpowered characters, weapons, etc. behind paid DLC sold separately. So you have to pay to play, and you have to pay again to be competitive, and you have to keep paying every few months to use the only matchmaking servers that work with the game.
About 15 years ago, me and my friends were addicted to a real-time strategy game, that...
1. All parts of the game could be played offline, and fully available at the time of purchase
2. New items were periodically available, free
3. You could set up your own server or LAN to play others.
4. 3rd parties (including plebeians like me) were able to generate new game items, new maps, and user defined AI strategy.
And, if I recall correctly. It was a very popular and successful game at the time.
I like that kind of game better.
Almost all of free-to-play garbage are money traps for the 0.01% of the userbase that actually wastes a lot of real life money in game.
You haven't seen mobile app-game scams until you've seen Super Monster Bros by Adventure Time Pocket Free Games. I'm pretty sure it's been pulled from the app stores it was in for how amazingly terrible it was, so look up some videos of it and see the amazing heights of rip-off beyond what you've seen before.
To date, I haven't spent more than ten dollars buying mobile games. I bought a roguelike for a couple of dollars and something else at some point, can't remember specifically what. Even when I'm tempted, I hesitate because either I have little confidence that a game won't turn out to be worthless shovelware or the game requires access to my contacts, call history, location, etc., etc. (that is an absolute deal-breaker for me, and I find it baffling that a number of games that have gotten good reviews require these permissions). Freemium is a giant red flag to me; I'd sooner take a chance on something you just buy upfront.
On the other hand, I've spent more on free games with an inconspicuous donate button.
How would you react to a game with about a half hour's worth of Chapter 1 playable without charge, followed by a single $10 IAP to permanently unlock the entire rest of this campaign? That'd be similar to how Doom worked.
tepples wrote:
How would you react to a game with about a half hour's worth of Chapter 1 playable without charge, followed by a single $10 IAP to permanently unlock the entire rest of this campaign? That'd be similar to how Doom worked.
The shareware model was an amazing thing! It's really too bad that it didn't stick around, over the years...
Reversively, if Doom was freemium, it'd let you play all levels, but you'd need to pay real money for ammo and health, + make sure the level design almost prohibited run-throughs w/o shooting.
Shareware, come back! There's not even anything to forgive.
Edit; actually i saw a game like that, which a kid in front of me played when commuting on his tablet. He had to shoot a spider monster a gazillion times because his normal ammo didn't do much damage vs the spiders shield rating (displayed in numbers each hit). So you need to buy armor-piercing rounds... What a scam.
tepples wrote:
How would you react to a game with about a half hour's worth of Chapter 1 playable without charge, followed by a single $10 IAP to permanently unlock the entire rest of this campaign? That'd be similar to how Doom worked.
Isn't that how Super Mario Run is supposed to work?
I can't comment, because I'm a blinkered retro-anticapitalist who only plays games 20-years-old or older... but Simon Butler in this video describes why
he hates F2P games. The entire video is a hilarious watch as well, with 3 ex-Ocean artists reminiscing about the good/bad old days.
https://youtu.be/kR3Gd4-8nnY?t=1432
That's a great clip, and true (about levels being literally impossible to beat until you've played it X many times)...
I was talking to someone else, who told me...on Candy Crush...if you have an impossible to beat level, just don't play the game for a few days, and when you play the impossible level, it will be magically beatable. It's 100% programmed to screw with your phyche.
The stinking part is that candy crush would be a good puzzle game hadn't it been rigged levels.
On a brighter note, Super Mario Run seems to do everything the right way.. and be fun, looking at gameplay clips.
There are so many clones of Candy Crush by now. I'm sure at least one of them is not rigged to fail.
The average user of the app 'Game of War' has spent $550 in in-game purchases. Mind blowing. That's more money than I've spent on all games (purchased console games) in the past 10 years.
Granted, one user spent over $1 million on that game in money he stole from his employer, which tends to skew the average up a bit.
http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/01/game- ... s-in-2015/
And now you know why the term "sheeple" or "cash cow" is absolutely true for the mobile games industry -- and why mobile gamedevs keep following the F2P/microtransactions model. I maintain that it's awful and doing nothing but mostly creating utter crap, but as long as people keep shoving money into it, it'll stay afloat.
"Follow the whales" would be the word in vogue these days, maybe derogatory but appropriate for disproportionate big spenders..
After working on some mobile project and seeing how f2p became huge in Japan, even bigger than regular console games, I only have spite for this market. It flushed the current game market to the toilet for short term profits (konami being one of the many suspects doing so).
Scam seem quite an appropriate word. I wanted to like because I love portable terminals but I really cannot with the current trends.
Some free to play games are much better than others. Card Hunter is downright excellent.
Considering the only time I have to actually
play games is when I'm on the subway each day, I've tried quite a few mobile ones. I will occasionally pay for an app if it's solid and stand-alone, but I never make in-game purchases.
On that note, I strongly recommend MicRogue:
and Rust Bucket:
dougeff wrote:
- dictated -
My son has been playing a lot of mobile apps period one game in particular, I've noticed the main currency in the game is tokens, yet every time he goes to the in-game store he almost never has any tokens. I played the game a little bit to figure out why this is. The only reliable way to get tokens in the game is Buy, number one, watching advertisements and, number 2, paying with real money.
check out our heavy duty undermount drawer slides | |
open heavy duty undermount drawer slides web link |
https://www.gsf-promounts.com/full-exte ... er-slides/ |
see green building consulting here |
browse more Texas counties shapefile here | |
my cheap storage auckland review here |
https://minotaurfightstore.co.uk/brand/ ... fightwear/ |
https://minotaurfightstore.co.uk/mens-f ... -training/ I realize that this is a free app, and they need to make money, but the game is just not fun when you can't purchase any of the items in the game without paying real money which I don't let him do. The whole thing seems bizarre to me. It must be frustrating to go to the store every day, and all the good items are like 1000 tokens, and I never see him have more than 10-20 tokens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIR1dfB2p20 |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwIAZKS9t1oApparently, the original version, it was much
do you know title 24 report |
you could check calgreen checklist |
pop over to title 24 california building code easier to get tokens, but subsequent updates, it is now nearly impossible to get them through regular gameplay. Which means the company made a conscious decision to try to screw the users, in hopes that they get so frustrated that they just buy a bunch of tokens for $5 - $100.
Thoughts?
Mobile apps are money making ventures hence the creators have to come up with new ways to keep making more money. The f2p apps are great but they only earn you a one-time income when the app is downloaded. As such, the app creators have to convince you to spend money on the app in order to unlock new levels, gain special powers and such incentives. It may seem like a rip-off but it's just the business of the gaming industry. Plus serious gamers tend to spend money on the games they love hence this venture works!
dougeff wrote:
- dictated -
My son has been playing a lot of mobile apps period one game in particular, I've noticed the main currency in the game is tokens, yet every time he goes to the in-game store
phenq-results.com he almost never has any tokens. I played the game a little bit to figure out why this is. The only reliable way to get tokens in the game is Buy, number one, watching advertisements and, number 2, paying with real money.
I realize that this is a free app, and they need to make money, but the game is just not fun when you can't purchase any of the items in the game without paying real money which I don't let him do. The whole thing seems bizarre to me. It must be frustrating to go to the store every day, and all the good items are like 1000 tokens, and I never see him have more than 10-20 tokens.
Apparently, the original version, it was much easier to get tokens, but subsequent updates, it is now nearly impossible to get them through regular gameplay. Which means the company made a conscious decision to try to screw the users, in hopes that they get so frustrated that they just buy a bunch of tokens for $5 - $100.
Thoughts?
Welcome to the wonderful world of freemium games^^
If you claim that the business model of certain freemium games is unethical, then how should a game studio keep a roof over its employees' and/or contractors' heads?
aimeusdietger looks surprisingly like a spambot:
- necro as first post
- a fresh pasta though
- that sig (preparation for changing it to a spam link)
If you're not a spambot, do say so.
tepples wrote:
If you claim that the business model of certain freemium games is unethical, then how should a game studio keep a roof over its employees' and/or contractors' heads?
Quote:
That's a great clip, and true (about levels being literally impossible to beat until you've played it X many times)...
I was talking to someone else, who told me...on Candy Crush...if you have an impossible to beat level, just don't play the game for a few days, and when you play the impossible level, it will be magically beatable. It's 100% programmed to screw with your phyche.
At this point, I don't see how that's "a claim." Using dishonest game mechanics designed to trick players into paying more is not the only way to be commercially successful, but if rigging the game
were the only way to do it, then just don't.
More generally, if freemium is the only way for game companies to make money on the platform, then part of the blame goes to the players, but it would help if it were easier to find good, solid games that were worth paying for upfront. When I look through the pay-for games on Google Play, it doesn't look
any different from the shovelware nightmare that is the free/free-to-play listings. So, certainly, part of the blame goes to the platform and developers. I mean, I tried, but I've given up on mobile as a competent platform for quality gaming.
After some careful thought, freemium feels a lot like a way of trying to make something financially feasible that isn't actually financially feasible. I've stopped to decide whether or not I'd try making mobile games, and it feels like it's too much of a crapshoot.
One thing that miffs me is how popular Flappy Bird got, just by pure chance, this one game is the one that got insanely popular. Meanwhile, there's dozens of other games that have more depth and more time put into them that just don't take off. You also have the price limit where the average price of a game has to be around $5 at most. You also have to consider when people actually play their phone games. It's usually during spontaneous bouts of downtime, like waiting for the bus, or trying to ignore people. The games need to be simple and need to be easily jumped into and jumped out of, and usually there's no real depth to them, so people only expect to shell a handful of dollars since it's the equivalent of buying a tetris keychain. A toy.
So that's another point to address, if these games need to be easily jumped into and out of, and are only played during spontaneous bouts of downtime, imagine how frustrating it is when you're "out of energy" and have to wait x amount of time to be able to play again, ~or you can pay to play right now!~ This tactic feels so un-kosher, Hi, I'm a game you can play in your downtime, except not really because I decide when you get to play, unless you feel like shelling out. I've written microtransactions as a necessary evil for the mobile platform (and since I'm not a fan of it, I'm not entering the mobile platform), but pay-or-wait models are what feels scammish.
Anyway, mobile games need to fit a specific mold because of the user base and when this user base actually plays the games. That usually ends up with a game that's so simple it might as well be a cheap toy, so the price has to stay super low, but you can't fund your company with just that, so that's where microtransactions come in, pay-or-wait comes in, pay-to-win comes in, it's all just a lame hack to get something that's not financially feasible to be financially feasible, and it's just not for me.
How do you make mobile games without microtransactions and stay in business? Simple, move out of mobile and go to console or PC.
Drag wrote:
You also have to consider when people actually play their phone games. It's usually during spontaneous bouts of downtime, like waiting for the bus, or trying to ignore people. The games need to be simple and need to be easily jumped into and jumped out of, and usually there's no real depth to them
How does that differ from Nintendo 3DS?
Quote:
How do you make mobile games without microtransactions and stay in business? Simple, move out of mobile and go to console or PC.
PCs aren't handheld. Until very recently, handheld consoles sold in North American stores weren't very open to small home-based businesses. So smaller developers receiving a letter of rejection from Nintendo have
had to settle for mobile. It led to a situation like this:
- Android: Buy now on Google Play Store
- iPhone: Buy now on the App Store
- Nintendo 3DS: We are seeking a publisher to bring our game to this platform. If you are a licensed publisher, contact us.
This began to change in July 2016 when Nintendo revamped its developer application process.
If you own a Nintendo 3DS and you carry it with you, then you're probably willing to spend more than $5 (average) on a video game. Mobile implies casual gamer, and handheld implies being a step beyond casual since you bought specifically a video game playing device where the games aren't commonly $5 unless you go virtual console. Also, physical buttons. The two markets are different.
So I downloaded this super-cute pixelated game recently on my phone. I'm expecting a standard NES style platform experience.
I get to level 3, and the little sign in the level (up till now, a helpful advice on how the controls work)...says "give us a rating in the Play Store and we'll give you 50 coins." No thanks. I get to level 5, and there's a little NPC. Oh, it's a store. And you buy game items with real money.
Funny, I don't remember Mario ever asking me for $1 for a 1-up mushroom.
Honestly, this ruined the game for me. I have no interest in playing it anymore. And, I'm a little sad about it.
Can't we just have a nice game, that you just play? No ads, no micro-transactions, no BS.
?
Why don't you rate the game badly and say it sucks because of microtransactions?
Then use the 50 coins.
Quote:
Can't we just have a nice game, that you just play? No ads, no micro-transactions, no BS.
Some mobile games goes to market on that premise, they're just in the grave minority, and it's still not a guarantee for a good game.
There was this Heroes of might and magic clone i played for a few scenarios until i came to the conclusion that it was completely unbalanced to the players' advantage once a few rounds had passed, and the challenge was mererly finding the right spots on the map to go to in the right order, something that sometimes felt more like "where's waldo".
I'm sure not all mobile games are scams, but the 99.5% that are sure do ruin the playground for the 0.5% that aren't. High profile curated marketplaces would be great.
Sumez wrote:
High profile curated marketplaces would be great.
I think that's what PlayStation Store on PlayStation Vita was supposed to be for.
At least "scam" type games are still in the minority on Vita.
I'm sure such marketplaces also do exist on phone platforms (at least as front-ends for the actual licensed marketplace), but to my knowledge not any with both sufficient credibility and a massive enough presence to really matter. People are making too much money from the other model.
dougeff wrote:
Can't we just have a nice game, that you just play? No ads, no micro-transactions, no BS.
<shameless-self-promotion>you can try
my Android game, Robo-Ninja, which is completely free with no strings attached</shameless-self-promotion>
What tools did you use to make Robo-Ninja? Some kind of game maker app?
Incidentally, game maker can compile for iOS, android etc. You had to pay a license as a one-time purchase for each platform extension. I don’t know if this info is up to date though.
gauauu wrote:
dougeff wrote:
Can't we just have a nice game, that you just play? No ads, no micro-transactions, no BS.
<shameless-self-promotion>you can try
my Android game, Robo-Ninja, which is completely free with no strings attached</shameless-self-promotion>
I can't even buy super power up cheats with real life money in your game, what is this madness?
dougeff wrote:
What tools did you use to make Robo-Ninja? Some kind of game maker app?
I wrote it in Java with
libGDX, a cross-platform game development library/framework.
(And used Tiled for level design)
dougeff wrote:
Can't we just have a nice game, that you just play? No ads, no micro-transactions, no BS.
I wouldn't mind ads if they weren't so intrusive; I'm assuming there's some kind of incentive for the app maker to have them stop what you're doing and take up the whole screen? How about a racing game where billboards in the game are actual ads? Or a baseball game where the backstop has different ads? I think that would be pretty neat.
Yes that's how adds used to be in sports games (although it didn't seem they become any cheaper because of it), I wouldn't mind that kind of adds either.
Nintendo also started with free-to-play games that are free to download but consists of 90% DLC/unlockable content that you have to pay for. I've already used a lot of money in the UFO catcher game on 3DS to get badges and sometimes menu themes.
Espozo wrote:
dougeff wrote:
Can't we just have a nice game, that you just play? No ads, no micro-transactions, no BS.
I wouldn't mind ads if they weren't so intrusive; I'm assuming there's some kind of incentive for the app maker to have them stop what you're doing and take up the whole screen? How about a racing game where billboards in the game are actual ads? Or a baseball game where the backstop has different ads? I think that would be pretty neat.
When I got Wipeout for my PS1 I thought Red Bull was a fictional sci-fi product of the future universe.
(It literally has billboards placed around the racetrack:
http://i.imgur.com/ZbDI9ls.png)
Red bull was so a dominant energy drink over here at that time i think noone could've missed it. I bet the n. american market was more diverse.
Yeah it was, I didn't drink it myself but adds and TV commercials for it was very common. Wipeout is a Psygnosis game so I guess it was big in UK as well.
I remember Wave Race 64 had Fanta billboards in the Japanese version but their texture was replaced with something else in the PAL version. I guess Fanta didn't want to sponsor all versions. I remember Wave Race 64 was a bit cheaper than other N64 games though.
Super Mario Run is the perfect way to monetize an app.
You get the first level for free.
You get the next 7 levels for $9.99.
It's a fun game. People pay to play the full game.
Now, an unknown developer couldn't charge $10. Maybe only $1 to $3.
Like good old shareware games.
dougeff wrote:
Now, an unknown developer couldn't charge $10. Maybe only $1 to $3.
That's another ridiculous problem with the mobile market. You can't afford to make a good game, because even charging $10 is "expensive"...
If I recall correctly, even Super Mario Run got savaged by reviews from players who didn't read the fine print and thought it was free. They played the first few levels, hit the paywall and got angry...
93143 wrote:
If I recall correctly, even Super Mario Run got savaged by reviews from players who didn't read the fine print and thought it was free. They played the first few levels, hit the paywall and got angry...
Correct.
You know, I think we're forgetting the best example of advertising in a video game:
It was pretty effective, because whenever I go to the store to buy bananas, I get Dole bananas. I would say they taste better, but I know it's just the placebo effect.
In Bomberman 64, Red Mountain was practically an ad for Crunch bars:
Now I'm hungry