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How Free-To-Play Is Constricting Mobile Games
An anonymous reader writes "Mobile gaming is crystallizing around one concept: games must be free-to-play. As an industry, it seems to work — there's no shortage of players willing to drop money on microtransactions and in-app purchases. But for making compelling or unusual games, this is a problem. 'Pitch a title that isn't games-as-a-service to publishers or investors and they'll practically install new doors to slam in your face. ... Free-to-play advocates naturally think their model is dominant because "that's what mobile gamers want," explaining that in-app purchases are just the players way of saying they care. If they've entertained the more dull notion that free-to-play is popular because... well, it's free? They seem not to let on. ... Recent data shows 20 percent of mobile games get opened once and never again. 66 percent have never played beyond the first 24 hours and indeed most purchases happen in the first week of play. Amazingly only around two to three percent of gamers pay anything at all for games, and even more hair-raising is the fact that 50 percent of all revenue comes from just 0.2 percent of players. This is a statistically insignificant amount of happy gamers and nothing that gives you a basis to make claims about "what people want."'"
I would wager that most people that pay a significant amount of money towards these games aren't happy... just compulsive...
like the old Civilization and Sim City games that gave you periodic awards for overcoming obstacles. you just pay to do it faster
same concept and lots of times same game mechanics except for the micro payments
just like a slot machine. keep putting quarters in and once in a while you win
Fremium just takes the tiny percentage of people with psychological issues who are prone to paying a lot of money and make A LOT of money off them
People aren't going to pay for stuff that they don't need. Games aren't necessary. It would have to be a hell of a game on your phone to justify spending money.
Charging money for every game would just assure that very few or none of them get played. A Chili's near me put in small touchscreen terminals that handle credit card swipes at each table. Avoids waiting for the server to bring you the bill, it's nice. They also have games on the terminal. Every one costs at least a buck. I haven't seen one get played yet.
Creating a new economy doesn't work if no one shows up.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Sure, only 3% of your players give you money if you're free-to-play. But if 3% of players of a F2P game is more than 100% of players of a $3 game, it doesn't matter. It's like arguing "If we implement super-awesome-DRM, our piracy will go down to 1%" without an understanding that these actions may hurt total sales.
Relative numbers are pretty useless without the bigger picture.
Sure, it's a problem getting a big game funded if you don't have a proven revenue model to present to your investors, but that's not unique to games.
"Gee, I'm sure if you just fronted me the money to make this, we'd absolutely make some money back because it'll be awesome, I promise!"
Publishers have limited resources, so they bet on what's making them money -- microtransactions.
Plenty of good games have a fixed one-time purchase price. Nobody is stopping you from making the next Super Hexagon.
... our 0.2% benevolent overlord angel venture capitalist gamer demographic who will now guide the development of all gaming.
Can't find the link (help me out here), but there was a recent interview with a f2p game studio that basically had a developer dedicated to keeping one particular gamer happy after this gamer had basically dropped $10k in in-game purchases.
So does this mean trickle-down economics does work in some domains?
Here in Sweden, free to play apps are a money cow, you can milk it endlessly. We've had stuff like that on national television, cases where kids have paid several THOUSANDS for extra features to their so called "free apps", (farm heroes saga anyone?). Now even Unreal Tournament dev. system want to go this way, free to...well...download...you figure out the rest.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
"The people who PAY FOR GAMES, want FREEMIUM." Just because you state a bunch of interesting statistics about what constitutes who puts money down for games, doesn't mean the end result isn't meaningful. As a business, what do you care what your non-paying customers want? They are not customers. You're asking for money, the people with the money are telling you how they recoup their money and you earn money yourself. Perhaps you should listen.
Time to realize that overall there's a pretty statistically insignificant amount of happy gamers in the first place.
Just go visit any gaming forum, get on any game that allows voice chat.
Everyone thinks that their game idea is great... It's probably not. Most games just suck. But if you've got such a great unique and original idea, why do you need an investor? build it. Don't have the time, the know how or need a large team? well at least nobody needs to waste time playing it ever.
I like old Avalon Hill strategy battle type games. We paid $60 each for them - and I'd buy modern computerized versions of them at the same price. Each player could use their mobile/tablet as his or her interface. Common elements (i.e. public information) could be displayed on a large TV or computer screen. Why aren't these games (re)made?
Linux is FREE, Android is FREE, GIMP is FREE, etc etc etc. The race to the bottom for software prices has also made so much software FREE.
The FOSS movement has created the impression that everything should be free, the down side is the 99% of people who do zero coding are also not willing to pay money for something they now believe is free.
The next item to be devalued will the the programmers, if software has to fall in price to sell, then companies will manage their costs (wages) and they will be forced down. Companies that contribute back to the FOSS will be pushing for wages to fall because they are NOT a charity (and if they are the funds will slowly disappear ) and the code from an value perspective has zero worth because anyone can use it for free.
Have a nosey around and see what FOSS projects have died because of lack of funds, or are in the process of doing so.
I have seen people posting "demands" that companies who use FOSS should contribute cash to keep the project running, but why should they it is after all FREE.
So, unless you are a behemoth like Google, Facebook etc etc, you and your code will soon have no value, and those companies only survive because they can scrape a few pennies from each of their millions of visitors via advertising, and even that revenue stream is falling , and as they try and put in more ads to compensate there is more pushback with ad blockers etc etc.
what I could understand was that they cried because they don't get others money to do games with and that their games get competition from freemium games
This is essentially abusing the small fraction of people who are positively predisposed to gambling, especially when either the game or the purchases themselves involve a significant component of randomness or luck.
I find it terribly unethical.
the fee oxygen thing is ending too? spirits still free? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjbq6K2ziDQ ner a better time to consider ourselves in relation to one another & our surroundings http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=weather+manipulation+starvation+wmd
It's always been about what will make the company the most money.
Mos game companies don't give a crap about making games players will enjoy, they only want to make games that will improve their own bottom line.
And the free-to-play model, or more accurately titled "play to win" model, will get you there with the least amount of effort.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"and even more hair-raising is the fact that 50 percent of all revenue comes from just 0.2 percent of players. This is a statistically insignificant amount of happy gamers and nothing that gives you a basis "
In other words, the rich, the money-stupid, and those with stolen credit card numbers.
Wait what? Publishers? Investors? Just what kind of a mobile game are you thinking of making that requires publishers and investors to get involved? Isn't the grand benefit of the mobile platform that you can self-publish and that the games are typically small enough that they can be coded by a one man team? That you can reach a wide audience by paying the yearly fee in for the Play Store and then spamming facebook? Why would you be pitching anything to a publisher for the mobile arena.
That said publishers aren't non-existent in the mobile business. But they tend to crank out nothing but shit (King) or crank out nothing but shit slowly (EA).
It's interesting timing, this discussion coming just weeks after Blizzard's first foray into Mobile, Hearthstone, launched on the iPad (coming soon for Android and iPhone). Hearthstone might possibly be the best freemium game in recent memory, with great balance between "Yes, you can excel at this card-battling game without paying money, with a reasonable amount of grinding" and "Spend $30 or so, and it will shortcut much of the grinding to build decks, but you still need skill to actually win anything" No ads in the game, unless you want to infer the game itself is an ad for other Warcraft titles. I'm definitely less jaded about Freemium after playing this game.
I used to work for a very large player in the adult online space, video content and the like.
Their research showed that customers who signed up had a window, measured in weeks, in which they'd blow a bunch of cash, then stop. This is why if you do sign up for an adult site you'll see their content, and ads for content from other sites (some they own, some their competitors). The links to competitors surprised me, but it makes sense. There's a very high Cost-Per-Action (CPA) in that space, and the window to get that user to spend money is closing, so any opportunity is worth looking into. You make less money sending them to your competitors, anything > 0.
paul reinheimer
everyone knows that the more ppl who play your game the more money it will make. i for one will very rarely buy a paid game that i know i will only play once or a couple of times. the vast majority of money that people get from free to play games is advertisement revenue(if it is popular), or cash shop from compulsive whales who spend money for no reason
I lost two friends in that Republican-created crash. I will never forgive xians for doing that. One had a six month-old baby girl when he killed himself. That girl is thirty now, and I'm proud to say she is making a difference with the work she is doing with her occupy group. They are the one hope we have in this new attack on gaming and gamers. So far, they are the only group standing-up to them. We had hope Obama would, but he so far, hasn't found his backbone.
The concept of "we want everything for free" sure as hell didn't originate with mobile games.
When the industry finally implodes (and the writing is on the wall) the "customers" will have only themselves to blame.
Man, I know Reagan was terrible, but I wasn't aware he was responsible for Atari Pac-Man and E.T.
The big problem with free-to-play is that all of the games tend to follow the same pattern:
It contains an in-game currency that is difficult or impossible to earn during gameplay, so it must be purchased with real money.
In some skill based games, levels and goals are procedurally generated, so there is no way to actually "win" the game. This includes most 3 lane running games and hunting simulators. (Minion Rush, Subway Surfers, Stampede Run, Deer Hunter Reloaded, etc.)
In other skill based games, the levels may have actually been authored by a human, but later levels are generally designed to become impossible to beat without buying some power-ups. Plants vs Zombies 2 is a good example of this.
In chance based games (gem/candy/jelly match games), you are basically forced into either buying power-ups to win the level, or grinding away by re-playing the same level over and over again until you finally get lucky. Except...
Many of these games have a lives/rounds system that will only let you play a certain number of times before forcing you to choose between waiting or paying to be able to continue playing. (Candy Crush, Jelly Splash, most Zynga games, Angry Birds Go, etc.)
Some particularly evil games will not even allow you to progress to higher levels unless you spam the game on Facebook or, you guessed it, spend money. (Candy Crush, Jelly Splash, etc.)
The absolute worst aspect of free-to-play, though, is how it almost always directly translates to "pay-to-win". The developers rarely limit the amount of power ups you can purchase or how often they can be used, so the end result is that paying removes absolutely all challenge to the game. How is it fun to play a game where the only thing standing between you and "victory" is how wide you're willing to open your wallet?
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
You could also make a case that the new "free-to-play" games are essentially the "demos" of old, but they're just a lot sneakier about the conversion to the "paid" version.
Most OUYA games that I've tried use a shareware model, where the user can buy the paid version as an "entitlement", a purchase that the user keeps as long as the platform remains in operation. A lot of the hated freemium games, on the other hand, tend to offer no way to pay once to unlock everything permanently. They handle all purchases as "consumables", which need to be purchased multiple times in order to keep playing.
A phone is just the wrong platform for a decent game anyway. Screen is too small and hard to read, the controls are amazingly clumsy, and even web based flash games are easier to use than the phone version of the same game. The only thing a phone game does is give you something to do while waiting for a meeting to start, and no one is going to pay for that.
Sure there's a possibility that someone will eventually figure out a game concept that is new and unique that actually works on a phone and is good enough that people will pay for it. But it will be a long wait.
Let the 'mobile gaming' scene derp along without a clue. It's a phone, not a gaming machine. I think at best mobile gaming is just supposed to get you through that 30 minute bus ride, or subway. And distractions are so high in these situations, your brain isn't going to handle much more than a sub-par freebie game.
Leave the gaming to the big boys.
Recent data shows 20 percent of mobile games get opened once and never again.
That's an amazing success rate, since Sturgeon's Law pretty much holds here just as it does for so many other things: 90% of them are crap.
66 percent have never played beyond the first 24 hours and indeed most purchases happen in the first week of play.
Most paid mobile games I've played haven't lasted more than a few days. They get played, then I move on. What's the point here? Most of them aren't, say, Checkers or Chess or Poker. You play, you figure it out or solve the secrets. You're done.
Amazingly only around two to three percent of gamers pay anything at all for games, and even more hair-raising is the fact that 50 percent of all revenue comes from just 0.2 percent of players.
That's because 99.8% of them figured out it's crap before they got suckered into paying. Again: what's the issue here?
This is a statistically insignificant amount of happy gamers and nothing that gives you a basis to make claims about "what people want.
Maybe because there wasn't a statistically significant number of games that people actually wanted.
Recent winners in my book: The Room 2, and Catan. I paid for both, and I am glad I did. (The board game Settlers of Catan is in the home, of course, but it's nice to have a mobile version.)
There are some other "free" games that seemed decent, but I round-filed them because they constantly pestered me for money or "social" likes or mentions, or activated "notifications" in the middle of the night, etc.
I really don't mean to be cynical. There are some really good games out there. But with the current state of the "market", you have to wade through a lot of shit to find them.
I think it will settle down, sooner or later.
I used to buy a game/app at least once every month. But I hardly ever do that now. I hate f2p games.
Candy Crush - never demands a purchase, ever, if you allow it to use Facebook data, and asks for $0.99 for new blocks of levels if you don't.
For one thing, it costs money to get verified on Facebook unless you happen to already have your own mobile phone with a plan that can receive unlimited text messages. You can't verify more than one Facebook account with the same phone number, which doesn't work so well for people who share a phone. After The Huffington Post required connecting a verified Facebook account before posting comments, a lot of people stopped commenting because they don't want to pay a mobile phone manufacturer and a cellular carrier just to get verified on Facebook. Some Facebook users even report running into a "roadblock" that won't let them use the site at all unless they verify a mobile phone number. Does Candy Crush Saga require the user's Facebook account to be verified? For another, Candy Crush Saga demands payments for "lives".
But if you've got such a great unique and original idea, why do you need an investor? build it.
Some game concepts work best with positional input, others with directional input. For a game that works well with positional input, like Candy Crush Saga or Plants vs. Zombies, mobile works well. But for directional controls, it's either PC, consoles, or handheld consoles, and only one of those is really open to indie startups. The publisher acts as your liaison to the console maker. Sure, it's possible to make a game for iOS 7 or Android that uses a MOGA clip-on gamepad, but have you ever seen one of those in use?
Just what kind of a mobile game are you thinking of making that requires publishers and investors to get involved?
A game that relies on directional control. Phones and tablets good for point-and-click games or one-button or tilt-controlled endless runners. But something like Mega Man or Castlevania really needs a directional control, and I haven't seen a lot of people with a MOGA gamepad clipped onto a cell phone. A publisher helps your one-man team deal with device makers whose names start with S and N.
Screen is too small and hard to read
Even the original (pre-Retina) iPhone's screen is bigger than that of, say, the Game Boy Advance.
Sure there's a possibility that someone will eventually figure out a game concept that is new and unique that actually works on a phone
If it uses point-and-click controls, it'll work. But you're right that anything needing a directional control is better on a PC than on a phone.
I am willing to be 90% of those games a crap no one would miss if they disappeared. Thats how I feel about the android app store in general.
My, admittedly anecdotical, example is a friend of mine who used to spend quite a bit of money on such "free" games. Then he started playing more of them. And more of them. And now he's playing like two dozen of them and doesn't spend a cent on them anymore. What made him spend was simply that these games hook you and then, when you're just about to enjoy it, they tell you "nono, no more today, you may play again tomorrow ... or throw me some coin".
He switched from throwing coins their way to switching to another game, and by the time he's done, the first one is ready again. It's probably some kind of a coping strategy...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is now such a glut that people are spoiled and few are willing to pay money, even after spending a lot of time playing the free part. Try making something genuinely useful and you may do better.
The reason why that freemium crap is so entrenched is because most developers forgot the concept of the demo. It is very hard to spend money on something you don't know you might like, hence why freemium is more popular. Just make higher quality games, charge more if you want and provide a demo. Personally I'm sick and tired of all the flood of crappy games for mobile, especially after you can see stuff like Civilization Revolutions, that proves that the platform can be used for much more than a pea shooter.
They won't just lettuce play for FREE!
... really, the freemium model sucks and I'd rather pay a few bucks for a game for mobile/tablet -- but that isn't where the market is heading ...)
(Woohoo! +1 for creative use of vegetable joke! No
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
SpeedX 3D, Air Control, My Paper Plane 2, and a handful of motorbike & car race games. These are older phone games that were well done, and showed what could be done on Android. Then games went the kiddie route to make easy money from kids who didn't realize that coins cost their parents real money. Someone needs to make up a list of just the quality games out there on Android, I'd pay for that.
Who cares if it is only 0.2% With a large enough population that is still a lot of money. What is important is if it is enough to make a (nice) living from it for you and your staff.
I know shops that do not get 0.2% of the population of a country in their store and still make a good living.
When I talked with a marketing guy, I asked him if he wasn't frustrated that a campaign only resulted in X% reaction and from those only Y% sales. He said he never looked at the people who did not react, he was only interested if the people that DID react did also buy. Because that was who he was targeting.
So 0.2% might sound like not a lot, unless we have some real numbers, there is no idea how good or bad this is. You also need to compare it to the original investment in money. This over many or all games. Because some games will have taken an afternoon to put together and make a shitload while others might have taken years and make a loss.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The biggest thing constricting free-to-play games is that most of them aren't actually any fun. I'm not even limiting it to the crappy zinga type games that are pure skinner boxes, but even the few mobile RPGs are typically just not very good in the first place.
It would also help if they didn't have absolutely ridiculous prices for their purchases. It's sort of funny to look at these simple little mobile game and do some ballpark calculations of how much money they expect you to spend to get a remotely even experience in them.
We have too much entertainment.
I retired a couple years ago and I *can't keep up*. Every week, there are at least 10 hours of material more than I can watch just from TV alone. Then there are computer games, board games, and real life stuff like vacations.
It amazes me that they are able to keep the prices up as well as they have in some areas.
So if I have 15 entertainment options to choose from that entertain me enough and 5 of them are free- at the least- I'll do the 5 free ones first.
It is *very* rare for anything wonderful or unique or special enough that I'm willing to pay a premium for it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
"Recent data shows 20 percent of mobile games get opened once and never again." I was trying to understand what these numbers mean but I failed. What's your point? If the cost of game is zero then anyone can try it, just like anyone could install demo version or just watch gameplay on youtube. While I agree that in-app purchases can destroy games (and perfect example is Dungeon Keeper) - I don't see any logical conclusion in your numbers.
the fact that most of these games are played once or for a few hours seems like evidence that they suck.
who wants to pay for a crappy phone game?
Dying breed I know (according to "markers"), but when I want to play a game, I use a PC, because the screen is larger, and the input devices are better.
And also when I'm out and about, I'm actually there to do something or enjoy something, not look at my phone.
The statistics are about what I would expect. There is no way to try most games being sold online except to download them. You can't try them in the store. If you could, most people wouldn't bother to even download so download statistics would plummet.
Most people download the games so they can try them. Most games are awful so they get opened once, tried and then ignored or even deleted.
A few games get tried a few times but then ignored and deleted.
A very few games are really worth it so those ones people pay for.
As to the in-app purchases, I'm not interested in that wallet sucking method of paying. If I like the trial version of the game then I will register it and pay for it. If it is a game that requires little in-app purchases to play, then I delete the game and find another that is a simple buy and play type purchase.
It's a sorry development and the various articles posted recently on the topic are all right on the money: It kills creativity. When your major design consideration is monetarization, actually making a good game becomes a secondary goal. Like the sequel-mania of Hollywood, it also reduces the willingness to take a risk with a new concept. The App Store may have 100,000 games you can download, but if you look behind the visuals and minor variations, it has probably about 100 actual games, each in 1,000 variations. And I'm pretty sure the 80/20 rule applies - 80,000 of those games are probably clones or versions of the same 20 basic game concepts.
But it's all the result of copyright infringement and downloading stuff. When developers can't live from sales, they need to find another way to earn money. The three ways that work are a) advertisement, b) subscriptions (early MMORPGs) and c) F2P.
Of these, F2P works best because it's a scam, one name bait-and-switch. Everyone knows that "free" doesn't really mean free, and that 90% of the game are designed intentionally as incentives to spend money. And more, often much more, than you would've paid for a comparable box-sale. It's a scam, designed to fight illegal downloads. Difficult to say which side one should be on.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Also I haven't seen many games relying on directional control on the phone for precisely the reasons you list.
So what's the best way to adapt a platformer to a phone (or other indie-friendly platform) without making it a 100 percent linear endless runner like Rayman Jungle Run?
Samsung and ... who is N?
In one market, Sony and Nintendo. In another market, Samsung and Nokia. And even in the latter (mobile phone) market, a publisher helps you design a promotion strategy for your game so that potential players have a chance of seeing it.
Let's let TOM speak shall we:
"I'm having great conversations on this site with one of my alias accounts" - by Tom (822) on Monday April 07, 2014 @02:29PM (#46686259) Homepage FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> Tom *tried* to libel me & failed after I destroyed him in a technical debate on hosts files... result?
Tom ended up "eating his words" here http://slashdot.org/comments.p... spiced with "the bitter taste of SELF-defeat" + HIS FOOT IN HIS MOUTH
... apk