Slashdot Mirror
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.
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?
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?
---
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.
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.
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.