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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
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.
... 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.
First, it requires you to design a game with logical free to play elements. This restricts the nature of games that can be written.
As for charging for games means none would be played- there's a couple of good counterexamples. Nintendo, Sega, Playstation, Xbox. All of the companies that develop for all of those.
I've been a games since I was 5. I'm ok spending 50 or 70 dollars on a good game. I have never once paid a dime for a free to play game, and it's next to impossible to get me to download them- I know they're going to try and nickle and dime me or charge me a fortune if I don't want to slowly grind stuff out (or make it impossible to play parts of the game if I don't pay). And I'm far from the only gamer like that. So they pick up a large number of people who won't ever pay a dime while disenchanting the existing base of people who are known to play video games. That's idiotic.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Usually one of three things happen with a F2P game:
1: It is malware. When you look at the permissions and a "free" fleshlight app demands everything under the sun including su access, something isn't kosher.
2: It is a game that is extremely grindy where you can spend hours doing repetitive tasks, or shell out $10 for some currency (brains, smurfberries, crowns) to make life easier.
3: It comes with 1-2 characters/weapons/etc., and you have to spend a buck each if you want anything fun to play with while playing the game. Essentially like DLC in consoles.
4: You are buying some fluff (like your vehicles with a different color) that don't change gameplay, but are a cool aesthetic.
5: It is pretty much a demo, with a couple levels, and you buy the rest.
Number 4 and 5 make sense. #1 won't get the game past the permissions menu, and a report. #2 or #3 will get the app tossed off the device and a one star review.
When you look at the permissions and a "free" fleshlight app demands everything under the sun
Tell me, where can I find this free fleshlight app?
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.