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Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

248 points by fragsworth 9y ago

Pxtl 9y ago
I love this essay. Thinking about people who've damaged their lives on addictive gaming.... those people behind the four-figure numbers on the spreadsheet of Whales. That's sad as hell. But... it's a clicker game. A hilarious-looking clicker game... but a clicker game. Would anybody spend $30 on a clicker game?
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  This announcement has gotten my hopes up about it. My thinking is, there must be enough to it that it's not just a clicker game (which is why I stopped playing the first one; I got bored of it).
- dragontamer 9y ago
  Clicker Heroes 1 was very good before they went with Rubies. I threw some money in the form of Rubies into the game, when it became pay-to-win (to some degree). But really, I was way better than my clicker-guild-mates because I personally had optimized a better strategy than them. So even when others spent Rubies, I personally was able to keep up with them through simply better tactics. Still, it left a bad taste in my mouth to pay for some in-game benefit. And I knew that if I dumped $100+ more dollars in, my superior tactics + money injection would lead me to higher clicks. At that point, I just became disgusted with the F2P model and quit Clicker Heroes. It was a very well programmed game, and I think getting rid of the F2P format will help this game a LOT.
- Lazare 9y ago
  > A hilarious-looking clicker game... but a clicker game. Would anybody spend $30 on a clicker game? Well that's the thing, isn't it: A lot of people spent a lot more than $30 on Clicker Heroes 1. So yes, obviously people will spend $30 on a clicker game. The question is whether they'll do so via an ethical business model.
  - bduerst 9y ago
    Aren't clicker games notorious for hidden difficulty curves, which are sometimes exponential? The whole p2w model is based off of getting players invested with their time before making it too difficult to progress without investing cash. I'd bet the people who spend $30+ on the p2w version won't be willing to pay $30 up front to start investing time into a brand new game.
    - dragontamer 9y ago
      It should be noted that ClickerHeroes didn't have p2w for months, maybe years. I did quit after the addition of Rubies. But the game was legitimately good at balancing the heroes. A good amount of my effort in Clicker Heroes was spent on optimizing builds through linear algebra and other optimization problems.
  - joesb 9y ago
    The problem is, without the free-to-play model, they now lose the essential parts of any products, marketing. Anyone who download the free game and talk about it or recommended it to a friend is free marketing. With enough friends talking about the game or play it without paying, one person in that group will spend $30. But without the groups existing in the first place, that same person may not interested in the game enough to buy it.
- on_and_off 9y ago
  I have tried their first opus after reading this article. Come on ! This is clearly tailored to hook into our addiction loops by always presenting us with a next task that is almost complete. I have a very hard time believing that these folks did not know exactly what they were doing.
- dkns 9y ago
  When you think of it Diablo 3 is also a clicker game and it costs 35€ + 15€ if you want newest hero.
- codingdave 9y ago
  That question was asked on reddit. Most commenters seemed to think it was too high. The devs said they spent $2 million to make a clicker game, and therefore needed to price it high to recoup their costs. Personally, I feel they should have managed their costs to a more reasonable price point, but I didn't feel like engaging in debate on reddit over the point.
  - Sohcahtoa82 9y ago
    $2 million?! Yeah...a game like Clicker Heroes should be less than a 1 year effort from a single programmer and an artist.
greggman 9y ago
it concerns me how many of my friends in free to play game dev are okay with exploting whales for profit.
- munificent 9y ago
  It's a sad fact of human nature that it's really easy for us to compromise our morals when the only person hurt by doing so is an anonymous stranger on the other side of the Internet.
  - jhvfcdyuhkljh 9y ago
    Plus said stranger is probably a fat and ugly couch potato (or they'd be consumed by real life instead). So it's OK.
- colmvp 9y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if some of those devs as well as other gamers just think that it's buyers fault for improperly spending money, and that it makes perfect sense as corporations exist for the maximization of profit. It's true some responsibility does lie in the person with the wallet. But it just strikes me as odd that none of these companies are really held accountable for exploiting human behavior, specifically by gaming communities.
- patio11 9y ago
  I go back and forth on this, because there seems to be material disagreement on whether whales are, in fact, a) folks with problems or b) folks with hobbies which are, relative to a single video game, expensive. There is a good presentation from the CEO of Kongregate talking about this here: https://www.slideshare.net/emily_greer/dont-call-them-whales-freetoplay-spenders-virtual-value-gdc-2015 https://www.slideshare.net/emily_greer/dont-call-them-whales... I share your moral intuitions about exploiting whales if whales are, in fact, little old ladies suffering from social isolation or teenagers with undiagnosed depression. But the F2P companies say that they've done the research and come to the conclusion that most of their whales are gainfully employed professionals. That sounds... not intrinsically implausible to me? I enjoy video games, quite a bit. Games, books, and hating on Bitcoin are my hobbies, and hating on Bitcoin is cheap. I have probably sustained $100 a month on video games for ten years now, and that would frequently be concentrated on a single game for an extended while (e.g. LoL for 2 years), likely resulting in me easily hitting their whale lists. I feel like if I'm a central example of a whale that it isn't unethical to sell me things that I like? It's not a material amount of money given my financial situation. It compares very favorably to the time commitment for my main hobby, which causes _much_ more friction than the money does. (The primary reason I don't play LoL anymore is an unpauseable 40 minute game doesn't play well with having young children.) Most external observers would categorize me under Either A Responsible Adult Or At Least Fakes It Decently Most Of The Time. Similarly well-adjusted people in my social class spend similar amounts of money on things which are not morally different than Evelynn skins, for example Hamilton tickets.
0xcde4c3db 9y ago
> Also, we like games with mods and we want mods. Real-money shops make little sense with mods, when you can just download a mod to quadruple the number of rubies you get. Also, it is simply too easy to cheat. I think this touches on an important aspect of microtransactions that to my knowledge remains largely unexamined (but maybe I'm just not reading the right critics). Specifically, games are traditionally built as tools that players use to have fun. From house rules in tabletop games to Game Genie/Action Replay to Automatic Mario rom hacks to Minecraft texture packs, players changing games is something that's been part of gaming culture for a long time. When publishers turn a game into a marketing venue for microtransactions, however, they're essentially laying claim to that entire space, turning it into a dictated, manufactured product rather than a self-directed process in the player community.
- derblitzmann 9y ago
  Very true, especially since some games (cough cough besethda) benefit greatly from modding, fixing bugs in the main game as well as expanding upon it.
- antonber 9y ago
  Check out Roblox. They are a UGC platform that enables creators to take microtransactions via a centralized currency (Robux).
  - jhvfcdyuhkljh 9y ago
    Itchy and Scratchy money huh. We all know how well that works.
- mirashii 9y ago
  I think Valve's model of pure cosmetics with an active workshop and ability to implement custom games shows you can still have microtransactions without turning away the notion of a player community. It just seems to me that the common monetization schemes implemented in other games is a bit of a blatant money grab made by forcing people to artificially grind.
alanfalcon 9y ago
Awesome, good on them! Another studio who dipped their toe in the F2P model then ran away screaming (in their case, to great success) is Butterscotch Shenanigans--three brothers in Saint Louis who released the game Crashlands for mobile and Steam which I've probably sunk 300 hours into (but I'm weird like that). I really hope this works well for the Clicker Heroes 2 developers. I've enjoyed Clicker Heroes and I'm really looking forward to everything they've layed out for CH2. Of course dropping $30 for what had been a free game is a bit of a shock on first hearing the price (price anchoring can be a major hurdle), but after reading this (and reflecting for a moment: most games that I spend any real time playing are easily worth $100 or more to me even if it's rare that I end up having to spend that much on them) I'll definitely be pre-ordering.
- SirZimzim 9y ago
  It seems the app economy has really skewed our sense of value when it comes to mobile games. If we can get over the mental hurdle of $1 to $5 apps we might be able to dig ourselves out of this F2P hole.
- woogley 9y ago
  For those who haven't seen it, the development story behind Crashlands is very inspiring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQHtOg46eOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQHtOg46eOw
kelukelugames 9y ago
A cute story about whales. Jeremy Lin, the NBA player, talked about getting his teammates to play Clash Royale with him. He was shocked that everyone had better troops than him after two days. Apparently they all dropped thousands.
- csours 9y ago
  Clash Royale brands their philosophy as pay-to-advance. You can upgrade faster with real money, but that doesn't mean you will win matches. At some point at the top I assume everyone is spending a lot of money, and is matched up with similar level cards. As a player it doesn't really bug me.
  - jon_richards 9y ago
    That is an interesting point, but I think most companies incentivise whales by putting them up against people who they can crush, whether it is deliberately (as in the case of activision's patent) or by having a matchmaking system that doesn't strictly separate people by their in-game power. Imagine a game where players only interact if they are the same level. If you can pay to gain levels, that doesn't necessarily make the game unfair. If you can pay to gain an advantage at the same level, that is unfair.
    - r0ze-at-hn 9y ago
      So I did play such a free-to-play game where you could pay to level up, but you just battled the same level. I grinded my way up the level tree exploring the different systems that the game had and got my fun out of it. What was interesting was I realized you could craft a "team" that the system thought was a low level team, but what actually something no one would have at that level and was actually more powerful. Think Level 1 character, but somehow was equipped with a great fire sword of the deep and level 10 strength. This was a evening of fun building up such a wacky team that could defeat everyone the system put up against them. And then I realized I had beat the game and never played after that.
    - ansible 9y ago
cortesoft 9y ago
I wonder if you could still have free to play, but just had a limit to how many different things to buy. Say, you could buy everything for $60. That way, you don’t have to worry about someone spending thousands because they wouldn’t get any more than if they spent $60.
- rocky1138 9y ago
  Train Simulator 2018 does that. All the DLC comes to $7800.
  - Viper007Bond 9y ago
    That's different. That game is more like a real life train set. People buy the types of trains that they are interested in playing with.
  - frik 9y ago
    The sad thing is that Pay2Win is coming to triple A games like Need for Speed Payday, Forza 7, Star Wars B2. These completely wrong trend deserves all the outcry that happens right now. If EA and MS try to destroy video games, it's just stupid, their greed will scare the real players away.
    - alasdair_ 9y ago
      Exactly. I have no real problem with a company charging for cosmetic stuff (unless it's limited-time-only, which hurts addicts) but pay2win makes the games pointless.
  - exDM69 9y ago
    This is something that comes up often as an example, usually mentioned by someone who doesn't actually play the game. Simulators are different. You do not gain competitive advantage by buying DLC. You get some more content, and usually they're high quality, historically accurate and come with nice documentation (checklists, etc). No-one would have the time to play with all the DLC in train simulator. There is hours worth of playing in each. Heck, it took me an hour just to figure out how to get a steam locomotive out of the rail yard. Flight simulators and racing sims (iRacing) are similar. You can expect to spend hours of time with a new aircraft or race car. In racing, you race against others with the same or similar car, so you gain no advantage. I can warmly recommend trying out Train Simulator or Trainz. It's fun and relaxing gameplay.
Lazare 9y ago
Well written and thought provoking. I'm not super interested in clicker games, but I pre-ordered anyhow, because I have to believe the future of gaming isn't just a never-ending series of venal cash grabs.
- swivelmaster 9y ago
  Clicker Heroes one is a lot of fun. I "played" it for about six months... which means I left the browser window open at work and bought upgrades every few hours. (bought with in-game currency; I never spent real money)
fuscy 9y ago
Good for them. I don’t have the numbers or business plan but I have faith they did their homework. There seems to be a counter trend in the current micro transaction game market which will catch some of the people who long for pure premium games. My guess is they intend to use the first game as a platform to bring people into the second. The drawback of premium is that 1 in 50 people who see a game buy it. The drawback of F2P is that 2% of players will spend money in it. This is a move to cause a conversion higher than that by effectively selling the F2P players, a premium game.
colmvp 9y ago
I hope (though I'm not truly that optimistic) in a decade that the trend of F2P will have passed. I find them extremely parasitic, exploiting human behavior. I also hate the term free-to-play, because it purposefully hides the fact that for many games, you either need to grind a lot to acquire content/in-game currency or have to spend a lot.
- on_and_off 9y ago
  Well, our language is a very blunt instrument and often gets in the way of clear and nuanced communication. Almost all the products advertised as free ask for some other form of payment. Not all of them are harmful, far from it, but we fail at discussing it if we can't even name these different variations. There is the game platform that will give you games for free because it wants you to register so there is less friction later on when you want to buy something there. Also, this way you have registered your mail in order to send you ads. Many services on the web are free but this time they mine your personal information in order to target ads Free to play games want to hook you like an addict using manipulation techniques. Etc They are all very different, and not necessarily all bad, but we don't even differentiate them that well in my opinion.
- stingraycharles 9y ago
  Just yesterday I was looking for a simcity-like game for my iPad to play that didn’t use microtransactions. It’s simply not there. Not a single city simulator that you can actually play without paying for some stupid credit system. I was easily willing to spend $10 for such a game, because of the scarcity. I would expect some indy dev to jump into this space, but I guess microtransactions are just too lucrative?
  - cwyers 9y ago
    > I was easily willing to spend $10 for such a game, because of the scarcity. Your willingness to pay $10 for a SimCity-style game probably explains the scarcity. If you and enough others were willing to pay $40-60, you'd find that game.
Nursie 9y ago
I've been enjoying a f2p game for a while - Paladins. I understand it's a lot like Overwatch, and that the comparison annoys both camps. They charge for skipping a bunch of grind, but in this case 'grind' is playing matches, which is why I'm here in the first place so...
angarg12 9y ago
I'm active in the clicker/idle game scene so I can give a bit of background: It isn't rare lately for people to come to https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/ https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/ and discuss possible ways to monetise games. How to best implement microtransactions, opt-in ads, or even some talk lately about cripto mining. Then yesterday someone wrote a post about the 'unannoying way to monetise', which is to make the game paid. https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/7e1u9f/the_unannoying_way_to_monetize/ https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/7e1u9f/t... It wasn't massively well received. If you look at the top comments, they still prefer F2P and microtransactions. And then CH2 dropped this bomb today. From my personal experience, I am quite skeptic about a paid model for this particular genre of games. Also, 30$ for this kind of game seems a little bit too step. Nevertheless I wish them best. Hopefully if they are successful they will show the way for others and we will move away from these kind of predatory techniques.
- jquery 9y ago
  $30 isn't really steep given the thousands of hours of... ahem... gameplay. It's easily justifiable for a niche hobby purchase. I've been idling Clicker Heroes for thousands of hours and it has a very soothing mathematical zen rhythm to it. I highly recommend it to anyone who's enjoyed Cookie Clicker or other idle-type games. What makes Clicker Heroes extra special is the high-quality design and the lovely math that's gone into making sure progress is smooth and eternal. I have high hopes for CH2 and will pre-order it as a vote of confidence.
  - mnsc 9y ago
    I'm at the end of cookie clicker and I honestly don't see any interesting progressions forward. I just got 350 chancemakers so now I'm just creating spreadsheets to try to time the "get xxx777777 levels on ascension". But actually this is a feature and not a bug since I actually appreciate the sense of "I'm done for now" that lets me pause gameplay for a couple of months and wait for a new tier building or something else. I think a more polished clicker game sounds rather scary given my player profile since I could easily see myself get totally absorbed. So CH2 being $30 is good news for me personally since that guarantees I wont get caught. =)
gldev3 9y ago
Incredible, good luck with Clicker Heroes 2 you guys deserve it. Keep up the good work.
sago 9y ago
A great piece, an ethical decision, and I hope the start of something bigger. I agree that free to play is often horribly exploitative, not to mention horrible game design. But that price point. That makes me worried. Browse around Steam to see the company they are trying to keep at $30. In the reddit thread the dev said they've chosen this price point based on $2m production budget. Fair enough they've done their homework and run the models. I'm sure they've done a competitive analysis. But it feels too expensive to me. I really really hope I am proved wrong. As spectacularly as possible.
- romanovcode 9y ago
  If it has no in-game shop the price is perfectly valid IMO, and I wish every mobile game was like this.
  - wccrawford 9y ago
    The problem isn't the price point, but what you get for that price. From the video, it looks just the same as the original, and I definitely wouldn't pay $30 for that.
    - sago 9y ago
      One of the problems with game development is that consumers aren't always very good at judging what they're getting (in terms of quantity, I'm not suggesting consumers can't be trusted to decide whether they like something). A game with one repeating background, versus a game with a whole range of varied backgrounds, can be order of magnitude cheaper to make. But typically this will be reviewed as "crappy graphics" or "boring art", and the more expensive version will be panned for being too expensive. Sometimes crappy graphics won't matter, sometimes it will. From the video, there is no comparison in terms of development resource. There is much much more art, many more frames of animation, much less smoke and mirrors in the engine. I can understand why the development budget is $2m. But I have a horrible feeling that most consumers will be like you, and not see that, and not think that all that effort is worth it, or that they've put much effort into the new game at all. And a good chunk of them (not you) will be very entitled about it, about not getting it for free. The reality of game development, unfortunately.
ge0rg 9y ago
We made a lot of money from these players who spent thousands. They are known to the industry as "Whales". I haven't seen this addressed yet, but what if the whales we are seeing are not poor addicted victims nor rich people but simple fraudsters? It really makes sense if you are a person with access to "unlimited" credit that you can't spend in a way that can be traced back to you. There is so much credit card fraud going on, and it's surely possible to decouple that from the actual in-game transactions by buying cash cards. The credit companies can't trace back the money, and the in-game transactions never get challenged.
- chki 9y ago
  But is it really worth commiting fraud to beat somebody in Clicker Heroes? Doesn't every transaction you make with a stolen credit card increase the chance of getting caught/no longer being able to use the card because it gets blocked?
  - joesb 9y ago
    Don't know how it is in Clicker Heroes, but many game allow player to "gift" other players. So you can use stolen credit card to buy lots of gems. Then post on a web board offering to gift cheap gems to people for cash.
- koonsolo 9y ago
  I've heard multiple stories (firsthand) of kids accidentally ordering virtual stuff on mobile for thousand(s). It happens only once, but there is no way to recover the money.
  - exDM69 9y ago
    Might depend on your location but I've heard several stories of successfully getting a refund from kids purchases in games and app stores. It's still a lot of trouble to file for a refund, not worth doing for a few bucks. But this might be because in my legislation there are strong consumer protection laws. Ymmv.
- 9y ago
Deimorz 9y ago
I'm really surprised to see this from a company that makes, of all possible genres, clicker games. Clicker games usually have almost no actual gameplay, and pretty much only interest people because they exploit many of the same type of psychological tricks that free-to-play games use to keep players hooked. They're a great demonstration of how the illusion of progressing at something is all you need to keep people interested, even when the only thing they're progressing towards is... the opportunity for more progression. I honestly don't think that charging people up front will work, especially not at a $30 price point. Microtransactions work for this game style because you can take advantage of all the time people feel like they've "invested" into the game. Once they've spent hundreds of hours progressing, it's not difficult for some people to justify spending money here and there to make things a bit faster. I don't think many people will feel the same way when they're asked to pay $30 before they can even start getting addicted.
- rangibaby 9y ago
  > They're a great demonstration of how the illusion of progressing at something is all you need to keep people interested, even when the only thing they're progressing towards is... the opportunity for more progression. If anyone wants to try this type of "game" give cookie clicker a try.
  - rplnt 9y ago
    One more with the niche of this forum, and one that doesn't take that much time (depending on your take on the task), is Paperclips http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/ http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
    - Jare 9y ago
      To close the circle, this was recently released as a paid game ($1.99 or $2.99 not sure) on mobile. This game works so well (within its scope) because of its ability to surprise you with the crazy narrative and convoluted mechanisms it brings in as you progress.
    - 9y ago
tallanvor 9y ago
> New updates can change the game to be incompatible with old saves (which will be rare, maybe once or twice a year), and there will be plenty of advance warning when it happens. Players then have the option to continue playing on the old version, or start fresh on the new version. And without knowing anything about the game, they've guaranteed that I'll never buy it. Corrupted or incompatible saved games is a great way to kill interest in your game.
partycoder 9y ago
In free to play games, significant money may be spent in user acquisition. The business model for many games is: effective cost per new unique user <= life time value of the user That gives you a profitability margin. Then, you need to acquire a lot of users, put them in the game and, move them from 1 to 3: 1. New user 2. Recurring user 3. Paying user Additionally, if users invite other users, that lowers your effective cost per new user, increasing your profitability. The process of getting paying users is very lossy, with only a small minority becoming paying users. That's why paying users have to pay so much. For a while it was generally accepted that freemium games monetize more than premium games. But with the recent proliferation of games I am unaware if that is the case anymore.
awjr 9y ago
I have a habit of playing a F2P game to understand how easy it is to advance. They really do understand how to get you hooked, and then put you up against players/AI where you either have to grind for the next 10 weeks or handover money, and even then I suspect you'd hit another wall every 10 or so levels. I usually end up uninstalling very quickly at this point.
sigi45 9y ago
hahahahah ... no. Clicker games are somehow idle fun but i never thought about paying for a clicker 'game'. Nope nope nope.
richrichardsson 9y ago
A bit off topic, but I would be extremely interested in a post mortem of the disaster that befell Micro Machines on mobile. My guess is people have completely abandoned the game due to it not working in iOS 11 for nigh on 6 weeks, and now there just aren't enough players to get regularly matched into a game. This must have decimated their revenue stream.
kbutler 9y ago
Solve the ethical dilemma/charged too much issue: Cap the max expenditure in the real money shop. After that level, players can continue to purchase, but they won't actually be charged real money. If desired, can also add a "donate" button for the hypothetical players who pay huge amounts to support the game/company.
- wccrawford 9y ago
  This would see me willing to pay a lot more to many f2p games, but would curb their income considerably from their whales. Also, it'd ruin most games, because of the way they're designed. For instance, gacha games like Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, Record Keeper, and Mobius. If you could cap out at (for example) $300 and then pull for free from then on, you'd end up with everything you ever wanted, all the time. There'd be nothing to stop you from just pulling until you got everything. The entire game would need a redesign to deal with that situation. Premium currency in most F2P games is the same way. I'm not arguing with you, just exposing the reason that nobody except Nintendo has done your suggestion so far. And to my knowledge, they've only done it twice. Pokemon Picross and another Pokemon spinoff game.
bpicolo 9y ago
Wonder if there will be a free trial. Giving people a level or two free might create a stronger draw into the paid product. That's a pretty common thing out there - wonder how well that model actually works in reality? I've never seen hard data.
mxfh 9y ago
Would like to see this resonate with IP holders in the creative industries too. I don't think the people who created a franchise like Bob's Burgers as used in AnimationThrowdown are ok with causing some collateral damage to kids or other addicition sensitive audiences and will put some restrictions into their licensing contracts.
jdlyga 9y ago
I can't see this working out for them. But I'm definitely willing to support it.
makecheck 9y ago
In-app purchases have such an absurdly high probability of being scams that I literally shop only by filtering them out. It’s why I can’t be bothered to tap into each and every game to see if it’s “only” using purchases to unlock the full game; I just assume it’s probably gem bags. They really need a built-into-store way of saying “Buy If Not Deleted In 24 Hours”, and then I would try so much more.

248 points by fragsworth 9y ago

Pxtl 9y ago

I love this essay. Thinking about people who've damaged their lives on addictive gaming.... those people behind the four-figure numbers on the spreadsheet of Whales. That's sad as hell. But... it's a clicker game. A hilarious-looking clicker game... but a clicker game. Would anybody spend $30 on a clicker game?

CydeWeys 9y ago
This announcement has gotten my hopes up about it. My thinking is, there must be enough to it that it's not just a clicker game (which is why I stopped playing the first one; I got bored of it).
dragontamer 9y ago
Clicker Heroes 1 was very good before they went with Rubies. I threw some money in the form of Rubies into the game, when it became pay-to-win (to some degree). But really, I was way better than my clicker-guild-mates because I personally had optimized a better strategy than them. So even when others spent Rubies, I personally was able to keep up with them through simply better tactics. Still, it left a bad taste in my mouth to pay for some in-game benefit. And I knew that if I dumped $100+ more dollars in, my superior tactics + money injection would lead me to higher clicks. At that point, I just became disgusted with the F2P model and quit Clicker Heroes. It was a very well programmed game, and I think getting rid of the F2P format will help this game a LOT.
Lazare 9y ago
> A hilarious-looking clicker game... but a clicker game. Would anybody spend $30 on a clicker game? Well that's the thing, isn't it: A lot of people spent a lot more than $30 on Clicker Heroes 1. So yes, obviously people will spend $30 on a clicker game. The question is whether they'll do so via an ethical business model.
- bduerst 9y ago
  Aren't clicker games notorious for hidden difficulty curves, which are sometimes exponential? The whole p2w model is based off of getting players invested with their time before making it too difficult to progress without investing cash. I'd bet the people who spend $30+ on the p2w version won't be willing to pay $30 up front to start investing time into a brand new game.
  - dragontamer 9y ago
    It should be noted that ClickerHeroes didn't have p2w for months, maybe years. I did quit after the addition of Rubies. But the game was legitimately good at balancing the heroes. A good amount of my effort in Clicker Heroes was spent on optimizing builds through linear algebra and other optimization problems.
- joesb 9y ago
  The problem is, without the free-to-play model, they now lose the essential parts of any products, marketing. Anyone who download the free game and talk about it or recommended it to a friend is free marketing. With enough friends talking about the game or play it without paying, one person in that group will spend $30. But without the groups existing in the first place, that same person may not interested in the game enough to buy it.
on_and_off 9y ago
I have tried their first opus after reading this article. Come on ! This is clearly tailored to hook into our addiction loops by always presenting us with a next task that is almost complete. I have a very hard time believing that these folks did not know exactly what they were doing.
dkns 9y ago
When you think of it Diablo 3 is also a clicker game and it costs 35€ + 15€ if you want newest hero.
codingdave 9y ago
That question was asked on reddit. Most commenters seemed to think it was too high. The devs said they spent $2 million to make a clicker game, and therefore needed to price it high to recoup their costs. Personally, I feel they should have managed their costs to a more reasonable price point, but I didn't feel like engaging in debate on reddit over the point.
- Sohcahtoa82 9y ago
  $2 million?! Yeah...a game like Clicker Heroes should be less than a 1 year effort from a single programmer and an artist.

greggman 9y ago

it concerns me how many of my friends in free to play game dev are okay with exploting whales for profit.

munificent 9y ago
It's a sad fact of human nature that it's really easy for us to compromise our morals when the only person hurt by doing so is an anonymous stranger on the other side of the Internet.
- jhvfcdyuhkljh 9y ago
  Plus said stranger is probably a fat and ugly couch potato (or they'd be consumed by real life instead). So it's OK.
colmvp 9y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if some of those devs as well as other gamers just think that it's buyers fault for improperly spending money, and that it makes perfect sense as corporations exist for the maximization of profit. It's true some responsibility does lie in the person with the wallet. But it just strikes me as odd that none of these companies are really held accountable for exploiting human behavior, specifically by gaming communities.
patio11 9y ago
I go back and forth on this, because there seems to be material disagreement on whether whales are, in fact, a) folks with problems or b) folks with hobbies which are, relative to a single video game, expensive. There is a good presentation from the CEO of Kongregate talking about this here: https://www.slideshare.net/emily_greer/dont-call-them-whales-freetoplay-spenders-virtual-value-gdc-2015 https://www.slideshare.net/emily_greer/dont-call-them-whales... I share your moral intuitions about exploiting whales if whales are, in fact, little old ladies suffering from social isolation or teenagers with undiagnosed depression. But the F2P companies say that they've done the research and come to the conclusion that most of their whales are gainfully employed professionals. That sounds... not intrinsically implausible to me? I enjoy video games, quite a bit. Games, books, and hating on Bitcoin are my hobbies, and hating on Bitcoin is cheap. I have probably sustained $100 a month on video games for ten years now, and that would frequently be concentrated on a single game for an extended while (e.g. LoL for 2 years), likely resulting in me easily hitting their whale lists. I feel like if I'm a central example of a whale that it isn't unethical to sell me things that I like? It's not a material amount of money given my financial situation. It compares very favorably to the time commitment for my main hobby, which causes _much_ more friction than the money does. (The primary reason I don't play LoL anymore is an unpauseable 40 minute game doesn't play well with having young children.) Most external observers would categorize me under Either A Responsible Adult Or At Least Fakes It Decently Most Of The Time. Similarly well-adjusted people in my social class spend similar amounts of money on things which are not morally different than Evelynn skins, for example Hamilton tickets.

0xcde4c3db 9y ago

> Also, we like games with mods and we want mods. Real-money shops make little sense with mods, when you can just download a mod to quadruple the number of rubies you get. Also, it is simply too easy to cheat. I think this touches on an important aspect of microtransactions that to my knowledge remains largely unexamined (but maybe I'm just not reading the right critics). Specifically, games are traditionally built as tools that players use to have fun. From house rules in tabletop games to Game Genie/Action Replay to Automatic Mario rom hacks to Minecraft texture packs, players changing games is something that's been part of gaming culture for a long time. When publishers turn a game into a marketing venue for microtransactions, however, they're essentially laying claim to that entire space, turning it into a dictated, manufactured product rather than a self-directed process in the player community.

derblitzmann 9y ago
Very true, especially since some games (cough cough besethda) benefit greatly from modding, fixing bugs in the main game as well as expanding upon it.
antonber 9y ago
Check out Roblox. They are a UGC platform that enables creators to take microtransactions via a centralized currency (Robux).
- jhvfcdyuhkljh 9y ago
  Itchy and Scratchy money huh. We all know how well that works.
mirashii 9y ago
I think Valve's model of pure cosmetics with an active workshop and ability to implement custom games shows you can still have microtransactions without turning away the notion of a player community. It just seems to me that the common monetization schemes implemented in other games is a bit of a blatant money grab made by forcing people to artificially grind.

alanfalcon 9y ago

Awesome, good on them! Another studio who dipped their toe in the F2P model then ran away screaming (in their case, to great success) is Butterscotch Shenanigans--three brothers in Saint Louis who released the game Crashlands for mobile and Steam which I've probably sunk 300 hours into (but I'm weird like that). I really hope this works well for the Clicker Heroes 2 developers. I've enjoyed Clicker Heroes and I'm really looking forward to everything they've layed out for CH2. Of course dropping $30 for what had been a free game is a bit of a shock on first hearing the price (price anchoring can be a major hurdle), but after reading this (and reflecting for a moment: most games that I spend any real time playing are easily worth $100 or more to me even if it's rare that I end up having to spend that much on them) I'll definitely be pre-ordering.

SirZimzim 9y ago
It seems the app economy has really skewed our sense of value when it comes to mobile games. If we can get over the mental hurdle of $1 to $5 apps we might be able to dig ourselves out of this F2P hole.
woogley 9y ago
For those who haven't seen it, the development story behind Crashlands is very inspiring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQHtOg46eOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQHtOg46eOw

kelukelugames 9y ago

A cute story about whales. Jeremy Lin, the NBA player, talked about getting his teammates to play Clash Royale with him. He was shocked that everyone had better troops than him after two days. Apparently they all dropped thousands.

csours 9y ago
Clash Royale brands their philosophy as pay-to-advance. You can upgrade faster with real money, but that doesn't mean you will win matches. At some point at the top I assume everyone is spending a lot of money, and is matched up with similar level cards. As a player it doesn't really bug me.
- jon_richards 9y ago
  That is an interesting point, but I think most companies incentivise whales by putting them up against people who they can crush, whether it is deliberately (as in the case of activision's patent) or by having a matchmaking system that doesn't strictly separate people by their in-game power. Imagine a game where players only interact if they are the same level. If you can pay to gain levels, that doesn't necessarily make the game unfair. If you can pay to gain an advantage at the same level, that is unfair.
  - r0ze-at-hn 9y ago
    So I did play such a free-to-play game where you could pay to level up, but you just battled the same level. I grinded my way up the level tree exploring the different systems that the game had and got my fun out of it. What was interesting was I realized you could craft a "team" that the system thought was a low level team, but what actually something no one would have at that level and was actually more powerful. Think Level 1 character, but somehow was equipped with a great fire sword of the deep and level 10 strength. This was a evening of fun building up such a wacky team that could defeat everyone the system put up against them. And then I realized I had beat the game and never played after that.
  - ansible 9y ago

cortesoft 9y ago

I wonder if you could still have free to play, but just had a limit to how many different things to buy. Say, you could buy everything for $60. That way, you don’t have to worry about someone spending thousands because they wouldn’t get any more than if they spent $60.

rocky1138 9y ago
Train Simulator 2018 does that. All the DLC comes to $7800.
- Viper007Bond 9y ago
  That's different. That game is more like a real life train set. People buy the types of trains that they are interested in playing with.
- frik 9y ago
  The sad thing is that Pay2Win is coming to triple A games like Need for Speed Payday, Forza 7, Star Wars B2. These completely wrong trend deserves all the outcry that happens right now. If EA and MS try to destroy video games, it's just stupid, their greed will scare the real players away.
  - alasdair_ 9y ago
    Exactly. I have no real problem with a company charging for cosmetic stuff (unless it's limited-time-only, which hurts addicts) but pay2win makes the games pointless.
- exDM69 9y ago
  This is something that comes up often as an example, usually mentioned by someone who doesn't actually play the game. Simulators are different. You do not gain competitive advantage by buying DLC. You get some more content, and usually they're high quality, historically accurate and come with nice documentation (checklists, etc). No-one would have the time to play with all the DLC in train simulator. There is hours worth of playing in each. Heck, it took me an hour just to figure out how to get a steam locomotive out of the rail yard. Flight simulators and racing sims (iRacing) are similar. You can expect to spend hours of time with a new aircraft or race car. In racing, you race against others with the same or similar car, so you gain no advantage. I can warmly recommend trying out Train Simulator or Trainz. It's fun and relaxing gameplay.

Lazare 9y ago

Well written and thought provoking. I'm not super interested in clicker games, but I pre-ordered anyhow, because I have to believe the future of gaming isn't just a never-ending series of venal cash grabs.

swivelmaster 9y ago
Clicker Heroes one is a lot of fun. I "played" it for about six months... which means I left the browser window open at work and bought upgrades every few hours. (bought with in-game currency; I never spent real money)

fuscy 9y ago

Good for them. I don’t have the numbers or business plan but I have faith they did their homework. There seems to be a counter trend in the current micro transaction game market which will catch some of the people who long for pure premium games. My guess is they intend to use the first game as a platform to bring people into the second. The drawback of premium is that 1 in 50 people who see a game buy it. The drawback of F2P is that 2% of players will spend money in it. This is a move to cause a conversion higher than that by effectively selling the F2P players, a premium game.

colmvp 9y ago

I hope (though I'm not truly that optimistic) in a decade that the trend of F2P will have passed. I find them extremely parasitic, exploiting human behavior. I also hate the term free-to-play, because it purposefully hides the fact that for many games, you either need to grind a lot to acquire content/in-game currency or have to spend a lot.

on_and_off 9y ago
Well, our language is a very blunt instrument and often gets in the way of clear and nuanced communication. Almost all the products advertised as free ask for some other form of payment. Not all of them are harmful, far from it, but we fail at discussing it if we can't even name these different variations. There is the game platform that will give you games for free because it wants you to register so there is less friction later on when you want to buy something there. Also, this way you have registered your mail in order to send you ads. Many services on the web are free but this time they mine your personal information in order to target ads Free to play games want to hook you like an addict using manipulation techniques. Etc They are all very different, and not necessarily all bad, but we don't even differentiate them that well in my opinion.
stingraycharles 9y ago
Just yesterday I was looking for a simcity-like game for my iPad to play that didn’t use microtransactions. It’s simply not there. Not a single city simulator that you can actually play without paying for some stupid credit system. I was easily willing to spend $10 for such a game, because of the scarcity. I would expect some indy dev to jump into this space, but I guess microtransactions are just too lucrative?
- cwyers 9y ago
  > I was easily willing to spend $10 for such a game, because of the scarcity. Your willingness to pay $10 for a SimCity-style game probably explains the scarcity. If you and enough others were willing to pay $40-60, you'd find that game.

Nursie 9y ago

I've been enjoying a f2p game for a while - Paladins. I understand it's a lot like Overwatch, and that the comparison annoys both camps. They charge for skipping a bunch of grind, but in this case 'grind' is playing matches, which is why I'm here in the first place so...

angarg12 9y ago

I'm active in the clicker/idle game scene so I can give a bit of background: It isn't rare lately for people to come to https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/ https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/ and discuss possible ways to monetise games. How to best implement microtransactions, opt-in ads, or even some talk lately about cripto mining. Then yesterday someone wrote a post about the 'unannoying way to monetise', which is to make the game paid. https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/7e1u9f/the_unannoying_way_to_monetize/ https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/7e1u9f/t... It wasn't massively well received. If you look at the top comments, they still prefer F2P and microtransactions. And then CH2 dropped this bomb today. From my personal experience, I am quite skeptic about a paid model for this particular genre of games. Also, 30$ for this kind of game seems a little bit too step. Nevertheless I wish them best. Hopefully if they are successful they will show the way for others and we will move away from these kind of predatory techniques.

jquery 9y ago
$30 isn't really steep given the thousands of hours of... ahem... gameplay. It's easily justifiable for a niche hobby purchase. I've been idling Clicker Heroes for thousands of hours and it has a very soothing mathematical zen rhythm to it. I highly recommend it to anyone who's enjoyed Cookie Clicker or other idle-type games. What makes Clicker Heroes extra special is the high-quality design and the lovely math that's gone into making sure progress is smooth and eternal. I have high hopes for CH2 and will pre-order it as a vote of confidence.
- mnsc 9y ago
  I'm at the end of cookie clicker and I honestly don't see any interesting progressions forward. I just got 350 chancemakers so now I'm just creating spreadsheets to try to time the "get xxx777777 levels on ascension". But actually this is a feature and not a bug since I actually appreciate the sense of "I'm done for now" that lets me pause gameplay for a couple of months and wait for a new tier building or something else. I think a more polished clicker game sounds rather scary given my player profile since I could easily see myself get totally absorbed. So CH2 being $30 is good news for me personally since that guarantees I wont get caught. =)

gldev3 9y ago

Incredible, good luck with Clicker Heroes 2 you guys deserve it. Keep up the good work.

sago 9y ago

A great piece, an ethical decision, and I hope the start of something bigger. I agree that free to play is often horribly exploitative, not to mention horrible game design. But that price point. That makes me worried. Browse around Steam to see the company they are trying to keep at $30. In the reddit thread the dev said they've chosen this price point based on $2m production budget. Fair enough they've done their homework and run the models. I'm sure they've done a competitive analysis. But it feels too expensive to me. I really really hope I am proved wrong. As spectacularly as possible.

romanovcode 9y ago
If it has no in-game shop the price is perfectly valid IMO, and I wish every mobile game was like this.
- wccrawford 9y ago
  The problem isn't the price point, but what you get for that price. From the video, it looks just the same as the original, and I definitely wouldn't pay $30 for that.
  - sago 9y ago
    One of the problems with game development is that consumers aren't always very good at judging what they're getting (in terms of quantity, I'm not suggesting consumers can't be trusted to decide whether they like something). A game with one repeating background, versus a game with a whole range of varied backgrounds, can be order of magnitude cheaper to make. But typically this will be reviewed as "crappy graphics" or "boring art", and the more expensive version will be panned for being too expensive. Sometimes crappy graphics won't matter, sometimes it will. From the video, there is no comparison in terms of development resource. There is much much more art, many more frames of animation, much less smoke and mirrors in the engine. I can understand why the development budget is $2m. But I have a horrible feeling that most consumers will be like you, and not see that, and not think that all that effort is worth it, or that they've put much effort into the new game at all. And a good chunk of them (not you) will be very entitled about it, about not getting it for free. The reality of game development, unfortunately.

ge0rg 9y ago

We made a lot of money from these players who spent thousands. They are known to the industry as "Whales". I haven't seen this addressed yet, but what if the whales we are seeing are not poor addicted victims nor rich people but simple fraudsters? It really makes sense if you are a person with access to "unlimited" credit that you can't spend in a way that can be traced back to you. There is so much credit card fraud going on, and it's surely possible to decouple that from the actual in-game transactions by buying cash cards. The credit companies can't trace back the money, and the in-game transactions never get challenged.

chki 9y ago
But is it really worth commiting fraud to beat somebody in Clicker Heroes? Doesn't every transaction you make with a stolen credit card increase the chance of getting caught/no longer being able to use the card because it gets blocked?
- joesb 9y ago
  Don't know how it is in Clicker Heroes, but many game allow player to "gift" other players. So you can use stolen credit card to buy lots of gems. Then post on a web board offering to gift cheap gems to people for cash.
koonsolo 9y ago
I've heard multiple stories (firsthand) of kids accidentally ordering virtual stuff on mobile for thousand(s). It happens only once, but there is no way to recover the money.
- exDM69 9y ago
  Might depend on your location but I've heard several stories of successfully getting a refund from kids purchases in games and app stores. It's still a lot of trouble to file for a refund, not worth doing for a few bucks. But this might be because in my legislation there are strong consumer protection laws. Ymmv.
9y ago

Deimorz 9y ago

I'm really surprised to see this from a company that makes, of all possible genres, clicker games. Clicker games usually have almost no actual gameplay, and pretty much only interest people because they exploit many of the same type of psychological tricks that free-to-play games use to keep players hooked. They're a great demonstration of how the illusion of progressing at something is all you need to keep people interested, even when the only thing they're progressing towards is... the opportunity for more progression. I honestly don't think that charging people up front will work, especially not at a $30 price point. Microtransactions work for this game style because you can take advantage of all the time people feel like they've "invested" into the game. Once they've spent hundreds of hours progressing, it's not difficult for some people to justify spending money here and there to make things a bit faster. I don't think many people will feel the same way when they're asked to pay $30 before they can even start getting addicted.

rangibaby 9y ago
> They're a great demonstration of how the illusion of progressing at something is all you need to keep people interested, even when the only thing they're progressing towards is... the opportunity for more progression. If anyone wants to try this type of "game" give cookie clicker a try.
- rplnt 9y ago
  One more with the niche of this forum, and one that doesn't take that much time (depending on your take on the task), is Paperclips http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/ http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
  - Jare 9y ago
    To close the circle, this was recently released as a paid game ($1.99 or $2.99 not sure) on mobile. This game works so well (within its scope) because of its ability to surprise you with the crazy narrative and convoluted mechanisms it brings in as you progress.
  - 9y ago

tallanvor 9y ago

> New updates can change the game to be incompatible with old saves (which will be rare, maybe once or twice a year), and there will be plenty of advance warning when it happens. Players then have the option to continue playing on the old version, or start fresh on the new version. And without knowing anything about the game, they've guaranteed that I'll never buy it. Corrupted or incompatible saved games is a great way to kill interest in your game.

partycoder 9y ago

In free to play games, significant money may be spent in user acquisition. The business model for many games is: effective cost per new unique user <= life time value of the user That gives you a profitability margin. Then, you need to acquire a lot of users, put them in the game and, move them from 1 to 3: 1. New user 2. Recurring user 3. Paying user Additionally, if users invite other users, that lowers your effective cost per new user, increasing your profitability. The process of getting paying users is very lossy, with only a small minority becoming paying users. That's why paying users have to pay so much. For a while it was generally accepted that freemium games monetize more than premium games. But with the recent proliferation of games I am unaware if that is the case anymore.

awjr 9y ago

I have a habit of playing a F2P game to understand how easy it is to advance. They really do understand how to get you hooked, and then put you up against players/AI where you either have to grind for the next 10 weeks or handover money, and even then I suspect you'd hit another wall every 10 or so levels. I usually end up uninstalling very quickly at this point.

sigi45 9y ago

hahahahah ... no. Clicker games are somehow idle fun but i never thought about paying for a clicker 'game'. Nope nope nope.

richrichardsson 9y ago

A bit off topic, but I would be extremely interested in a post mortem of the disaster that befell Micro Machines on mobile. My guess is people have completely abandoned the game due to it not working in iOS 11 for nigh on 6 weeks, and now there just aren't enough players to get regularly matched into a game. This must have decimated their revenue stream.

kbutler 9y ago

Solve the ethical dilemma/charged too much issue: Cap the max expenditure in the real money shop. After that level, players can continue to purchase, but they won't actually be charged real money. If desired, can also add a "donate" button for the hypothetical players who pay huge amounts to support the game/company.

wccrawford 9y ago
This would see me willing to pay a lot more to many f2p games, but would curb their income considerably from their whales. Also, it'd ruin most games, because of the way they're designed. For instance, gacha games like Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, Record Keeper, and Mobius. If you could cap out at (for example) $300 and then pull for free from then on, you'd end up with everything you ever wanted, all the time. There'd be nothing to stop you from just pulling until you got everything. The entire game would need a redesign to deal with that situation. Premium currency in most F2P games is the same way. I'm not arguing with you, just exposing the reason that nobody except Nintendo has done your suggestion so far. And to my knowledge, they've only done it twice. Pokemon Picross and another Pokemon spinoff game.

bpicolo 9y ago

Wonder if there will be a free trial. Giving people a level or two free might create a stronger draw into the paid product. That's a pretty common thing out there - wonder how well that model actually works in reality? I've never seen hard data.

mxfh 9y ago

Would like to see this resonate with IP holders in the creative industries too. I don't think the people who created a franchise like Bob's Burgers as used in AnimationThrowdown are ok with causing some collateral damage to kids or other addicition sensitive audiences and will put some restrictions into their licensing contracts.

jdlyga 9y ago

I can't see this working out for them. But I'm definitely willing to support it.

makecheck 9y ago

In-app purchases have such an absurdly high probability of being scams that I literally shop only by filtering them out. It’s why I can’t be bothered to tap into each and every game to see if it’s “only” using purchases to unlock the full game; I just assume it’s probably gem bags. They really need a built-into-store way of saying “Buy If Not Deleted In 24 Hours”, and then I would try so much more.