8 ms·

When I think how much money I spent sinking quarters into Galaga at the local diner as a child, I just can't feel that bad when people complain about Candy Crus

When I think how much money I spent sinking quarters into Galaga at the local diner as a child, I just can't feel that bad when people complain about Candy Crush charging $0.99 for another 5 lives to people that are too impatient to wait a couple hours for the free set. Is that really so exploitative? Meh. I played past level 100 on Candy Crush without spending a cent, which is probably dozens of hours of gameplay. The market is speaking pretty clearly: it is not even close to profitable to make premium casual games, the group of hardcore people that are willing to pay up front is way too small to make it worthwhile. IAP lets you get many more people enjoying your game, and you make a lot more money doing it, which is IMO a win on both ends. I get that a lot of gamers hope these games will fail, but as of right now, this is the most profitable and fast growing sector in the games industry, so I'd be hesitant to predict its downfall yet. If there was some magical way to get the same number of mass market users to pay a fair $5 up front for games (hell, even $1 would be great), every one of us in the game industry would be thrilled to hear it, because it's much easier to make premium games than freemium. I'm open to ideas, but I haven't heard many realistic ones. Disclaimer: I work on F2P games (not for King), so take all of this with a grain of salt based on self-interest.

watwut 13y ago
How many people/kids were willing/allowed to sink that much money into Galaga? It was not mainstream hobby. At least, my parents taught me it is not wise investment and I plan to teach my kids the same about level ups in seemingly free games. Speaking about exploitation, I recall one especially ugly example. A game with kiddy graphics and story had crying Bambi 10 minutes into play. You came there and Bambi told you that he is dying and the only way to save him is to pay money. If this is not emotional manipulation I do not know what is.
- Paradigma11 13y ago
  Do you have a link for further reference.
Mithaldu 13y ago
> Is that really so exploitative? Read this, then look at the games you make and tell me what you think: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/194933/ http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/1949... Frankly, at this point i have to assume that you're either shilling, or are simply unaware of the psychological effects at work because you only work with the technology.
- grblmrbl 13y ago
  Not unaware, so I very well may be a shill. I get the psychology behind all of this, I just don't find it particularly problematic, at least the bits that I interact with. As I've said, the model I support within F2P games is mostly equivalent to the coin-op arcade game: you died but want another move? A quarter to continue. You ran out of lives? A quarter to continue (or wait a little while for free lives). You want to cheat? A quarter, please. There's psychology there, but I don't think it's anything very new or sinister - charge people straightforwardly for playing, in an amount that seems fair for the amount of entertainment they're getting out of it. Give them something for free with the realization that most customers will never actually pay, and try to please everyone because word of mouth is the best advertising. Sure. The profit motive requires that we design games so that people have incentives to spend quarters (or rather, dollars for packs of whatever we're selling, since you can't charge a quarter on the app store, but it works out to about a quarter per "unit" - I'm totally against in-game currencies because they make purchases less transparent, and that's bad). That means making difficult levels, more or less. But we'd make ridiculously difficult levels anyways for design reasons, and our greater incentive is to make sure that people stay in the game for as long as possible, so we primarily worry about crafting compelling experiences that people enjoy, and don't feel cheated by. Freemium just means that we place the "pinch" levels more carefully than we would otherwise. In my current project, skill still reigns supreme - while we do present increasingly difficult challenges to the player, we specifically avoid the type of RNG-based difficulty that Candy Crush leans on. If you fail, it's not because you got an impossible seed (which is often the case in Candy Crush, as I know all too well, as an avid player), it's because you could have done something better but didn't. Internally, we make sure that we are all able to beat every level without using boosts or any such nonsense; those are there merely to accelerate progress for the impatient, never a requirement. Granted, we're all really good at our game at this point, so the difficult levels might be very difficult for normal people even if we can beat them, but forcing people to either get really good or pay money to progress is fair, IMO, and much less abusive than leaving it to randomness. Maybe that's just rationalization, maybe we're actually doing better than other people, I'm not sure, that'll be for you to decide when we release, and it will be up to the market to decide whether we deserve money for what we're doing...either way, F2P is here to stay, and believe it or not, some of us really do want to make it as fair to players as we can while still working profitably within the model (we need to make enough money to stay afloat, and premium casual games do not do that). I'm 100% open to suggestions, as long as you realize that "go premium" isn't a realistic one, because we've tried, and it doesn't work anymore.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
PaulHoule 13y ago
Coin-op games scorched the earth in 1983 and never recovered.

watwut 13y ago

How many people/kids were willing/allowed to sink that much money into Galaga? It was not mainstream hobby. At least, my parents taught me it is not wise investment and I plan to teach my kids the same about level ups in seemingly free games. Speaking about exploitation, I recall one especially ugly example. A game with kiddy graphics and story had crying Bambi 10 minutes into play. You came there and Bambi told you that he is dying and the only way to save him is to pay money. If this is not emotional manipulation I do not know what is.

Paradigma11 13y ago
Do you have a link for further reference.

Mithaldu 13y ago

> Is that really so exploitative? Read this, then look at the games you make and tell me what you think: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/194933/ http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/1949... Frankly, at this point i have to assume that you're either shilling, or are simply unaware of the psychological effects at work because you only work with the technology.

grblmrbl 13y ago
Not unaware, so I very well may be a shill. I get the psychology behind all of this, I just don't find it particularly problematic, at least the bits that I interact with. As I've said, the model I support within F2P games is mostly equivalent to the coin-op arcade game: you died but want another move? A quarter to continue. You ran out of lives? A quarter to continue (or wait a little while for free lives). You want to cheat? A quarter, please. There's psychology there, but I don't think it's anything very new or sinister - charge people straightforwardly for playing, in an amount that seems fair for the amount of entertainment they're getting out of it. Give them something for free with the realization that most customers will never actually pay, and try to please everyone because word of mouth is the best advertising. Sure. The profit motive requires that we design games so that people have incentives to spend quarters (or rather, dollars for packs of whatever we're selling, since you can't charge a quarter on the app store, but it works out to about a quarter per "unit" - I'm totally against in-game currencies because they make purchases less transparent, and that's bad). That means making difficult levels, more or less. But we'd make ridiculously difficult levels anyways for design reasons, and our greater incentive is to make sure that people stay in the game for as long as possible, so we primarily worry about crafting compelling experiences that people enjoy, and don't feel cheated by. Freemium just means that we place the "pinch" levels more carefully than we would otherwise. In my current project, skill still reigns supreme - while we do present increasingly difficult challenges to the player, we specifically avoid the type of RNG-based difficulty that Candy Crush leans on. If you fail, it's not because you got an impossible seed (which is often the case in Candy Crush, as I know all too well, as an avid player), it's because you could have done something better but didn't. Internally, we make sure that we are all able to beat every level without using boosts or any such nonsense; those are there merely to accelerate progress for the impatient, never a requirement. Granted, we're all really good at our game at this point, so the difficult levels might be very difficult for normal people even if we can beat them, but forcing people to either get really good or pay money to progress is fair, IMO, and much less abusive than leaving it to randomness. Maybe that's just rationalization, maybe we're actually doing better than other people, I'm not sure, that'll be for you to decide when we release, and it will be up to the market to decide whether we deserve money for what we're doing...either way, F2P is here to stay, and believe it or not, some of us really do want to make it as fair to players as we can while still working profitably within the model (we need to make enough money to stay afloat, and premium casual games do not do that). I'm 100% open to suggestions, as long as you realize that "go premium" isn't a realistic one, because we've tried, and it doesn't work anymore.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

PaulHoule 13y ago

Coin-op games scorched the earth in 1983 and never recovered.