F2P is burning article on polygon

[Izuno]

Some seriously good thinking here:

http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/9/5699058/free-to-play-mobile-candy-crush-the-room

My favorite part:

" Henry Ford invented the first production line and the first affordable car, and once said "If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses". The quote is mythical, but delivers more truth about creative work than a million pages of factual user data. "

[Steppenwolf]

Read this article yesterday. It's excellent. The mobile gaming scene is fubar. Imo needs a complete restart/rethink.

F2P needs to be eradicated with actualy free games so every mobile user gets a taste of proper gaming with no ads and scam bullshit. Maybe then there will be a market for higher quality paid games. But who's gonna volunteer to fix this? Everybody seems to be into it for completely greedy reasons.

[Furyo]

It's a gigantic bubble. Shark investors came flocking to mobile hoping for magnificent returns once a few breakaway hits were created, never understanding why or how these games boomed and copying everything that had a modicum of success. Now we're in the age of player acquisition costs 4 to 5 times higher than the average in game spending with no end in sight, making this market a continuous race  for an uncertain future 3 months ahead that requires constant cash flow from completely uncertain games.

 

Welcome to the age of games supermarket distribution. Yet another market that was doomed by every actor outbidding each other towards cheapness.

[Vilham]

Yup, it is a huge bubble, I know with some people that absolutely deny this. I don't know what world they live.

[Steppenwolf]

My biggest fear is this spills over to PC gaming. Steam with lowering the entry bar and almost non existing quality control of what is sold is a step in that wrong direction already. A nightmare would be if a simple and cheap to make VR game becomes a huge hit.

[Taylor]

Fairly sure I've read this article fifty times already by different authors, although this one at least gets credit for length. As usual it pretends mobile and traditional gamers are the exact same demographic, but the former have just been mislead by the evil people in suits. It also has some pretty suspect examples: Mobile games don't care about UX design? Please. Like all other opinion articles in Polygon, it's link-bait to advertise something, although at least it isn't quite as factually inaccurate as Bennet Foddy's "my game collection won't have net-play because I don't understand net-code" piece.

 

The F2P model is already ingrained in PC gaming and Steam, and accepted and beloved by gamers who will defend it as being fine because you're never "paying to win." Go tell a League of Legends player LoL's model is exploitative and they'll bite your head off. Valve are pretty much leading the F2P charge with Team Fortress and Defence of the Ancients being a constant test-bed for different monetisation models.

[FrieChamp]

This article is based on the assumption that paying = enjoyment. Are 100% of the people who shell out $60 for a paid game happy with the game? A good F2P game is enjoyable, no matter if you decide to pay or not.

 

About the state of mobile in general and this evil "data" specifically: there have always been people who'd rather copy a succesful formula for quick profits than taking risks with original stuff. We've all seen shovelware on other platforms, too. The points he is making is the usual artist vs suit discussion. I don't think he knows what he's talking about when he talks about analytics. Intuitive design skills are as important as ever. Otherwise you're just throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks. Data cannot give you that awesome game idea nobody has thought of yet. But data can be a tool to optimize games and create better experiences.  

 

If you think that the top grossing games on mobile are crap and not "real" games, have you considered that the majority of mobile users don't consider themselves "gamers" and have different tastes/backgrounds than you? If you want to make an artistic game that's fresh and looks/plays amazing, then slap a price tag on it - nobody is stopping you to do that on mobile. Apple is constantly looking for great, original content and they are featuring decent paid games. It is not guarenteed, but I don't remember a guarentee when Steam was still accepting/rejecting games at their sole discretion either. 

 

P.S.

 

 

Threes, Plague Inc., Limbo, Minecraft, New Star Soccer

 

Plague Inc. offers IAP, Limbo was VC-funded and New Star Soccer is F2P. Just sayin'.

[Steppenwolf]

Granted New Star Soccer is a very bad example by the author. To me it represents everything that is wrong with mobile gaming. I used to play it on PC years ago. Paid once, then had a blast with it. On mobile on the other hand it is barely functional without in app purchases. There is no option to buy a fully functional full version. But what you can pay for are things that temporarely boost your character at prices that are in no sane relation to what you pay for. The whole payment model is designed in a way that if you would play it for as long as you would play the PC version you would pay x times more in the end. To me that's a scam and that's what wrong with a shitload of fp2 games on mobile. Either that or they bombard you with annoying ads just in case it's the next flappy bird so the dev will get rich.

Edited May 11, 2014 by Steppenwolf

[selmitto]

The author talks about "conjuring the new" and mentions Plague Inc. However, he clearly haven't done a proper research as that game is just like Pandemic. Just google it.

[Izuno]

This is why I post things like this here....always good analysis from multiple angles.  The way my colleagues and I view it, we see that the notion that there is a bubble is correct, just not 100% correct. Certainly there are unsustainable practices in F2P, but as you guys have mentioned there are some games doing F2P right, or at least better.  We don't see mobile F2P as a giant bubble that will destroy itself, rather we see a lot of shakeout as gamers get sick of the grind that many F2P mobile games become.  In other words, Farmville etc. on Facebook was the hot, cute new thing but people got burnt out of it.  It will happen again in mobile and it will likely get harder and harder to make big money (by as many companies) in mobile F2P unless the companies simply offer more actual gaming value...which gets harder and harder.

 

tl;dr:

Market forces and competition will hopefully weed out the weak, but that doesn't necessarily mean the thing you hate is the weak.  Mobile F2P isn't going to collapse just yet but parts of it may spectacularly flame out.  Get the popcorn!

[Skjalg]

Fairly sure I've read this article fifty times already by different authors, although this one at least gets credit for length. As usual it pretends mobile and traditional gamers are the exact same demographic, but the former have just been mislead by the evil people in suits. It also has some pretty suspect examples: Mobile games don't care about UX design? Please. Like all other opinion articles in Polygon, it's link-bait to advertise something, although at least it isn't quite as factually inaccurate as Bennet Foddy's "my game collection won't have net-play because I don't understand net-code" piece.

 

The F2P model is already ingrained in PC gaming and Steam, and accepted and beloved by gamers who will defend it as being fine because you're never "paying to win." Go tell a League of Legends player LoL's model is exploitative and they'll bite your head off. Valve are pretty much leading the F2P charge with Team Fortress and Defence of the Ancients being a constant test-bed for different monetisation models.

Hah yeah, I've had this discussion a lot with LoL players and none of them seem to understand that if you pay you get an advantage simply because you can actually just grind and get the same advantage. But if I don't have time to grind I can pay.. to win... Its just the same with Hearthstone. 

 

Which, we all should know, is pay to win.

Edited May 12, 2014 by Skjalg

[Taylor]

Yeah, it's not the same as simply buying power, but you need to unlock all your options and if you don't have all your options it's not a level playing field. Most F2P games operate via time = money.

 

I think I worked it out that if you won three games a day it would take about 5 years to unlock everything. Although this also includes runes (and most of those are pointless) and doesn't account for the continued stream of more content to unlock.