So recently ngmoco announced that Eliminate would be free, but you have to pay a buck to buy "energy" that enables you to keep playing. I was thinking, this has now basically turned into a "Chuck E. Cheese, pay as you play type thing. So here is the question: Do you think this style of pricing is good or bad? They both have their advantages. Free- Pay as you Play pricing -Get to try the game free, see if you like it enough to buy energy -Better for people on a tighter budget if they decide to just wait for energy to charge Set pricing -Cheaper for people who can't stop playing -No more worries about having to keep dishing out a buck every couple rounds So what do you think?
good or bad for players? this is a common pricing model for multiplayer games, i would say it is a fair model.
You are not forced to buy energy man. Why does everyone act like it is required? It is replenished by itslef every 90 minutes, so if you want to wait you can and your energy will return. My only question is, with the game being free, why is everyone still complaining about pricing? They put quite a bit of time and effort (not to mention money) into this game, so we would enjoy it. Now, why would you not want to support them (with your money) so they can keep the servers running smoothly?
So far it sounds great for the gamers and extremely risky for ngmoco. But until the game actually ships we can't really conclude anything.
It's a good think no doubt. - more players - bigger plus+ network - better and cheaper advertising - more money for game development - try/buy - more frequent updates since updates will bring more cash with more DLC - decide what you need instead up buying the whole package. - ...
Yeah, I was actually surprised to see that, considering all of the nay say I have been hearing from others. I hope everyone is happy with this decision made by NGMOCO. It is a very bold move, but I think it will work out better for them in the long run. Guys, dont be afraid to make the in app purchases, as it will keep the servers running smoothly.
Good for us, bad for Ngmoco. The die-hard fans that will be buying the energy would have gladly dished out 10 bucks to buy it. However players like me, who are patient, would have waited for a sale, then just played when we have energy. Now when it's free, they don't make any money on release, and only the die-hard fans will give them any money for energy. Now I like the fact that it's free, but I'm not sure if it was a smart move.
Just remember, they were gonna do in-app purchasing anyways. This just eliminates the .99-9.99 that they had in mind. It only changes initial pricing not the in-app purchase prices. I really see why that would be a bad thing. Why is there even a thread on this? lol I mean unless you want to pay more, then yes I can see why you would be upset. "dang it eliminate is fee!! ah and i couldve spent my .99 cents on this, instead I'm spending it on (insert awesome .99-cent game here) Am I missing something EDIT: i just realized, did they ever announced how they would do in-app purchasing at all? I think this questions relies heavily on whether or not they were going to do in-app purchasing this way or not. If they werent, its bad b/c for the player there's a potential you might end up paying more than $10 If they were, its good. for above reasons
Do we know how many games we can have with our free energy? If this is good I will want to play it a fair bit, but not have to pay multiple times a day to play it.
I really wish people would read about how the energy system in the game actually works before having these completely incorrect knee jerk reactions to how they think it's going to work. If you're having doubts about Eliminate, read this- http://toucharcade.com/2009/10/01/eliminate-hands-on-preview/ If you're still having some doubts about Eliminate, read this again because you probably missed something- http://toucharcade.com/2009/10/01/eliminate-hands-on-preview/ Finally, if you still aren't sure how the energy system is going to work, read this- http://toucharcade.com/2009/10/01/eliminate-hands-on-preview/ Seriously though, there is absolutely no down side here. People who enjoy the games who want to rapidly progress their character can toss out a couple bucks every now and again to buy more energy for their characters. People who only play the game once in a while can earn credits whenever they play because it's unlikely that these kinds of casual gamers will play the game more than 10-15 minutes at a time every 90 minutes. Furthermore, the people who love the game but don't want to give ngmoco a dime can also play the game for as long as they want, they just will stop earning credits when they don't have energy. Reading how people seem to be interpreting this news that Eliminate is going to be free has been extremely puzzling. The problem is, this isn't a sustainable business model. They would have needed to sell the game for 99¢ or so in order to generate the vibrant community the game flat out requires. 99¢ doesn't buy a whole lot of servers and bandwidth. A constant stream of energy upgrades and kickbacks from people completing the in-game marketing offers on the other hand creates a constant revenue flow. There are tons of games online right now using this exact same business model and the amount of money they bring in on a daily basis is just downright disgusting.
Yes, that is what I was thinking. All these reactions were making me doubt my memory b/c I remembered that they said Eliminate was going to be very in-app purchase based. I really see nothign wrong with this being free. I mean, heck they were going to charge anyways. sigh *goes to play warfare inc, until eliminate and command and conquer come out* @ Hodapp in the article it says to wait 90 minutes to play again, but in the video I saw yesterday from their website it says that each player is given a full energy bar per-day. That could be a gameday i guess, do you know for a fact its 90 minutes? you did mention that they were still working out details so I just want to be sure.
You might be waiting for a long time then... Imagine what would happen if it was possible to enter a negative price for an app?
Not sure, the original idea was once per day, but when we did the whole preview deal Chris Plummer, the producer, told us the current recharge time was 90 minutes. They made it pretty clear that this was all still up in the air, and they were still tweaking the game balance with the whole energy system. Since the game is going to be free now it wouldn't surprise me if they increased the recharge time, but the last we heard was 90 minutes.
Since it's free it'll get terrible reviews, since only half of the users (at best) will buy energy NGmoco will have no money to keep the servers running which will cause lag, and because of this last issue some other ridiculous pricing arrangement (i.e. Subscription to play that costs a lot, etc.) will e adopted or the game will be dropped. This is not the way to go in the first massive online FPS for the iDevices. Wrong market, wrong time. I predict massive ammounts of fail and let-downs.
