Hey, I am a long time touch arcade reader and I check out multiple threads every day. You can't do that thoug without lengthy discussions in most f2p threads about how f2p is bad. I see multiple 1-star reviews for games just because they are f2p. I see people that just comment in threads "f2p, it's bad.". On the flip side I just saw a comment in a premium game thread about "this game is good, where are th f2p zealots, go buy this game" ( not literally, just from memory). So there is that side as well. But then there are the people that get mad about people that voice their concerns for the price of newly released games. "Is it worth it to pay X,99 for this game?" "Dude it is only X,99, don't complain!". I myself ask for impressions every now and then. Even if the game only costs 0,99 and do not grab the games in question right away. Now you could say that it's not even one euro, but if I buy a few games like these every week plus my normal premium games I come out way higher than I want to in the long term. Even a few cheap games produce a considerable cost if you just buy everything "that looks promising". Best example for me was Zombiebaseball. The first few pages where so positive in this forum, that I grabbed it after watching the trailer. Well turned out it was so punishing and difficult that I wasted my money, regardless of the cost. So why is there this hate towards freemium in general? I get it, most f2p games are bad. I download most of them in a new week and most of the time I delete them after 5 minutes. I also get, that potentially great games suffer from f2p or just plain fail completely. It is often read that they got ruined by f2p and I tend to kind of agree to that sometimes. But nothing justifies the dozen of comments from people that just hate f2p, they don't even try the game but just rate it 1-star, mostly with a comment which aggressive towards f2p. But if we look on the other side: I am not even slightly as mad towards bad f2p games that I do not like and insta delete as I am towards the premium games I buy and then insta delete. Worst even I sometimes feel obligated to give them another try or play longer on my first one because i payed money for it. So the risk free element of f2p is something I really like. The best of both worlds for me personally are free to try games, (play x missions before purchasing the complete game as iap) but they also get hated on by others and I feel as a developer I would have to ask myself: If i set this as free on the App Store with iap (even it is a single one which unlocks the full game), I have to run the risk from people that just hate f2p just never bothering to checking them out. At last I think that these people are a vocal minority, like so very often in the Internet, as f2p games are INCREDIBLY popular as of last year and such. But I am very curious why there is such a passionate discussion about the pros and cons discuss above in the vast majority of threads on the forums. Cheers!
That's a good, well reasoned post forsakenxe. I'm all in favour of lively discussion but the f2p debate is getting old now, and will not change anything. There's something for everybody on the Appstore; a great choice of games and payment models. We can choose what we like and leave the rest.
I agree, good post but the subject has been beaten to death. I remember years ago it was which genre of game was better than another with other subjects surfacing later and now we have the f2p vs premium debate/argument. There'll always be something to hash over.
My guess is plenty of people who congregate to Touch Arcade have an older mentality of purchasing content upfront. Also it doesn't help that some F2P games aren't shy about milking certain players with addictive tendencies for all their worth. I do agree that F2P does have its advantage over premium in being able to try out the game before committing any money. I have, like you, been burned by premium purchases that I did not care for even though they may have been liked by the majority. My golden rule is the MMO rule when it comes to F2P games. Most PC MMORPG's used to cost around $10 to $15 a month where I live (usually $15 if I remember right) before going the F2P route. If I really enjoy a F2P game I don't mind spending $10 to $20 a month on one F2P game. Of course if others have more money to spend and are responsible then more power to them, literally, if they spend much more. If I download a game and feel it's too heavy handed I usually delete the game. I also like the premium unlock method with some F2P games that are more try before you buy although you could be correct in people who avoid anything F2P overlooking certain titles.
I started gaming on the Atari 2600,so its ingrained in me to pay upfront for a video game. When I was introduced to the App Store, I would always seek out games without ads or IAP that unlock content. I cant bring myself to give it a chance and will flat out ignore titles based on that alone. Doesnt matter nowadays because some devs are forced to change their games to f2p or put ads in them. Developers should take notice of the Gunman Clive developer and various others who found success on a console digital marketplace.
For every successful console/Steam digital indie there are 500 abject failures -- that's the latest estimate I've read from Gameindustry.biz. And I wouldn't be surprised if Gunman Clive did well because it was first released on mobile. BTW, I'm of the Atari 2600 generation as well. But I'm also an arcade veteran, where I spent many a quarter for 3 measly lives on games I didn't own. Games that were designed, according to Miyamoto himself, to extract as much money from me as possible. Sound familiar?
The arcade comparison is fair, but it was different. The games were just hard based on how DIP switches were set and not a paywall implemented in game design. When I was in high school, my friends and I were able to get the arcade operator to modify DIP switches on certain games for us. The newer machines were off limits for obvious reasons.
They were also skill based, so if you got good enough you could theoretically play through the game with a single quarter. Then again, to get that good at a game like Donkey Kong, you had to spend a lot of money. Of course, you also had games like Gauntlet (and many brawlers that came later) that were through and through pay to win, since you could always keep going by pumping more quarters into them. And yes, those games were designed to have paywalls -- that's what boss fights were all about. My point is that the relationship between gaming and money is more complicated than "we used to pay for games upfront." For me, the question is not whether I'm playing upfront, but whether I'm getting entertainment value out of the experience. I've played many $60 games that felt like a ripoff, and I can think of more than a few freemium games that delivered big time. Not that there's anything wrong with buying only premium games. I would hope that anyone who does that takes the time to share their favorites on our forums -- premium developers need all the help guy can get.
I totally agree its a complicated issue. My beef with this whole thing is that devs that make premium games are struggling because of this. They should be able to charge more than 99¢ for a game in order to stay afloat, provide updates,etc rather than realize they need to change the game mechanics to f2p, ads,etc
I'll tell you a secret. The hate comes from not wanting to admit we are addicted to them and love them.
For me it's all about fun. A f2p game that allows me to buy stuff to make it easier always feels like there is a pay wall - regardless of whether there actually is one or I just suck. That feeling is no fun for me. I'm actually not really hating it - I just tend to play other stuff which just is clear about the fact that I suck. I then know that I should just practice more. With f2p, I am never sure that I can reach a point where I can beat the spike in difficulty.
I don't spend money on F2P games because usually they are hosted on a developer's server and they can decide when to pull the game whenever they please, so I try to only pay for games/apps that can still function even if pulled from the store...
I played games at arcade bars where it was free to play. The bars either made money from selling booze, or also a cover charge. Some games... Terminator 2 Judgement Day, Operation Wolf (both "rails shooters"), and Ninja Combat (That Neo Geo, side scrolling beat 'em up game in the same genre as Double Dragon), had easy levels with "unlimeted quarters". For the final level/boss, it'd be super hard that you needed mad skills to pass. For a couple of them, even if you had the credits, it would game over after x # of tries, so they were pulling stuff like this even during the olden' days. According to a GameFaqs.com FAQ, people got so good at the first edition of Gauntlet that they were able to beat the game on very few quarters. Later revisions, they added a "starvation mode" that meant if you were doing too good, food would NOT be generated. It happens with businesses in general. Some restuarants rely on booze income to keep the place going. Because of the whole "starbucks" culture that was pioneered, cafes can charge more outrageous prices for cup of joe, and that helps keep them in business. Many cases, they do a business plan, and if things look like they won't work out, they won't even bother with such ventures. Back to video games, one person even said he wish there were more AAA titles for Ipad, or iOS in general, but unfortunately, there's generally a culture of NOT paying for things on iOS. They need to charge x amount of $ that customers won't pay, so the right thing from a business perspective is to not bother.
I also started with an Atari 2600. However, times change, and both gamers and developers need to change with the times, or get left behind. Well, you and I can still whip out the Atari 2600 if we still have it somewhere, but to expect that we'd be like that 30 years later was at best wishful thinking. No1 could've really anticipated that we'd have consoles and portable devices with lots of computing power and resources in general, that are more affordable than gaming machines of the past, but would you say you're so ingrained that you couldn't adjust to a smartphone for gaming?
So you're trying to say f2p is the way it should be for gamers? No thanks, I'd rather spend my money on lotto tickets and lose than spend it on a f2p game. Little background info on me. I thought mobile was a viable platform until last year as I stopped purchasing mobile games due to lack of updates, games changing to f2p, implementing ads, etc. It pushed me to get a Nintendo 3DS and couldn't be happier. All I hope is that the developers that continue to make premium games charge more than 99¢ for their work because if they can't, this current trend will never end
Actually, I did NOT say such a thing. It appears you inferred that. As much as you hate how things are these days, the market has spoken... f2p is here because the buyers (not you and I, nor most of us here on TA... we're likely only the vast minority that buy premium games) generally don't spend $$ nor need to due to the "race to the bottom" scenario that's happened. Devs noticed that fp2 model lets them be more flexible in their dev cycles, not to mention do a much better job of deterring piracy. Also, since the AppStore doesn't let them charge for updates, f2p was a way around that. The "free updates for life" also works against devs who need to put in even more work to make updates, but can't charge for it, screwing them out of pay for more of their hard work. There's little incentive there to continue working. With my IpT5 running on 2 years, and the IpT6 having a pitiful 4" screen, I too may want to consider getting a Nintendo 3DS or 2DS. However, I still have a backlog of Steam games, so it's not like I'm lacking any good content.
I have a problem with F2P that is mentioned much more rarely than the reasons I've read above. I'll try to re-state it in a succinct way. Super Mario Bros. 3 is a true classic, one of the all-time best sellers, excellently balanced gameplay. While it starts out rather easy, by the end of the game it becomes pretty unforgiving. I enjoy the challenge because I understand that this is the way it was meant to be -- tough, ramped up. How do I know this? Because I bought it for $40, and I understand that it is in the designer's best interest to make the game as good as possible, to convince me to buy later games in the series, and to get me to tell my friends about it. Now, imagine if SMB3 was F2P. As the game gets more difficult, I have the ability to purchase extra lives always hanging over my head. And it leads me to wonder: is the game SUPPOSED to be this tough? Was difficulty added "artificially" to lead players to purchase assistance? This i true both generally ("World 8 is really tough!") and individually ("That one jump is impossible!") Every one of my failures in the game now makes me suspicious: am I just bad at this game, or am I, in fact, just playing (and paying) into the hands of the developer? Was this game deliberately made worse than it could be just so players would feel the need to continue paying out? That suspicion clouds everything for me. It's why I don't play ANY freemium games: I never can enjoy them, always wondering if this or that detail exists for my benefit (to make me a happier and therefore repeat customer) or my frustration (and therefore get me to buy items). Even if a game is "fair" with its IAPs, that suspicion lingers, leeching all the fun out of it for me. Perhaps ironically, I therefore have much less problem with energy bars and timers. If I'm directly paying to play, then I know that the developer wanted to make the game as fun as possible, to get me to continue buying time. It's items that directly impact the gameplay and balance that make most F2Ps total non-starters for me. Basically, a F2P game makes me feel like I need to constantly looking over my shoulder. I don't enjoy that sensation in an activity that is supposed to be entertaining and relaxing.
I would love someone to reply on this forum topic who supports f2p and actually spends real money towards a particlar f2p game (MMORG's don't count) Help me understand why you do it. Maybe you know someone that does and get their take on it. Thanks
