Quote:
Originally Posted by Claytoonz
Hey LordGek,
All understandable reactions given the general tone of some freemium games.
When Ron and I decided to go with this approach to our design it was with the goal of avoiding that hamfisted grab for the wallet, while allowing players to have some fun at no cost. A couple things I can clarify, if that isn't too scammy:
- Yes. Some of the niftier weapons in Destroy mode are purchased with coins. You can earn enough to buy a single shot pretty easily just playing the game for a few minutes. A few levels into the game and you can collect at least enough for several UFO's or Flaming Cannonballs on a single level. Also, our Destroy scoring is based on skill vs. quantity. If you hit the right spot with the free cannonballs, you can still get a high score -- but you need to choose your shot more carefully (points per piece broken goes down with each shot taken).
- You can play a level again and still get coins. Coins appear at different altitudes and in different layouts that can change every time you play a level. So, you might see coins at 100 feet one time, but not the next (but maybe more will appear at 200, etc.). We just wanted to make the levels worth playing again. Hope this clears up any misunderstanding about how this works.
- True. The Cathedral set costs more in-game coins than the other stuff in the store, but we always thought this would be attainable. As you build and collect coins, they increase value WITH ALTITUDE. So, if you get through the levels in the basic game, you can rake in some pretty good coins totals. This was also something we did to avoid gaming the early levels, which can be built super easily.
TBBC was something a couple game designers did for fun. We figured it would offer enough game at $0.00 to be worth checking out, and some additional stuff if someone decides to either spend some time with the game, or take a shortcut yes, by buying some coins if you want to unlock everything. It's actually really interesting to hear "just charge me a couple bucks for everything," since that's pretty much what you get if you fall for our evil plan.
We did some stuff in the past with regular pricing and were curious to learn about in-app purchase since that often gets your game in front of more eyeballs, which at the end of the day is what we really wanted to do.
Hope this helps clear up any misconceptions, or at least makes our evil plans more horrifying.
Best,
Clayton
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I think I jumped the gun a bit and appreciate the randomization of coins and pieces each replay.
Paying cash up front to have a game completely unlocked is sooo different than being nickle and dimed for consumables each time I play.
I think an IAP option to buy the new level set is more than fine, but I'm afraid if I bought some coins to get the Cathedral set would not tranfer over to a new device. In games where you are buying expansions directly and not credits (like new tables in Pinball Arcade), even if I need to reinstall the game, all purchases are preserved.
07-20-2012, 09:37 PM
Linear Mode
