Yes. Go check Solomon's Keep/Boneyard. Even IB1/2 would qualify, but not sure if you could consider IB1/2 freemium. Star Warfare:Alien Invasion also did it right. Game is free, and you can buy gold/mithril. But you don't need to, as you can earn enough via playing. Horrendously negative examples: Dungeon Hunter 3/4 - timers for everything, but you can pay to make things go faster. Good "pay what you want" examples, excellent games by the way: --- Spellcraft CCG - it's free; and you do not need to buy any of the IAPs, as the gold they give you can easily earn through playing. But then the devs are friendly and dedicated, makes you want to support them by buying something (which I did, biggest pack available ~8€; twice even, I think). --- Ravenmark:Mercenaries (coming soon): Possible conflict of interest disclosure: I am a betatester, and extemely impressed by the game, the devs, and its predecessor. Will be multiplayer and free, but you can buy gold/gems for cash. Gems I needed next to none so far. Cannot comment on if you will need gold IAP, as we have plenty for testing. However, the devs are extremely fair, so I just don't see them suddenly springing some cheap money-grabbing scheme on players; and I see so far that you can earn a fair share just through playing. And yeah, it has cooldown timers, so you cannot send your army into the next fight right away. But - I normally *DESPISE* timers - even that is okay, as it forces you to use different units and come up with different strategies&tactics. And I cannot play 24/7 anyways, so the timers don't bother me much. By the time I get to my next session, the 5-50 minutes are over already.
Now here are games that I think have done freemium wrong. (Side note: The games I lost below arent necessarily bad, heck, some of them are really good, it's just that their pay models aren't the best) Random Heroes: The problem with this game is that it is extremely grindy at the beginning. It makes it extremely boring. Once you get your first really good weapon, you say to yourself "Why wasn't this game this fun from the start?!" Clash of Clans: I've deleted that game for the second time, and it's not coming back. The first time I downloaded it because everyone in school is always playing it and acting like its the best game ever. NO. It's very boring, leveling up anything ranges from several hours to a week, maybe even more, and everything is too expensive. I tried giving it a second chance today, but I'm done with it. Doodle Army 2: It's a fun game, but the perks cost way too much battle points and the frequency in which you earn them takes way too long. Trigger Fist: I'm okay with the expansion pack, but all the other IAPs are gross. By the time you get your third weapon from each of the three classes, the XP gain becomes painfully slow. And to level up quickly, they charge you 4 dollars to get your next class unlock. That's just rediculous, and it's why it's not on my phone anymore. SAS: Zombie Assault 3: This one isn't necessarily freemium done "wrong," but nor is it done "right." Now, if this thread was made a long time ago, I would've said its done right, but it's gotten more and more freemium after each update. The costs to upgrade your weapons and equipment start to skyrocket for the stronger ones, but I guess that makes since since they are already extremely powerful as is. Overkill 2: The first one wasn't that bad, but while I enjoy this one more than the first, it's more grindy too. Some of the weapon attachments cost OMS, a currency extremely hard to get, even through Tapjoy, and of course the attachments that cost OMS are better than the ones that cost cash. The IAP to get more of them is also overpriced. Pixel People: The amount and cost of the IAP in this game is gross, and the cost to expand your land increases dramatically out of no where, so why can't I stop playing it?! I think I'm more addicted to this than I was to Tiny Tower. And how can I forget these: Any game from Gameloft that doesn't cost money. Every Glu Game ever. All of Triniti's half-assed games, "paid" or otherwise.
The skins are absolutely optional. Everything else costs just fine. You wanna know a grindy but good runner? Pitfall! How that made your list of freemium games done right beats me.
Just read your reply sorry. Anyways, it's because it never felt like grinding to me. The more i played the game, the more i just enjoyed it. Didnt even think about upgrading a lot of stuff, but surprisingly, i had them all upgraded in the first week of playing. Other than that, the limited thingies that let you unlock waypoints are the game's only bad point for me, unless you already know when to use them to maximize their use. Oh, and i played pitfall on the touch4, 4s and ipad mini, and I had all upgrades maxed out, s'why i claimed it wasnt too grindy. Probably because i enjoyed the game too much.
I always liked Storm the Train. Sonic Dash was okay provided you did the Daily Challenge every day and for some reason I always end up going back to Verticus. I may only have spent so much time on Verticus and Sonic Dash as I bought them before they went free, but I still enjoyed them nonetheless.
What is this Freemium? Sorry to say that there has to be a reason why companies are still for horribly done freemium? Somebody must still be getting paid despite the lack of dignity in the games being pushed by the companies. Is that was it is? Removing dignity from the game and from its players, in the attempt to obtain revenues. But for the revenue chasers, if they are getting what they are looking for, why change what they are doing?? The problem with all the ideas we consider to be bad freemium is that, like it or not, the consumer vote says that these cheap freemium antics are rewarding for these business suits who think its the future of gaming. Here is a proposal for the standard we can set for freemium: Bad Freemium - Pay money to progress. Pay money to skip purposely tedious tasks. Pay money to do anything in the game you thought it should have done to begin with. Good Freemium - Actual add ons, most likely a post release add on. Visual customizations that have nothing to do with gameplay mechanics. (The idea is that a community will support a games economy if the game's dignity and the players dignity is in tact.) I've mention customizations that have nothing to do with gameplay mechanics to avoid falling under the category of Bad Freemium. Doing freemium mechanic based items such as weapons and power ups have to be balanced to the point where you don't need them to beat the game. There is a line between offering a item that you dont "NEED" to beat the game with but yet it would take you 365 days of mindless grinding to "beat" the game otherwise.
Just fact checking here. I presume your "pay money to progress" part of bad freemium makes an allowance for paying the developers something for making the game you are playing? But it's not as big or bold as the line between paying for a game and freeloading. Just sayin.
I guess that difference is largely down to honesty. I don't think many people would complain about a game (such as Magic 2013) where you can get a certain way for free, and hen pay to unlock the rest of the game. The problem is games that claim to be free to pay, but you reach a pay wall that you can't get past without buying some big weapon or something with real money. Of course inevitably, once you do that you'll progress a little way before hitting another pay wall that requires an even more expensive weapon.
I guess I just don't see a problem with this. Back in the day (I'm surprisingly old), all games came with demos so you could try for free and buy with confidence. This was a good thing. Then a while back that idea fell foul of publishers, mainly claiming that you can't give a good demo of something like CoD in five minutes. And was also partly about hiding the shiteness of shite games, of which there were a lot. So fast-forwarding to today, and still only really prevalent on our favourite mobiles, we have demo+. You play quite a long way into a game for bupkis and then at some point you run into a place where the dev decides "Now hang on a minute matey, that's plenty - get your wallet out coz we have to eat". It just seems fair enough to me and I'm happy to pay for games that way. What's utterly wrong imo is stuff like buying bags of fertiliser that go away so you have to buy more. That's a con. Everyone knows it's a con. But most freemium games I've played are not like this. Nor are the ones we're going to be developing in the future. (In fact our next game, our first FTP, has no consumeables at all and can be played to at least halfway through for free. What we're selling through boosters packs is more choices.)
Whats your next one rubicon? I think freeloading can be alliveated by doublers. That way grinding is reduced and the game is payed for.
You are right. We are spoiled today because its easy to be a freeloader. Today we get whole games for free, right at our disposal. If I remember right, most demo discs came with a magazine or something that was getting a promotion out of it. But then demos were downloadable start with the launch of the 360, and it looks like the magazine and demo disc business was out. Its not like the games are getting more expensive (I remember getting a deal on MK2 for SNES at $68, from the retail $75, same tag as NBA hangtime on N64) I believe people will love to support creators of great products. The issue comes at the con's. Some people are tricked and conned, and eventually we all learn. Look at Zynga's bubble bust. I believe its about we the consumers to DEMAND a standard. I like how apple approached the music business as an example. They didn't approach with a subscription to "get music" and have "free songs" for a signup and some songs have "blackout dates" and all that jazz. It was straight forward. .99 Cents a song! People knew what they were buying. and Thats it! That being said, What if we break it down to not 'conning' consumers, we would have to be honest and our transactions transparent. So our last line of demanding a standard is as developers ourselves. We have to set the vision and create the product. And I think that boils down to keeping focus on doing what we love, creating what we love and presenting a genuine product. Create something worth experiencing. And people will vote.
Freemium Ideas I forgot to post some basic ideas I came across and wantd to bring out. What about a SAVE IAP? You won't be able to save any progress or anthing in the game unless you purchase the IAP. This way the designers arent forced to 'adjust' mechanics based on algorithms to get the 'numbers' right. The important thing is something like a SAVE IAP flat out says "this is how we intend on getting paid for what we created" and going with what I mentioned earlier about having your transactions clear. Doublers are along the same idea, but design can be free from grinding.
Look for Combat Monsters coming in a couple of months. Quick and dirty video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0TmDoxNyKrY
I've not thought it through, but I like that idea a lot. Although on mobile you can go for days without turning an app off even if you're not playing with it.
My expectations and standards are a bit higher now due to the release of Warhammer Quest, and XCom, not to mention the enhancement done on FFT which made it's way as a permanent resident on my ipad mini, but looking at the video for Combat Monsters, i like it. Cant wait to play it!
Yep, I think XCOM set the standard for everybody in even roughly that genre. Then again, with a brand and team that size, you won't find many devs making original games like that for mobile. (Worse for us, GBWG was nominated for a games BAFTA but guess who won it.)
I believe since you never know when the app can be closed, you always risk losing your data. after a while players will understand. Its an interesting idea to me; it more or less replays the same experience I had growing up with a PS1 and not having memory card to save anything for a while. And again its not dependant on game design. P.S. Combat Monsters looks really cool! Looking forward to checking it out!
XCom! The bizarro thing being this was in the full blown games category. We actually got put in the same pool as the XCom PC game, which was an honour all by itself.
