One of the Touch Arcade podcast episodes mentioned that at a recent gaming convention, it's all business, and no game. Many of the developers had the business side of things nailed down, and were talking to each other about ways to get more money out of their users, where they should also be charging $$. To the TA staff, it was kind of depressing.
Basically what's happened to me and why I am giving up on F2P is that the same cycle persists. Game is released, looks really promising. I start playing, kinda like it. Has potential. After really enjoying myself for awhile, they drop an update that patches in a lot of the same ole IAP nonsense gambling roulette wheel scheme. I quit in frustration Rinse, repeat. It's not going to get any better until people stop going all in on these games and/or until the market is so flooded that a bunch of publishers crash all around the same time. As for the brand recognition/loyalty, I just named some developers/publishers off the top of my head. I've been gaming long enough that I remember when Sierra (now defunct) and Activision were just small shops started by a collective of programmers often operating out of home offices and garages. All these big mega-companies started somewhere. Mobile gaming is fairly new and the ability to really hook consumers and build a lifelong brand is now. This cynical "take as much money as you can while leaving them with a sour experience" is going to tank these guys.
"At some point, this model with crash. The dissatisfaction is too high," Who's dissatisfied? Certainly not the casual gamers who are the majority of users for the f2p. All you've stated is opinion with nothing to back that up. Looking at the ratings for the f2p titles, which are in the 3-5 star range, indicates otherwise-and that's across all platforms, iOS, Android, and Windows.
It's 100% absolutely depressing. If you go to a conference like Casual Connect, half the talks or more are just "How to maximize revenue by making your users as miserable as possible." Every once in a while a gem like this one appears: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-09-17-weve-lost-our-internal-compass-for-what-good-even-means-any-more (disclosure - Aaron's a friend of mine) I think there's a shift happening, though - a few years ago, the "casual/mobile" sessions at GDC were dominated by "squeeze your users for $$$" talks, and folks pitching their consulting firms that will help you increase your monetization. But now, you'll see more talks focused around discussions of how to make F2P games that aren't purely exploitative garbage, or how to design a game for a mobile-specific audience, and more things that are people sharing knowledge of how to make mobile games that are actually *gasp* good. So I have some hope that as an industry, we're moving away from this addiction to fast, exploitative revenue, and realizing that there are a lot of benefits from the F2P model *other* than just $$, and that to do F2P in a sustainable way that players *enjoy*, you've got to take a different approach than just "maximize all metrics". It's happening, it just takes a few years to go from "seeing a talk at GDC" to "implementing something better" in most cases. But I think the big key will be when audiences have enough *good* F2P content out there that it's not whether you support F2P or avoid it entirely, but when you can choose to support an F2P game because it's clear that they value fun, and quality, and have your bests interests in mind as a player, and as someone who they see as a long-term *fan*, because they're not going to crush you under a pile of misery for another $.
Fascinating views guys, especially you OP. I believe that the current situation results from a huge number of people who have just entered the realm of video games. These people (women, kids and pretty much everyone in 3rd world) consider these games to be good, because they don't know any better. They just lack the perspective us veteran gamers have. I assumed that this current state of things could not last for more than a couple of years since the audience would eventually mature and start demanding for better games. This was few years ago. Now I'm starting to lose all hope.
