I would agree with that and I don't think customers would have a problem with that intent, however if developers start to fish for whales or over inflate the value of their product then we're always going to have this debate. The model itself isn't really the villain, it's more the self regulated nature, good developers with decent intentions will suffer the more the less than ethical developers keep pushing the limits. Freemium itself will hit the same hurdles as more developers move over and more customers get burnt (by the not so well intended). But theoretically it makes sense if everyone plays fair, just as there are no developers if they're not getting paid properly, there won't be any customers (or at least a lesser pool) if they keep having bad experiences with the model.
Hey, I did my part! I posted and changed my signature to say boycott EA until they remove the wait timers on RR3, then got hammered by the pro developer faction rip73. http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=178087&page=117 So I tried, but it is hopeful, EA has just made changes to shorten the wait timers, so there is still hope that the timers will be removed by the time the game hits the US.
About the gambling inapps, you can't win actual money or physical prizes right? What you are saying is there are a lot of games like slot machines, where you can play, but then run of out of coins, so you have to buy more inapp coins right? But there are no prizes right? So if this is the case, then I don't think it would be considered gambling, even though in a realistic sense, it is. I have heard of some seniors that I know that love these gambling simulators, I never understood why, but they are bored and probably don't have the dexterity to play console games. Like my brother in laws parents. They got an ipad, so my brother in law was asking me what gambling slot machine games were best. I was like wtf? I am supposed to be an expert on ios games, and I was dumbfounded, I had no clue. It was kind of funny for me, but I didn't think all that much about it. I better warn my brother in law about disabling inapps on his parents ipad haha. Oh well.
Not in the same way afaik, not sure you can cash your chips in so to speak but it's converted to in game currency which you would normally buy with $$$, so I guess you have a point as far as legality goes. But they're not like the simulated slot machines of old, which were pure simulations and more about point scoring. For all intents and purpose I feel it's the same and am more suspect re the age, but you are probably right. A fair bit of tax being missed out there regardless.
Thanks for the insight. I'm aware of the reasons why developers are after higher returns. Why wouldn't they? I think most people (gamers and devs) can assume that we are all part of the problem that lead us towards the change in pricing model. I would also like to think by working together that we can come up with a solution. Most posts in here so far have highlighted one of the main stumbling blocks of IAPs as being greed. A game that was released this week had a $5.99 purchase price. Some were not impressed at the high difficulty early on and the not so subtle push towards IAPs for easier progress. Now perhaps the games asking price stacked against projected sales would only cover costs and the IAPs would possibly get them ahead. We dont know. This is the issue. There is no transparency. Detailed P&Ls shouldn't be part of the games description but its content pricing and what it does should. The same goes for boasting that a game is FREE. How the Appstore could lead me to hate one of greatest words to ever be scribed is beyond me. Without the transparency gamers cry "greed" and we go nowhere. So how do we get around this? Sadly trusting all devs to do the right thing is about as naive as thinking that a stack of douche bags aren't going to buy a $100 dollar car in RR3. Thanks again for your comments and BTW huge fan of your games!
I think Deepworld might become the first game where I actually end up buying consumable iAP. They seem generous and the cash only items are great.
The game unlock is $2.99 and for $9.99 you can get some decent stuff, although $24.99 is where things get fun. I'll consider going for the bigger pack if they add a little bit more content in the coming months.
Yeah, September has a good point that the freemium model is not the actual villain, it is how it is implemented that is more important. I do think many developers need to be more honest and if they are designing a freemium game, don't do crap like try to take advantage of early adopters with price drops to freemium in 3 days. Or changing a game from premium to freemium on an update. If you do that, just do two versions of the game. Sure, it's more work, but it's the right thing to do, and who knows maybe some can prove that they can have more sales by having a premium and freemium versions at the same time. TA seniors often side with developers, but this market is a two way street. It's important for developers to have a good freemium model plan, and create ways to make buying inapps fun. Not forced like in paywalls, wait timers, or artifical damage for repairs. Make us want to buy your inapps, that is what is important. Some developers seem have lost all memories of when they were consumers. It's important to live life poor at some point, so that if you become rich, you understand both sides of the freemium debate.
I am so totally in agreement with this. Timers and stuff are horrible. I'm even surprised it works tbh, putting deliberate frustrations in my way is only gonna have one outcome - uninstall/no money. We're doing our next game with booster packs. You start with some basic stuff and can play the whole game unimpeded but just without much variety. Play a lot and earn some boosters eventually. Buy a few boosters to start with and you get more to play with and hopefully thus more fun. Buy a ton of boosters and you get everything in the game, but that just gives more choice, not an advantage in stats for the multiplayer etc. Time will tell if this works or not, but I think it's the best of all worlds.
Agreed. One thing i've noticed is how much gamers spend money on IAPs to customize the look of their character, car, alien etc. When in MP situations people like to stand out from the crowd. These avenues are good as they don't affect the gameplay and can run in conjunction with either premium or freemium models. Paywalls just seem dishonest and sneaky. Why not just have a unlock price for the rest of the game after the 1st stage or car or whatever. It promotes trust and transparency.
This sounds cool! Enjoy the hotdog but pay for the sauce. Im wondering if it would serve you well to give a lowdown of this content in the Apps description as many gamers just throw up red flags at the idea of IAPs as they've been burnt before
Yes, we have considered that. I see no reason for freemium games not to explain how they monetise right there on the store description. Nobody seriously expects a free game to be totally free and complete, so missing this off isn't fooling anybody. Worse, a lot of people will assume the worst - see the size of several threads about RR3 before even a single fact emerged.
Ha yep it was crazy here. A major issue being all the ugly stuff hit early on. No one knew they were going they were going to be waiting for repairs unless they paid. Transparency again. Of course now we know that it opens right up after a few cars and it is a pretty un-intrusive IAP model. The EA name casts a large shadow for alot of gamers
Greedy Manipulation is what IAP is I don't offer any tears for developers who claim their premium games are not making enough to pay off their $million mortgage and neither should anyone here. Freemium represents a manipulative, insidious model of using cons and virtual trickery to empty people's wallets. The majority of gamers hate IAP but developers show absolute contempt for us by completely arrogantly ignoring our pleas for good premium models. Why were premium ok for years? Why did premium make a fortune for many small developers whose stories of success you can google for? Simply because greedy Apple enticed them with a model that could make MORE $$ knowing there were enough gambling addicts to take the bait. And it's those fools who sell their souls that are making gaming hell for us. The only reason is for MORE fortune and riches NOT to make ends meet as lies would try and deceive us to believe. Almost every gamer hates games like Real Racing 3 and IAP rip offs but they don't care. Their one and only mission in life is to rip you off as far as you're silly enough to allow yourself to be ripped. A very famous person said 'Greed hath made captive all mankind' rings so true here. It's all fuelled by sheer greed. They could give gamers good premium games but their prime objective is to get you addicted and hope you sell out your soul and because a small minority are stupid enough to do that they rake in their massive fortune and show those who don't like it the finger. Freemium will one day self destruct like the banks. It's up to us gamers not to support this IAP trash. It's an insult. The only time I would consider it fair to have IAP would be for a sequal not just chapters. Soon weather apps will become SUBSCRIPTION based. Information will all be based on a subscription model and games and entertainment on selling or unlocking virtual non existent items. Why don't we charge them for using our computers and graphics cards to show us ads on every page?
I presume you don't actually want answers to those questions, as if you spent any amount of time at all thinking on the subject, almost all of them would answer themselves. The rest can be researched very easily. As to the rest of the diatribe, well everyone has an opinion. To make them worth sharing though, it'd be nice to see the workings out. For example: "$million mortgage" Which developers have these? "The majority of gamers hate IAP" Evidence? (Hint, about 0.01% of app store customers visit TA) "..of using cons and virtual trickery.." How? "Almost every gamer hates games like Real Racing 3" Evidence?
I've said this probably too many times, but one more time won't kill me. I don purchase IAP. I spend money on games that are full self contained. If they have IAP, then it should be for stuff I don't care about because I'm not buying it. I think last year I spent around $200 on the AppStore and not a penny went to IAP. I got a lot of premium games and it didn't bother me that some of those premium games were considered "short". I'm fine with that. The only model that works consistently on me is to release a trial/free version of a game along side a premium version. If I can test a game I'm more likely to buy it. So yes, I have to skip games that are free but have IAP to unlock the rest of the game. It costs nearly nothing to put out a premium version of a game next to a free one with an IAP unlock. The code is pretty much identical. Part of my thought in this is the future and my past. In the past, a game purchase could be pulled from my collection and played without issue. On the flip side with digital games, in the future I'm depending on the AppStore to let me recover an IAP purchase to play something again and there's no guarantee I will be able to do that. At least with self contained games I can back them up to iTunes and have a path back to playing them even if they get fully pulled from the AppStore (like what happened to Real Racing 1,2>i last week). Consumable IAP is like gambling or for a less evil comparison it's like arcade games of the past. What ever happened to the arcades? Oh yeah they kept upping the price and developing more expensive games to the point that they weren't financially viable because people were playing more self contained console games at home. One last thing, the AppStore is over saturated with developers and games. Even with a monsterous number of ios users, with too many choices it would be harder to make money developing huge games with big budgets. So my suggestion to small devs, stay small and develop smaller games to maximize profits. It would be nice I'm sure to have multimillion dollar budgets on games but right now your main competition for premium games is a one or two person dev team that can pump out something fresh with fantastic gameplay. Trying to grow big fast is a sure path to failure in this market.
That's a much better reasoned opinion, thanks. You are wrong on a couple of points though that I can't let drift... But the splitting of forces like that destroys discoverability via the charts. Our old games work this way and it did us no favours. If you prefer trial/full with two downloads and a split set of user reviews etc., why are you so dead against an IAP unlock from a trial to a full version inside the one game? Are you under the impression that the unlock IAP you bought the game with isn't remembered by iTunes? It's just as reliable as reinstalling an old game. Actually, there is exactly that. You can always get a (non consumeable) IAP back from iTunes and it's now a requirement for apps to have a button to do exactly that. Whatever method you used to get that game back, the IAP history is still kept in your account iirc. Sorry, but this is terrible advice. The industry is littered with developers who made small games to "maximise profits" and made literally no income at all. In fact it's the vast majority. Even if you do a snake game it has to have high production values to stand even a remote chance of selling more than zero copies. The average "per app" income is about $17 iirc. Given that the top of that average is filled with high value big games taking most of the money, what do you think the bottom is filled with?
The difference is that the idiots paying money for virtual chips have no expectation of ever actually winning anything. It's not gambling, it's giving someone money.
Well this is an interesting thread. worldcitizen, I think you have misjudged the average developer rather dramatically. Rubicon, your insight is interesting and welcome. Thanks for your input. IAP's aren't inherently evil. Expansions are great, pay to unlock full game is certainly fine, buy your progress is ok I guess...there are plenty of models that can help developers generate income without offending the consumer. I'm getting a little tired of dual currency based games, though. There aren't many that I play. There are a lot that started with a different model, and after I paid for the game, they changed to a freemium-based, dual currency system. I find this totally unacceptable. Just because you gave me some useless virtual currency to compensate me for my purchase does not make it ok to pull the rug out from under me. Totally unacceptable. Furthermore, the dual currency system in general is rather ridiculous...and not something I support at all. The thing is, these types of models make money, as illustrated a few posts before. Although I don't believe for a second the average consumer of a freemium title spends $14 on said title. That's absurd. Even $5 is absurd. I'd be willing to bet it's less than $1, but still, the math works out in the end because its proven to be a more profitable model. That's why everyone is doing it. That's why it won't stop. There are plenty of developers doing great things on this platform. I'm not sure how much that will change in the next few years, but RR3 is not the end of the world. I can name 5 amazing titles I've played that have released in the last couple months without demanding IAP. That's more than anything on the consoles or the PC In that amount of time. And this is the slow quarter. This platform isn't doomed yet. Quite the opposite, from where I see things. I only hope the developers that are creating these amazing experiences are being compensated accordingly. That's where the freemium threat scares me the most...the supersaturated market makes it hard for these games to get noticed by the people not in the know, and as a result, has to hurt the bottom line. I couldn't care less if Johnny Moneybags wants to buy his way to the top of whatever crappy freemium trash comes out next, so long as games like Year Walk or Heroes & Castles find their way onto my device every now and again. EDIT: turns out $14 average per *paying* customer isn't as absurd as I thought, albeit with a caveat: http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/11/arppu-in-freemium-games/
