This article and the comments here saying "This is common knowledge in the industry" and "I'm getting tired of people saying this is a bad thing" are a beautiful illustration of why mobile games suck and freemium is destroying the industry.
There are plenty of good games out there. The problem is nobody plays them. Then the devs of those games say "Fuck this, I'm out" and go on to start making pay to win games because that's how to get paid making games. It's gotten to the point where the games we play aren't even fun; we just find an easy game that lets us shoot up a shot of dopamine once in a while and settle for that. Or maybe we pick up clash of clans, play "free" for a month, then once we're hooked we pay way more than we'd ever pay for a real game every month just to be competitive. And we still lose, because someone else has more money.
The majority of popular mobile games are a costly addiction, not a hobby.
As a side note, if anybody wants to support a couple awesome indie devs (and play a sick mobile game) check out http://subterfuge-game.com/
Just started playing a week ago, already in love. Found out on their forums & reddit a couple days ago they're already planning to stop development because in the 3 months they've been on the market they've lost $40,000.
EDIT: Also, their freemium is non-intrusive (Which is probably why they're sinking). Play for free, upgrade for $10 to be able to play multiple games at once and play rated games.
The most accurate (and amusing) description of that game I've heard is that it is a "backstabbing simulator".
I was in the alpha and had to delete it from my phone, it was too addictive. It's disappointing to hear that they're having money troubles, their game is pretty unique and deserves a better fate.
Except really it doesn't. While it might be unique it's clearly not what the market wants. I found the tutorial lengthy and confusing. The game doesn't have mass market appeal. Did anybody really expect this game to do well?
Not everybody wants to be entertained the same way that you do. In fact I think the market has shown us that most people like simple games that they can play for a few minutes at time, that don't involve much strategy or twitch skill that we would associate with previous video games. They've also voted with their wallets for the freemium model.
You need good games before people can buy them. List 5 fun mobile games relative to say good game-boy games ex: Metroid II: Return of Samus, Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, Dragon Warrior I & II, etc.
IMO, Angry Birds does not make the cut and I don't know of a better iOS game.
You can't compare most mobile games to "action"-y portable games like that, because a phone largely doesn't control the same way. Strategy and turn-based games tend to work better.
As far as good mobile games that provide more than a bathroom break or subway ride's worth of gameplay, off the top of my head:
* Carcassonne
* XCOM: Enemy Unknown and it's expandalone, Enemy Within
It's telling that three of those five were developed for other platforms first, and ported to mobile after they became successful. In my experience, the majority of mobile games that are both decent and professional work like that: they're only ported once they've proven to be big sellers. Developing a good game specifically for mobile is a huge risk.
I meant Carcassonne, XCOM, and Hearthstone. (One could make an argument for Pinball Arcade, since it uses classic tables, but I feel like the game experience is probably different enough to call it more than a straight port.)
I would say the only one that wasn't developed mobile-first was XCOM (and it shows -- tap targets are smaller, and there's lots of scrolling text and wasted screen space). Hearthstone was developed simultaneously for iPad and PC (they share an interface; the iPhone version is somewhat cramped); Carcassonne is a board game but the iOS version [0] is an excellent rendition of the game that makes great use of the touchscreen while adding a good one-player mode.
Ok, here's 5 non-freemium iOS games that I would put up with every game you listed (and this is speaking as someone who loves a lot of the old gameboy games):
Threes, Year Walk, Device 6, Monument Valley, You Must Build A Boat
I could name a handful more, and that's not counting games that are iOS ports of games on other platforms, or games which are freemium but in ways that aren't intrusive or obnoxious. And I'd put up any of these games against the best games on any other platform, bar none.
Give a few of them a shot, you may be pleasantly surprised!
Of those I've only played Threes. I do not question your self report, but it's likely that there's a big difference in how we enjoy games, because for me there's an immense chasm between the quality and the experience of any Metroid game and a game like Threes. From my perspective it would be like someone comparing a home cooked meal to a tic-tac.
That said, You Must Build a Boat looks pretty neat, I grabbed a copy and will check it out.
Monument Valley takes 2-3 hours. Interesting sure, but many people would consider that a huge waste at say 20$. People used to complain when free demos where that short.
Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, NS Hex, Battle of the Bulge, Agricola, Does Not Commute, This War Of Mine, Spider 2, Tiny Wings, Prune, etc. etc. I've bought 100-200 games, many of them very good.
XCom and Pandemic are the ones that I've spent the most time on. The iPad is a fantastic form factor for board games, and XCom worked better IMHO on iPad than on console or PC.
There's http://www.metacritic.com/game/ios for recommendations. Works well. That said, discovery on the App Store is simply atrocious. Absolutely terrible and a complete embarrassment for Apple since the start. Even recommending games to me that I already own!
That's the thing, it's about voting with your dollars so majority opinion 'wins' and most people don't consider press A to be a fun game worth paying for.
They have also done remakes of popular shmups like R-Type and popular Neo Geo shooters. There is plenty of depth in and fast action in these games. Tapping rhythm games are awesome like:
* Rhythm Control 2
There's also adventure games:
* Sword and Sorcery
Not to mention the Secret of Monkey Island series and Grim Fandango have been remade for iOS. I also know a guy was super into Street Fighter tournaments and really like Street Fighter IV on his iPad. The platform has already been proven as a viable gaming platform. Very few people other than serious gamers want to pay more than a few bucks for "just an app".
Monument Valley is indeed very good, but you can beat it in 2-3 hours so it's more akin to watching a movie than having a game you can play a few minutes per session several times a day.
Tiki towers was also good. I haven't played enough recently to have too many more, but I would recommend Cause of Death (not on app store anymore, can download from hipstore and copy episodes over on a jailbroken device), as a text based game that was really well thought out.
Of course, you could always get a Gameboy emulator (even not jailbroken, Google it) and play whatever you want from there.
I also recommend the port of Bike Or Die, which was all the rage in the Palm era when I was growing up. Ios version is OK, although I'm not sure if it's still on the app store. You can probably find an IPA though.
True. The puzzles were and still are fun, just wish there were more of them. Almost makes me want to program a clone, allow people to mod it, just to play some more of the same-style puzzles...
Totally agree, the depth of most mobile games is extremely lacking. That said, I would recommend "Kero Blaster" by Daisuke Amaya (Cave Story guy). It's a similar run 'n gun, but very fun if you're into that genre.
I really liked the Chaos Rings games, and the Final Fantasy remakes. Square Enix did a bang-up job. I'm on android now, but years ago I also loved the concept for Sword and Poker. Thats at least 5 games there. All (save for Sword and Poker) had a production value on par with most games for the Gameboy.
Heartstone is one of those free-2-play games with pay-2-win model. I see that many fail to see this just because it was made by a respectable PC developer. Heartstone is no different from Clash of Clans. It may be slightly less evil, but still falls into the same category.
This is the crux of it. This thread is overfilled with comments from people who don't like free to play games... It's like reading complaints about daytime soap operas from people who prefer Daredevil. Daredevil fans don't even know what good looks like to a soap opera fan.
If you prefer console games or Steam games, these games just aren't made for you. They don't try to appeal to your sensibilities. At all. They are made to appeal to someone else entirely. Sometimes there's overlap between the market segments. I myself am playing Clash Royale a crapton lately, which I'm sure Supercell would consider a happy accident, but they are focused on the general audience, not me.
I'd agree that not everyone likes the same kind of game. But people are being 'trained' to like these types of games, so you are going to find skewed results.
When I played games I realized it was for those rewards of accomplishment. I felt good about myself for a few minutes when I beat some hard level. Its worse when you are not getting those rewards elsewhere in your life.
While most games have some degree of this, there are many games that are designed for other purposes as well. Mobile just happens to be the most soul-sucking thanks to it's profit model.
Lately I mostly play Rocket League, which is mostly for social reasons (my friends dig it and live too far for me to hang out with), but is enough like a regular sport to have a sense of skill-building, competition and team cooperation.
The witness is sort of like a really fun math course that looks really pretty and teaches in a more interesting way. In real life I only occasionally get to solve interesting problems that I don't yet know the answer to. This scratches that itch in a way I have power over.
Undertale is an emotional story that I have agency in. It's one of my favorite examples of how game mechanics can enhance a traditional story.
Minecraft is a lot of things, but creativity and design are often front and center.
Writing this, I think a lot of games may be about experiencing things in a manner where people have more control than in 'real life'. It's also cheaper and faster than most hobbies. You can even get social status for being particularly skilled at games (see: twitch). Admittedly you probably won't make money playing games, but that's true of art, music, football, open source programming and most other hobbies.
I pretty much quit playing any/all Blkzzard games after a month of WOW.
It quickly became clear to me that they intended and succeesed at effectively creating a profit-making skinner box for humans.
Who knew the HS psychology class where we trained a rat to pull a bar for sugar water would later act as an innoculation for lousy games that manipulate their users via classical conditioning methods.
It's sad really because the Blizzard classics (IE Diablo 1/2, Starcraft, Warcraft 1/2) represent the pinnacle of visual storytelling in games.
>The market only cares about people that do pay. Those 99% might as well not exist and nothing would change.
Except that's not really how it works. You have to make your game good enough to attract the amount of players for which that 1% of paying users can support your development.
Go ahead and try to design a game that focuses on "whales", see how the works out.
Also why buy the "SUPER FLAMING SHOTGUN 9000" for $9.99 if there aren't mobs of non paying players to blow up? It's sort of like google, the non paying players are the product here.
Only because they don't know about it. If you had a way to market to them you really wouldn't need the other 99%. There's probably enough data out there to do just that, too.
Well, except that a lot of the worst F2P mobile games are competitive multiplayer. If you cut out all the freeplay minnows, the whales don't have enough people to play against.
Doesn't that make the original statement a tautology? If the market doesn't care about the 99% that play but don't pay, of course video games are nothing but a costly addiction.
No, because in markets where most people pay, they aren't optimized to be costly addictions. Mainstream video games charge every player $50 one time, instead of charging 1 player $5,000 and 99 players $0.
"But the audience is right. They're always, always right. You hear directors complain that the advertising was lousy, the distribution is no good, the date was wrong to open the film. I don't believe that. The audience is never wrong. Never."
What does that mean? As far as I can tell, it's either saying that advertising has no effect whatsoever on the success of a product (which is obviously nonsense), or it's some weird circular prosperity-gospel thing where you declare that only good people/films make money, so any person/film that makes money is by definition good.
Bejewelled is a near perfect Skinner Box, I had a serious 'addiction' to it for a while, managed to avoid spending on it but can see how others didn't.
Entertainment is a tough business to be in in general. There are plenty of good songs out there no one listens to. Mobile games suck for more reasons than the present most profitable business model and I don't think the industry is at risk of being destroyed any more than otherwise with or without a freemium model. I know plenty of people argue that freemium is what allows the mobile game industry to exist in the first place.
Your last sentence is at odds with the claim of mobile games being supported by whales. If the popular games were a costly addiction, then they wouldn't derive their revenue from so few users. In fact most people play them as a distraction or hobby and never pay a cent -- hence the need for whales (or ads). They may be an addiction for the majority of people who play them, but they're not costly.
I've always assumed the contrary (no games, with markets full of absolutely unplayable and terribly boring "my clash of tower defense sniper sugar pizzeria"-grade crapware), but gave it another thought today. I think now I know why I believed there are "no games" on mobile, while there probably are. The explanation is quite simple I'm not sure why I haven't really noticed this earlier - the genres I generally like are basically unplayable on the mobile form factor. And genres of the games suggested (say, puzzles or platformers) generally aren't really appealing to me.
So, when you hear someone says that there's no games - maybe the reason is just the person's preferences.
Every genre is covered with high-quality mobile games. They have to adapt to different form factor and player habits, but they do exist. The huge problem is discoverability. You have to specifically ask for your genre and you'll get some good recommendations.
> The majority of popular mobile games are a costly addiction, not a hobby.
Precisely. And to a large extent I think we're lagging behind the proper realization of what's going on here. A lot of "freemium" mobile games play in the same space as gambling does, and they hook into the same cognitive, behavioral, and reward mechanisms in order to hook people's attention and keep extracting dollars from those who become addicted. Hopefully it's not nearly as damaging as gambling addictions because there seems to be a somewhat slower curve and lower cap on spending, but it's still pretty bad.
This explains why I don't play mobile games anymore. They are boring and it's way too obvious to me when the mechanics are designed around money and it immediately becomes pointless to play.
Stardew Valley is such a refreshing game. It's the antithesis of freemium mobile crap, and I wish the otherwise talented mobile devs would focus on games like that.
I play 10-20 hours of games a week, all of them on consoles or handhelds that are >10 yrs old.
Do I want to be playing only old games? No, but it's easier to find a Game Boy game that I love than having to poke through a hundred awful mobile games on the various app stores first.
It seems to me that there's a good market for an App that simply curates excellent games and sells them to you.
Anyone know of anything like that? I'd be all over it.
I just came across your post while I'm working on a possible solution for your problem.
A friend & I are trying to build a Netflix for mobile games. The app is called GameGif and we believe that mobile game discovery should be about video content.
That's why the unique part on GameGif is that you swipe though short game videos rather than looking at screenshots or reading boring descriptions.
I wish Valve would expand Steam into the mobile gaming market. That would certainly help with the discovery problem, with frequent sales, user reviews, custom tags, and whatnot. Also in my experience, their recommendation engine actually works pretty well.
Obviously they'd have an uphill battle on their hands, as they can't distribute their store app on the Play Store, but the Amazon App Store seems to be doing decent so far despite that handicap.
I imagine the kind of market data needed to curate effectively is held closely (private) by the companies and devs involved. See also: music services and their recommendation engines being universally lame.
pockettactics.com is probably what you want. They concentrate on the more interesting stuff: RPGs & roguelikes, strategy / tactical wargames, 4x's, boardgame conversions. Very little of what they feature is the "free-to-play" ilk.
it does suck. but that doesn't mean a majority of mobile games are a costly addiction. And even granting you that, it sounds a lot like the text-message-addiction commentary in the early 00s.
This is pretty common knowledge within the industry. In fact, more than 4 years ago, they were already calling these users "Whales" (as a fishing metaphor) and actively catering to their interests.
There are people who will spend well over $10,000 a year to fulfill their compulsion for their "chosen" game. The advice in the article is actually rather asinine unfortunately:
>"Game creators should begin to look at pushing more sales after install. Swrve suggests this should be done one month after the game has been downloaded. Another way to keep keen players coming back would be to reduce the privileges given in purchases so they will need to buy more to play more."
It's implying that game creators haven't been carefully playing the analytics game since before freemium was a word. Any of these proposed changes will typically have catastrophic effects on the casual user base which could reduce game popularity and then tank the whale usage (depending on how much the game depended on network affects). Freemium games face the problem that TV networks do, there's too much alternative content out there.
>"Although, perhaps restructuring or ditching the freemium model might be the safest bet."
This is the right answer if you want to make good games. Freemium is an excellent model to optimization profit but it typically is directly counter to what can be considered a "good" gaming experience. The freemium games that have been largely successful (Clash of Clans, Hearthstone, Candy Crush, etc.) were all successful because they were easy to play for free, this garnered more popularity, which brought in more "whales" to support their creators.
I see mobile gaming as a race to the bottom, the margins are razor thin for the company, the pay is mediocre for the employees (as well as growth opportunities). Occasionally King comes along and wins it for a year but there are hundreds of these companies out there and the odds aren't good for them.
> There are people who will spend well over $10,000 a year to fulfill their compulsion for their "chosen" game
Undoubtedly the free marketeers will downvote, but to my mind it's simply not ethical to make money feeding off someone's addiction in that manner. At least drinking, gambling and other compulsions have heavy (but inadequate) regulation. Freemium needs some regulation too.
Buying a monthly sub, at $15 to compare with WoW, or buying the game outright is at least a fair trade. You still get addicted but your business no longer depends on bleeding people dry.
Abusing mental illness is not taking advantage of voluntary exchange, so any reasonable free market / libertarian advocate would also not say "tough luck you have mental disease compelling you to behave irrationally".
It really is no different than how transactions done under compulsion are not fair or voluntary. If you are mentally compelled to participate through psychological manipulation, that is no different than someone pointing a gun at your head and telling you to give them your money, or using socioeconomic influential factors and market capture to force participation in unfair transactions (ie, monopolies).
I would argue very few, if any, purchases are purely rational, non-addictive, and non-manipulative.
Most products play off of our own varying degrees of "mental illness" and addiction -- be that video games, coffee, high-calorie content food, cars, clothes, big houses, and so on.
Still, I'd rather be ill with my stuff than healthy without.
There is a difference between allowing the temptation, and exploiting psychological conditioning.
I'd definitely consider arguments that western culture has in many ways developed the advertising industry as a means of systemic psychological manipulation. There are a lot of people who make irrational purchasing decisions based on what is on the TV, and there is some degree of exploitation in that behavior.
Practically speaking we want to think that anyone over the age of 18 is a competent rational capable human adult with acceptable brain chemistry, but in practice I'd imagine very few people are perfectly healthy mentally, it is just the degree to which mental illness is apparent. Look at how common depression is, or how diagnostic rates for Autism and ADHD have risen dramatically in the last three decades. That is not to say we have more mentally ill people today, we are just paying more attention to individual psychological profile to deduce that there is much more nuance to mental health than just being insane or not.
I'm pretty disgusted with the bulk of the industry and their attitude. The company I was associated with, I felt, was doing more harm than good to the world by promoting a false set of idealistic beauty standards, promoting obsessive behavior, promoting competition based on physical attraction, etc.
I'm all for free markets but I'm not dogmatic in my support, the people that pay money for freemium games are going to be at a net worse position in life. There is an argument about free choice, whether the person would engage in another 'destructive' behavior, etc. but in the end I just felt the industry was focusing on being hyper-exploitive.
You, for example, have choosen not to work for people anymore who exploit others.
Others maybe don't have your morale standards, and others choose to get exploited. Thats their way of life, not yours. You don't have to be part of things you don't want.
Interesting how you value money over time. WoW has bleed millions of gamer of their time, making them compulsively addicted, such as using incentives to make them log in every day (for "dallies" and other rewards). These gamers felt compelled/required to devote time to the game. Blizzard knew that they had to get as many subscribers as possible and keep them for as long as possible.
The problem with that sentiment is where do you draw the line between someone who really loves to play certain types of games and someone who has some sort of mental problem?
Your "being bled dry" is the other person's "fun game I throw a few bucks at every now and then". What gives you (collective, not anexprogrammer) the moral authority to determine who should be playing what in what way?
And then advocating for government intervention on top of it?
This seems like legislating personal preference to me. Most of the moralistic arguments about game design tropes were already tried in the 80s-90s when the arcade was still a thing, and IMO, they're just as busted now because we're not talking about gambling.
I think the gambling industry could probably start taking tips from the mobile gaming industry now.
Free video-slots that give you "Casino Coins" (CC) that you can redeem for drinks/food.
The free games will be very, very basic (no multiplay or bonus features), and you might earn enough over a few hours for 1 free drink. Limit free game spins to a certain rate per hour.
Pay into the game and you'll get better unlocks. Pay continually and you'll increase a "combo meter" that will tilt things even more in your favor. Pay small extras that let you customize the video slot interface with your favorite characters, hats, sounds, etc. that are tied to your casino account rewards card.
A lot of this stuff is slowly being integrated done with points cards and the like, but laws on the books in the NGC prevent some of the more egregious stuff from occurring that violate privacy things.
I went to a casino that sorta does this, but isn't 'free'. But for every dollar or so you spend, you get casino dollars to spend on food/drink (no idea of the real dollar to casino dollar)
Went there with a friend that spends a lot in slots and we all (party of 8) drank and ate for free because of that for the entire night.
Don't forget the social network integration to broadcast their jackpots to their networks. Also, the cosmetic rewards should affect the outward display of the machine, so their status can be easily ascertained by others.
You could also have a mechanic where Casino Coins are earned automatically for your for a few days automatically, depending on your participation level. Visit the casino again and play some games to "wake" things up and get them going again.
You just came up with a great idea, I think there's only two or three casino game manufacturers in the world, one of them may want to pursue this. (Better than Big Bang Theory and Sex in the City)
I actually didn't know that, thank you! Completely makes sense.
I know it created some friction after a while when the company realized that calling users a synonym for fat, even if internally only and without that intent, was a bad idea (their game also targeted girls making it worse).
> There are people who will spend well over $10,000 a year to fulfill their compulsion for their "chosen" game.
John "Rotten" Lydon is a famous example:
I wasted – you’re the first to know this – 10,000 f‑‑‑‑‑‑ pounds in the last two
years on apps on my iPad. I got into Game of Thrones, Game of War, Real Racing,
and I just wanted to up the ante. And like an idiot I didn’t check myself. I’ve
been checked now. But there's a kid in me, see? A bit of my childhood was taken
from me and I’m determined to bring it back.
I'm quite fond of what Blizzard is doing with Hearthstone (it is a take on the freemium model) but companies like that are the exception nowadays, not the rule.
I think this is because Blizzard/Activision is already a successful gaming company with many years of experience of player retention (via WoW) and deep pockets. Thus, they don't need to squeeze every penny out of a user now if they know those users will come back every time a new expansion is released to buy more cards.
That said, there are still players who complain about it being too hard to get into the game for new players, but I think Blizz is addressing those issues decently well.
Agreed on accessibility. I like the direction they're taking with the Standard and Expanded (or whatever they're naming it), I'm looking forward to it.
I made a conscious decision to monetize in the game early on so I dodged the monetization ramp challenges. Now it's just a problem of not having enough time to devote to ladder climbing.
> $10,000
Isn't this related to the actual growing wealth inequality?
As the people in the top have more and the people at the bottom less, will it in a time to come make sense to create products only for the rich?
1,000,000 people paying $1 is the same amount of money than 100 paying $10,000.
I think business focus on profit growth is actually the predominant reason for growing wealth inequality (in the USA). We're coming off of an unprecedented history of market growth and prosperity in this country with consistent exponential returns.
Lower yields are unacceptable to businesses, even if they are part of a normal healthy economy, so they tighten wages for their workers and raise prices for their products (after running out of alternatives). This is a "double squeeze" on the working class. Not only do they have less money to spend, because they're paid less, but their cost of living goes up because every company is raising prices.
Couple that with speculative investors (new yuppies and Chinese nationals hiding money) targeting real estate as long-term rentals pushing potential buyers out of the market. They then renovate this housing into "luxury" and push the affordable housing out. It doesn't matter if these rentals sit empty for a while because the speculative investors are banking on continued property appreciation external of all rational reasons.
So, to sum:
- People are getting less money (relative to inflation)
- Prices are still rising (inflation keeps going)
- Speculation in the housing market is also increasing cost of living
For those people that spend >$10,000 a year, with a few rare exceptions, my expectation is that they live with an absurd debt load and eventually go bankrupt. I don't think this is a root cause but it definitely doesn't help people accrue assets.
Let's pretend video games on console/PC are music albums. Let's pretend board games are live music. Let's pretend mobile games are ringtones.
They're all "music", but they're all very different products.
Ringtones are cheap, disposable, mostly looked down upon, but still popular at the same time somehow.
Live music is seen as requiring a greater level of commitment; perhaps a little more exerting or rough around the edges, strangely pricey, but generally worth the above-and-beyond effort you have to make.
Music albums are ubiquitous, real effort went into many of them and they are not really disposable. There are a lot of sad "me too" attempts to capitalize on other trends created by first-movers. Most people have at least a couple they are into, and connoisseurs can dive into a pile of esoterica to unearth unappreciated artistic gems. Every once in a while, a major production turns out to actually be artistically important too, and people freak out.
What's my point? The "game" in "mobile game" seems pretty weighty, implying a closer kinship with other kinds of games, but, really they're as distant in kinship as ringtones are from "music". They're another product altogether. And ephemeral. And dangerous to tie your long-term longevity to as a content producer.
There's really no reason it needs to be this way. Obviously, some games require controllers with their complex controls and aren't a fit for mobile gaming. But there are so many great games to be made with minimal interfaces that can run on these amazing little computers in our pockets we call "phones".
Phones don't just have ring tones anymore. I can listen to just about any song ever published on my cell phone with spotify or pandora or slacker. There's no reason we should only be writing garbage "ringtone" games for mobile.
> we should only be writing garbage "ringtone" games for mobile.
Nobody is buying non-ringtone games, predominantly because the ubiquitous exploitation of users through ringtone games has driven away any significant gaming crowd.
Nvidia has interestingly been pushing for Android gaming for years, making handhelds and consoles for it, but I'd really wonder how their success is doing. It is a really fascinating behavior that consumers will buy Nintendo games on their handheld for incredibly high relative prices, but balk at spending a quarter as much on the Tegra Store for a more expensive to produce product.
The Shield portable is a goofy looking PoS that you can't easily put into a pocket. For $200 the Nintendo or Sony options are a lot nicer.
The barrier to entry for Android gaming is lower, but no one is going to develop for the form factor if the unit isn't going to be in a lot of people's hands.
So instead we get games designed for touch that can optionally controlled with a traditional controller. Maybe.
The games brought to Sony Vita and Nintendo xDS have higher budgets and teams targeting the features of the console, so they sell even though the cost is high.
And touch is a pretty shitty input modality for anything beyond puzzle games.
This is what happens when the race to the bottom goes too far. People start realising this sort of tactic makes more money than traditional sales, so people start expecting all mobile games to be free with microtransactions and eventually you have an industry which is pretty much unsustainable in the long run.
Still, it's not as bad as it could be, at least not in the US or Europe. If you think it's bad that people are encouraged to pay money for things in mobile games here, well, the 'kompu gacha' type stuff is another level of scary:
It's basically literal gambling in some areas. You don't pay for items or even advantages in game mechanics, you pay for the 'possibility' of getting characters and items. It's between 1 and 5 dollars for a roll of the dice, and the probability of getting a rare character can be less than 0.1%. There are stories of people spending thousands of dollars in a few hours playing these games in a livestream on Twitch or the likes...
Fortunately, this isn't as common in most games on the US app store just yet.
I am worried that this is sustainable in the long run and that we will be saddled with these types of microtransactions forever. They have figured out the perfect topamine release methodology and people will pay for that.
Well, the Japanese legal system actually put laws in place to stop some of the worst excesses. That's probably going to happen to the mobile market in the rest of the world too. The 'freemium' games with microtransactions go too far, so the legal system puts out laws banning various practices and the industry crashes hard.
I agree with you. But the fact is that those clickbait games exist for one reason and one reason alone -- to make money. Unfortunately, this aligns well with the interests of the app stores; their interest is to make money, and not to make it easier for consumers to find good content.
Everything we buy exists to make money; everyone is interested in making money. But some stores actually do a better job stocking theirs shelves with things I will actually enjoy.
> "... the report looked at over 40 free-to-play games through February 2016, analyzing the uses of more than 20 million players."
If they're looking at 40 games with 20 million players during one month, they're looking at a specific class of mobile games, not mobile games at large.
Also,
> "A new report is highlighting that risk, showing that almost half of all the revenue generated in mobile gaming comes from just 0.19 percent of users. That means the other 99.81 percent of users aren’t worth anything money-wise to the creators."
Uh, aren't they worth 'half'?
edit: anecdotally, I've probably spent about $100 in the past year on random puzzle games that probably don't end up on the top of lists. Not sure how weird/errant I am though.
0.19% of mobile users have "more money than sense".
99.81% of users don't see the point in buying the $5 "valu-pack" of [insert contrived currency here] to unlock an extra few hours of playtime every day.
Mobile developers get angry and post rants about people being averse to spending as much as a cup of coffee on their abusively designed time sinks.
And other gaming industries are starting to follow suit. There are AAA console/PC titles with microtransactions now, it's ridiculous.
You have a point but it's also ridiculous that mobile game consumers expect every game to be free. Game studios often spend tens of thousands of hours developing a mobile game, why should that be free? The freemium model is just an unfortunate consequence of this cultural shift towards expecting all mobile apps to be free.
Exactly. Freemium is an attempt to maximize revenue given the following parameters: 1) 99% of the population won't pay more than $0.99 for a game, regardless of its quality; 2) 1% of the population will pay a fuckton.
So what do you do within those parameters? You try to make a game that relies on #2 to subsidize #1. The alternatives? Release totally free games (where's the business model?). Release ad-supported games (everyone hates ads!). Release games on a flat subscription model. Or accept that the whales are your actual paying customer base, and make games explicitly for them.
By and large, the mobile gaming industry has concluded that the latter approach is the optimal way to run a profitable business. The result is the shitty, manipulative, cookie-cutter approach to game design that has become so dominant today. But unless and until some of the 99% of us decide that games are worth paying for upfront, this seems to be the world we're stuck in.
Not sure it matters. Only a small handful of people can turn a profit on a solely ad-backed games. The Flappy birds of the world, which immediately inspire a wash of cheap copy-cats. Games like subway surfers and sonic dash still need some IAP money -- a high production value game costs about $3m to make these days so no major studio would trust a solely ads backed game.
The mobile freemium model is exactly why I am so averse to spending money on mobile games. If I could spend $5 for a game and know that it is both worthwhile and fully available, I would do so. Instead, I've become cynical enough that I rarely bother unless the game is well-reviewed by sources I trust.
There are examples of games that got the freemium model right and are fairly successful as a result, and the pattern is always the same: start with a game with a fun core gameplay loop, do not gate gameplay content or progression behind paywalls, let players spend money on cosmetic/status symbols, or to more quickly progress in areas that could also be progressed more slowly without spending.
Warframe and Path of Exile do this and are seeing a good amount of success as a result.
One of the problems being ignored here is that, even if you only charge $1 for a game, I still have to trust you enough to give you my credit card info.
And this trust is actually far easier to earn if I am making larger purchases, not smaller ones. I'll spend $100 on something if I think it's a high-quality, one-time payment. But I won't even spend $1 on some seedy, risky experiment.
Distribution platforms mitigate this risk. These days, mobile app stores or services like Steam/Desura/Gog/Itch are what you trust, and they often have nice refund policies.
Well I've never heard of most of those, so why would I trust them? I mean, my phone basically pushes unwanted ads at me, so why would I do anything that would indicate that I'm willing to spend money over the phone?
It's rather sad really, taking advantage of some people's propensity to addiction, exploiting it for financial gain. Somewhat the digital equivalent of rigged casinos or drug pushers.
Hearthstone recently introduced planned obsolescence to its system (i.e. certain cards become "obsolete" and you can no longer use them in ranked matches).
I can see why they would want to do it, but it just makes me sad that good complete game experiences are going away in favor of infinitely evolving cash trains that will be forgotten as soon as their last server goes out of commission.
Most trading card games "cycle-out" content to drive sales. The business model works because the players want new content. I wouldn't liken Hearthstone — where people generally know how much they need to spend to get a competitive deck — with games that are socially engineered to reward sinking arbitrary amounts of time and money into them.
That's what WotC did with Magic: the Gathering very early (just a couple years after it was introduced) - it allows the company to make so much more money that it's really a no-brainer business-wise.
It's not all virtual currency. Sometimes it's extra levels. The ones who don't pay must just uninstall then try one of the other forty million free/freemium games.
Note that this is mostly caused by the fact that mobile game developers are courting such a distribution by making "pay-to-win" games where you can pay more to get advantages without limits.
While such a structure means that a game developer can earn 10k or more from a single player, it also makes the game worse for those who aren't willing to spend unlimited amounts of money and thus drives some of them away or causes them to decide to not spend any money at all.
If this is not desired, the simple solution is to have an "unlimited pass" that gets you access to all current and future IAP/DLC content that gives a game advantage for either a fixed one-time fee or a fixed subscription fee.
This is probably not often done because the game developers believe that it would be less profitable overall.
I am getting tired of people complaining that this is a bad thing. Freemium monetization works: developers get paid and consumers get a lot of great content for free.
I disagree with the recommendations of this article to basically put the screws to the customers until they pay up
> Another way to keep keen players coming back would be to reduce the privileges given in purchases so they will need to buy more to play more.
Keeping happy users that recommend your game/app is the driving force of freemium. Pissing them off just kills the golden goose. All you need is to make certain that if a customer WANTS you to take their money, there is always something to purchase at high and low price points.
That's HIGHLY subjective. Lots of things work, doesn't necessarily make them good. How is it great content for free when it's locked behind gem and extreme time gates?
The freemium space is such a mess that you'll download something interesting and it's telling you within minutes that unlocking this tile will take 22hours. Only 17 gems to unlock now! Candy Crush supposedly set levels to be almost impossible without bought boosts, after just a few. Never installed candy crush so can't comment directly. Let's not forget the total piss take that was Dungeon Keeper on mobile.
Yes we've all read the blog posts on how to monetise, and the first purchase is the hardest so get it the day they install etc etc. Taking the piss defines the freemium space.
Older freemium games had a much more ethical balance. Things like Temple Run managed to let you play a decent game for free. Then pay for more. Must have worked well enough as they decided to make a TR2.
I won't even install freemium games any more.
"Pissing them off just kills the golden goose"
Meanwhile pissing off everyone who knows them with the Candy Crush "I want to get a level unlock", "Woo I reached level 2" Facebook spam is fair game presumably?
I've bought several games when I can buy them outright. I wish there were more ports of classics like Bard's Tale, which I bought, to Android - Pirates, RealMyst etc are all ipad/iphone only.
I want a game I can buy, not a bloody subscription. We didn't buy subscriptions or gems for the kids either, no matter how much they whinged.
> Meanwhile pissing off everyone who knows them with the Candy Crush "I want to get a level unlock"
Why do you get piss off when a friend is asking you for help in a game they like?
I used to play MMORPGs and stayed connected - without playing - just to help people in my clan with questions on quests and similar things, as I knew quite a lot about the games. It was time consuming, but it felt rewarding to help other people.
What makes so specially bad the Facebook requests?
You obviously found playing MMORPGs fun or interesting, even if you grew tired of it. On top of that, you were voluntarily opening yourself up to these requests. Random mobile-game Facebook spam is different, because it's unwelcome and they're asking you to do something you never wanted to do. If these people had instead been constantly coming by your house uninvited asking you to contort yourself into painful positions for their amusement, you'd probably have been less welcoming towards it.
> Why do you get piss off when a friend is asking you for help in a game they like?
If the messages were going to the Candy Crush community i couldn't care less, as they'd at least then be pushing the messages to people interested in that game. Of course that would completely destroy a community with the volume they push.
I'd not mind an ask from guild or MMO community to help out, or even talk about build advice or whatever - if it's a game I played, and I'm in the community I care at least a bit. Asking for help in WoW when I'm in Lotro or vice versa isn't anything other than spam.
It's the same as auto-ding plugins - they're damn annoying unless you're 11. I don't care that you level++, please don't tell me.
I'm sure most the players don't realise how spammy it is, and often there's a pattern in the UX to heavily encourage the FB push by default/mistake, or get extra gems for sharing.
1. Game devs have an incentive to make the game crappy unless you pay
2. When it comes time for you to pay, you have to support all the freeloaders.
I would venture a guess that most games could have higher median "fun" and still only charge $2-$5 . Instead of charging one person $10k and 5k ppl nothing.
just my thoughts though, no science/data to back it.
> When it comes time for you to pay, you have to support all the freeloaders.
Digital information has never, and will never, work like that. The price of movies is not influenced by pirates. The price of music is not influenced by how much radio stations charge to wholesale play it. There is absolutely no limit on supply of said information, the only scarcity is the revenue to produce it.
If you make a game for 100k, it does not matter if you have 10k buyers at $10 each, or 1 million players where 1 in 1000 spend $100, you recoup your costs either way. The only difference is that your 10k player game is seen as "dead" or "unsuccessful" if its competition has 1 million players, and on mobile stores that prioritize install base, the former will always lose in market growth.
But money made and money lost on a game have nothing to do with one another. You lose money when you cannot recoup the developer hours to make it, and you can only gain or break even on money that users spend on it after release. The closest you can get to "losing" money is bullshit MAFIAA propaganda about how all the pirates / freeloaders would have bought the game if it cost money, when we can demonstrably see here, and in almost every other instance, that if you paywall things people want for free they will very often just go for other things rather than stick around paying for yours, and that the conversation rate of pirates / freeloads - especially in mobile gaming - almost certainly does not offset the increased userbase and word of mouth you get from them to attract whale customers.
Freemium players who don't pay aren't "Pirates". Also they take up server resources (and complain even louder than paying ones when the occasional defect happens).
I never equated freemium players with pirates, just that the surrogate equivalents for other digital assets is piracy, because the rights holders of those other products want money per copy.
While sharing movies over torrents does not incur a cost to the producer, running servers for a game does. The model is different, and thus i do not believe your points apply.
There are examples of successful freemium models: Warframe and Path of Exile. In those cases, point #1 is mitigated by the customers themselves keeping a very close eye on the game's development. If they feel like the developers cross a line they are very vocal about their displeasure and the developers will tend to roll back the change. That "line" is usually when you have to pay to accomplish a thing at all, rather than it just speeding the process along. If the slow/free path is too arduous, then there's a problem.
The key point here is that the developers want to maintain a healthy and positive relationship with their customers. They're not just churning out a product and expecting people to give them money for it.
I actually started playing Warframe a couple months ago and have been pleasantly surprised by the game's level of quality while still having a relatively player-friendly business model. I've only spent around $30 and that's been more than enough (along with a very mild grind) to get me through a large chunk of the game's content without feeling pressured to spend more. In most mobile style games, you may as well toss your $30 into the wind for all the good it will do you. That probably won't be enough to get you the one card/hero/item/whatever that you actually want, let alone allow you to be competitive within the game.
I think one reason people don't like it is because it's not "fair." Bunch of freeloaders get stuff, people with too much extra money get taken advantage of... We need to get over it. Paying-big-money-up-front is even less fair because you have to shell out cash for a game you may or may not like. Plus, you can only get people to buy games this way with a huge marketing budget.
It's strange that so people people whine about mobile games being freemium but nobody mentions League of Legends: A completely free PC game that has made an obscene amount of income on little more than avatar skins.
> It's strange that so people people whine about mobile games being freemium but nobody mentions League of Legends: A completely free PC game that has made an obscene amount of income on little more than avatar skins.
You also have to buy characters. Like in many "free" games, you can earn currency to buy the characters through playing the game, but you get it very, very slowly. I'm still missing dozens of characters after four years, and that's even paying money for some of them (thanks to gift cards).
I call this a "grief" economy. The more grief you want to skip, the more expensive it is. The problem being that the maker is intentionally adding grief. To me that sounds annoying at best and malicious at worst.
The big problem of the freemium model is, that it seems to push developers to make bad games. The model is based on making people repeatedly spend money on the game - and that is too often done by blocking the game until more money is spent, which of course creates a bad gaming experience. With a fully paid game, the incentive is to entertain the user to a point that he is happy with the purchase and spreads the word.
Around the time the mobile world got dominated by freemium games, I bought myself a Nintendo 3DS and I have not regretted it. The games are much more expensive up front, but they do offer very elaborate gameplay and long time fun.
The game industry was born in arcades. You know, those arcades filled with people slumped over bright, flashing machines, pulling levers and plopping in quarter after quarter. No, no, not the casino. The arcade! The one where all the games were specifically designed to make the player lose, forcing them to insert more quarters to keep playing and get another chance at winning. Yes, I'm sure I'm talking about an arcade, and not a casino...
Then came consoles, and everyone pretty much ditched arcades and stayed at home. We went from spending buckets of quarters drawn out over the course of an evening, to spending buckets or quartuers all at once every month or two, and taking out a loan to afford the next $400+ console. The arcade model died, because consoles were better in every regard. People wanted to stay home, the games were better and more engaging, the platform and context allowed for games with more depth and value than could ever be achieved in an arcade, and you didn't have to worry about the console eating your quarters. And no more collecting 10 million tickets only to realize that the best item you can redeem them for is a plastic transformers ring.
Then came PCs, and PCs and consoles lived happily together alongside one another for the next decade or two. So how does the story end? Well, arcades are back baby, but in the form of pay-to-win freemium mobile games. They've evolved; now you don't have to go to some sticky floored dungeon to play Time Cop 15. You can do that from the comfort of your own phone. Just plop in $1 every now and then to keep playing. Best of all, game devs found out a way to price discriminate. Poor? Here's some ads and patience. Rich? Push a button and Apple will take care of the rest.
But the games haven't changed. Mobile games are just as shallow as arcade games ever were. But weren't arcades great? Of course they were; those games were a blast. They're a different kind of fun. A kind of fun you can pick up, enjoy, and then leave without another thought. These aren't grand masterpieces like The Witcher 3, or thought bending games like The Stanley Parable. But they were still fun, exciting, and a great way to relax or kill time.
So, my question is, why is everyone so caustic towards mobile gaming? Because it's exploitative? Sure, I can understand that, but so were arcades. If I had to guess, it's perhaps the pervassiveness of the games and the manner in which they present themselves that people find so offensive. See, arcades were at the arcades. You had to drive there, and physically be there for awhile. Mobile games are constantly with you, just one finger swipe away. And they take advantage of that, with notifications and constant come-hither looks to get you to play and spend. Also, arcade machines were upfront about their pricing model. The quarter slot is right there on the front of the machine, and the screen is flashing "Insert Coin". Mobile games advertise themselves as free, and even let you play a little bit before revealing their true payment model. That's deceptive in ways arcades were not.
No real point other than to remind everyone of history. It's clear that mobile gaming shares a heritage with arcades. And it's perhaps clear that they've evolved the model, but perhaps that evolution is not what everyone was hoping for. I'm more curious what the next "console" evolution will be.
The critical distinction between the arcade and mobile freemium models is that arcade pricing was skill-based. It's entirely possible to complete Raiden or Street Fighter on a single credit, and indeed the 1-credit-challenge is a convention that keeps a lot of people playing emulated arcade games.
If you tried to "1cc" most mobile games, it would take a fixed amount of time while you wait for your gems or energy or whatever to recharge, and you'd spend most of your time refraining from playing. The two models are certainly on the same evolutionary line, but mobile freemium games are a more blatant and direct psychological hack. The "challenge" is from overcoming your inbuilt desires and delaying gratification - exactly the sort of boring, responsible, real-life stuff people play games to avoid.
I'm wondering when we might see regulation, at least in the US, regarding certain gambling-like activities some games have (not just mobile). What I mean is some games have you build a team of characters. They'll have an in-game shop where you buy "card packs", with chances of getting legendary or what have you versions of cards. Yet nowhere are the chances of getting those type of cards listed and even if there were, there's no regulatory body ensuring that those chances are correct.
From what I understand, Vegas voluntarily has rules in place that test this to keep from being regulated?
Isn't the freemium games on other platforms more of the same? I play a few and there never seems to be a game without those few who buy up every perceived advantage they can. If not advantages then every special item or unit.
I remember Mechwarrior Online coming out with GOLD colored mechs for some obscene price and seeing them in game. I want to say they were like five hundred bucks. Wargaming also follows a similar model but I haven't see individual tanks or ships cresting a hundred bucks but there are enough that are in the fifty range and they are plentiful in matches
If I download a game that's made by a company who make a loss then it's their backers/founders/previous successes who have subsidised my gaming, not the 1% of people who buy things in Candy Crush. Candy Crush players have nothing to do with what I'm playing. Consequently the premise that the 1% of the players who buy in-app things keep the industry afloat is wrong - the industry is kept afloat by the money people risk speculating on investing or producing games in the hope of becoming the next Candy Crush.
Can anyone recommend me a good Android game? Good is subjective, but I find that Android games pale in terms of gameplay and replayability. I'd much prefer to play a GBA emulator on my phone.
I'm more than willing to pay for mobile games, but I've been continually disappointed and how shallow the mobile games industry is.
Mobile games currently have much more in common with Flash games (remember when those were all the rage), than the gaming industry. Cheap, and quantity > quality.
Humans are flock animals. Witch app would you choose, the one who has 1000 stars and 100 contributors on Github, or the one who has 1 star and 1 contributor?
Do you read the top news on HN, or the new ?
It doesn't help that the app store & play store are setup to favor popular apps, rather then quality apps.
By giving away your app for free you can save a lot of marketing costs. A game budget usually is 79% marketing 1% production, 20% profit.
The bigger problem is the consolidation in the industry. 4-5 years ago, there were lots of relatively small studios making good money off of this 1-2% freemium model, while also releasing high quality games.
However now, that money has dried up. Formerly successful studios that used to make a lot of money are having a hard time making ends meet on their own IP. The cost of user acquisition has gone up way too high, because the biggest players have effectively infinite ad spend.
I haven't worked in this space, and I don't play this type of game, but ads for these freemium mobile games seem to show up everywhere. Are the ones with the giant ad spend the only ones making money? Are they not making money either? At first it seems that more discoverable app stores or even some other "curation" services could help lower the required ad level, but then it occurs to me that perhaps whales really only respond to flashy expensive ads on popular media properties?
Like most businesses, most mobile games run on a customer acquisition cost vs. LTV model. Buy customers for $5 a pop, with LTVs of $7, which you can scale till you've used up all the profit. If you can drive that CAC down via better social (Words with Friends), better 1st party featuring (Clash Royale right now), IP (Star Wars: GoH), then more power to you.
Sorry, that'd be Google Play and App Store featuring (in their featured apps section). Quality editors choice or "best new games" featuring can mean hundreds of thousands of free installs, and a ton of momentum to drive word of mouth/virality.
That's OK, because that's a pretty ignorant comment by the author anyway. We had a time when we didn't have in app payments in Android, and Google frequently showed slides showing a 20x increase in revenue for companies that switched from paid apps to in app purchases. Freemium definitely makes you more money.
The biggest problem with apps nowadays is that you write it and no one ever hears about it or finds out about it, let alone downloads it, not how to get money out of your users once you have them. That's a much easier problem. The author probably just has no clue.
At this point, even total nothingness would be preferable. The mobile games ecosystem has become so bloated and malignant that we may as well just amputate the infected limb, cauterize the wound, and try to move on.
I'd ask another question : are in the mobile world of instant gratification with social networks, image crafting and everything reachable at a click mobile games even "fun" enough to compete with all that ? If I get more gratification from other instant things, why even bother with a game ? Hell, why pay for it ?
It just means that there is a small number of customers that pay A LOT to play those games. So the real price of those games might be $150 or $500+ for those customers.
Why is this article getting up-voted on HN? It is poorly written, contains very little information and completely mangles it's interpretation of the statistics.
Its truly an amazement - I can't think of another field with such advanced, accessible tools yet such a shitty market to enter than the games industry.
I don't think there is, sadly. It isn't possible on the iOS side (although Apple has started to feature games that don't have pay-to-win or freemium mechanics), and while possible on the Android side, 99% of people are going to get their stuff from Google Play anyway, so even if such a store were to start up, anyone offering their wares on that store would be offering them on Play anyway.
The majority of premium titles on Android are pirated, especially for the most popular games. If someone wants to go to a 3rd party app store, it will be to pirate a premium game, not better curation to pay for one.
Most people, before GOG.com, would have said many of the same things about an ardently anti-DRM marketplace, whose main selling point is the same titles but without DRM.
I've heard from a lot of gamers that would love to purchase a given version of a game outright for ~$15 than to be sapped with free-to-play mechanics. For example, take a look at the feedback on the Torchlight Mobile facebook page from 2015-06-25:
People who pay for consumable in-game resources aren't interested in the same kind of games that I'm interested in. Reading this article made me realize:
If you're not paying for it, it's not designed for you.
People defending the freemium model are detestable IMHO. I don't agree with the notion that companies are justified in doing "anything" if it is going to make them money. Unethical practices should be publicly shamed as much as, and as often as possible.
There are plenty of good games out there. The problem is nobody plays them. Then the devs of those games say "Fuck this, I'm out" and go on to start making pay to win games because that's how to get paid making games. It's gotten to the point where the games we play aren't even fun; we just find an easy game that lets us shoot up a shot of dopamine once in a while and settle for that. Or maybe we pick up clash of clans, play "free" for a month, then once we're hooked we pay way more than we'd ever pay for a real game every month just to be competitive. And we still lose, because someone else has more money.
The majority of popular mobile games are a costly addiction, not a hobby.