I have really mixed feelings about this. On the other hand I dislike this method of selling games but I also understand that it is rather difficult to make money selling $1 games. And a $5 price tag in the market doesn't work for most games (the exceptions seem to be ones that are coming from PC/consoles: Grand Theft Auto games, Minecraft and Final Fantasy games sell for $5-$15). But this micro transaction trend has been getting out of hand, this is already the second article on the subject on HN this week.
I play a lot of simulator games, which have a lot of after market content. Flight simulators have a lot of 3rd party vendors who create additional aircraft and scenery (an aircraft may cost around $30 or more). The most popular train simulator has additional 1st party content, trains and routes which total up to $2000 even after discounts in Steam x-mas sales. The racing simulator I play has a subscription model and cars and tracks cost extra ($50 a year + $12 per car + $15 per track). But these pieces of extra content are very high quality and are accurate visually, historically and performance wise. I have no problem spending $10 to $30 every now and then on this.
But there's a stark difference between additional content in simulators (which obviously costs money to create) and a pay-to-win IAP gaming model. In p2w games, there's a hidden subscription fee because you essentially have to pay every now and then to stay in the game and not have to wait for ages (e.g. real racing android game requires you to buy new tires every few races, or wait for hours) and a price on additional content which is usually nothing but a piece of artwork (which is cheap to create in contrast to the accurate simulator content). The biggest problem with this is that these games are labelled as "free" while in reality you pay subscription + extra for additional content.
I would actually like to pay for games on my mobile, but I don't want to play games that where the whole game design is optimized for maximum IAP profit rather than maximum fun. But when browsing the Android market for games, you just can't find any interesting games that do not employ this IAP pricing model.
$30 for an accurate aircraft simulation seems like a better deal than $120 for speeding up digging of 56 tiles. Not sure if this is a good comparison :)
This is a natural outcrop of the everything is free/cheap zeitgeist. The demands from users for game quality far outstrips what they expect to pay for them, so if you charge high they will just not buy it or find a loss leader and play their game - they are all almost perfect replacements for the average user after all. If a small amount of people want to pony up $100+ per title then it might work, but there is something to be said for high volume low cost.
At the risk of being crass, the online porn industry has gone to this model as well. They give a significant amount of free teaser video leading up to what would be the climax of the scene, only to cut away to an ad or just outright end.
I would assume it is working the same as with freemium games.
The thing that ultimately limits this strategy is people get far more excited about paying up-front for a "thing" that is play-oriented, whether it's marketed as a professional tool or a game. When you lead with monetization, you have to actively cut out regions of play so that feedback loops related to monetization can dominate.
With F2P microtransactions in the context of a single player game(multiplayer adds social value effects), the hope is, essentially, that people are too uninformed to take control of their own play experiences. Everyone who would consider themselves a games enthusiast essentially lives in a different world - even if they're addicts, they know how to satisfy their addiction at lower cost, and often with more ability to customize the experience.
Isn't this kind of a supply and demand thing? There is plenty of demand for indie games and fantastic indie games get created frequently enough (e.g. Hyper Light Drifter, Dustforce, FEZ [I know, I know]). If you want to change the medium for the better, the most permanent solution under Capitalism is to change what people will pay for.
This article harks on mobile games a lot. Why do you need games on your phone? More artistic, less crass games appear on systems like the 3DS, and PCs. If I really wanted an art piece of a game on my hypothetical iPhone, I would try to make one myself.
I do disagree with micropurchases in children's games. They just don't have the thinking power yet to realize what they're dealing with. That's a more pertinent moral question, I think.
Here is the sticking point for me, if its suicide then great these things will fail and like the original DivX idea it will be some cautionary tale in the past.
But what is really the rant? Is the rant it costs me more to play this game? Is that it? Your $5 game is not as entertaining for as long as your $50 game? I agree that the nickel and diming is annoying but they offer the "big bag of tokens" for some big price $50 - $70. If you buy that you can whiz right through things, and they don't "re-lock" so in the case of the racing game the cars are there forever, except you had to pay $50 for that game instead of the $1 - $5 you thought it cost.
'if it's suicide then great these things will fail' is missing the point.
These strategies are dramatically revenue-positive in the short term, where short term is defined as say 6-36 months. Nobody is thinking long term, so these practices thrive in the industry, they make investors happy, they make executives happy. Everyone is doing them.
The problem is that eventually these practices scorch the earth, just like how Zynga's fabulous success was built on completely destroying the effectiveness of viral pathways on Facebook.
That "big bag of tokens" is never, in any of these games, enough to just "buy the whole game". At best it's 25% cheaper than the "normal" price, which in every case still runs in the thousands.
Anyhow, the question you ask, what is really the rant, is this:
A large portion of human effort in the game producing industry is spent on an activity that can honestly only be described in one manner:
Legally defrauding customers.
This will in the long term breed distrust to the entire industry and wastes talent that could be used in furthering the art.
And while, yes, eventually this will die out, the problem is that in the western world it will take about half a generation and in the eastern world might never happen due to certain cultural differences.
When I think how much money I spent sinking quarters into Galaga at the local diner as a child, I just can't feel that bad when people complain about Candy Crush charging $0.99 for another 5 lives to people that are too impatient to wait a couple hours for the free set. Is that really so exploitative? Meh. I played past level 100 on Candy Crush without spending a cent, which is probably dozens of hours of gameplay.
The market is speaking pretty clearly: it is not even close to profitable to make premium casual games, the group of hardcore people that are willing to pay up front is way too small to make it worthwhile. IAP lets you get many more people enjoying your game, and you make a lot more money doing it, which is IMO a win on both ends. I get that a lot of gamers hope these games will fail, but as of right now, this is the most profitable and fast growing sector in the games industry, so I'd be hesitant to predict its downfall yet.
If there was some magical way to get the same number of mass market users to pay a fair $5 up front for games (hell, even $1 would be great), every one of us in the game industry would be thrilled to hear it, because it's much easier to make premium games than freemium. I'm open to ideas, but I haven't heard many realistic ones.
Disclaimer: I work on F2P games (not for King), so take all of this with a grain of salt based on self-interest.
Has anyone looked at applying this to the non-gaming market? I'm guessing the emotional attachment isn't as much but you are still attached from the time you have invested.
Let's take Word for example. You write a three page document, you want to save it? That's $1 please. Printing? That's another dollar. Oh you don't like Cambria? You can unlock Times New Roman for $10, or our Business Serif Pack for $49!
I guess it's similar to shareware, but more annoying...
As much as I also dislike how some IAP game developers base all their gameplay mechanisms purely on maximizing the user likeliness to keep spending without even noticing, I recognize that they get the very basics of video game design very right.
Because they have to.
The goal for any game developer who treats its creation not only as an artistic piece but also has a product, is to design software that offers a positive feedback loop to the user in order to keep her engaged.
Consider how Nintendo, for instance, considers the Mario platformer franchise as an instrument (see Ask Iwata interviews). During development, designers are focused on getting the timing (rhythm) right between challenge (say ennemies or holes) and corresponding rewards (powerups or secret exits). This ultimately plays/tricks how our brains are wired (effort needs reward) in order to engage users and ultimately enjoy the game... and pay again (and again) for the sequels/updates when they need their fix.
Imho IAP is an interesting return to the origins of video gaming (and coin-based arcades) and refocuses the industry on getting the core ingredient right, the feedback loop, rather than betting it all on graphics, story, feature-creep... and marketing.
Marketing is important when you need to convince your game is worth paying upfront, even in a seemingly minimal amount, as mobile gaming is a very "dispensable" expense in the general public.
There is no ROI in marketing an IAP game that does not engage enough of its users (enough). On the other hand, marketing heavily an upfront-cost game can draw sales, sometimes thanks to the franchise name as well, despite providing no to little entertainent to most of its users as the feedback loop is just not good enough to engage them.
For good or bad, I think IAP is accelerating adoption of data-driven practices for video game design. As an engineer/scientist, this is very interesting.
Last but not least, IAP probably helps expand the (mobile) gaming audience to people who would have otherwise either not played game(s) at all or would have downloaded illegally.
In the long term, I believe this can only be good for the industry.
The bad parts of IAP will be regulated by better consumer protections for the worst "abuses" and more naturally over time by the users themselves as they get more familiar with the model and more "meaningful" IAP titles become available.
[+] [-] exDM69|12 years ago|reply
I play a lot of simulator games, which have a lot of after market content. Flight simulators have a lot of 3rd party vendors who create additional aircraft and scenery (an aircraft may cost around $30 or more). The most popular train simulator has additional 1st party content, trains and routes which total up to $2000 even after discounts in Steam x-mas sales. The racing simulator I play has a subscription model and cars and tracks cost extra ($50 a year + $12 per car + $15 per track). But these pieces of extra content are very high quality and are accurate visually, historically and performance wise. I have no problem spending $10 to $30 every now and then on this.
But there's a stark difference between additional content in simulators (which obviously costs money to create) and a pay-to-win IAP gaming model. In p2w games, there's a hidden subscription fee because you essentially have to pay every now and then to stay in the game and not have to wait for ages (e.g. real racing android game requires you to buy new tires every few races, or wait for hours) and a price on additional content which is usually nothing but a piece of artwork (which is cheap to create in contrast to the accurate simulator content). The biggest problem with this is that these games are labelled as "free" while in reality you pay subscription + extra for additional content.
I would actually like to pay for games on my mobile, but I don't want to play games that where the whole game design is optimized for maximum IAP profit rather than maximum fun. But when browsing the Android market for games, you just can't find any interesting games that do not employ this IAP pricing model.
[+] [-] panacea|12 years ago|reply
They should not be listed as free games. Free games should be listed as demos.
In-app purchasing should be limited to unlocking discrete chunks of game-play... not 'coins'.
There should be a way to buy the game outright instead of freemium.
Essentially, we're back to where we were with video arcades, before consoles at home gave us unlimited play.
Video arcades died... Freemium games need to die too.
Apple has a noose of very bad karma around it's neck because of this.
[+] [-] Aardwolf|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|12 years ago|reply
At the risk of being crass, the online porn industry has gone to this model as well. They give a significant amount of free teaser video leading up to what would be the climax of the scene, only to cut away to an ad or just outright end.
I would assume it is working the same as with freemium games.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] chipsy|12 years ago|reply
With F2P microtransactions in the context of a single player game(multiplayer adds social value effects), the hope is, essentially, that people are too uninformed to take control of their own play experiences. Everyone who would consider themselves a games enthusiast essentially lives in a different world - even if they're addicts, they know how to satisfy their addiction at lower cost, and often with more ability to customize the experience.
[+] [-] _bfhp|12 years ago|reply
This article harks on mobile games a lot. Why do you need games on your phone? More artistic, less crass games appear on systems like the 3DS, and PCs. If I really wanted an art piece of a game on my hypothetical iPhone, I would try to make one myself.
I do disagree with micropurchases in children's games. They just don't have the thinking power yet to realize what they're dealing with. That's a more pertinent moral question, I think.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|12 years ago|reply
Here is the sticking point for me, if its suicide then great these things will fail and like the original DivX idea it will be some cautionary tale in the past.
But what is really the rant? Is the rant it costs me more to play this game? Is that it? Your $5 game is not as entertaining for as long as your $50 game? I agree that the nickel and diming is annoying but they offer the "big bag of tokens" for some big price $50 - $70. If you buy that you can whiz right through things, and they don't "re-lock" so in the case of the racing game the cars are there forever, except you had to pay $50 for that game instead of the $1 - $5 you thought it cost.
[+] [-] kevingadd|12 years ago|reply
These strategies are dramatically revenue-positive in the short term, where short term is defined as say 6-36 months. Nobody is thinking long term, so these practices thrive in the industry, they make investors happy, they make executives happy. Everyone is doing them.
The problem is that eventually these practices scorch the earth, just like how Zynga's fabulous success was built on completely destroying the effectiveness of viral pathways on Facebook.
[+] [-] Mithaldu|12 years ago|reply
Anyhow, the question you ask, what is really the rant, is this:
A large portion of human effort in the game producing industry is spent on an activity that can honestly only be described in one manner:
Legally defrauding customers.
This will in the long term breed distrust to the entire industry and wastes talent that could be used in furthering the art.
And while, yes, eventually this will die out, the problem is that in the western world it will take about half a generation and in the eastern world might never happen due to certain cultural differences.
[+] [-] kaonashi|12 years ago|reply
That it works and perpetuates is not an argument in its favor.
[+] [-] grblmrbl|12 years ago|reply
The market is speaking pretty clearly: it is not even close to profitable to make premium casual games, the group of hardcore people that are willing to pay up front is way too small to make it worthwhile. IAP lets you get many more people enjoying your game, and you make a lot more money doing it, which is IMO a win on both ends. I get that a lot of gamers hope these games will fail, but as of right now, this is the most profitable and fast growing sector in the games industry, so I'd be hesitant to predict its downfall yet.
If there was some magical way to get the same number of mass market users to pay a fair $5 up front for games (hell, even $1 would be great), every one of us in the game industry would be thrilled to hear it, because it's much easier to make premium games than freemium. I'm open to ideas, but I haven't heard many realistic ones.
Disclaimer: I work on F2P games (not for King), so take all of this with a grain of salt based on self-interest.
[+] [-] lucaspiller|12 years ago|reply
Let's take Word for example. You write a three page document, you want to save it? That's $1 please. Printing? That's another dollar. Oh you don't like Cambria? You can unlock Times New Roman for $10, or our Business Serif Pack for $49!
I guess it's similar to shareware, but more annoying...
[+] [-] nnx|12 years ago|reply
Because they have to.
The goal for any game developer who treats its creation not only as an artistic piece but also has a product, is to design software that offers a positive feedback loop to the user in order to keep her engaged.
Consider how Nintendo, for instance, considers the Mario platformer franchise as an instrument (see Ask Iwata interviews). During development, designers are focused on getting the timing (rhythm) right between challenge (say ennemies or holes) and corresponding rewards (powerups or secret exits). This ultimately plays/tricks how our brains are wired (effort needs reward) in order to engage users and ultimately enjoy the game... and pay again (and again) for the sequels/updates when they need their fix.
Imho IAP is an interesting return to the origins of video gaming (and coin-based arcades) and refocuses the industry on getting the core ingredient right, the feedback loop, rather than betting it all on graphics, story, feature-creep... and marketing.
Marketing is important when you need to convince your game is worth paying upfront, even in a seemingly minimal amount, as mobile gaming is a very "dispensable" expense in the general public.
There is no ROI in marketing an IAP game that does not engage enough of its users (enough). On the other hand, marketing heavily an upfront-cost game can draw sales, sometimes thanks to the franchise name as well, despite providing no to little entertainent to most of its users as the feedback loop is just not good enough to engage them.
For good or bad, I think IAP is accelerating adoption of data-driven practices for video game design. As an engineer/scientist, this is very interesting.
Last but not least, IAP probably helps expand the (mobile) gaming audience to people who would have otherwise either not played game(s) at all or would have downloaded illegally.
In the long term, I believe this can only be good for the industry. The bad parts of IAP will be regulated by better consumer protections for the worst "abuses" and more naturally over time by the users themselves as they get more familiar with the model and more "meaningful" IAP titles become available.
[+] [-] narrator|12 years ago|reply
People want to believe that people are smart enough to figure out that this is a bad deal but they're not. Welcome to reality.
[+] [-] analog31|12 years ago|reply