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Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

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Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#31

Post by bduerst »

Lazare wrote: post #14
Pxtl wrote: post #2

I love this essay. Thinking about people who've damaged their lives on addictive gaming.... those people behind the four-figure numbers on the spreadsheet of Whales. That's sad as hell. But... it's a clicker game. A hilarious-looking clicker game... but a clicker game. Would anybody spend $30 on a clicker game?

> A hilarious-looking clicker game... but a clicker game. Would anybody spend $30 on a clicker game? Well that's the thing, isn't it: A lot of people spent a lot more than $30 on Clicker Heroes 1. So yes, obviously people will spend $30 on a clicker game. The question is whether they'll do so via an ethical business model.

Aren't clicker games notorious for hidden difficulty curves, which are sometimes exponential?

The whole p2w model is based off of getting players invested with their time before making it too difficult to progress without investing cash. I'd bet the people who spend $30+ on the p2w version won't be willing to pay $30 up front to start investing time into a brand new game.

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#32

Post by patio11 »

greggman wrote: post #3

it concerns me how many of my friends in free to play game dev are okay with exploting whales for profit.

I go back and forth on this, because there seems to be material disagreement on whether whales are, in fact, a) folks with problems or b) folks with hobbies which are, relative to a single video game, expensive.

There is a good presentation from the CEO of Kongregate talking about this here: https://www.slideshare.net/emily_greer/dont-call-them-whales...

I share your moral intuitions about exploiting whales if whales are, in fact, little old ladies suffering from social isolation or teenagers with undiagnosed depression. But the F2P companies say that they've done the research and come to the conclusion that most of their whales are gainfully employed professionals.

That sounds... not intrinsically implausible to me? I enjoy video games, quite a bit. Games, books, and hating on Bitcoin are my hobbies, and hating on Bitcoin is cheap. I have probably sustained $100 a month on video games for ten years now, and that would frequently be concentrated on a single game for an extended while (e.g. LoL for 2 years), likely resulting in me easily hitting their whale lists.

I feel like if I'm a central example of a whale that it isn't unethical to sell me things that I like? It's not a material amount of money given my financial situation. It compares very favorably to the time commitment for my main hobby, which causes _much_ more friction than the money does. (The primary reason I don't play LoL anymore is an unpauseable 40 minute game doesn't play well with having young children.) Most external observers would categorize me under Either A Responsible Adult Or At Least Fakes It Decently Most Of The Time. Similarly well-adjusted people in my social class spend similar amounts of money on things which are not morally different than Evelynn skins, for example Hamilton tickets.

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#33

Post by on_and_off »

colmvp wrote: post #27

I hope (though I'm not truly that optimistic) in a decade that the trend of F2P will have passed. I find them extremely parasitic, exploiting human behavior. I also hate the term free-to-play, because it purposefully hides the fact that for many games, you either need to grind a lot to acquire content/in-game currency or have to spend a lot.

Well, our language is a very blunt instrument and often gets in the way of clear and nuanced communication.

Almost all the products advertised as free ask for some other form of payment.

Not all of them are harmful, far from it, but we fail at discussing it if we can't even name these different variations.

There is the game platform that will give you games for free because it wants you to register so there is less friction later on when you want to buy something there. Also, this way you have registered your mail in order to send you ads.

Many services on the web are free but this time they mine your personal information in order to target ads

Free to play games want to hook you like an addict using manipulation techniques.

Etc

They are all very different, and not necessarily all bad, but we don't even differentiate them that well in my opinion.

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#34

Post by IanCal »

cortesoft wrote: post #9

I wonder if you could still have free to play, but just had a limit to how many different things to buy. Say, you could buy everything for $60. That way, you don’t have to worry about someone spending thousands because they wouldn’t get any more than if they spent $60.

One issue with that is that it cheapens the other route you can take.

If you need 100 hours to unlock all the characters (playing through lots of times was common for fighting games I recall) but you advertise you can buy them for $60, it puts a price on your time and takes the achievement of spending those hours getting better and puts it as "worth $60".

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#35

Post by on_and_off »

panic wrote: post #29
cortesoft wrote: post #9

I wonder if you could still have free to play, but just had a limit to how many different things to buy. Say, you could buy everything for $60. That way, you don’t have to worry about someone spending thousands because they wouldn’t get any more than if they spent $60.

App stores could easily enforce a rule like this. The maximum price could also appear next to the download link for the app so you know what you're getting into.

The Play Store already does that.

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#36

Post by dragontamer »

bduerst wrote: post #31
Lazare wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A hilarious-looking clicker game... but a clicker game. Would anybody spend $30 on a clicker game? Well that's the thing, isn't it: A lot of people spent a lot more than $30 on Clicker Heroes 1. So yes, obviously people will spend $30 on a clicker game. The question is whether they'll do so via an ethical business model.

Aren't clicker games notorious for hidden difficulty curves, which are sometimes exponential? The whole p2w model is based off of getting players invested with their time before making it too difficult to progress without investing cash. I'd bet the people who spend $30+ on the p2w version won't be willing to pay $30 up front to start investing time into a brand new game.

It should be noted that ClickerHeroes didn't have p2w for months, maybe years.

I did quit after the addition of Rubies. But the game was legitimately good at balancing the heroes. A good amount of my effort in Clicker Heroes was spent on optimizing builds through linear algebra and other optimization problems.

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#37

Post by on_and_off »

Pxtl wrote: post #2

I love this essay. Thinking about people who've damaged their lives on addictive gaming.... those people behind the four-figure numbers on the spreadsheet of Whales. That's sad as hell. But... it's a clicker game. A hilarious-looking clicker game... but a clicker game. Would anybody spend $30 on a clicker game?

I have tried their first opus after reading this article.

Come on ! This is clearly tailored to hook into our addiction loops by always presenting us with a next task that is almost complete.

I have a very hard time believing that these folks did not know exactly what they were doing.

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#38

Post by jon_richards »

csours wrote: post #26
kelukelugames wrote: post #8

A cute story about whales. Jeremy Lin, the NBA player, talked about getting his teammates to play Clash Royale with him. He was shocked that everyone had better troops than him after two days. Apparently they all dropped thousands.

Clash Royale brands their philosophy as pay-to-advance. You can upgrade faster with real money, but that doesn't mean you will win matches. At some point at the top I assume everyone is spending a lot of money, and is matched up with similar level cards. As a player it doesn't really bug me.

That is an interesting point, but I think most companies incentivise whales by putting them up against people who they can crush, whether it is deliberately (as in the case of activision's patent) or by having a matchmaking system that doesn't strictly separate people by their in-game power.

Imagine a game where players only interact if they are the same level. If you can pay to gain levels, that doesn't necessarily make the game unfair. If you can pay to gain an advantage at the same level, that is unfair.

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#39

Post by stingraycharles »

colmvp wrote: post #27

I hope (though I'm not truly that optimistic) in a decade that the trend of F2P will have passed. I find them extremely parasitic, exploiting human behavior. I also hate the term free-to-play, because it purposefully hides the fact that for many games, you either need to grind a lot to acquire content/in-game currency or have to spend a lot.

Just yesterday I was looking for a simcity-like game for my iPad to play that didn’t use microtransactions. It’s simply not there. Not a single city simulator that you can actually play without paying for some stupid credit system.

I was easily willing to spend $10 for such a game, because of the scarcity. I would expect some indy dev to jump into this space, but I guess microtransactions are just too lucrative?

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#40

Post by ghostcluster »

greggman wrote: post #3

it concerns me how many of my friends in free to play game dev are okay with exploting whales for profit.

It concerns me that Apple and Google are happy to take 30% of all the gambling exploitation on the markets. And looking at AppAnnie, they appear to be the largest grossing segments of their app store profits, or "increeased services growth", as Tim Cook might put it during a quarterly call.

All this while being incredibly censorious of their stores otherwise, to the point of bragging about their store curation. Political commentary is out. But gambling mechanisms aimed at children is OK. Hell, outright name your app "Big Fish Casino" or "Slotomania".

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