121–130 of 179 posts
That's a pretty common thing out there - wonder how well that model actually works in reality? I've never seen hard data.
Solve the ethical dilemma/charged too much issue: Cap the max expenditure in the real money shop. After that level, players can continue to purchase, but they won't actually be charged real money. If desired, can also add a "donate" button for the hypothetical players who pay huge amounts to support the game/company.
Also, it'd ruin most games, because of the way they're designed.
For instance, gacha games like Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, Record Keeper, and Mobius. If you could cap out at (for example) $300 and then pull for free from then on, you'd end up with everything you ever wanted, all the time. There'd be nothing to stop you from just pulling until you got everything.
The entire game would need a redesign to deal with that situation.
Premium currency in most F2P games is the same way.
I'm not arguing with you, just exposing the reason that nobody except Nintendo has done your suggestion so far.
And to my knowledge, they've only done it twice. Pokemon Picross and another Pokemon spinoff game.
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> pay $30 up front to play it i'd rather pay upfront than be nickeled and dimed afterwards. Esp. if the production quality of the game is up to scratch (e.g., no unrecoverable bugs, good looking graphics/sound, and intuitive UI etc).
But there's no gameplay! Sorry, I mean to say: there's no inherent evolution of plot or mechanics. It's a game that's literally defined by "numbers increasing on the side of the screen, and microtransactions to make those numbers go up quicker." What would that look like without the microtransactions? while True: i++ print i Done.
MMOs have been wildly popular in the general community, precisely because there are no significantly complex mechanics. Yes, there can be, but a very small portion of the player-base are engaged at that level. You don't need amazing aim. You just press a sequence of buttons. The plot is often totally incoherent and a lot of people skip it. And plot can be supplied by the player's imagination, fitting in with existing fantasies they hold (writing fantasy dialogues for your virtual pet, or I'm the king of the realm, building it by clicking things).
Even FPSes are changing, in Blizzard's Overwatch, the most loved/despised hero Mercy[1] is "skill-less". You're not trying to get head shots or twitch aim or anything, you're keeping 5 bars full while moving around with very simple mechanics. And love it or hate it, you can't deny it's brought in a lot more diverse set of players to the game, I've never heard so many female voices in an FPS.
It make me think that games can be thought of as combinations of several elements, plot, progression, mechanics, difficulty, etc.. Some people like parts part of that. They hate other bits of it. The progression thing seems to be one that's very easy to "exploit" through gambling mechanisms, it seems to be some sort of built in congitive mechanism that probably benefited us when you needed to plan ahead to build a shelter, or go on a hunt, or go out and get X berries, or anything that required a multi-step process for future planning.
[1]Overwatch is a 6 v 6 first person shooter team game where there are lots of different characters to choose from that have very different weapons, skills, and roles, including healers. Mercy is a healer who can heal using a beam that requires extremely basic aim and can fly from player to player. This has allowed players without highly developed aim or positioning skills to enter the game and enjoy it, and then gradually develop those other skills to move to different heroes. The general consensus in the community is that this has allowed it to be much more accessible and fun for people who haven't been playing Halo/CoD/Battlefield from the age of 12.
A great piece, an ethical decision, and I hope the start of something bigger. I agree that free to play is often horribly exploitative, not to mention horrible game design. But that price point. That makes me worried. Browse around Steam to see the company they are trying to keep at $30. In the reddit thread the dev said they've chosen this price point based on $2m production budget. Fair enough they've done their ho…
If it has no in-game shop the price is perfectly valid IMO, and I wish every mobile game was like this.
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One more with the niche of this forum, and one that doesn't take that much time (depending on your take on the task), is Paperclips http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
I love how paperclips is extremely addicting, but short. These games can eat up all your free time for months easily. Paperclips takes one day or two.
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> pay $30 up front to play it i'd rather pay upfront than be nickeled and dimed afterwards. Esp. if the production quality of the game is up to scratch (e.g., no unrecoverable bugs, good looking graphics/sound, and intuitive UI etc).
But there's no gameplay! Sorry, I mean to say: there's no inherent evolution of plot or mechanics. It's a game that's literally defined by "numbers increasing on the side of the screen, and microtransactions to make those numbers go up quicker." What would that look like without the microtransactions? while True: i++ print i Done.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They're a great demonstration of how the illusion of progressing at something is all you need to keep people interested, even when the only thing they're progressing towards is... the opportunity for more progression. If anyone wants to try this type of "game" give cookie clicker a try.
Don't try kittens game. Please.
For those interested in these types of games I would recommend subbreddit https://reddit.com/r/incremental_games
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> pay $30 up front to play it i'd rather pay upfront than be nickeled and dimed afterwards. Esp. if the production quality of the game is up to scratch (e.g., no unrecoverable bugs, good looking graphics/sound, and intuitive UI etc).
But there's no gameplay! Sorry, I mean to say: there's no inherent evolution of plot or mechanics. It's a game that's literally defined by "numbers increasing on the side of the screen, and microtransactions to make those numbers go up quicker." What would that look like without the microtransactions? while True: i++ print i Done.
I'm really surprised to see this from a company that makes, of all possible genres, clicker games . Clicker games usually have almost no actual gameplay, and pretty much only interest people because they exploit many of the same type of psychological tricks that free-to-play games use to keep players hooked. They're a great demonstration of how the illusion of progressing at something is all you need to keep people i…
> They're a great demonstration of how the illusion of progressing at something is all you need to keep people interested, even when the only thing they're progressing towards is... the opportunity for more progression. If anyone wants to try this type of "game" give cookie clicker a try.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They're a great demonstration of how the illusion of progressing at something is all you need to keep people interested, even when the only thing they're progressing towards is... the opportunity for more progression First time I heard about clicker heroes game was 2 hours ago, reading your reply. Guess why it took me 2 house to reply? That’s right, I’ve been clicking and clicking. It’s crazy how something so point…
> pay $30 up front to play it i'd rather pay upfront than be nickeled and dimed afterwards. Esp. if the production quality of the game is up to scratch (e.g., no unrecoverable bugs, good looking graphics/sound, and intuitive UI etc).