The Free-to-play Fallacy

Mobile games... How many times have we read on the news of children 'accidentally' spending a fortune on a 'free' game to the shock of their parents? Considering that cases that come to light probably involve a significant the sum of money, how many cases of 'accidental' spending are there in reality?

Make no mistake, apps are designed to make money. Most free apps make money either through advertising, option to purchase for added features, or, as in this case, micro-transactions, and it is this monetization model that can be an issue.

Micro-transactions, or the option to buy perks, cheats, or speed boosts to get through the game faster, are becoming extremely popular, especially with Farmville-like games, for example, Smurf Village. These games, commonly referred to as cow clickers, tend to give the players very limited activities each game session and the player has to wait, possibly for hours as you get further into the game, before they get more activities to participate in. In order to speed things up, there are options to pay to instantly build stuff, or buy game currency so a player does not have to spend the time to earn it.

Patience is not a common trait among gamers, especially younger ones with more time on their hands. And if parents do not have the proper measures on place, they can spend a lot of money to get through to the next objective, not knowing the value nor the amount of money they are truly spending. Given how the app stores work and the safety measurements in place, these cases should be rare, but people somehow trust their children with the passwords to their accounts with their credit card details attached. And even if that's not the case, a child can be tempted to cry and whine to his parents to buy it for him. And who's to say that it's not actually the parent himself who spends, regrets and then blames it on his child to get a refund?

These games are designed and tweaked to a point where players are tempted to spend money to get ahead, yet are not put off by the slow pace of progression. And therein lies the problem. It's arguably exploitative, especially to certain vulnerable people. Considering the fact that free-to-play games tend to make the most from a very small percentage of its players, this could quite possibly be true.

And it's not just cow clickers. Any free-to-play game, or any game with micro-transactions built in, for that matter, can potentially be exploitative, locking content behind 'energy levels', whereby you need to wait or pay before the next level, or currency walls, i.e. you slowly save up in-game currency or, you guessed it, pay, to unlock the next level or upgrade your character. Game difficulty can even be tweaked such that it's impossible to complete without paying for upgrades. How often have I played a game with micro-transactions and have that nagging feeling that I'll never complete the game because I'm not going to pay.

As parents, it is our responsibility to police our children and educate them on their gaming and spending habits (duh). As gamers, we need to realize what and where we're spending on as well. Quite often, the amount spent on a free-to-play game in order to make decent progress can easily cost more than buying a retail game outright. Of course, it's hard to determine if a phone app is worth our time, but perhaps by not spending time and money in exploitative ones the moment we are sure, we can bring down it's popularity? Well, we can dream, can't we? Perhaps we can start by letting people know of such exploitative games and avoiding them.

If you know of any app with detestable business practices, especially the famous ones, feel free to post in the comments. And thanks for reading!

Why Can't I Buy the Game I Want to Play?

I spoke up a lot on this blog with regards to why I don't want to support certain games. It could be a certain form of DRM, or some monetization issue, or a piece of pre-order bonus. Why is this an issue to us gamers? Shouldn't we be thankful to the developers for making such great games for us? Shouldn't we cut them some slack and give them the money they deserve?

Actually, it is understandable when companies choose to use DRM like always-online requirements to fight piracy. Piracy is a problem, and it does eat into sales, and in truth, having a game connect to a server and having parts of the game run server side is a very powerful form of DRM that can be almost impossible to crack, unless the pirates manage to duplicate the server's role somehow. Whether or not having DRM will get people, who would otherwise download the game to actually pay for the game is another matter (there's no reason to believe they would still want the game if it's not free), but we can understand where game developers are coming from. The problem with always-online is obvious, server issues, internet provider issues, companies closing down, or shutting down servers; the fact is, technology is just not good enough yet, whether it's the game company or internet providers. And in many countries, internet is limited by data caps, and subscription is not cheap. Perhaps one day, when speeds can finally be fast and internet, reliable, and accessible anywhere and anytime without latency issues and wiring requirement, perhaps then, can we accept always-online. Now, however, it is just not acceptable, though we tend to be more forgiving if it's free-to-play.

Other issues like pre-order bonus and DLCs are just there to encourage sales, which technically isn't wrong. But it opens up abuse. Pre-order bonuses are content created before the game is released, meaning potentially, it could be something originally in the game, something purposely removed from the game just before release to, 1) encourage people to buy before reviews are out, i.e. trick people into buying a bad game, and 2) get people who didn't order the game to fork out more money for content that should be in there originally, effectively increase the price of the game by $5 to $15. Not a bad deal for the company at all.

These are things gamers don't want, and yet, we still buy games that have all these issues. The message we are sending to companies is that we don't mind their exploitation, as long as we get good games. They can inconvenience us however they want with DRM; they can sell us five minutes of content at a time for $15 dollars each; they can make crappy games full of bugs, log in issues and with server issues and we'll pay for them without waiting for reviews. They can do all these, and we won't mind. If we keep sending out these signals, companies will keep testing the waters, keep exploiting us more and more, trying to see how far they can go before we react, and they will do it with games that people really want to play.

I'm not sure if it's worth fighting anymore. Perhaps gamers don't really care, and people who are complaining are just the vocal minority. Or people are really just stupid fan boys, complaining about every little misstep EA makes but worshipping at the feet of Blizzard that does no wrong. You know, both Sim City and Diablo 3 use server processing always-online DRM but only one of the companies finally made their game playable offline.

Blizzard's Shift into Anti-Consumer Policies

Reaper of Souls has pre-order bonuses. And always-online DRM. And it almost has micro-transactions and pay-to-win elements. Almost.

How long will it be before we get into expensive, overpriced DLCs? And in-game content purposely removed from the finished product as pre-order bonuses or DLC? Or pay-to-enter betas?

I ranted about pre-order bonuses before. They encourage people to buy games before knowing if it will be any good. Granted, Blizzard is only giving out cosmetic items as pre-order incentives, but with regards to the Demon Hunter, not enough is known about Heroes of the Storm so it leaves to be seen if it will be an issue.

I guess I'm just sore because I've made it a point not to pre-order, and to not buy anything that has always-online at full price, and because I'm a collector, since I won't be getting the full package when I don't pre-order, it means I won't buy it in future even if there is a sale. (Yes, there are sales on the Blizzard store - Christmas and Black Friday.) AND because it crosses over to other Blizzard games, and I won't be able to complete my 'collection', I'll be giving up on collector's editions, digital deluxe editions or what not. Yes, I know I'm dumb for collecting games, but thanks to Blizzard, I won't have any IP that I'm devoted to anymore, so I can save my money.

The Aliens: Colonial Marines incident should have been a wake up call against pre-ordering games, and really, since it's on the online store, there is no need for Blizzard to get the numbers so they can stock up on copies. What reason is there but to bait people into making rash purchases? What annoys me is that because it is Blizzard, they can get away with absolute anything. If it were EA, the internet would have exploded in a rage equivalent to the detonation of a million nuclear warheads.

Edit: My bad. Turns out Blizzard actually announced that the 'pre-order loot' will be available till 31st March, i.e. after the launch so people can actually wait for reviews before purchasing, instead of buying blind. But then again, people thought Diablo 3 was good for the first few hours...

Free Lunch? Really?

Free-to-play is getting really popular with publishers, especially with MOBAs (and really, who isn't making a MOBA these days?).  Gamers are getting more choices for nothing, and that's great! Gone are the days when 'free' means 'it sucks' and developers are wise to move (or, as we'll see, try to move) away from buying power. Even consoles are getting into the free-to-play market. But no, mobile free-to-play doesn't count - it's still pretty much exploitative of gamers over there.

One issue with free-to-play, however, is that some companies just don't get it. Though some of the examples I'm giving might be from iOS and Android, (and we know how clueless developers are on that platform) and might be games from companies like EA, things are just slightly better on PC and consoles. Unlocking weapons are not done very well for the most part for FPS (paying to unlock more powerful weapons), and the one real strategy game, Age Of Empires Online, locks up so much content and items that you can get but not use without paying, that it might as well be a long demo.

Worse, games may be designed with the payment model in mind and are made to be as grindy as possible so people are tempted to pay to skip. The new Plants Vs Zombies 2 is so lacking in content when compared to the first game, and reuses maps by locking levels behind 'stars' that you have to collect by replaying levels. Some levels are extremely hard, making you wonder if it's to make you pay for the power ups to get through them. And speaking of power ups, these are so insanely broken that the game becomes extremely easy if you do use them. Talk about greed damaging the integrity of the game. Even the Injustice game on iOS by NetherRealms, a company that is pretty respectable in it's monetization models, is designed to be almost impossible to complete unless you spend money, or lots and lots of time.

And money, oh how they love thee. Free-to-play games, even if they almost do not require that you spend money on them, can cost a ton for the simplest of items. Path of Exile, a game whom the dev have made it so well that you can experience the game to its fullest without spending a dime, has a pet that actually costs $55 worth of points (though I can understand since they won't probably make any money at all since the game is so fair to its customers). And you'll be surprised how much these games can add up to just by paying for a bit of these extras - it could easily cost multiple full priced games. Understandably, the studio has to make a lot of money from the few that pay so others can play for free. It would be nice if we can pay for, let's say the price of a boxed game and get everything, just like buying a normal retail game. Then again, if you pay to unlock everything, is the game still worth playing, since you just took the progression out of it?

Publishers also have to worry about committing too much into free-to-play games. These games, by nature, have to be addictive with a lot of content, much like MMOs, and gamers can't afford to sink too much time into too many of them. This means competition is high and with so many games already in the market from the various genres, it'll be tough to capture an audience for new free-to-play games since gamers can't 'complete' the existing ones and move on to new ones, especially if they have sank money into them. There are still genres that do not have successful free-to-play modeled games though, like RTS and Turn-based-Strategy, so there's money to be made for the studio who makes a good game with a successful payment model. I personally can't see how it can be done effectively, but then again, I didn't expect and action RPG like Path of Exile to do it, but Grinding Gear Games pulled it off pretty well.

At the end of the day, whether it's a free-to-play, a subscription based, or a buy once plus DLC model, each model has its merits, and it is good that as gamers, we get games from these different models along with the pros and cons from each. Be warned though, that there are a lot of us who aren't happy when you combine all these payment models into a game to milk consumers and compromise your game as a result of your greed...

Always-On, DRM or Game Feature?

EA has come out and said DRM is a "failed, dead-end strategy" and that always-online for Sim City isn't DRM at all. That's pretty convenient. But I guess piracy is a failed, dead-end strategy for gamers who want more games because companies that don't earn money can't keep making games, however, torrenting isn't piracy either, it's just file sharing so that is fine, right?

 

Is having always-online in a game really beneficial for gamers and the company? Most gamers would scream out "NO", so why do companies still do it? Some reasons have been brought up, like the integrity of the game, especially if money is involved, like Diablo 3, or having a game where people can be interconnected, like SimCity. But why can't this be, say, OPTIONAL? Because if people can choose, companies will make less money? For Diablo, they want you to always consider the auction house, and so keep you online, and in the case of SimCity, because there are people visiting your cities, it would make it desirable for you to own premium buildings just to show it off?

And what if it were DRM? Does it benefit the company in anyway? I guess the pirates might have a harder time getting a free copy, or in the case of Diablo 3, probably not at all, but still, do you really expect the pirates to buy the game, and even if by some miracle, some do, will the money you earn from the 5 of them makeup for the maybe thousands that don't buy the game because they can't play it?

 

Will so many online distribution platforms, games can sell so much longer after they have been released. Sites like GoG are even fixing old games go help them run better on modern systems. But for games with an always online requirement, their lifespan is limited by the servers. These games can't keep selling simply because games cost less the longer it gets. After some time, the amount of money made cannot offset the costs of maintaining the servers, and because EA is famous for shutting down servers, I'm not sure if it's worth getting SimCity later at a discount as you never know when the servers are going down. So by limiting the lifespan of their games, they are doing themselves a disservice. (On that note, have you ever thought of what would happen if Steam were to shut down?)

 

And what of the consumers? Servers cost money to run, maintenance costs money as well, and the servers themselves are an investment, and this is why there are always launch problems. Did you think they really have no idea how it'll sell? There are pre-orders that give them a pretty good idea of how many servers are needed, but in order to save money, they would rather underestimate because launch day or launch week is probably the only time they'll get so many concurrent users. Over time, people stop playing, and the investment on the servers will be wasted. If that's the case, it would be wiser to let the consumers suffer during the launch, and hopefully, the company can get past the rough period with minimal additional costs, and when less people play, the available servers will sort themselves out.

 

Consumers hate DRM, and will bash a game to the ground, and EA has wisely agreed with consumers in order to get into their good books. Yet, in order to justify what they did with SimCity, they are forced to try and say that it is not DRM. I guess that is like claiming pirating games for demo purposes and not buying it even if one likes the games...

 

Oh, and just when I finished my draft, this:

 

 

How to solve this? I don't know... maybe start another separate server just for people who want to play without the auction house? And maybe add in single-player local play while you're at it?

You know what? Aliens...

By now, many of us have had the chance to read about or play Aliens: Colonial Marines, and to put it simply, it wasn't good.

 

Many had hopes for this game, not only because of the license but also because of Gearbox, developers of the Borderlands franchise. The advertisements and interviews with Gearbox declaring their love for the franchise, and the long development time was encouraging as well, and the demo that they showed to the press dripped with atmosphere.

 

It's no surprise that, people, after all the hype surrounding the game, pre-ordered, and were horribly disappointed by the game at release. The gaming sites exploded with negative reviews and rumours on how the game could go so disastrously wrong after the awesome demo. People took to forums and social networks to express their displeasure, and accusations of Gearbox's dishonest behavior surfaced.

 

Did Gearbox lie to Sega and the gaming press? Why was the end product so different from the demo and trailers? There is talk that Gearbox outsourced the project, preferring to focus on their own title, Borderlands 2 instead.

And so, (some) people realized that pre-ordering games wasn't such a good idea after all, especially if the pre-order bonus was just skins or something pointless. And even if the bonus was good, you're really risking a lot buying a game that you know nothing of, besides a press demo, and as Gearbox has shown, press demos can be fake, and even consumer demos can be faked, seeing they just need to put together say, 30 mins worth of gameplay (whether or not it's taken from the full game doesn't really matter to them) and send it out to the gamers, and we won't know the difference until the game is released.

So that's our little lesson to learn from this saga, and if you still want to pre-order instead of wait for reviews, that's your choice, and if the bonus depends on the number of pre-orders, have fun with your gamble!

When Using Cheats Became Stealing

Dead Space cheat undermines in-game micro-transactions

 

When Diablo 3 was released, it blurred the line between single-player games and MMOs. Here was a game that is a single-player game with multiplayer options of up to 4 people, yet had elements of MMOs that meant things that were OK in single player and even multiplayer games of the past were no longer acceptable. Let me explain...

 

MMOs have a large player base, numbering up to millions, though technically, the most you might meet or play with number in the hundreds. Because of that, there is a complicated social interaction at play that developers have to pay special attention to when developing g and patching their game. Bugs that can be exploited for better gear or currency had to be fixed and in-game benefits gained from said exploit removed, even disciplinary actions against the offending player, all because of the perception of the other players who will deem it unfair that the offending player could brain an edge over them.

 

Such issues should only be a concern in multiplayer games, or more specifically, competitive games, but recently, and especially because of Diablo 3, we are seeing that even single player games that blatantly have micro-transactions that give the player an advantage. We already had those in the past - cheats and bugs. But now, because of the monetization of cheats, exploiting bugs in even single player games are seen as wrong and even illegal? This is pretty ridiculous if you're like me and have played games before the current generation of consoles.

 

Blizzard took a gamble with Diablo 3 and it paid off. Now EA is following suit and other companies to. Will there come a day when finding and making use of bugs in games is illegal because you are techically by-passing paid dlc cheats to gain an advantage in the game? I shudder to even think of such a possibility...

Edit: Apparently EA says it's ok. So kind of an over-reaction on my part.

Game Developers, Used Games and the Fans

There are rumours popping up that the next Xbox will be blocking used games. While this isn't the first time that rumours like this have surfaced, it is gaining more attention as we await the upcoming announcements regarding these new consoles.

Most people think this is a stupid idea because if only one of the consoles does go ahead with this, its rival will definitely gain the upper hand, or will it?

One thing to note is that if a console does block used games, it will most likely be more attractive for developers to release games on that console. Used games make up a large part in sales in brick and mortar stores, and it is said that certain stores will actively promote the sale of used games because of the higher profits. Publishers and developers gain no revenue from these sales, and it is understandable why they would go through lengths to deny this. Current measures include the online pass, promised DLCs, and locking achievements to a single account. If a console does block used games, it will be a huge draw for developers.

So then, will the console with more owners win out, or will the one with more games gain popularity? It will come down to whether gamers stick to their guns and support used games as an option, or sell-out and buy the less desirable console just so they can play the next big game. And looking at the trend of the gaming industry now, it is likely the gamers will give in. Already we are seeing gamers ignoring poor business practices and buying games with offensive DRM and supporting publishers that exploit their customers, and this is also because publishers cleverly do such things only on games that are highly anticipated. Take Capcom for example and it's on-disk DLC on Street Fighter x Tekken but not doing so on the new IP, Dragon's Dogma, or EA realizing the popularity and gamers' need to play the newest game in the series of Dead Space 3 and Mass Effect 3 and adding micro-transactions, essential story day-one DLC and the like. So will gamers take it line, hook and sinker?

I don't personally think it's true because the rumours came with the Xbox having an always-online requirement. But then again, Microsoft came up with Games for Windows Live, so they aren't really that smart after all...

More 'disturbing' DLC for Dead Space 3

Though I have resolved to no longer buy games published by EA, being a fan of survival horror, I'm still pretty interested in Dead Space 3.

 

However, it was announced today that there will be 11 day-one DLC for the game and this has caused a major uproar among the gaming community.

 

Though I'm not really happy with this news, I have to sit down and properly consider the nature of this news. Don't get me wrong, I'm still not buying this game because of the micro-transactions but some of the announced DLC doesn't actually seem that bad. There are things like personality for helper bots and capacity. These are for single player and are not crucial to the story and in fact, can make the game easier so people who buy them are actually kind of stupid.

 

We'll have to wait and see what the rest of the DLCs are before deciding, but one thing is for sure, if gamers let it slide, or worse, support this DLC practice, we will see this crap in almost every game published.

 

(Dead Space 3 is a survival horror game so what smart gamer would buy DLC and pay money for micro-transactions to make it easier? And why make a horror game co-op? I'm sure Capcom is proud of its decision to make Resident Evil co-op and not turning back and saying that they will return to its roots. Good luck EA, you'll NEED it.)

Support for companies

Do people buy games because they are good or because they love the developer? I hardly have time to play my games - competitive ones require time to be skilled at them, RPGs tend to be more engaging and immersing if played for longer stretches each gaming session, and co-op play with friends or strangers simply do not allow the flexibility in gaming time. As such, I do end up buying games to support the developers, especially those whose publishers have good business practices.

Recently, especially, with less time and even less money due to having a kid, I am getting even more religious and selective in my support for companies. I still am keen in gaming, even if it's for small stretches at a time. I still want to pay for good games to good companies (though 'good' is a pretty subjective word).

There's always this difference between publishers and developers. We often hear of EA or Activision, and generally put the blame on publishers yet buy games because they are made by certain developers. But is the truth really because of the publishers? Or is the blame just being pushed to them so they can still sell the games because of the developers, and yet still get to exploit their customers, having their cake and eating it? How can we tell the difference and who are we actually 'supporting'?

If you have limited amount of cash and time, would you buy popular games with questionable business practices, or not so popular games that are good but not great? Does business practices alone indicate a good company or does quality games dictate that? Or more likely, both?

Lessons that should have been learnt by Blizzard?

Most gamers have gotten their hands on Diablo 3 (D3) are and are spending a lot of time fighting the minions of hell. The release has been troubling, but nevertheless, the great gameplay of Blizzard games still hold up to the flaws of the DRM.

The server crashes on the first day was surprising, considering Blizzard held a stress test that worked (i.e. stressed the server enough to crash it), and that, with the number of pre-orders they received, should have given them enough information to determine how much server resources they would require. The only unknown is that of online purchases made on release day, or shortly before that.

There have been cases of hacking, and that is hardly surprising with the Real Money Auction House and character data saves been made on the Blizzard server instead of the client's machine. But interestingly, unlike World of Warcraft (WoW), when Blizzard restores your items after you report a hacking, your character is rolled back to a much earlier state, potentially losing levels and the latest acquired gear.

The last I checked, Blizzard made WoW, and like WoW, D3 has persistent online DRM, characters stored on Blizzard servers, and has gameplay that's heavily gear dependent. Also, WoW faced all the problems currently plaguing D3, like poor server stability launch-day and hacking, so why isn't Blizzard doing what WoW did?

(The later part of this post is going to devolve into a Real Money Auction House [RMAH] rant.)

The fact that we have to be always online to play is not purely for fighting piracy, but also because Blizzard needs to have the characters on their servers to prevent people from hacking to get better items. Items equals money with the RMAH, and having a surplus of items in the market will push costs down, making items not worth selling, dropping sales and thus Blizzard will earn less money from it. Players who prefer to play single player are thus forced to be online all the time.

The restoration system likely works for the same reason. You don't get back your most recent gear because they are not going to make another copy of it. The hacker has it, and giving returning to gear to the player increases the number of copies of the item. Granted, the player might not sell it immediately, but in future he may, and if Blizzard rolls back the items on the character so easily, players can easily fake a hack, passing expensive items to another account and then reporting to get more items to sell.

A lot of problems of D3 are there simply because of the RMAH, which aggravatingly, isn't even ready yet. I am against the RMAH, but very keen to see how it will affect the economy. Will gold be rendered useless? Will the gold auction house still have high quality items? It would make sense to sell it for real money if I'm honest. Of course, you could sell gold for money and then use the money to get items from the RMAH, and Blizzard will happily take a cut from both sales.

Tekken Tag 2 DLC

A couple of articles on Gamespot discusses the issues with DLCs (among others) on fighting games. In an interview with Katsuhiro Harada, producer of the Tekken series, he revealed that he thinks that dlc is fine, but "stages, characters, and moves shouldn't be added as paid DLC" because "these are necessary elements to a fighting game. Much like chess pieces to a game of chess, they shouldn't be charged for separately."

Brendan Sinclair, in an article Tekken Tag 2 a model of how to handle DLC, talked about how dlc is employed by publishers for two different reasons, 1. to discourage players from selling their games after they're done with it because there will be new content, and 2. to earn money. He notes that the problem comes when publishers try to do both and that turns players off. DLC done right, he argues, is if you want money, then make the content worthwhile and give us a "complete" product at the start. And if you want to lock up content that's already completed, it implies that your goal is to stop people from selling the game when they are done, so the content should be free. Tekken Tag 2 will give players more characters free of charge, and that shows the DLC's for reason number 2.

How do we actually tell what other motivations are behind the DLC if there's a price tag on it? As a consumer, what gamers are unhappy with is being short-changed, and if a game has DLC, cost, time of release, and whether it is already available on day-one will be a huge indicator on whether they are being exploited. It's nice to see that publishers are beginning to take note of this and taking steps to keep the consumers happy, but skeptical me says that most companies will just find ways to mask their money making schemes, while continuing to exploit and milk their fan-base.

And if you like fighting games, do support Namco Bandai with the release of Tekken Tag 2. Good business practices should be rewarded. Unless of course, they decide to pull a Capcom on us.