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(In App Purchase) I've been a PC gamer since there were PC games, yes I'm old (Talking Vic-20 and 2600 old). Never much a console guy but when I got an Ipad a few years ago the games for IOS started to actually get pretty good and ended up getting my wife one. It was cool just playing little stuff when I didn't feel like sitting in front of the computer or just lounging on the couch. Most of the good ones usually had the free version so you could try it before you shelled out 5 or 10 bucks. Granted I think UO started the idea of buying game poo poo for cash, maybe EQ first but it wasn't over the top. UO $20 and get a character with certain primary skills at 85 so you could restart without having to click a drum for 3 weeks to play your bard and EQ was 99% fluff, different looking mounts maybe slightly faster but nothing required to actually play. D3 it got a little worse but at least it was between players with a small fee, I bought stuff for real cash but it was cash from selling other stuff. Made enough to buy Starcraft 3. But even then it was nothing you couldn't get just playing anyway, just buy something someone else found if you're impatient. But the trend now with IOS games is having to buy in game currency and it rapidly has become not only required but at a level of greed I've never seen. Played one called Armed Heroes Online and it got to the point where if you didnt want to be insta gibbed in pvp you needed to shell out serious cash, and I'm talking a couple grand. By the time I stopped there were a dozen or so players who had spent literally 50k+ and the were completely godlike, just see them on the screen and you're dead, one could take out 100 people in seconds. It's gotten so bad single player games are requiring it. I browse around for a new game to gently caress around in an the first think I do in the App Store is scroll down to see if there's the "top in app purchases" in the game description. I keep hoping it'll at least get less insane, throwing $10 every now and then would be like an online subscription but I'm starting to think its just going to get worse
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Sep 8, 2014 01:29
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What do you mean "going to become"?
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Sep 8, 2014 01:34
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As long as there are people out there mentally ill enough to dump $50k into a single game, there will be games willing to accept $50k from them.
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Sep 8, 2014 01:39
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I think it is here already. But people are willing to pay it. I don't think I have made any yet, but I was pretty tempted to buy some GTA bucks on GTA online but I stopped once I saw the prices they wanted. They were completely in congruent to what I thought should be the cost for value amounts. For example, I think it is $20 real money for a million GTA bucks, which is a lot, but I can get a whole other game with that money.
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Sep 8, 2014 01:40
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I think developers are still figuring out what games work best with that model. I see a lot of eye-rolling when these systems appear in AAA releases, but I view it as experimentation more than an inevitable trend.
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Sep 8, 2014 01:41
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Outside of games developed by people who develop games they'd be william to play themselves, it already is, op. e: hrm. thank you, autocomplete
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Sep 8, 2014 05:19
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I work for a Japanese iOS development house and I can guarantee you IAP is going to be around for a long time, it literally prints money with little to no effort.
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Sep 8, 2014 05:21
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Here's a cool gamedev pro tip: In the opening menu by "START GAME", have there be a button with some dice on it. When you press the button, you automatically pay $0.50 for a random in-game item, or a chance for an item, if you'd prefer. Everybody wins. Well, except in the latter case. But yep.
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Sep 8, 2014 05:26
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In app purchase is pretty bad in a sense that some of these game contain gambling or gambling like elements that tickle the human brain. Like the simpson tap out is one of the most grossing "game", one of the reason why is, by design or accident, everything is made so you have to go back playing the game often. The longer you are playing the game the more likely you are to purchase something. The games is actually a chore to play and the graphic and joke are really poor. It is really sad the a lot of customer are playing this poor man sim city because there is Simpson's characters in it.
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Sep 8, 2014 05:40
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Was it Greece that banned videogames altogether because of their gambling-like attributes? Well, extended that into a world-wide IAP ban.
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Sep 8, 2014 05:46
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I hope not. At least not with how they currently are on iOS. IAP pretty much took what was a somewhat new platform for different styles of games and poo poo all over it into a wasteland. Now it's simple games in the loosest sense of the term with IAP slowing down gameplay to try to milk as much money as it can out of players. They're designed to give just enough gameplay that players will become annoyed with waiting and constantly plug money into IAPs hoping once they do gameplay will kick off. The new Dungeon Keeper is one of the biggest examples. In a game that's supposed to be an RTS digging out a 5x5 chamber can take up to a loving week unless you rush it with IAP gems. Zombies VS Plants 2 at one point tried to make it so you had to rebuy a mower if you ever had to use one and is balanced around using powers which cost quite a lot of coins which, of course, you can get with IAP. And those are games with actual gameplay. Almost everything else is some bejeweled knock off or something that's surpassed by early new grounds flash games Could you imagine playing, as an example, Half Life 3 and after dying a fourth time having a screen pop up saying you need to wait 24 hours for lives to regenerate. But if you post a link on Facebook someone can send you a life or you can trade three lambada symbols for another life. A five pack of lambada symbols is 4.99. Oh and half the guns are behind a pay wall that if you pay ten lambada symbols each you can unlock! Of course you really can't make a game on iOS that actually costs something up front now cause everyone only goes for free games. People are terrible at keeping track of what they spend with micro transactions but hey they game is free right? Dr. VooDoo fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Sep 8, 2014 |
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Sep 8, 2014 06:09
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Browser game sites are starting to push it harder than ever. Kongregate makes 70% of their revenue from IAP and pretty much everything on their developer pages opens with a push to redesign your game to get players to treat it like a meatspace hobby and spend thousands of dollars pursuing it.
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Sep 8, 2014 08:15
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Have any games marketed themselves as "NOT free to play" yet to distance themselves from the gungho chaff?
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Sep 8, 2014 08:24
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Bleusilences posted:The games is actually a chore to play and the graphic and joke are really poor. It is really sad the a lot of customer are playing this poor man sim city because there is Simpson's characters in it. This is the worst part of it all. It encourages devs to make low-quality games with some popular theme and just watch as the money comes in. Even in the iOS games thread, people who play tapped out seem to be aware that the game sucks, but they still play it anyway for reasons I just can't comprehend. This video sums up my thoughts on them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZvYZNunm_w It's insane how companies like mobage literally release the exact same lovely "game" with a new licensed skin and profit off of it.
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Sep 8, 2014 08:39
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It doesn't help that a ton of mobile games are just carbon copies of another popular game. They simply copy over the same IAP concepts too!
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Sep 8, 2014 08:41
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Bleusilences posted:In app purchase is pretty bad in a sense that some of these game contain gambling or gambling like elements that tickle the human brain. Like the simpson tap out is one of the most grossing "game", one of the reason why is, by design or accident, everything is made so you have to go back playing the game often. The longer you are playing the game the more likely you are to purchase something. The games is actually a chore to play and the graphic and joke are really poor. It is really sad the a lot of customer are playing this poor man sim city because there is Simpson's characters in it. Yeah thats the other lovely thing especially when it comes to any kind of MMORPG type game, half the IAP's are just scratch off tickets. Buy it and you might get the sword of the giant penis. Or maybe a rusty dagger. With the odds being 0.5%/99.5% I downloaded Evolution over the weekend an christ is it over the top. It looked like it could be interesting, sort of a 4x4 with FF style combat added in but you have to buy loving AMMO for real money, nevermind building anything at any kind of speed since you get one 'build slot' that is used for building, upgrading, researching. But for just $50 you can do more than one at once!
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Sep 8, 2014 16:24
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As someone who is prove to momentary bouts of poor impulse control during times of stress and being within reach of my phone during times of stress I have made many IAPs that I have come to regret over the year or so since I started buying poo poo on my phone. IAP is here to stay thanks to chumps like me, but to be fair there does seem to be a big difference in games that are free to play and games that essentially require money to advance. I discovered the latter after paying a little over $20 to Evolution only to discover that there is pretty much no way to advance at any reasonable pace if you don't dump a ton of money into the game. Conversely I've spent about $10 on Tales of Honor and have had no need or desire to spend any more. Rule of thumb is that it is extremely likely the game will be rigged if it contains any kind of leader board.
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Sep 8, 2014 17:04
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We're in the midst of the glut. It'll work itself out - good game developers will eventually find ways to make the IAP model work and still make fun games people want to play, and it'll eventually become unprofitable to keep making the same cloned games over and over. Same thing happened with Facebook games, and the bottom fell out of that a while back. There will always be stupid crap making a lot of money, but it's crazy to think that this current trend will continue forever. It'll die down - that's what trends do.
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Sep 8, 2014 17:30
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I can live with IAPs its this new IAP/Pay hybrid that annoys me, the Plants vs Zombies shooter has it where you pay 30 for the game but to unlock new items you either earn them slowly from playing matches or pay real money for random packs to unlock stuff faster. It really needs to be either/or.
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Sep 8, 2014 17:34
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thuly posted:Have any games marketed themselves as "NOT free to play" yet to distance themselves from the gungho chaff? There's a somewhat popular game called "Fly Catbug, Fly!" which I bought because of two things. 1)No IAP 2)Decent reviews. I didn't know jack poo poo about the cartoon series or anything. I was just browsing for some games and was relived that I wasn't about to start downloading something only to realize it's unplayable without IAP.
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Sep 8, 2014 17:42
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Tequila posted:As someone who is prove to momentary bouts of poor impulse control during times of stress and being within reach of my phone during times of stress I have made many IAPs that I have come to regret over the year or so since I started buying poo poo on my phone. IAP is here to stay thanks to chumps like me, but to be fair there does seem to be a big difference in games that are free to play and games that essentially require money to advance. thuly posted:Have any games marketed themselves as "NOT free to play" yet to distance themselves from the gungho chaff?
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Sep 8, 2014 18:25
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After Sony dissolved Studio Liverpool, a few of them came together to make Table Top Racing for iOS and Android, later porting it to Vita. It's poo poo, but more than being poo poo, it's also got in-app purchases and a few ways of tricking you into thinking they're necessary.
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Sep 8, 2014 18:35
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Great Joe posted:After Sony dissolved Studio Liverpool, a few of them came together to make Table Top Racing for iOS and Android, later porting it to Vita. It's poo poo, but more than being poo poo, it's also got in-app purchases and a few ways of tricking you into thinking they're necessary. For just one mission. And as far as I could tell, there's no in-game way to acquire the currency. So unless you really like assault rifles and pistols, you could literally use no other weapons after you used up your freebies, unless you paid real money every. Single. Mission.  Also remember that god awful mobile Dungeon Keeper game? I didn't even realize it was so terrible it killed the studio who made it.
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Sep 8, 2014 20:47
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quakster posted:Here's a cool gamedev pro tip: In the opening menu by "START GAME", have there be a button with some dice on it. When you press the button, you automatically pay $0.50 for a random in-game item, or a chance for an item, if you'd prefer. When a game says "PRESS 'START' TO BEGIN" I always press "A" because it starts anyways and I get to feel like a rebel.
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Sep 8, 2014 20:48
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limited posted:
Good. Whoever is responsible for that abomination shouldn't ever program a game again for their entire life
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Sep 8, 2014 20:55
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Stick Figure Mafia posted:When a game says "PRESS 'START' TO BEGIN" I always press "A" because it starts anyways and I get to feel like a rebel.
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Sep 8, 2014 21:08
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Dr. VooDoo posted:Good. Whoever is responsible for that abomination shouldn't ever program a game again for their entire life I've been out of game dev for a few years and I'm pretty sure you're being hyperbolic but I can guarantee you most of the people who worked on it probably saw this coming from a mile away but were powerless to do anything about it. limited posted:I'm in this group too. I can see how F2P kind of relies on some sort of mechanism to make you buy. But just so many games quickly come to a point where it's impossible to proceed, or progress becomes sluggish even if you were dumb enough to keep paying, it's a hell of a balancing act. I got rid of Puzzle and Dragons when I hit that point, and still kick myself for being stupid enough to have fallen for it. PAD is the game I've spent the most on IAP wise and sadly it's one of the least offensive about IAP (as long as you get a good roll on your starter).
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Sep 8, 2014 21:12
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Lottery of Babylon posted:As long as there are people out there mentally ill enough to dump $50k into a single game, there will be games willing to accept $50k from them. quakster posted:Was it Greece that banned videogames altogether because of their gambling-like attributes? Well, extended that into a world-wide IAP ban.
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Sep 8, 2014 21:27
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Dr. VooDoo posted:Could you imagine playing, as an example, Half Life 3 and after dying a fourth time having a screen pop up saying you need to wait 24 hours for lives to regenerate. But if you post a link on Facebook someone can send you a life or you can trade three lambada symbols for another life. A five pack of lambada symbols is 4.99. Oh and half the guns are behind a pay wall that if you pay ten lambada symbols each you can unlock! Lambada  Lambda. Half-Life needs more Lambada, in IAP form, I don't care! E: Dr. VooDoo posted:Good. Whoever is responsible for that abomination shouldn't ever program a game again for their entire life Guess I have some bad news. http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/news/a236819/mythic-becomes-bioware-mythic.html#~oPj2caj8xGH1MX THE BAR fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Sep 8, 2014 |
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Sep 8, 2014 21:51
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Would some of these fall under online gambling? Quite a few are "buy this pack of cards or treasure chest and you might win this awesome 11 star super thing!" That armed heroes one had a chest that cost about a buck and could win $250 bucks worth of game money but nobody buys them since the odds are like 1:10000
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Sep 9, 2014 04:08
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Toasticle posted:Would some of these fall under online gambling? Quite a few are "buy this pack of cards or treasure chest and you might win this awesome 11 star super thing!" That armed heroes one had a chest that cost about a buck and could win $250 bucks worth of game money but nobody buys them since the odds are like 1:10000 The law hasn't caught up with that so buying a mystery box isn't technically gambling. dis astranagant fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Sep 9, 2014 |
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Sep 9, 2014 04:26
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IAP is popular among developers because there's a certain kind of audience that is more likely to pay more money for a game that is based on that type of payment method. But there's also an audience that sees through that kind of thing and/or just never saw the appeal in a game with that type of progression, and they're more likely to put more money into games that aren't dependent on IAP. If literally all gaming companies eventually go full IAP for whatever reason, it's only a matter of time before one developer rediscovers the audience who never wanted to deal with IAP to begin with--then that developer makes serious bank off those gamers with a one-time payment game, every other developer copies that developer to get in on some of that money, and the great circle of life continues. In reality, you can misuse either method. There have always been companies that aren't as concerned with making a quality product as they are with finding the easiest and simplest method of getting more money, and plenty of game companies have "tricked" people into putting money into their bad games before IAP ever existed. IAP just happens to be big right now because it wasn't even a feasible source of income a few years ago. Developers are still in a frenzy to compete with each other to figure out the best way to take advantage of it, and the market as a whole hasn't lived with the concept long enough for customers to become familiar with how samey these games actually are. It's still new and exciting for both sides, but that's going to fade some with time. IAP will probably still be big in the future, but it will seem more normal that it's as prominent as it is, and people will be more familiar with how developers can misuse it. It's just like how there's still plenty of games based on movies that profit mainly due to recognizability, but most gamers don't worry about them because they already know they're probably mediocre. In reality, though, there is nothing inherently bad about the concept of IAP. I get the impression that a lot of people who are against it take that standpoint based on the idea that they should have the full game now, that their experience isn't complete unless they have everything the game could feasibly have to offer, but I think it's just a matter of moving past that mindset. If you don't need to 100% every game you play, and particularly if you don't even need to finish every game you play, then IAP opens doors to a market full of games where you have more flexible spending options, where you only pay for as much of a game as you want to have. I remember when Final Fantasy IV: The After Years came out, and I only bought the first three episodes or so. I didn't see it as spending twelve or so dollars on a game I didn't get to finish; I saw it as being able to spend only a small portion of the full fifty-dollar price to play through whatever amount of content was good enough for me. Actually, that's how it already is with the bad IAP games you're talking about. If you play a game that you become disappointed with because you discovered that it's pay-to-win, well, hey, you had a free game that you got to play until you figured out you didn't want to play it anymore. If you spent a few bucks on it before figuring that out, I assume you did so because you enjoyed the game on some level. At least you didn't have to pay fifty bucks for a full game you ended up hating. You can say that this means developers are relying on "mistake money" and that's a lazy thing to do, and maybe you're right; but that's ALWAYS been the most popular method of making a profit in all areas of marketing, and it's never stopped good developers from making actual quality games as well. It seems to me like the most successful games are going to be the ones that offer a good, full game either for free or for a low price, and they provide optional content that would definitely be considered overpriced if you take it only as standalone content. They're not mobile games, but specifically the two games I have in mind that follow this method are Team Fortress 2 and Path of Exile. Both games are great, well-balanced, plenty of content for people who never want to pay a dime, but people who REALLY love the game also have the option of showing their love by spending tons of money on dumb crap. They draw in a big player base full of people who like it not only for being free, but for actually being a good game, and once this player base gets big and passionate enough, they can convince larger and larger numbers of people to spend hundreds of dollars to buy the possibility that they will get an in-game article of clothing to make their character look Yeah, it's a pointless thing to spend money on... for most people. For others, I think it genuinely enhances their experience. I think they genuinely care about the game enough that they want a chance to personalize it for themselves. They want to be able to show that they care about that game more than others by putting more money into it, and getting a small thing from spending that money that makes the game a little bit more unique for them. But that's just for the tiny playerbase where they have the disposable income to afford it and it's personally worth it for them to do so. For everyone else? Hell yes it's stupid that you spent a hundred dollars on an in-game fedora you didn't actually want, what the hell are you even doing. Don't blame the developers for being manipulative, that was your own drat fault. Make sure you understand what you're going to be getting for your money before you buy it, and don't pay unless you actually want it. And don't blame the people who bought it because it WAS something they wanted. That got kind of harsh at the end, but my point is basically this: It's okay. It's all gonna be okay. IAP will probably get bigger, but it's not going to replace the types of games you like playing. In fact, the games you like playing will probably get even better due to the lessons learned from all this IAP experimentation. Just do your best to stay an informed, responsible customer, and you will be fine.
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Sep 9, 2014 13:05
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Toasticle posted:Would some of these fall under online gambling? Quite a few are "buy this pack of cards or treasure chest and you might win this awesome 11 star super thing!" That armed heroes one had a chest that cost about a buck and could win $250 bucks worth of game money but nobody buys them since the odds are like 1:10000 I think the only gambling they care about is the ones that payout money. These are indefinite money sinks.
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Sep 9, 2014 17:38
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I have no problem with the concept, just how its being used. If a game offers something like an EQ expansion no problem, they have to get paid for the work to create significant game additions. Fluff I could care less about. If you want to pay $20 to look like a pony in the game go wild. It starts to get grey with having to pay for features required to just play the game, if they are not an issue until you've been playing awhile, like the game and then have to throw them a few bucks to 'unlock' features its closer to the older lite version vs paid version. Download it, play it, if you like it pay to keep going. The issue is a good chunk have turned it into a pay to even play the game at all. That Evolution game its apparent within the first 30 minutes that you dont have to just shell out money to open up the full game, you need to keep paying shitloads to play it period. Having to buy loving ammo for real money is just flat out greed. 4x4's that give you the choice of constructing a building required to actually do anything and giving you the option of "Ok log on next week and it'll be finished or just give us $10 and it'll be done now" Its also nearly destroyed all kinds of PvP games, most of them are essentially selling you godmode. I wondered why all these card game types starting popping up like weeds till I tried one and realized they are just trying to copy the original MtG. Here's a bunch of poo poo cards that will get you nowhere but for just $5 each you can buy a pack of cards that may have awesome rares in them! Theres a game Beyond the Dead that not only copied the card packs model but you can literally only play for 5 minutes every 3 hours because shooting 20 zombies is so tiring you have to drink a $2 water bottle to shoot 20 more. Thats just naked money grabbing. Lucasarts put out a star wars card game, 'questing' is mostly clicking a picture of a stormtrooper and watching alightsaber swing across the screen and one shot it. Except swinging a light saber is so tiring you have to wait 3 hours between every 20 swings. Or pay $1 to swing it 20 more times.
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Sep 9, 2014 17:41
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Or there's Tyrant Unleashed, Where you can only do a quick less than a minute PVE fight every 2-3 hours once you progress a bit, can do a quick less than a minute PVP every 5 but gently caress you if you don't want to check the game every 25 minutes, and can pay $10 for a chance at rare cards that are literally useless unless you have 4-6 of the same one out of a giant set, and even if you do get your 4-6 1 in 2000 cards you still need a month's worth of "salvage" (from destroying all the garbage you pulled in the process), which you can also buy for the low, low price of $360 on a limited time offer.
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Sep 9, 2014 17:57
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Toasticle posted:Would some of these fall under online gambling? Quite a few are "buy this pack of cards or treasure chest and you might win this awesome 11 star super thing!" That armed heroes one had a chest that cost about a buck and could win $250 bucks worth of game money but nobody buys them since the odds are like 1:10000 Gambling requires you to be able to cash out back to real world money at some point, games don't do that
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Sep 10, 2014 05:36
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it already is the current standard
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Sep 10, 2014 05:51
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Toasticle posted:I have no problem with the concept, just how its being used. If a game offers something like an EQ expansion no problem, they have to get paid for the work to create significant game additions. Fluff I could care less about. If you want to pay $20 to look like a pony in the game go wild. It starts to get grey with having to pay for features required to just play the game, if they are not an issue until you've been playing awhile, like the game and then have to throw them a few bucks to 'unlock' features its closer to the older lite version vs paid version. Download it, play it, if you like it pay to keep going. Yeah, I feel like a distinction should be drawn between consumable in-app purchases and just buying extra content in a game. Consumable items or currency that costs real money is almost completely indefensible in my eyes, but buying the rest of the episodes in a Telltale game is pretty much as far away from that as possible.
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Sep 10, 2014 06:05
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icantfindaname posted:Gambling requires you to be able to cash out back to real world money at some point, games don't do that How did Blizzard get around that? I assume because you couldn't actually get the money, just use it to buy other games or Auction House items.
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Sep 10, 2014 14:52
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Toasticle posted:How did Blizzard get around that? I assume because you couldn't actually get the money, just use it to buy other games or Auction House items. Not at all, it went to your PayPal account.
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Sep 10, 2014 15:04
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