This is pretty much how I feel about free to play.

I know there is some conscientious free to play going on out there (DOTA, Heartstone isn't too bad). But it's fucking rare.

Path of Exile here

When I saw that Dungeon Keeper was released, I immediately went to get it. Then I saw it was free with IAPs. I didn't download it.

I just love that post tutorial, you can do something simple that will not be finished for 24 hours without spending money.

Last night Assassin's Creed IV asked me if I wanted to pay $99.99 in order to unlock enough credits to unlock all the content in multiplayer without having to earn it.

In PvP oriented game, free to play means the free players are meat for the paying players' grinder. You don't have to program AI as opposition.

So there's the part where they're shitty games, pay to win, etc.

But another part of why I hate free to play is that I hate thinking about money and weighing monetary transactions during the game. It breaks my immersion in the videogame and gets me thinking about my budget, what a fair price is, what I can afford, etc. That is stress for me. That beef applies to even respectable free to play games.

I don't know about you, but usually I decided that far ahead.

If it's got micro transaction I immediately assess whether I can enjoy the game wholly without getting into micro transaction. Micro transactions on cosmetic stuff I can usually tolerate. I will even buy it.

Sometimes they went into gameplay, and I still look the gap between non-paying to paying customers. Some games actually manage to have very little to no gap between non-paying and paying customers.

Then I ask myself, how much do I have to pay. I do this before I play the game, or very early (like 1 or 2 hours of gameplay). Generally if it's bothering enough, I just stop. I've paid for cosmetics, just to support the game.

I have a buddy in the gambling machine business and he talks about how the interfaces are designed to keep you in once you get in. Those little flashes on the screen (like sunlight glinting off a piece of metal, etc.) are designed to pull the eyes back to the center of the screen during down moments in the action so they don't wander off to find something else of interest. It's all about serotonin levels and maintaining long-term focus. In short, enjoyment by you the user is at best a tertiary issue for the designers. From their perspective it's simply not a high priority.

At that point why bother?

S.

^There is similarly sinister psychology going on in free to play games... here are two articles, the first one being how deep down the rabbit hole these people get in terms of structuring their games for obsessive types. I'm not sure I could work on something like this from an ethical perspective, but I don't think anything illegal is going on.

www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/...etization_Tricks.php
www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/195806/ch...ing_the_.php?print=1

An interesting point here is that it's EA's DUNGEON KEEPER for iOS that has everyone so up in arms. EA is the company that got free-to-play so right with PLANTS VS. ZOMBIES 2 on iOS. The difference here is that this game is not playable in the "Free" mode. In the DK example, it's not that paying makes the game bigger or more diverse, it's that paying is what makes the game capable of being played.

It should be a game first, and a monetization opportunity second. They have lost the thread.

Gary Sax wrote: ^There is similarly sinister psychology going on in free to play games... here are two articles, the first one being how deep down the rabbit hole these people get in terms of structuring their games for obsessive types. I'm not sure I could work on something like this from an ethical perspective, but I don't think anything illegal is going on.

www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/...etization_Tricks.php
www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/195806/ch...ing_the_.php?print=1

The crack-cocaine multiplayer formula of Call of Duty that immersed in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was developped by psychologists. There's a really cool book on the gamification of our world (it was a great read and of course I forget the name of the book because it's a book and not a video game). I don't think there's an ethical boundary being crossed tho. They aren't structuring games for obsessive types, they are structuring games to make players obsessive types. They've figured out the reward-center parts of our brains and what sets off the most endorphins (within reason) and develop games around that type of feedback system.

Hopefully it eventually means that we'll get to meet a young Ashley Judd wearing pyjamas for uniform.


Reality is Broken was the name of the book (my wifey remembered)

I disagree about PvZ2 being done right, and I know many that would side with me about that. Sure, you could play through the whole thing without paying at all, but compared to the original PvZ, one of my favorite games EVER, this one started feeling like a grind after a while. I stopped playing in the second level and haven't returned to it in months. And I was soooo excited for this game, but it just felt tedious. I'd have been happy to pay a lot up front to just have a great game to play through without grinding around pay barriers. I agree it does free-to-play better than others, but I still think it's a crap way to do a game like that.

I don't understand the logic of PvZ2 being FtP anyway. Everyone loved the first one and would have gladly paid 10$ for the second one, no?

Plants vs Zombies 2 is incredibly padded, most levels are very similar to each other and you need to play a lot of them to get enough stars or keys to progress. Unless you pay, of course.

Imagine Dragon Quest with the same content but each dungeon's corridors are 50% larger. It feels like that.