Beyond Conspiracy: Entire generation growing up on this ultra diabolical "FREEMIUM GAME MODEL"

I hate it. I used to buy a game, and then put the time in to get the goodies

now they just buy the goodies

its lame

a reply to: Wide-Eyes

Then all the mods for CnC generals zero hour...

Trying to grow up but still find myself loading up one every now and then late at night when I cannot sleep, Get the Decades pack and have all of them up to Zero Hour and then download all the free mods the fans make.

This isn't about games- it's the new model of modern business. It used to be that the ethos of business was to make a quality product and hope people buy it. Now the new business model is to try to trick, scam or force people to take your product. Don't believe me? Look at Flash player, or computer cookies. Everyone has them, but no one really wants them. You're forced to have them on your computer if you want to access most websites. The companies get lot of data from the cookies, etc which they sell to other companies. It's basically exploitation against our will, in fact most people don't even know about it.

a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

I hate the new "Pay to Win" model.

I do most of my gaming on PC and I don't mind paying for additional content that isn't needed to finish the basic game. I don't like when they provide an unfinished game and then make you pay for the end as if it is additional content.

You really need to be careful these days.

This is why I have a vita

freemium for mobile games

DlCium for platform games- seems most games nowadays are released unfinished as the time it takes to make a game now is a lot. Takes a year or two of DLC's for a lot games to reach maturity.

Freemium is not aimed at conventional gamers, it is aimed at the general population who generally does not get enough reward from conventional games.

Can't say I really enjoy these p2w games. That is despite a few that I like but don't even see progressing much further than certain levels with them. While it's easy on the budget that some are free, you really can't get ahead otherwise. In the long run it makes you spend more cash than it you had a subscription.

Though, on the other side of the argument, companies may be implementing the p2w model because of observing the weaning subscription model game revenue. As already mentioned, basically the casual players making up the bulk of gamers now days or at least in the general market. They just don't have the time to work-some may not have the will lol- their way anywhere, it's easier for them to pay for advancement.

a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

Are we actually bitching that videogames aren't free?

They've never been free.

The very first widespread games were DESIGNED to require a quarter every 5 minutes or so.

That was 35 years ago.

Only the format has changed.

Entertainment costs money.

Excellent thread. This freemium model has even infiltrated games like the mobile FIFA football. They introduced FIFA Ultimate Team in FIFA13, which is their own version of a freemium model. I played it, but didn't pay (I did pay for Angry Birds Friends, but that's another story).

Now since FIFA15 the game model is based on Ultimate Team. So instead of focusing on teams that exist in real life they want you to focus on those fictional teams that will cost you money to upgrade quickly.

I refused to upgrade and still have FIFA14 on mobile, which is the last mobile FIFA game not based on the freemium model.

A couple of years ago my son who was around 7 at the time was playing one of these freemium games, every now and again we would let him spend his allowance money on upgrades in this game. That is until we got a $600 bill! Apparently the geniuses at iTunes have a default setting when you initially buy the upgrade and enter your password to verify the purchase there is a 30 minute window where you can continue to buy all the upgrades you want without having to reenter the password. So my son being the schemer he is found that loophole and went crazy. My wife had no idea this was possible and thought somebody had hacked the account, so she called apple and they did reverse the charges and told her how to change the settings so that you have to enter the password every time.

My question at the time was how in the world would itunes or the game allow that much money to be spent on a kids game?

a reply to: Urantia1111

Did you miss the part where people can and do spend literally thousands of dollars on one (generally stupid piece of crap) little game app?

The first week I was figuring this out that was my rant: What the hell?! You cant just spend $50 and have it 'all' in a game, anymore?

a reply to: reldra

Wartune was the first and ONLY freemium game I've ever played. Holy crack pipe I thought WoW was addictive...those developers know very well what they are doing.. I spent way more on wartune than I ever spent on WoW.

I am pround to say that I have since put both of those crack pipes down. I'm finally free! (Although now slightly obsessed with Fallout4)

Wow, see, everybody read his post:

a reply to: Aazadan

Yeah my final years in the 'arcade' industry, my 'final employer' had me manufacturing, and building rooms full of "sweepstakes" and 'arcade slot machines'. Networked, progressive machines. Other stuff like that. There was this one cool little mechanical game "Circus Circus" we were the exclusive operator of. Gambling crack machines was never what I signed on for, but it's basically the final remaining frontier for 'arcades'. His clients were basically more or less targeting areas around old folks, trailer parks nearby. It's common knowledge in that little niche of the industry the old folks on Social Security check day pay out.

But at least there was a certain logic to it that say they only go in there with $20, they could win back more and have more game time as a result. Do recall going to the arcades in the 80's-90's, as a kid, spend $10-20 in a hour or two, no money back. But then you have the ADDICTS which really warrant the whole investment.

So then of course with the Sweepstakes machines its a total scam. It's best likened to a digital scratch off ticket scheme. They look and play like the arcade slots, mostly anyhow, except click with a mouse or a touch screen. There's a weird logic to them that they all hook together, and every time frame (say once per day) or every so many total plays across the lot of them, between all the machines there's a set amount of 'wins' for each payout bracket, split amongst the lot of them. Its supposed to go around till all the prizes are used up, and then reset again. There were state laws supposedly enforcing the model. Total crap, and at the time it was a haywire industry. There were all sorts of developers coming up with their own software suites and trying to get companies to go all around the legal states installing the rooms. So I dont know how many even followed the legal specs. Nobody can really see behind the math models very well, but my impression was they're even more scheming that the typical stand alone slot machine.

Then of course, with the Sweepstakes machines, there's the bizarre 'loophole' scheme where you dont actually buy 'credits' per say, instead you're buying something like "internet time", or "phone card minutes". They actually put "Internet Cafe" on the signs. So you buy the "hour" of internet time, but once you sit down, and click past the bogus web prompt screen, then it all looks like normal slots. A lot of times they have to do gift cards as what you win. I guess this model helped them bust into a lot of districts for a while, until the authorities get around to figuring out the legal goobleygoop to stop them. Here in FLorida it was a big craze (all the old folks to prey upon), but time legislation turmoil it was causing when I was paying attention *back around 2010'ish).

Yep, 2 years of that, at the end, retired from the entire gaming industry for good.

It's in the paid games, too.

Buy the game, then you need to buy the content. Battlefield anyone? They release new maps and weapons for the game you already paid for, and expect you to buy them.
You can choose not to, but if you play online anyone who is willing to spend the money gets the better equipment- so if you like to compete (and they're competitive games...) you have to buy the game over, and over, and over again.

I won't stand for commercials, let alone that nonsense. Starcraft 2 coming out in three parts (each $60, iirc) really irked me, as warcraft 2 and starcraft were some of my favorite all time games. I was also a big fan of battlefield bad company 2- but then battlefield 3 came out and a few months later I was left in the dust by people willing to spend an extra $30 for in-game items that I could see and were impacting my gameplay- but couldn't use.

Suck it, gaming industry.

I only play console emulators on my portables as I have given up on games made for them, they all seem to be Pay 2 Win and specifically made to waste time more than having fun. The modding/hacking scene of old games is quite strong so classics can be played again while still being new. There's a Final Fantasy hack I've done called Frank Fnatnsy Remix which is quite good!

www.romhacking.net...

I'm also reworking on it, a new version should come out soon.

Many more cool hacks on that site too!

a reply to: lordcomac

Battlefield 1942: Desert Combat (modern warfare mod) was my final game. EA bought out DICE (original developer) around the time I got into it, which was there big model: distribute games for developers, but the develpers, fire the original coders, bring in their crappy coders, make a new game that's prettier, but the gameplay sucks). Anyways, I was big into the Capture The Flag scene, was in the #2 all time CTF clan (KILL DESTROY ANNIHILATE). Bastards EA released Battlefield 2 a year or so after I was hooked on Desert Combat. The bastards didnt include CTF with the original release, claimed they would add it in a future patch (which they never did). It screwed up my clan busting up out CTF model, and then the problems with BF2 itself. For me I spent $1200 building an all new decked out rig just to play it, and the damn game had some hidden conflicts would crash the game.

So it dawned on me I'm spending big cash to not even play the game, I'm done playing games! And IIB was born...

Mind you the thing with EA ruining Battlefield for me, the game I was playing before that was CNC by Westwood. It's ALL about online battles with that game, and Westwood ran it on their own servers. They had bots to prevent cheaters. EA took over, Generals release imminent, they turned off the anti-cheat bots so you couldn't start matches to save your life (as there were spam bots that would come in and fill the slots), but if you did then you were fighting cheaters. I was so goo at that game I could actually beat the cheaters half the time, but everyone quit playting. SO I went and spent $50 on the pretty 3D generals and couldnt even run the game on the PC I was a terror at the previous version of the game. And the game wasn't half the actual fun as its predecessor.
F%#@ EA Games!

originally posted by: Tristran
One cynical player summed it all up one cruelly by saying 'its nothing more than a repeat cycle where the player...
1) goes to a spawn point
2) kills mobs
3) collects sell-able items
4) returns to trade zone
5) sell items
6) buy better items from shop
7) return to spawn point
8) repeat process.

Level up and move to next spawn point to repeat process all over again.'

It's not being cynical, that's how the games are made. If I'm making a game I'm going to meter my content and design it to give you x time for y dollars and the best way to do this is through loops creating a loop that results in the player getting a reward after jumping through some hoops. It's literally the exact same thing as giving a monkey food when they pull a lever.

I forget the fancy name for this but it's essentially an addiction loop and all games do it. Partially because it works, and partially because no one has come up with a better system for any game. Basketball, monopoly, golf, your favorite MMO, they're all based on this same principal.

With modern games there's usually nested loops, you kill 30 guys in a loop, get a level up, go to the next spot with the act of traversing spawn nodes being a loop in itself.

a reply to: Aazadan

Cant you just make a sweet game, give the first 5 levels free and then charge a dollar per level afterwards?

There has to be hundreds of ways to do it. I'll bet if I focused on it I could come up with dozens by tonight (the one above I thought of in only the time to click reply!).

I look at most of these games and the whole intention is build the loop and wrap a game around it. So just build a game and wrap an income metric into it. Or do they HAVE to make a BILLION DOLLARS off a game that took 1/500th the dev investment compared to an XBox game?

If you need game ideas you could go download an emulator, download and sample say the entire catalog of NES games, and viola endless stuff to work from. From when nobody could have ever dreamed such madness as this Freemium crap, they came up with all kinds of different game styles / elements. Yet now in the New Millenium, THE FUTURE, there's only one core game concept that anyone can dream up?

I've been playing video games since pong. They always cost money. Whether is was .25 cents or more for a play or $200 plus for a console or $500 for a computer, 50 bucks+ for a cartridge or a CD....or now downloaded content or extra content....or pay to play more than 20 minutes at a pop starting at 5 bucks for a bag of coins/gems...whatever...to play even more.

I don't mind paying to play, I just don't go wild spending money on it like its candy. Play in moderation. Getting so transfixed on something like this that you would sell yourself dearly to play is a sign of mental illness that actually has nothing to do with the game and more to do with the psychology of the people who are addicted to them.

We can blame the folks that make and market the games or we can blame the folks that buy them. We can't blame both.

Just because there is a 'drug' you can buy to get your 'fix' doesn't mean you have to buy it.

originally posted by: wdkirk
Play in moderation. Getting so transfixed on something like this that you would sell yourself dearly to play is a sign of mental illness that actually has nothing to do with the game and more to do with the psychology of the people who are addicted to them.

But that's the point: Essentially all of these mobile game developers are effectively targeting these people with "mental illnesses". Applying your own words, they're targeting sick people. Preying upon them like lions out there trying to rip to shreds while eating alive the sick antelope from the herd. Well, they're targeting both sick people and children. The children bit is as low as it gets considering they hardwire all these kids to be addictive gamblers their entire lives. This makes McDonald's age old practice of targeting children look like a charitable work: as they're only trying to sell them burgers their whole life, not destroy their lives chasing the slot reels while smoking crack pipes!