Undoubtedly the free marketeers will downvote, but to my mind it's simply not ethical to make money feeding off someone's addiction in that manner. At least drinking, gambling and other compulsions have heavy (but inadequate) regulation. Freemium needs some regulation too.
Buying a monthly sub, at $15 to compare with WoW, or buying the game outright is at least a fair trade. You still get addicted but your business no longer depends on bleeding people dry.
It really is no different than how transactions done under compulsion are not fair or voluntary. If you are mentally compelled to participate through psychological manipulation, that is no different than someone pointing a gun at your head and telling you to give them your money, or using socioeconomic influential factors and market capture to force participation in unfair transactions (ie, monopolies).
Most products play off of our own varying degrees of "mental illness" and addiction -- be that video games, coffee, high-calorie content food, cars, clothes, big houses, and so on.
Still, I'd rather be ill with my stuff than healthy without.
I'd definitely consider arguments that western culture has in many ways developed the advertising industry as a means of systemic psychological manipulation. There are a lot of people who make irrational purchasing decisions based on what is on the TV, and there is some degree of exploitation in that behavior.
Practically speaking we want to think that anyone over the age of 18 is a competent rational capable human adult with acceptable brain chemistry, but in practice I'd imagine very few people are perfectly healthy mentally, it is just the degree to which mental illness is apparent. Look at how common depression is, or how diagnostic rates for Autism and ADHD have risen dramatically in the last three decades. That is not to say we have more mentally ill people today, we are just paying more attention to individual psychological profile to deduce that there is much more nuance to mental health than just being insane or not.
I'm all for free markets but I'm not dogmatic in my support, the people that pay money for freemium games are going to be at a net worse position in life. There is an argument about free choice, whether the person would engage in another 'destructive' behavior, etc. but in the end I just felt the industry was focusing on being hyper-exploitive.
You, for example, have choosen not to work for people anymore who exploit others. Others maybe don't have your morale standards, and others choose to get exploited. Thats their way of life, not yours. You don't have to be part of things you don't want.
Thats what I think of free markets.
And then advocating for government intervention on top of it?
This seems like legislating personal preference to me. Most of the moralistic arguments about game design tropes were already tried in the 80s-90s when the arcade was still a thing, and IMO, they're just as busted now because we're not talking about gambling.
You probably already know this, but for those that don't, this phrase was borrowed from the casino community. Seems apt, no?
Free video-slots that give you "Casino Coins" (CC) that you can redeem for drinks/food.
The free games will be very, very basic (no multiplay or bonus features), and you might earn enough over a few hours for 1 free drink. Limit free game spins to a certain rate per hour.
Pay into the game and you'll get better unlocks. Pay continually and you'll increase a "combo meter" that will tilt things even more in your favor. Pay small extras that let you customize the video slot interface with your favorite characters, hats, sounds, etc. that are tied to your casino account rewards card.
Urgh.
Went there with a friend that spends a lot in slots and we all (party of 8) drank and ate for free because of that for the entire night.
I know it created some friction after a while when the company realized that calling users a synonym for fat, even if internally only and without that intent, was a bad idea (their game also targeted girls making it worse).
John "Rotten" Lydon is a famous example:
I wasted – you’re the first to know this – 10,000 f‑‑‑‑‑‑ pounds in the last two
years on apps on my iPad. I got into Game of Thrones, Game of War, Real Racing,
and I just wanted to up the ante. And like an idiot I didn’t check myself. I’ve
been checked now. But there's a kid in me, see? A bit of my childhood was taken
from me and I’m determined to bring it back.
And it isn't just mobile games, not is it just games. There's a race to the bottom in the entire content creation industry.
That said, there are still players who complain about it being too hard to get into the game for new players, but I think Blizz is addressing those issues decently well.
I made a conscious decision to monetize in the game early on so I dodged the monetization ramp challenges. Now it's just a problem of not having enough time to devote to ladder climbing.
Lower yields are unacceptable to businesses, even if they are part of a normal healthy economy, so they tighten wages for their workers and raise prices for their products (after running out of alternatives). This is a "double squeeze" on the working class. Not only do they have less money to spend, because they're paid less, but their cost of living goes up because every company is raising prices.
Couple that with speculative investors (new yuppies and Chinese nationals hiding money) targeting real estate as long-term rentals pushing potential buyers out of the market. They then renovate this housing into "luxury" and push the affordable housing out. It doesn't matter if these rentals sit empty for a while because the speculative investors are banking on continued property appreciation external of all rational reasons.
So, to sum:
- People are getting less money (relative to inflation)
- Prices are still rising (inflation keeps going)
- Speculation in the housing market is also increasing cost of living
For those people that spend >$10,000 a year, with a few rare exceptions, my expectation is that they live with an absurd debt load and eventually go bankrupt. I don't think this is a root cause but it definitely doesn't help people accrue assets.
There are people who will spend well over $10,000 a year to fulfill their compulsion for their "chosen" game. The advice in the article is actually rather asinine unfortunately:
>"Game creators should begin to look at pushing more sales after install. Swrve suggests this should be done one month after the game has been downloaded. Another way to keep keen players coming back would be to reduce the privileges given in purchases so they will need to buy more to play more."
It's implying that game creators haven't been carefully playing the analytics game since before freemium was a word. Any of these proposed changes will typically have catastrophic effects on the casual user base which could reduce game popularity and then tank the whale usage (depending on how much the game depended on network affects). Freemium games face the problem that TV networks do, there's too much alternative content out there.
>"Although, perhaps restructuring or ditching the freemium model might be the safest bet."
This is the right answer if you want to make good games. Freemium is an excellent model to optimization profit but it typically is directly counter to what can be considered a "good" gaming experience. The freemium games that have been largely successful (Clash of Clans, Hearthstone, Candy Crush, etc.) were all successful because they were easy to play for free, this garnered more popularity, which brought in more "whales" to support their creators.
I see mobile gaming as a race to the bottom, the margins are razor thin for the company, the pay is mediocre for the employees (as well as growth opportunities). Occasionally King comes along and wins it for a year but there are hundreds of these companies out there and the odds aren't good for them.