When I left it was Candy Crush that was the top of the field; and we were in awe. They were _always_ rewarding players, and were pushing microtransactions everywhere. It was flashy like a slot machine, and provided a constant stream of "rewards" for continued engagement.
It was a disgusting industry then; it probably still is now. I went into game dev to tell stories and explore worlds, not to sell dope.
It is quite possible to be a relatively competitive player without spending a single cent (and without needing excessive grinding to do so, or at least, no more grinding than a paying player).
This is a lot better than most mobile games (pay more or wait # hours to continue), or games with lootboxes whose results give serious competitive advantage. (There are far too many of the latter to even list.)
But I do dislike any game that depends on any form of microtransaction model. I've no real issue with meaningful DLC for single player games (i.e. the equivlent of the old expansion packs), but otherwise a game should either be a one time cost, or a simple subscription. Not some unholy hybrid of the two as has become all too common.
Fortnite's store UI is designed around limited time access panic sales.
For reference https://twitter.com/jmantheguy/status/970497516566347776?s=2...
One thing that's ironic with a lot of mainstream AAA gaming though, is that even though they aren't copying the revenue model the game design conventions still tend to focus on length of engagement and playtime. I'm sure there's a reason compelling it but I'm not sure what.
Maybe with the advent of digital purchase (and the death of selling your used copy) we’ll see a return to designing games for fun.
In contrast a lot of the big mobile games are barely even games. They're just AI controlling your gambled for gacha characters, which are very not cosmetic only. And the games that aren't AI controlled are still just basic turn based battle mechanics with very little strategy (and what is there is vastly less important than just getting better characters, probably by gambling).
I suspect the market of "people who play mobile games" and the market of "people who play PC games" are not even the same kinds of people, and if you tried to release the same stuff that makes money on mobile on PC, you wouldn't actually attract many new players. Likewise if the mobile market ceased to exist overnight, I doubt the players would be that attracted to many PC/console games. They're getting different things out of them.
Of course this is all just speculation, I don't really know.
The people who play whole night and that are irritable and underperforming during day, who made gaming their whole life, are not playing causual games. They are playing console and pc games.
Couldn’t have been more happy to get out of casual and F2P games four years ago. I honestly thought I might be done making games after that experience.
Thankfully, between doing the indie thing for a few years and starting a new studio last year, it became clear it was the medium and not the craft that was the problem.
Do you mean to say it's specifically a mobile issue?
Is there no Breaking Bad effect because it's all legal?
This is an accurate description. So many games where people have to pay for the chance to get something. It's even worse than actual gambling since the prize isn't even money. All people get is some numbers in a database.
Another oppressive feature found in most exploitative games is the timer. Through a timer, the progression of free players is rate-limited. There's almost always some kind of resource that's used up whenever players do anything and when they run out of it the timer reveals itself. The game refills the resource on a regular basis.
This creates habits in players. People start out playing normally and next thing they know they're setting alarms to wake them up at 3 AM to do game tasks because that's when the timer resets. This is done deliberately with the goal to increase the number of players who login every day through a mix of positive and negative reinforcement. The timed refills themselves act as a periodic reward which is simple enough. More insidious however is how usually the timers will not start counting down to the next reward until players play the game. Every second the timer is not running is wasted and delays the next reward.
Paying customers can reset this timer at will. They are therefore able to progress at an uncapped rate. This implies the game's true form is a spending competition: the whale who gives the most money to the company for the longest time will win.
Video game addiction is already a recognized medical diagnosis. I have no doubt this trash is at least partly responsible for that. The reputation of the games industry is only gonna go downhill from there.
I don't play them though, since I know I'd spend too much money and time on objects intangible.
The thing that strikes me the most about F2P is how societally acceptible it is. The people for whom the notion of "casinos" doesn't fit their interests can now have their own preferentially targeted equivalent of a casino in their pockets at all times, branded with things like television show franchises that ground them in a sense of familiarity.
F2P games are nowhere near as dangerous as casinos. 90% of players waste nothing more but their time. They're more similar to social media. Really, i wonder why social media hasn't figured out a way to have meaningful microtransactions yet.
That is what's happening. It's a strip club model where the biggest tippers get the most attention. It is super effective, at least for live streams (see: all of twitch, every adult cam site).
If someone wanted to monetize this with static content, you could probably get people to pay for comment responses from content creators, but I haven't seen that done yet.
The constant rationalization around the office was basically something like: "They're paying for fun, it would otherwise be drinks/movies/real gambling/etc, we're just a different medium". This, of course, completely ignored the boatload of psychological exploitation tricks that we used to keep people playing (and paying). The game mechanics were literally a rigged slot machine. The meta-game was designed to constantly tantalize you with something just out of reach. The monetization was high-pressure, time-sensitive, and used false discounts to increase value ("Get this $20.00 pack for $1.99! Only for the next 60 minutes!")
It got very draining after a while, and I'm much happier now that I've left the industry.