Good games don't succeed in F2P

[Don]

So I've been playing Marvel Puzzle Quest recently, and in the Hulk event you can see there are probably less than 100K active players. Now, compare to something like Candy Crush Saga that's obviously very small, but why? Candy Crush Saga sucks as match 3 game compared to MPQ. Sure one of them has been out for a lot longer but this is really a case of strictly better. That's when I realize that people don't actually want good games. They want games that slap you and make you spam all your friends and needs you to shell out a large amount of money, as opposed to a game that is actually reasonably fair (even if you bought the $100 hero point pack in MPQ it'd still take you a pretty long time to get all the Isotope 8s to just level up your heros, not to mention you're still subject to luck on what heroes you'd get). This is a pretty consistent theme I've seen in gaming. If a MMORPG actually offers you a good deal as a F2P don't expect that game to go anywhere, but games that might as well be Ponzi scams seem to thrive just fine. In fact aside from WoW which is an obviously outlier (I think it's way overrated but it's no doubt very good), pretty much only the bad MMORPGs are doing well right now. I don't even know how FF14 didn't die (though I paid a 6 month sub for it too, so I guess I'm dumb too) yet given it's basically an inferior version of (insert any MMORPG made in the 5 years). Actually, I think FF14 succeeds because SE has a firm stance of slapping players silly whenever possible so that players keep on come back for more. Heck, SE keeps on make these lousy iWhatever games for $30, and I assume they must be selling some of it or they'd be totally wasting their time.

It's almost like the philosophy of Ravage of Time when they say a ruler needs to keep on slap his subjects so they'll learn to come back for more instead of trying to rebel. I always assumed that was random manga philosophical nonsense but now I'm not so sure. I know people always say stuff like 'fun' but we're not talking about say you don't think Pokemon is fun, even though it is obviously high quality product that doesn't necessarily appeal to every players. We're talking about games that are strictly inferior to other games in its genre but still do well. Diablo 3 is still the best game of its genre (probably helps there are all 5 games in its genre), just like Pokemon is clearly the top its genre too. But a game like Candy Crush Saga or FF14 shouldn't even be considered top 10 of its respective genre.

[Zeus]

The vast majority of gamers want games that play themselves. They don't wanna get stuck or they get bored...quick.

[Don]

But a game like Candy Crush Saga you can easily get stuck and then you'd have to shell out money or wait a very long time to go again. And yet it seems to me most guys prefer to be abused. That is, you have something that looks like this: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/12/18

And while people complain about it, they're apparently totally willing to wait a stupidendously long time or even shell out money, but if you actually offer the players a fair deal, they'd quickly get bored of it.

[Zeus]

I've been playing Candy Crush for months. I'm on level 273 and i've been stuck on it for a bit. Do I feel the need to pay? Hells no, I don't care THAT much.

Consider games that are designed like that to be a tax on those with no willpower.

[Don]

Candy Crush Saga is strictly a bad match 3 game unless one considers generating levels that are borderline impossible to beat without paying money as a good design. There are plenty of good match-3 puzzle games but Candy Crush Saga is the most popular. What if you simply had infinite lives and can attempt each level over and over again? You'd probably realize the game design is stupid and stop playing, but this means getting slapped by a completely arbitary limit is what makes the game better. It's the same way in MMORPGs. Every F2P game that ever offered a reasonable deal for the player quickly dies a horrible death, but the games that try to rob you blind tend to be the ones that are still thriving. Heck, FF14 is one of the two subscription based MMORPG that's still out there and playing game is like getting repeatedly abused (and for some reason I'm still playing it until I come to my senses). It's basically like hitting your head on the wall because it feels good when you stop. Again I'm not talking about the guys at the top of the food chain being greedy, like WoW or Call of Duty, because at least they're top of their genre so if they think they can get away with robbing you blind then they certainly can try. There are plenty of inferior games of their genre who seems to only do well precisely because they slap their players silly, because if you provide a fair and equitable experience for all people will just say that's boring. Sure people cry about pay 2 win but if they really hate that, there's no way Candy Crush Saga or a host of weak Facebook/iWhatever games could possibly generate the revenue.

Sure you can say it's a tax on the stupid, but why does stupid not play the best game of its genre? Is it because some genres lack a clear leader for the stupid? If you play MMORPG you can be pretty safe sticking with WoW. If you play FPS you know Call of Duty is a safe bet. Even Diablo 3, which I hated, is clearly the best its limited genre has to offer. So if there is WoW, why do people chose to instead get slapped on inferior game like FF14 (which I did) or the F2Ps that are hoping to trick you into spending hundreds of dollars a month?

[Eric]

I've been playing Candy Crush for months.

Stop.

[Julius Seeker]

Candy Crush is largely successful because of one of the most insanely large marketing campaigns an iOS game has ever had. They put ads on websites that will forward you directly into the app store to download.

The overall most successful title of the last year, Clash of Clans, which was earning nearly 3 million per day off of about 8.5m dau tried an interesting strategy:
1. Used a familiar theme, it looks a bit like Warcraft.
2. Monetization occurs via sample and sell - they give you premium currency to purchase one worker to start. You can work hard to get enough premium currency to get a second, which scaled up in price from the first. After locking yourself in, you realize how much faster and more successful you'd be by spending $10 and getting two more workers, or $20 and getting a third.
3. Their consumable purchases are all rushing, and naturally there are players who are going to want to spend money on that too, they want to get through stuff as quickly as possible. Especially once getting more invested, they're not necessarily going to want all be fine with waiting for 5 days for a cannon or archer tower to upgrade when they need it to defend their base protecting points and resources.
4. Top players are typically whales who want to keep their rankings, and since they get huge amounts in premium currency rewards, they see spending even more to keep on top of the curve as a good investment in the game that they are invested in.

Overall, these are not the same kind of games that you play on console. The one dimension to consider with gaming console games is that players want to play for long periods of time. There are 2 dimensions to consider when playing this sort of mobile game:

1. They don't play them for 20+ minutes+ like a console game; they consider this a waste of time after a few early sessions of the game that may take this amount of time. The fanbase typically doesn't want to spend lots of time in game, they want to spend as little time as possible and be as successful as possible - they invest so they can play less later on. They want to log in, do inconsequential stuff, lower the amount of time they spend on consequential stuff; and reduce their gaming time to a handful of sub-minute play sessions per day primarily for observational purposes, with maybe one or two play sessions in the 1-3 minute range.
2. They play these games over long stretches of time, they are not playing simply for the little burst of joy, they are playing because they build up over time, become more successful. Tying this in to part one, they want to build up over long periods of time and waste as little time, per day, as possible doing it.

Console games share the fact that they are mobile games, but they are a completely different type of philosophy.

[Eric]

Candy Crush was also heavily integrated into Facebook, I used to get spammed from requests by friends daily until I figured out how to block it.

[Don]

I don't buy this mobile games being inherently different because you don't accidentally get to level 257 of Candy Crush Saga by just playing a few minutes. There's obviously a lot of content which is why the various throttles does matter. If Candy Crush Saga took 20 hours to beat people would obviously be done with it by now even if you can only play an hour a day. They're really not that different from a MMORPG looking at the playing pattern (you log on and do your dailys or your raids and then you don't play as much). I get that people are stupid and stuff, but if you're going to waste your time in a game that clearly resembles the daily grind, why go play some cheap Facebook or iPhone game when you can get World of Warcraft? And if you really don't want to pay, there are plenty of good F2Ps that offer a very reasonable package too. I mean World of Warcraft even runs on basically any computer known to man.

It seems like the only reason these games are successful is that they slap you very hard and that they spam you over and over again. I was reading an article on these games and one point the article makes is that if none of your friends (using the term very loosely here) played Candy Crush Saga, you almost certainly wouldn't play it either, because there are simply better games in the same genre. I think these games are hurting the creativity/quality of the market as a whole. The only game that absolutely beats those game in revenue would be the absolute top tier games, i.e. Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and so on. Most companies know they don't have the next World of Warcraft there, so why bother working hard when a game programmed by a trained monkey that sends out a lot of spam can get you the next best thing? Maybe this is why we're getting these ridiculous DLC on unfinished products. After all, if you figure people will shell out money for stuff like Candy Crush Saga then why not ask for $10 for a 2 civilization pack in Civ 5 that took you all of 10 minutes to do? It seems like the current market no longer rewards hard work. Unless you're absolutely at the top, you're better off running the latest facebook spam scheme than actually trying to make a good game.

[Julius Seeker]

Why go play some cheap Facebook or iPhone game when you can get World of Warcraft? And if you really don't want to pay, there are plenty of good F2Ps that offer a very reasonable package too. I mean World of Warcraft even runs on basically any computer known to man.

While both game experiences offer the ability to play the game continuously over months or years, both experiences target different markets, casual and MMORPG.

The MMORPG market wants play sessions to last hours.
The casual game market wants play sessions to last as short a time as possible. They want to log in for brief periods throughout the day and accomplish tasks in seconds to a few minutes.

World of Warcraft is a terrible game for the casual market because the play sessions are far too long.

[Flip]

I've been playing Candy Crush for months. I'm on level 273 and i've been stuck on it for a bit. Do I feel the need to pay? Hells no, I don't care THAT much.

Consider games that are designed like that to be a tax on those with no willpower.

I think the GF is on 275, or something. Just beyond your pathetic little reach.

[Zeus]

Candy Crush was also heavily integrated into Facebook, I used to get spammed from requests by friends daily until I figured out how to block it.

See, I never had that problem because I don't connect nothing to Facebook.

And Don, the reason Candy Crush is popular is because anyone can beat any level at any given time. Its 80% luck, its based in Bejeweled after all. If you pay for anything in that game its because you're just impatient

And Flip, what is the "GF"?

[Don]

Everyone can beat a level of Tetris too but it sure isn't making that kind of money. It's not like these games have figured out some kind of easy to approach gameplay that nobody has ever figured out. If anything the levels designed in a game like Candy Crush Saga is necessarily significantly harder than what can reasonably be beaten because otherwise it's literally impossible for it to generate the revenue which is based on people unable to beat the levels.

Candy Crush Saga had about as much innovation as Second Life or Project Entropia in terms of gameplay. Actually I'd wager those two games which might as well be a Poniz scheme probably have more to contribute to the MMORPG mechanics-wise, however little that might be, compared to CCS to the match-3 genre. Puzzle and Dragons is another example of something that's basically another match 3 game that somehow makes a ton of money. This isn't like if Nintendo came out with the latest Mario on a 2D side scroller that is somehow very good and you say that's an example of gameplay trumps graphics or whatever. This is about stuff that are decidedly nowhere near the top of gameplay of their genre somehow making an unbelievably amount of money. I know what Seeker said about whaling and stuff but again the question is if you're a guy with a ton of money to spend, why settle for some cheap MMORPG when you could have WoW? Or is it because WoW doesn't actually offer any significant advantage for spending money that you've to go for something lesser? Marvel Puzzle Fighter has by far a superior combat system for a puzzle game compared to PAD, but PAD makes way more money than MPQ. Is it simply because spending money doesn't actually help you much in MPQ (unless you're talking about an outageous amount of money, like in the thousands) whereas spending $10 in PAD will yield immediate results?

I guess in the end, people might cry about pay to win, but what people really want is indeed something you can pay to win. A game like CCS has all its revenue from P2W elements, since there's literally nothing else you can pay for in the game. If you try to give people a fair deal they'll just complain about it being too boring, but if paying $100 gets you the uber sword, there's obviously a lot of guy who will totally take that deal. Heck, I remember back in EQ1 when they started doing the gamble packs, there were guys who were just posting fake info like: "OMG I got a perma 500 HP increase item" and then in the thread you've all the guys who cry about P2W immediately post stuff like: "How come I didn't get any in the 100 packs I bought?" I don't actually care too much about P2W games in general, but it seems rather sad that games that try to avoid P2W usually just die terribly while games that shamelessly want more money from you in exchange for immediate power usually do pretty well.

[Eric]

And Flip, what is the "GF"?

Girlfriend, lots of girls play Candy Crush.

[Zeus]

And Flip, what is the "GF"?

Girlfriend, lots of girls play Candy Crush.

Ah, that makes sense. Us old fogies who have been married for a long time don't know the lingo the kids use :-)

Of course a lot of women play CC. It's not a skill-based game, perfect for non-gamers