Ok, so here's a little story for you: My earliest memories of arcade machines are such which played motorbike racing games or bubble bobble. As far as i remember the machines allowed you to play as far as you could and when you failed the machine reset and you had to pay to have another attempt. Now i was just informed that apparently it was the norm in the USA for arcade machines to offer you to continue from where you were for more cash.
Now why did i need to be informed of this? Because i live in germany where arcade machines, along with slot machines and similar, are banned from public establishments; because yes, this stuff is exploitative.
Now, that said, there are also some real differences between software for your home and arcade machines: The arcade machines were real upfront about what's going on. You paid a coin to play, and you paid a coin to cheat. There was no pretension of free and no obfuscation of the transaction. further arcade machines were made at a time when the hardware was not affordable for the home.
> In my current project, skill still reigns supreme
That's a tall order. Please do me a favor and go through the article and make a list of techniques you see that your game does NOT employ versus those it DOES employ.
Also, a question. I play a game because the gameplay is enjoyable. Is there ever any point where the game says "no, you cannot play unless you wait or pay"? Note, i did not say progress, i said play.
> it will be up to the market to decide whether we deserve money for what we're doing
That is the entire problem. Just like arcade machines back then you are extracting money from those who are either not mentally capable of or lack the experience to make a fully rational decision.
As for suggestions, really damn simple:
1. Don't sell cheats.
2. Allow me to make a down payment to purchase the entire game, in two possible modes:
2.a) if most of the calculation involved in a game happens on a customer machine, just allow me put down a single lump sum (guild wars, roaming fortress)
2.b) if most of the calculation involved happens on a company server, allow me to pay a regular fee (eve online, and i'm really fucking sure there is NO f2p game that even approaches the amount of computation their servers do)
You can stack on all kinds of naff f2p bullshit you like, but plenty of games which were made with more effort than any f2p game are profitable on these models, even in the mobile space.
I had a look. There's nothing I can see that suggests they are centrally computing anything like 1920x1080x24 bits of data at 60Hz, that's 360MB of brand-new data per second per user, which is what our graphics cards are doing for us client-side.
I won't. And neither are they. Perhaps a very, very sparse approximation taking advantage of diagonal and/or block structure that actually computes a miniscule fraction of that.
Now why did i need to be informed of this? Because i live in germany where arcade machines, along with slot machines and similar, are banned from public establishments; because yes, this stuff is exploitative.
Now, that said, there are also some real differences between software for your home and arcade machines: The arcade machines were real upfront about what's going on. You paid a coin to play, and you paid a coin to cheat. There was no pretension of free and no obfuscation of the transaction. further arcade machines were made at a time when the hardware was not affordable for the home.
> In my current project, skill still reigns supreme
That's a tall order. Please do me a favor and go through the article and make a list of techniques you see that your game does NOT employ versus those it DOES employ.
Also, a question. I play a game because the gameplay is enjoyable. Is there ever any point where the game says "no, you cannot play unless you wait or pay"? Note, i did not say progress, i said play.
> it will be up to the market to decide whether we deserve money for what we're doing
That is the entire problem. Just like arcade machines back then you are extracting money from those who are either not mentally capable of or lack the experience to make a fully rational decision.
As for suggestions, really damn simple:
1. Don't sell cheats.
2. Allow me to make a down payment to purchase the entire game, in two possible modes:
2.a) if most of the calculation involved in a game happens on a customer machine, just allow me put down a single lump sum (guild wars, roaming fortress)
2.b) if most of the calculation involved happens on a company server, allow me to pay a regular fee (eve online, and i'm really fucking sure there is NO f2p game that even approaches the amount of computation their servers do)
You can stack on all kinds of naff f2p bullshit you like, but plenty of games which were made with more effort than any f2p game are profitable on these models, even in the mobile space.