Freemium results in terrible games

[bramcohen]

Game designers in general think of themselves as performing a valuable service for humanity. Aside from simply entertaining, they have the goal of making their users smarter, more disciplined, and all around better than they were before playing. In large part they can succeed in doing this. Unfortunately the freemium business model doesn't

Comments

[theswede]

World of Warcraft is trying to head down a different path. I believe a huge part of the success of WoW comes from the reasonably successful balancing of letting hardcore gamers hammer their heads against new, challenging content and then a while later open it up for more casual gamers through "welfare epics" and nerfing down the difficulty.

But to get to the point where this worked took years of millions of monthly subscribers, and an excellent dev team given strong input from hardcore gamers. Since most companies do not have even remotely those resources I expect you're entirely correct; the shortcut to go freemium must appear very tempting. Most mmorpgs already seem to be heading that way, and other "less complex" (for a lack of better way of expression) games are even less likely to even support the "WoW model", much less be given the expensive constant development such an approach requires.

[chard]

I play WoW for about a month each year. Last year there was a lot of new content which was nicely made but entirely unchallenging. This year I failed to find any challenging content. The only challenge in WoW is to stop playing, forget how to play, and come back later. And I'm not particularly hard core.

[theswede]

I'm impressed you have access to a 25 man top end guild which will let you try out all content in such a short time. Most people don't, and will find the end game instances quite a challenge, even in 10 man. How did you find the Lich King in Heroic mode to be?

[chard]

Exactly the same as all the other content, but with slightly higher numbers. That's my point.

[whims]

Based on your characterization of the Freemium games business model, I would say that your conclusion depends on the type of games offered. Games that rely primarily on visual pattern detection and logical puzzles can offer no shortcuts that wouldn't amount to 'cheats', but there are many games that combine reaction-time challenges or boring 'grind' activity with various types of problem-solving. As long as the challenges are offered in series rather than parallel, I don't see how offering to bypass the 'grind' or 'twitch' parts necessarily detracts from its challenge to cognitive skills.

[slayemin]

I think you're partially correct. Partially, only because you're speaking from the perspective of the male demographic. It's men who are more achievement oriented. Women on the other hand, seek socialization and cooperation more than achievements.

I have a feeling that if a game design fosters social connections and ways to use those social connections as enhancements to the game, paying for the game is an after thought. Some of the social media games we're seeing are starting to realize this, but I think game designs haven't hit the grand slam quite yet.

[emamio]

I hate games that penalise me for not having enough friends.

And that game is called LIFE. (not the board game)

[cousin_it]

Game designers in general think of themselves as performing a valuable service for humanity. Aside from simply entertaining, they have the goal of making their users smarter, more disciplined, and all around better than they were before playing. In large part they can succeed in doing this.

I don't believe this part.

[kethinov]

That's a fallacy of the excluded middle, Bram.

The concern you're expressing is very real and it does happen, but it's fallacious to assume every freemium game suffers from this issue.

Thus the solution you're searching for is to find a freemium game that doesn't suffer from this issue. Or to make one.

All it takes to make freemium succeed in gaming without alienating players in the way you describe is to use ways of monetizing it that aren't performance-enhancing.

A hard balance to strike to be sure, but not impossible.