Jimquisition: Free To Wait

Chicago Ted

New member
Jan 13, 2009
3,463
0
0
I'll call it Free2Wait (F2W) to make it simple, but there are a few I have on my phone that I play from time to time. In my mind, this is just one of those situations where, like almost all practices, it can be used horribly, and in this case, it seems that there's been a bit of a market flood of it.

Anyways, the four F2W games I have on my phone currently are You Don't Know Jack, ScrambleWithFriends, TinyTower, and TinyPlanes. In each of these games, waiting until you can play next can serve as a major limit to the game. But it doesn't at all bother me. Why? Because I play these things when I commute. Everyday I normally have to take a 20 minute trip to my University. Most of that time is spent on the train. When I get on it, I'm not looking for a game that'll be wanting me to sink a good chunk of time into. I want something quick and simple to pass the time for a bit, and each of these deliver. Whether I'm answering trivia questions, playing boggle, or managing my virtual skyscraper or airports, I can normally get one of these set of tasks completely done in the time that it takes to get from point A) to point B), walk away, then have something to do again either on the way home, or the next day to keep me going.

Now, I haven't played games like Dungeon Keeper, or that Simpsons one, but if they're shit games, they're shit games. It doesn't mean that just because they are bad, the entire model for them is bad. What F2W games are great for are ones where you're only going to be playing them in short bursts a few times throughout the day, before doing the same tomorrow. That way, the next time you log in, there's some new stuff for you to do to waste your time with. Ideally, the best ones should have a way for you to earn the in game currency through gameplay (In the case of TinyTower for example, by dropping people off on the correct floors) as well as an option to buy the currency directly. But honestly, that can be said for virtually every F2P game out there on the market.

Essentially, in my eyes, F2W games are like potato chips. They're great to snack on, but, if I'm wanting to sit down and have a full, three course meal, I wouldn't be looking at it to serve as the main course in the first place.
 

thepyrethatburns

New member
Sep 22, 2010
454
0
0
canadamus_prime said:
DementedSheep said:
Is this really a scam? It not like you can't see what it is and it's sneakily taking money from your account. If people are buying it they are getting something out of it personally or they are just stupid. Either way how much money they spend on these things is on their heads and I don't see why we should care.
You should care because as long as incredibly stupid people buy into this crap then more of this crap will continue to be made. And in the worst case scenario it'll come to a point where you'll have no choice but to buy into it yourself because it'll be the only thing available. That's why.
That strikes me as an issue with gamers/magpies with money.

"Well, I have to play this because it's the only thing coming out."

So the Rapture happened and everything gaming-related from the Amiga to the Xbox360 got called home to heaven. No? Well, then there are enough games out there that you will ALWAYS have the choice not to buy into it. The only reason that gamers would have to buy into it is because of decades of being conditioned to buy the latest thing as soon as it comes out. Only "incredibly stupid people" would feel that they have no choice but to buy into something that they don't want to.

Even if the Video Game Rapture happens and it sucks everything but free-to-wait games up to heaven...

Y'know, there are other things to do with your life.
 

Spambot 3000

New member
Aug 8, 2011
713
0
0
CrossLOPER said:
Jimothy Sterling said:
It's the business model that's sweeping the world, and it's absolutely disgusting.
Business models are bad because they generate money.
Yeah, man and you know what else, why does everyone give those snake-oil salesmen heaps? They're just making money!
 

Therumancer

Citation Needed
Nov 28, 2007
9,909
0
0
Good one Jim, if only we could have Jimquisition every day.... It's usually pretty cool even when I disagree with it. :(

That said I think a lot of the problem is that developers need to start getting hammered by fans a lot more. At the end of the day publishers don't really care what you think of them as long as they are making money. Indeed I wouldn't be surprised if some of them literally feed on the anger. The Devs on the other hand are the ones who take the money from the publishers and do what they are told. What's more is the developers who consciously make the choices to sell out to companies like EA or Activision and put the IPs they have control of under those banners and management. Without the compliance of the talent the publishers have absolutely nothing.

See, at the end of the day the argument against getting on the case of the developers more assertively is that these guys need to work, in order to survive. At the same time though, the pursuit of money is no more noble for them than it is for the publishers, typically the devs do what they are doing because of the sweet deals they make with publishers at least in the short term. A company like EA can offer to pay developers more money and let them live more comfortably than if they remained independent, basically amounting to the devs willfully deciding to sell out, and screw all of us fans and customers in exchange for their own direct benefit. Besides which, there is a point at which doing a specific job becomes unjustifiable, unless your life is literally in danger, you can always go find another career, or simply choose to not screw people over for your own benefit. On a lot of levels I have more sympathy for Nazi camp guards (who have been hunted down like dogs after World War II). For a lot of the camp guards the bottom line was that their "just following orders" came along with the simple fact that they were military and not following orders meant they could be killed and the families made to suffer harsh penalties for it. In some cases one could argue the Nazis actually forcing jews into an execution chamber were facing a very literal "him or me" situation. With a game developer it's not like Bobby Kotick is going to execute you with a shotgun out behind the Activision offices, and force your wife and kids into what amounts to slavery. Pretty much the worst thing a developer faces is having to go to unemployment, and perhaps find another career. That's not a nice prospect for sure, but when your dealing with an industry that has increasingly become less about producing the best possible product for the least amount of money and using it to run a business, to seeing how much you can screw the customers by how crappy and how expensive you can make things. Just because the publishers are paying you for it, makes you no less complicit in the end result or the effect on the industry as a whole.

Of course I'd also like to say that I blame IP holders for some of these problems as well, half the point of say "Trexels" or "Tapped Out" are the licenses attached to them. Viacom (which ultimately holds Star Trek) and Fox (who I believe controls The Simpsons) should have more standards about what kinds of products they allow their IPs to be used for. Without those IPs the central draw to these soulless cash grinds wouldn't exist... and really it seems the worst ones are nostalgia based properties aimed at aging nerds. Sadly not much could be done about "Dungeon Keeper" because EA pretty much owns that IP flat out, as opposed to the other two "infamous" games I mentioned where the IP had to be licensed.

The point I'm getting here is that we as gamers need to stop just going after the publishers whose basic attitude is "huh, what was that? I can't hear you over the sound of the dozens of machines counting all my money..." but going after the developers who decide to work for those publishers, instead of treating them like rock stars and passing the buck. After all these guys can't really justify screwing you over for money, which is what they are doing, pretty much any of them could choose to go indie, or take up a new career like being a Barista at Starbucks or whatever. The old excuse of "well if we didn't do it, someone else would" wouldn't matter if anyone in the same position gets the same treatment. I mean honestly, if you actually took money to make "Dungeon Keeper Online", you obviously knew what you were doing, and as a developer you share responsibility, you can't just pass the buck for that one upstairs, it's not like the publishers were going to murder you for saying "no", all you had to do was hold out, let them fire you for refusing to basically be complicit in scamming people, and then collected your unemployment for however many months while looking for another job either as an indie developer or in another career.

I know a lot of people won't agree with this, as I've said it before and few do, but honestly I think publishers are not a group that can really be attacked. What's more simply not buying games is of limited effectiveness, especially with the lowest human denominator involved. Jim always goes off on the hatred of "real gamers" for the "filthy casuals" as he puts it, but let's be honest... it's the casual gamers that have created this kind of garbage which is why people haven't wanted them involved. It's games like Farmville that sold the model, and at the end of the day no matter what thousands of serious gamers, and fairly smart people say, there are going to be ten times our number of casuals lapping this stuff up, which is why at the end of the day EA hasn't actually done much about "Dungeon Keeper Mobile" and "Trexels" and "Simpson's Tapped Out" are still running. Indeed if enough AAA games are crashed we might just wind up destroying that part of the industry (as much as I support not buying some of the horrible AAA titles out there for their own reasons), you'll just see the industry push even further in the direction it's already going, which is casual-oriented shovelware, since really it's become a goldmine. A lot of hostility towards the "casual" and "casual games" was more or less that exactly this kind of thing was going to happen. It's why there were so many gamers hating on things like Farmville and that entire demographic (which arguably started this) and appalled that companies like "Zynga" were being mentioned alongside real game developers and efforts were being made by the gaming media to welcome this crowd into the fold and shelter them... and well... here we are... "pay to wait" has now become an industry standard. It's actually become a problem where the "everyone is a gamer, even if they just play Farmville" crowd is beginning to come around and see... "hmm, yes, now that it's everywhere I do see why this isn't a game... watching a timer slowly move, and being offered the option to remove the timer with real money is not a game".

I'd have to check some old Jimquisitions and see if he actually defended Farmville players and such in the past (I know he's defended casual gamers), it will be interesting to see if his attitudes change, and if we see Jimquisition becoming less casual-friendly. Of course at the same time, I don't expect Jim has made the same connections I have, we do tend to think a bit differently. On some levels I'm in "I told you so" territory over this whole thing though I rarely just say "I told you so" like I just did twice now. :)
 

xrogaan

New member
Mar 10, 2012
16
0
0
Well, there is absolutely nothing to stop them from trying. I don't believe there is a law against this kind of scam. And if there is one, good luck to define what is a game and what is not.

The best cure would be to be smarter. And I hardly see it coming.
 

geier

New member
Oct 15, 2010
250
0
0
kuolonen said:
geier said:
Were that we lived in a world of infinite resources that would be true. But alas this is not so, and when this pay to win scenario bubble bursts, as people like Jim keep telling it will, it will hurt the entire industry. If you see a person standing next to you using 100 tons of TNT as bonfire, will you just say: "oh well, that wont affect me"?

Also money siphoned out of our misguided gamer brothers/sisters will not only bloat the bubble to come, but will also mean less money on games you too would probably like to see succeeding. Also free publicity really only can be good so far, I don't think that EA likes the "free publicity" of having been voted worst company in america for example.
I disagree. Yes, when the bubble explodes it will take down many studios and many people will lose their jobs. But in the end it will only affect the big budget games, or the bloated mobile market. Don't forget, the games market had already one crisis.
Imagine: A indy studio creates a Dungeon Keeper clone (like i said in my first post) and every site/reviewer that tore the mobile Keeper game a new one tells the fans about it. Not as a ad or for money, just to show the gamers a good example of how to bring a PC game to a mobile device.
 

MeChaNiZ3D

New member
Aug 30, 2011
3,104
0
0
I'm a bit conflicted. I play Warframe, which in my opinion is largely a very fair free to play game - you can make and find practically everything you need, and the cheapest thing in the game as far as the in-game currency is concerned is slots, allowing frugal players like myself to still play virtually unimpeded, at least until a discount. However, it does have plenty of that time shit. Warframes take 84 hours - 3 and a half days - to build optimally, weapons generally take 12 - 24, and clan research takes 3-4 days. Additionally, the warframes and weapons are fucking expensive to buy outright, but naturally when they released a new warframe that required clan research, individual part research AND assembly, a bunch of people I know bought it anyway. Frustration is not a good game mechanic, and there are other ways to encourage people to buy currency.

Imperator_DK said:
And really now, who's to say that buying a magical sword with $5 of real money you earned on the job is any less meaningful than obtaining a magical sword you earned by using 3 hours of grind to kill 10,000 digital orcs beforehand?
In the first case, it's not a reward for playing the game, it's a reward for having money. You could have found $5 on the ground and it wouldn't have made a difference. You can't assume there was work behind that $5, and even so, it has nothing to do with gameplay. You don't deserve a better sword in a game for having money, you would deserve it for putting time and effort into the game with the sword you have.
 
Jan 27, 2011
3,740
0
0
MeChaNiZ3D said:
However, it does have plenty of that time shit. Warframes take 84 hours - 3 and a half days - to build optimally, weapons generally take 12 - 24, and clan research takes 3-4 days.
You can still play when that shit's going on, right? Then yeah, it's annoying, but at least you can still play the game.

Unlike freakin' Spiral Knights, where the slowly-regenerating resource for forging was the same as the resource you needed to go into the dungeons. :s So if you forge anything, you can't go dungeoneering the rest of the day. It gets worse when the high tier stuff takes MORE than the regenerating resource cap.
 

Canadamus Prime

Robot in Disguise
Jun 17, 2009
14,334
0
0
thepyrethatburns said:
canadamus_prime said:
DementedSheep said:
Is this really a scam? It not like you can't see what it is and it's sneakily taking money from your account. If people are buying it they are getting something out of it personally or they are just stupid. Either way how much money they spend on these things is on their heads and I don't see why we should care.
You should care because as long as incredibly stupid people buy into this crap then more of this crap will continue to be made. And in the worst case scenario it'll come to a point where you'll have no choice but to buy into it yourself because it'll be the only thing available. That's why.
That strikes me as an issue with gamers/magpies with money.

"Well, I have to play this because it's the only thing coming out."

So the Rapture happened and everything gaming-related from the Amiga to the Xbox360 got called home to heaven. No? Well, then there are enough games out there that you will ALWAYS have the choice not to buy into it. The only reason that gamers would have to buy into it is because of decades of being conditioned to buy the latest thing as soon as it comes out. Only "incredibly stupid people" would feel that they have no choice but to buy into something that they don't want to.

Even if the Video Game Rapture happens and it sucks everything but free-to-wait games up to heaven...

Y'know, there are other things to do with your life.
Ok let me rephrase that. In the worst case scenario you'd have no choice but to buy into Free to Wait if you wanted to play anything new.
 

Megacherv

Kinect Development Sucks...
Sep 24, 2008
2,650
0
0
GAunderrated said:
Megacherv said:
I can't say I agree with that last sentiment. Developers work at a studio doing what they're told. It's a job, they're people living in a society that requires money to survive, so they'll carry on doing what they're told. They won't necessarily like it, but if they don't do it the higher-ups that make these awful decisions will stop paying them, and then those developers won't be able to support themselves or their families. Please don't shout at the developers for this.
I completely disagree. There is always another option. Those developers choose to make this product fully knowing what kind of company EA is and what type of game they are making. People need to be held responsible for their actions, stop blaming it on "society", "corporations", or the "government" forcing them to work these jobs.

They have every right to sell out their ethics and integrity to support their families, but that does not mean they are somehow immune to being called out for it.
Sure, there is that, I just don't agree with the level of vitriol that he's slinging their way. The developer probably won't be very happy with what they're doing, and they may be currently looking at another job already, but they still need money at that point in time and finding a replacement job can take time depending on the role in question, and once they've found it they have to make sure they've got the job first before quitting. Even then, if they've got a comfortable paycheck and they're in debt (which a lot of developers will be in a lot of, for example, after going through University), they're going to want to feel better not having to live in the fear of becoming bankrupt. Remember that these are people, humans with emotions, they won;t necessarily like what they're doing but they're doing it knowing that their lives will be fine.

Furthermore, you can blame it on the 'corporation', because they're the ones making the business and design decisions. A programmer, for example, won't be the one who decided that it should be F2P, they'll simply be the ones implementing it.

ObsidianJones said:
I'm sorry to pick you out, but you touch on a point in a way that I'm curious about. I can understand your opinion. it's one shared by a lot of people even on this very site. But this side issue that has popped in my head after reading your post made me curious about something that you didn't even touch upon, but I still want to ask the question to the Escapist because of it.

I wonder why we offer such leniency to Developers who produce game tripe just because they are told, but we as gamers as a large majority have nothing but vitriol and disdain for Game reviewers who need to eat just as bad as these developers? They were told by their upper ups to give a ten out or ten for an average game because that game paid to be plastered all over their gaming site. At large, we jump on that reviewer for not having the credibility to possibly lose his job and go hungry.

It's not like his or her company will say '... we support you for sticking by your moral constraints. We're going to get sued, but we're going to back you a hundred percent for having the balls that we didn't have when we accepted the money'. No. He or she will be fired. And probably won't be able to find another job for a while because even though people want good writers, they want people to follow the rules of the company.

And lest we forget, The game pr team didn't go to the reviewer, they went to the company. They gave that reviewing company the money and said give us a good review. But we give the reviewer equal amount if not more hate as we give the reviewing site as a whole. Why is that, Escapist?
That's actually an interesting point, I'm kinda glad you nudged me about it. I will sat that unless it's Greg Miller, I don't actually know who reviewers actually are, I often see them as a corporate entity when I come across their reviews. It's odd.
 

Ohlookit'sMatty

New member
Sep 11, 2008
951
0
0
Man, this topic really got underneath Jims skin // I will say this in Dungeon Keepers favor thou, it does look really pretty // The effort that went into it's style, the different kind of floor tiles and walls as well as the creatures is commendably

It's business mode is, however, not

-M
 

tzimize

New member
Mar 1, 2010
2,391
0
0
Beetlebum said:
On the brighter side, it has given us one of the most accurate image ever:
Wahahahahah! Nice one :>

OT: Because of stupid crap like this I've more or less written off "free" games. I'd rather just pony up the dough for a decent product and be done with it. That said, even "regular" products nowadays are plagued with endless DLC garbage...*sigh*
 

Mahoshonen

New member
Jul 28, 2008
358
0
0
Surprised no one else has noticed the hypocrisy on display here.

According to Jim, it's okay for him to call the developers of games he disapproves of cancers of the industry and if they are offended by that message, 'fuck you.'

But when anyone else gets personal and confrontational, they're driving out all the creative talent in the industry and the gaming public deserves whatever shallow, samey games we are left with. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/7955-Im-Going-To-Murder-Your-Children]

So Jim Sterling, before you get up on your reinforced soapbox, ask yourself two questions:

1. Is the wet sensation on your rear from me kissing my ass too much, or did you just crap myself?

and,

2. Who You Crappin'?
 

Milanezi

New member
Mar 2, 2009
619
0
0
I only disagree with one thing: I don't see this business model growing at all, I mean, there are a handful of strong games that are thriving from it but that's all, all others are rip-offs of the successful one and, most of the time, games that "PC/console gamers" aren't really into...

I really wish I could argue the "good sense" point of view here as well, but that'd be wasted. The point exists (you make the gamer play through something or wait through something to get the goods, but give him the option to pay cash to get it faster) but, as we can all see, is of no interest to most companies, they just rather put such loooong waiting times that, as Sterling put, you have to actually pay to see progression (to pay again).

I don't complain about the price that Square Enix charges for their Final Fantasy games on iOS anymore (the true FFs, not the strange mobile only crap), I'd rather pay more for a complete version than zero and get extorted through the whole game.

Ps: guess my mom is safe from this, she plays that Hay Day and every time she was asked to buy something she bolstered "I'm not buying anything to speed up, what's the fun in that?". Yep, somehow she understands that part of the game's joy is in waiting hahahaha
 

Milanezi

New member
Mar 2, 2009
619
0
0
tzimize said:
Beetlebum said:
On the brighter side, it has given us one of the most accurate image ever:
Wahahahahah! Nice one :>

OT: Because of stupid crap like this I've more or less written off "free" games. I'd rather just pony up the dough for a decent product and be done with it. That said, even "regular" products nowadays are plagued with endless DLC garbage...*sigh*
At least the DLC is (usually) truly optional, I mean you can enjoy the true essence of Skyrim and not need any DLC (other than patches, which, even though are free, shouldn't be around: the game should be as near perfect as possible upon release)... Whilst those games, many times (specially the crappy ones), put such amount of obstacles and impossible challenges in our way that we either pay to get through or, well, we don't.

Case in point: Candy Crush has some nigh impossible moments, but sooner or later you'll get through, no need to buy anything (and when you're 100+ and run out of lives you'll actually welcome the resting period hahah); recently I downloaded that Papa Pear thing, hell, there are some stages in which they're almost screaming at me "if you don't buy the bomb you'll never get through"...
 

Lightknight

Mugwamp Supreme
Nov 26, 2008
4,860
0
0
I understand the free to play model. I just wish these games also had a fee to unlock option. One fee that generally gives me what I need. I will never shell out money for these games for individual things. But I would consider a single payment and done option as if I were buying the game.