PopCap Boss Defends Free-To-Play

[CriticalMiss]

I'm waiting for the press release that assures people that this decision was entirely Popcap's choice and no one at EA said anything about free-to-play, in fact they tried to stop them but respected Popcap's move and allowed them to follow their original creative vision and were entirely hands-off. Because EA totally aren't arseholes like that.

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm waiting for the press release that assures people that this decision was entirely Popcap's choice and no one at EA said anything about free-to-play, in fact they tried to stop them but respected Popcap's move and allowed them to follow their original creative vision and were entirely hands-off. Because EA totally aren't arseholes like that.

*in stiffly awkward tone implying great discomfort*

Popcap rep: I am reading this announcement of my own free will. We here at Popcap demanded the Free to Play model. We had to fight for this innovation, much like the developers of Remember Me had to fight for a female protagonist. That's how strongly we believe in the Free to Play model. In fact, we had to hold several members of the EA board at gunpoint to ensure that your favourite plants were locked behind a paywall.

That is all.

 

[DaxStrife]

Roberts said that from a financial standpoint, free-to-play is where it's at these days, pointing out that the top-grossing games on the App Store are F2P and "you have to get down to 70 or 80 or 90 [in the list] before you see a paid game."

I would think most people would take that as a sign there are too many free-to-play games out there, and releasing another wouldn't work so well (especially considering the last one worked just fine as a normal game release).

 

[Nexxis]

This is semi-related, but I was looking through the app store and saw plants vs zombies 2 in first place. Even though it has all of its lingering problems like taunting your wallet with every move and being related to EA, it had an almost unanimous rating of 5 stars. In fact, around 50 thousand people gave 5 stars on it, which isn't far from the number of total voters. Anyways, I clicked reviews.

Every single review for as long as I could scroll down gave it 2 stars or lower.

Has anyone ever covered this? I mean, I know most people that don't know much about mobile games tend to buy them on ratings, but if the ratings are pretty glaringly faked for a game such as PvZ, what does that say of Apple's entire store?

Yeah, I noticed that. Granted, I didn't check every rating out there, but the first batch of ratings are all 3 or lower. Most of them are 2s. They also ask for a rating before the shop really starts to work your nerve. Many F2P games with in-app purchases do that. That's how they get high ratings from people sometimes.

I have no problem with the Free-To-Play model until it becomes Pay-To-Win on a competitive game. The problem with this game is that the shop is constantly thrown at your face, even as you're just trying to progress through the levels. Some plants are locked behind walls that you can't open unless you grind other levels for keys that are uncommon drops. Other plants you can only buy with real money. And we're not talking the typical $0.99 here. They're $3 or $4 each. You'd pay $20 to own all of those plants, but you're still not free from the shop. Extra plant slots and plant food slots also have to be paid for. And if you find yourself in dire need of an upgrade or plant food, you can pay for them with the coins dropped by the game at times, but it's usually not enough to get you through, so you end up paying for those as well. The shop infects too much of the game's mechanics and it's annoying. I had to stop playing since it sucks all the fun out of it.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

"There were notorious games that had 63 minutes of great game play that sucked," he said. "I think there are ways to abuse any business model, and people sometimes say, 'Yeah, you can do horrible things with that.' Yeah, of course you can... With PvZ we have a pretty important brand here and we are trying to protect it."

Too bad they are doing horrible things with it. The game's Giant Bomb Quick Look certainly made that clear.

 

[weirdee]

btw, y'know that facebook game they made for PvZ....it requires you to have friends who also play the game or pay in order to actually advance past the first area

pretty sure EA's wearing PopCap's skin like a suit now

 

[Evil Smurf]

I like free to play, but locking content behind a pay wall is filthy.