Update 2: EA Dismisses Dungeon Keeper Mobile Criticism

[Atmos Duality]

I think we need Hanlon's Razor here. "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."

As for the user feedback, perhaps EA was thinking "If my customers aren't giving 5-star ratings, they must have a problem with it. I'll set up a system for them to let us know what the reasons are for not giving us the highest ratings."

In order for this to be accidental, we have to find some ground that demonstrates EA's ignorance.
So, lets examine how the system works:

Game ends and presents a screen asking how the user rates the game on a numerical system of 1-5.
So right away, we know that EA is aware of the Google Store rating system.

There are two buttons:
Rating 1-4 OR Perfect 5.

Clicking on 1-4 asks the user to do one of two things:
1) Send a message indicating why they aren't rating Dungeon Keeper a 5/5.
2) "Not now" (Skips the rest of the rating system entirely and exits the game)

Did you notice what's missing?
The rating the button asked for.

Well, this could just be them wanting to know why the user would rate it less than a 5, not that they could actually rate it in game.

So what does the "5/5!" button do?
Clicking this button opens a page DIRECTLY TO THE GOOGLE STORE RATING SYSTEM, where the user can then proceed to give the game any rating they want; ironically, including something LESS than a 5/5.
If they knew how to program this into the 5/5 rating button, why wasn't it included in the 1-4 rating button as well?

But maybe we can stretch our benefit of doubt even further, and suggest it was AAAALL just a big oversight on EA's part and that they're really sorry for unintentionally misleading everyone, which lead to an obviously-inflated rating for their game. We have a method for malice, but perhaps EA can demonstrate that wasn't their motive, right?

...And then EA opened their mouth.
EA didn't respond to criticism with "Whoops, our bad." they dismissed it outright by bragging about their Google Store Rating. So, now we have a clear motive that matches their method.

CONCLUSION: It was no accident, this was quite obviously a ploy to filter out negative ratings.
It's definitely malice, not stupidity, and undoubtedly a calculated risk.

EA launched a game they knew would get torn apart by critics and the vocal public, but are banking on the ignorance of the masses (in how the google ratings scheme) to turn a profit anyway.

It's not hard to fix either: all they had to do was include the link to the Store Rating system in the 1-4 along with the user feedback. But they didn't, and they demonstrate no intention to fix it.

 

[Frozengale]

What's this? Bad game poorly implemented? Shady tactics to obtain high ratings? Talking down to your consumers?

Ooo it looks like EA is starting to campaign for the Worst Company of 2014!

We've still got a few months to go before The Consumerist starts the polls, but this is a strong start for the company. Looks like they're dead set on making this a Hat Trick. I'm giddy with anticipation to see how they'll follow this up. Are we going to have another huge fiasco like Sim City of last year? Or maybe they will just slowly whittle away at our good graces with poor decision after poor decision. It looks like EA is going to have a good year.

 

[Amaror]

But how else are we supposed to make money off of games? Spend time and energy on testing out new concepts? What a waste of company resources. You can just copy and strip down an existing brand, 'monetize' it and ship it, while capitilizing on both name recognition and controversy of people who have a dear place in their heart for the game.

Did you consider efficiency at all before you quoted yahtzee? I guess so. That's why you used his words instead of your own. If you can just figure out how to monetize this quoting business, then the transformation will be complete. Welcome to the dark side.

Owh, damn let me put this right.

How did Yathzee put it:

View Yathzee's quote for only 3,99.
You can also choose to get half the quote for 2,99.
Our customer favourite is getting to view the Quote TWICE! for only 5,99.
But only the best get the best value when they purchase our elite Tier offering to view the quote 10 times and giving you the special link to the video were the quote originated from for only 49,99!
Get it NOW.

 

[glider4]

The fact that companies can get away with scamming people like this drives me nuts. Heck just the level of manipulation on display here is mind boggling. Why do people put any faith on big companies at all it beyond me

 

[Madman123456]

Bleh. I'll say this again: If you buy from EA, it's your own damn fault. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 4583 times...

 

[Scorpid]

The sun is bright, winter is cold, summer is hot, EA trys a shitty despicable tactic to make money, gets called out, does mental reasoning only a psychopath could understand, keeps getting called out, people hate EA, makes money and moves on to next game and the cycle repeats itself in 2 months. Boycott EA if you really care and don't make an excuse to buy that one single title you might like from BioWare. There are alot of games out there now and BioWares quality is no longer unmatched in video game story telling department, has long since been well passed by infact, so don't buy them.

 

[Branindain]

Bleh. I'll say this again: If you buy from EA, it's your own damn fault. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 4583 times...

This, this, this. Shame on the gamer community for allowing this cancer to thrive. Get some willpower.

 

[Fox12]

This guy's career is probably over if he speaks out against it, especially so early on.

Maybe keep that in mind before anyone decides to talk shit about him personally.

And... I'm okay with this. When you are put in a position of responsibility, and you mess up as bad as this, you should be held accountable. That's how the real wrold works. Besides, if working on a blatantly anti-consumer product is the best he can do then he doesn't have a career worth saving. The game was broken and fundamentally dishonest on multiple levels. The man has no dignity, and thus deserves no respect.

Harsh? Yes, yes it is.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Dear the makers of these app stores, don't the companies have any say or influence on the rating of these games.

Steam, for all it's flaws, forces every game to have a metacritic score and an independent user review system to give consumers some idea if what they are getting is any good.

 

[MammothBlade]

Fucking douchebags. Everything about this stinks. "Love our shitty arsecrumbs or tell us why not!"

Peter Molyneux, the lead designer of the original Dungeon Keeper game, has himself voiced his concerns about the mobile version of the game. "I felt myself turning round saying, 'What? This is ridiculous. I just want to make a dungeon. I don't want to schedule it on my alarm clock for six days to come back for a block to be chipped,'"

Says the man who sold out bullfrog to EA in the first place.

 

[II2]

What baffles me is why they thought this game was FOR. Surely anyone unfamiliar or disinterested in the DKeeper franchise wouldn't want to spent increments of time and wads of money there, while anyone who WAS into the kooky Strategy / Management PC titles... well, their complaints echoed before the game even was available.

I suppose while I'm not surprised, it's puzzling and depressing all the same. The larger EA apparatus may be made of baby tears and blood money, but there must be enough smart creative people within the company to point out how things like this might be prone to failure, or is that 20 lashes at the lawn logo at this point?

Maybe it's worse than that. Maybe EA are right, the voices of sanity are wrong and the many heads of the hydra are making mad bank.

I've been putting some thought into that myself.

Spoiler: Body of Text

I think the target audience is middle aged nerds with both lots of money and lots of nostalgia. The thing is that Dungeon Keeper isn't the first game like this. Another infamous one that got a lot of attention recently was "Star Trek: Trexels" which generated a lot of the same furor and raised the question of "who is this game for". It also garnered a lot of the same defenses in that it's locking of content behind huge timers that could only be overcome with real money (in Trexel's case it has to do with accumulating resources to unlock missions), and the same defense that people complaining about this were "playing it wrong" since the game was intended to be checked in on a couple of times a day like a virtual pet or whatever, rather than actually played seriously.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_AgjWkNGew

That right there pretty much covers it. I think it's also been mentioned on The Escapist a couple of times before (heck this is probably where I heard about it).


At any rate the bottom line is that this whole "popular nerd IP turned into a low-grade mobile game that requires scads of cash constantly pumped into it to be played anything like the game it's supposed to be, but defended as some kind of virtual pet/management sim hybrid" is not new, as I get the impression "Trexels" wasn't even the first. EA even seems to be kind of late in jumping into this.

If I had to guess the idea here is that the target audience are people who can afford to play these games, and do so in part simply because they can. There is a lot of elitism among nerds, and the idea is that the guy who say plays "Trexels" is better than you because he can do it and you can't. It would not be the first product of it's kind, yet it would be the first time we've seen this on mobile gaming platforms. Basically your nerd who raves about things like Dungeon Keeper, can feel more "elite" because he can pay a dollar a block or whatever to build a dungeon on his mobile phone, where other nerds who have not succeeded as well cannot do so, and can only QQ about it... sort of like little orphan boys looking sadly at toy stores and what kids with parents can have in a Charles Dickens novel.

To be honest I do not do a lot of mobile gaming, simply put all the ones I'm interested in trying aren't out for the Kindle, and a Smartphone/iPhone is something I have chosen to do without. However from what I have on the Kindle (which cannot play that bloody Ultima game I've been drooling over) it seems that these heavily microtransaction oriented "freemium" games seem to be on the high end of the spectrum for mobile games, which seems to be part of the lure and presumably why they would be a status symbol.

Mostly in thinking about it I've tried to put it into the context of things that have come before. While it was longer ago than most Escapist users have been following games (and probably long before they were born) we indeed DID see something vaguely like this before. Back when personal telecommunications was in it's infancy and people were being nerds with their 300 - 1200 baud modems (I remember when I was all excited to upgrade to 2400 baud), most online gaming took place on BBS systems with games like "Yankee Trader", "Land Of Devestation", "Arena", "Sinbaud", and of course the ever present and popular "Trade Wars" which was the spiritual predecessor to EVE. Most of these games could only be played by one person at a time but the program would save the moves of each player who had so many turns per day, so potentially dozens of people could be playing and competing with each other in the same game, especially on a BBS that might have more than one phone line hooked into it.... at least that is what most nerds did online for gaming and kicks (including me). Along with that you of course had premium services, which were much more advanced than BBS systems, and required their own special clients just to login to. AoL, CompuServe, Prodigy, Q-Link, PC-Link and others, and these sites all had their own special games that were far more advanced than anything BBSes could run, ranging from professional grade text MUDs, to things like the forgotten "Club Cairbe" which ran over Q-link and could quite possibly be considered the first actual graphical MMO. The thing is the services that ran these games didn't charge you monthy fees, or even by the hour (usually), they charged by the minute for premium time. This means someone could basically be paying like $1.00 per minute to run around Club Cairbe and chat with people while engaging in scavenger hunts, which was even more money back then than it is now. The thing is people actually DID this, and enough did it in order for there to be multiple services of this type all fighting with each other for a while. I was a kid at the time so all I could do is sit there and boggle at how cool some of these games were when I actually heard about them or ran into someone who spent the money to play them for a bit. Understanding how crazy this was, I did indeed ask why someone would pay $1 a minute to run around Club Cairbe, swap heads around from vending machines, and do gender reversals to themselves in "The Swedish Room" while "adventuring" with the so called "Adventurers guild" and maybe occasionally harassing someone with a Jump Wand the answer was pretty much "because I can, and not many other people can either". That was kind of the thing, if you were there you were sort of nerd elite, either someone who was a rich nerd, or so dedicated to things nerds like that you were literally willing to break yourself financially to be at the peak.


The point of my rambling is that the only thing that these games could possibly be, given their success, is some kind of crazy status symbol like that which EA and similar companies are more than willing to cater to, much like the old premium services did with a lot of their stuff. That's why you keep seeing it happening, despite the backlash from regular gamers, the gaming media, and everyone else, and why people are still buying it. The only way I could think to justify Dungeon Keeper in this form would be if the point of it is so two rich nerds who happen to be doctors or whatever could both show off their respective dungeons and "how nerdy they are" by how much money they spent and how much time they put into it doing so. The complaints of someone like Jim Sterling going "70 bloody pounds for 14000 Gems, and that's a "best value"?!?!?!?" is sort of the point, the people paying that do so specifically because someone like Jim Sterling can't afford to pay that just to show off how trivial such an expense is to his friends. Sort of like how if you hung out in Club Cairbe for a couple of hours, you just blew $120 (or whatever it was) you achieved nothing really except to show that you can do it, and are nerdy enough to do it there.

I found that to be an interesting read. I kinda posed the question as flippantly hypothetical without really putting much thought into the actual answer, besides how incongruous it seems to most avid gamers - the ones who one might describe as 'hardcore' (not for dumb reasons regarding platform preference, but for having both a broad and keen interest in their hobby, following news, keeping informed and generally being analytical of games and the general industry, etc)

I hardly follow mobile or tablet gaming save a few titles that grab my attention or are recommended to me by friends, so I'm functionally aware of it without a rich understanding of comparative success and failure across a breadth of titles. I agree with your thoughts, for what it's worth. I kinda felt I should write a reply after you made that post, though I don't have much further insight to offer.

I do recall a little bird telling me that free to play monetization, in the broadest terms, basically alters the numbers on profitability, in a rule of thumb sorta way, by increasing the user base by a factor of 1500-3000% compared to retail sale players, but reduces the number of paying customers to 5-15%. (Piracy doesn't really factor into these projections)

That's general F2P, mind, though I'd expect the net that casts is behind what seems to, indeed, be EA's strategy to try and fire a free money sink like grapeshot on any recognized brand, presuming that that does pull in that very small group of people who have genuinely possess the money and inclination to make up a massive stake of the profit off such a title. I think I heard that the superfanboys of games in F2P models sometimes will pay out EXPONENTIALLY more than the average paying user.

Whatever plausible business math is behind it though, things like DK Mobile are not really designed as games at all anymore, so much as incentive systems that operate as a variable in a financial experiment with the pleasing tits and lipstick, so to speak. If you value games as worthwhile bodies of art or entertainment, it's fucking vile. I think everyone's on board with that

People on the internet get angry and speak in performative ways about a lot of stupid alleged issues, but I can get behind people rasing irate hell over shit like this, since it acts as a grassroots financial landmine warning.

 

[blackrave]

reading 5star "reviews" on g-play is awesome
majority of them sounds like spambot did it
(some took excerpts from description and slapped 5star rating, while others used single line description, like "amazing", "excellent", etc.)


rating of this game is a fucking joke.

 

[Karadalis]

Bleh. I'll say this again: If you buy from EA, it's your own damn fault. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 4583 times...

This, this, this. Shame on the gamer community for allowing this cancer to thrive. Get some willpower.

Yeah you go tell that faceless entity known as the "gamer community" whats what...

Whats that? Telling of a vague concept like the gaming community has the same effect as booing against a faceless corporate giant like EA?

Holy jellybeans batman!

Serious thought its gaming culture not gaming community. Battlefield fans arent necesary Call of duty fans and vice versa.

Part of gaming culture is sadly buying stuff in the hopes that it wont suck because it either looks interesting or has potential. And not ALL EA games are that bad if youre honest, not necesary good but atleast mediocre... as much as i hate to say it their games have "entertainment" value (well besides this piece of crap aparantly)

Be it Dead space, Mass effect, Dragon age or Medal of honor... those are games with entertainment value. Sure they get bogged down by EA corporate bullshit but there is a game buried in that dung pile that people can enjoy.

Mass effect 3 had a shitty ending that nagged you to buy more DLC... the rest of the game was pretty cool thought.

And i think that is why people keep buying games published by EA... because they see the potential and hope that this time it will be different.

Heh... no wonder the Greeks thought that hope is a possibly evil thing and the last thing remaining in pandoras box.

 

[Frankster]

Says the man who sold out bullfrog to EA in the first place.

To be fair...EA was just a fledgeling evil corp at the time and if anything you'd probably have had a positive view of EA since this would have been from the era where their games still came with an EA "certificate" where they state some nice idealistic lines about how they are a conglomeration of "electronic artists" who just want to make the best games they can that people will enjoy for years to come. So yeh selling bullfrog to EA really didn't seem a bad idea at the time...We didn't know, how could we have known? *gets on knees and cries*

Seriously guys I still remember EA from the megadrive days, what the fuck happened to them?

 

[Citizen Graves]

Hey guys, if you want a proper, real FREE-2-PLAY DUNGEON KEEPER you can actually get it on Good Old Games (www.gog.com) FOR FREE right now (as part of their Valentine's Day Promo).