Outwitters Is a Financial Disaster

Title is pretty linkbait: Apple didn't mess up in any way.

But article is still interesting. Summary:

Free to play game. Millions of dollars in free advertising from Apple. Over half a million "sales" (downloads). But the idiots only had a total of $4 maximum of in-app purchases in the game. So they made it impossible for their best fans to pay them much, while also not taking any money at all from the masses. So they didn't get paid much by anyone.

I know it's not nice to enjoy the failure of others, but I'm really pleased to see any free-to-play failure. My most recent misery in this segment is Tiny Troopers. It's a great little game that you can play to pass 2 minutes, or dig in and spend an hour or so working through the campaign missions. The problem is, the game is tainted by free-to-play. It actually makes it a worse game than it could have been.

Gaming is, first and foremost, about balance. If a game is too hard, players get discouraged and give up. Too easy and there is no satisfaction in winning. This is not a secret. Every game developer knows it, and many game enthusiasts are acquainted with the subject once they start to investigate the question of "why" they enjoy a specific game so much.

The trouble with free-to-play is that our wallets end up on the balance scale. How hard, or easy, the game is depends upon how much I'm willing to pump in to this little game. They make the game too hard to play without paying anything, but once you open your wallet, things can easily get way to effortless.

In order to develop truly great games, the developer needs to control the difficulty. I'd rather not have to guess just how much I should pay them in order to get the best experience.

I think Free to Play, while a nice idea, is somewhat misled. The end goal of a project like this has to be breaking even or making a profit, and if the free version is set up to be good enough to play long-term you're not going to convert as many to sales.

It used to be that these "free versions" were billed as demos, with the implication that you try it out for 30 days, a chapter of the story, or whatever the developer chose to limit. And after you get through that, you buy the game to keep playing. Giving away 90% of the product and hoping people want the extra 10% enough to pay $15 for it doesn't seem sustainable.

I especially hate this in competitive multiplayer games (looking at you, Tribes: Ascend), where you're absolutely at a disadvantage if you haven't bought stuff or invested a huge amount of time. I'd rather have the type of demo we used to get in games like Unreal Tournament, where you have the complete gameplay experience but only have one or two maps to play on.

Title suggestion "Outwitters Outwits One Man Left".

A lot of hater comments on the article, most bashing the IAP model. I wonder what would be a proper/good model, given the volatility of the platform (no one plays the same game for long) and the average low price...

Random thoughts anyone?

Flagged for the incredibly misleading title.