Video Game News and Miscellany

Frank

Frank

On the positive side, the investor that's buying up the companies assets sound like they're going to release everything as scheduled.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Any Skylanders people: Is it possible to play online with people using different platforms? Example: my cousin has it on Wii and I had it on PS3, would we be able to play online together?
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
The first Ouya dev units have made their way into the wild, and some devs already have their ported games running on them. This got me interested enough to start paying attention to what I thought would be vaporware. The idea of a relatively low-cost console with fairly open development intrigues me.

What makes me say "heck NO" is that all game purchases will be done in-game. Nothing in the Ouya store will have a price tag, it will all be listed as free with developers deciding how much content they'll supply for free, and what style of in-game purchase they will have. NO, all prices need to be available in a single location. I'm against any sort of DLC where I can't find out prices from my web browser. Screw you, Ouya, for trying to obfuscate game costs.
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

They're essentially trying to bring the mobile payment environment to console, but what works on mobile may not work on console so much (especially since the way mobile games hide costs isn't really considered a feature by most folks, I imagine).
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
stienman said:
It may irritate you on a theoretical level, but if you approach game playing and purchasing from a practical standpoint, I expect you'll be paying a lot less for a lot more.
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I already pay a lot less for a lot more. Steam, Humble Bundle, GOG, etc. Almost all the prices are upfront, discounts are still abundant and I can shop and compare prices without jumping through many hoops at all.
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

stienman said:
By selling milk below cost, and putting it in the back of the store, grocery stores make more money by forcing people to look at all the other products on the way there and back. They place cheap impulse buy items at the cash register that you get to look at for 5-10 minutes before you check out. They make sure there are enough cashiers to keep your wait below ten minutes, but not so many that you wait less than 5 minutes.

Yes, it's a gross abuse of human behavior, but for those that can go in and get the milk and go out while resisting the temptation to purchase other items, you come out ahead. You are buying milk for less than the store pays for it. Shop sale and coupon items only, and you can get a lot more for less as well.
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That's a very strange comparison to make because when people enter a store to buy groceries, they're there to spend money on groceries. There is no sunk cost to going to the back of the store to get milk when you need milk, the "price" is being advertised to by other groceries, some of which you may have already entered the store under the assumption that you might buy them.

No one is being told that one of the best things about the store is that walking through the door is free. The assumption on entering the store is that you are there to spend money.

One of the things they are actively promoting about the Ouya environment is that everything in the store is F2P. Which it is. What they don't tell you, and what I hear frequently in focus groups as a complaint, is that different games have very different interpretations of what "free" actually means, and the fact that you're usually not told up front is a point of frustration.

You don't know if a "free game" is functionally a bunch of demo levels with purchase-required for the back 80% of the game, or a free game with purchased consumables that allow you level faster or smooth out the difficulty if you desire, or just buying your way out of the ads, or buying additional post-release content, etc.

One of the best things about this new decade of gaming is that all these options exist and it has drastically changed the pricing value of gaming experiences in favor of the consumer. One of the bad things about it is that it has led to the tendency of developers to not be up front about the actual product you're getting.

It's not that people are complaining about walking past all the other groceries in order to get milk for cheap. They're complaining that they don't know if it's really milk.
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

stienman said:
So the developers aren't being up front about the product you're getting ... for free.
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Funnily enough, I ask that question in focus groups, and most of the time, the answer is "no, because it's not actually free".

The reason why they say that is because "free" means something different on a per-game basis, and no app store page tells you up front what that definition is.

EDIT: Let me use an example.

I asked someone who is an avowed mobile puzzle gamer about frustrations in mobile gaming, and she brought this issue up. I asked why it mattered and she said that she often downloaded games onto her phone in the morning before getting on the train to work because she knew she would have an hour to kill.

So she downloads 4 F2P puzzle games directly from the top lists in the appstore because they're well-rated and popular and she figures that she can play them in both directions and maybe eventually spend money on them if she really likes them. However, when she starts playing them on the train, 3 of those 4 turn out to be demos where you can only play 5 minutes or so before it asks you to spend money on more content. So there's only one puzzle game that lasts longer than that because it only uses real money for optional power-ups and bonuses, but its still a mobile game and she really only plays it for 30 min at a time, and now she has time to kill.

She can always go looking for more apps after that, but she would have preferred to have found those apps in the morning before she got on the train in the first place.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
SpecialKO said:
Funnily enough, I ask that question in groups, and most of the time, the answer is "no, because it's not actually free".
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Bingo. PC World's App review of the My Little Pony game found it would take 2½ years of playing to unlock the characters necessary to finish the game. (Not extra, bonus characters, ones needed to finish playing.) To quote "Of the six ponies needed to finish the game, two cost gems. Rarity is a ‘reasonable’ 90 gems, while Rainbow Dash is a staggering 500 gems. You can’t even see how much she costs to purchase until you reach level 43, which represents at least a couple of weeks of intense gameplay."

For someone who doesn't care about finishing a game, that may not sound like much of a problem; after all you've gotten a couple weeks of playing every day. However, some people care about finishing a game, especially if there is a story involved, and it's a real dick move to suddenly spring a huge cost on players. Seriously, 2½ years of daily playing or $50+ of in-game gem purchases to be able to finish a story? It's bullshit like that I'm trying to avoid.

It's really story based games that are the problem. If I never see the paid levels of Angry Birds, I don't really give a crap. Yes, there is a "story" but it's not anything more than a cardboard cut-out. Imagine if Portal 2 were free-to-play but to get to the ending you'd have to either spend 2½ years solving the same puzzles every day, or spend $50+ dollars to see the ending. Would that feel like it's a "free" game to you? Would you think it's a good business practice to hide that price and only show it to players who have already completed a significant chunk of the game?[DOUBLEPOST=1357326447][/DOUBLEPOST]Oh, and I just checked. On the Android app page, there is no mention of how much in-game purchases cost, or what's available. On the iOS app store, there is a short ten item list of "Top In-App Purchases" but it doesn't tell you what those purchases do, if they're necessary to finish the story, or how much content is available for free.[DOUBLEPOST=1357326654][/DOUBLEPOST]
stienman said:
There will always be bad developers that will deliver a great "commercial" for free, then deliver a bad DLC. So there's still a loophole to get consumers to buy a pile of garbage. This is usually handled through user feedback via reviews and ratings.
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In a good system the rating for paid content would be separate from the rating given to a demo or trailer. If the teaser on Youtube for the next AAA blockbuster game has 100,000 thumbs up, I don't expect that to reflect the quality of the $50 game. However, there's no distinction in the rating on apps. I have no idea how to tell if a five star rating was because someone loved the free gameplay, or if they loved what they paid for, or even how much they paid in order to be satisfied to five stars.
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

figmentPez said:
even how much they paid in order to be satisfied to five stars.
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Now that would be a wonderful way to rate games. I'm not sure how they would implement seamlessly and in such a way as it would be informative at a glance, but "average spend by rating" would be wonderful.
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

stienman said:
Would she also have preferred to pay for them before playing them? And be out both the cash and time if 3/4 of them were junk?

Honestly it looks like play before pay actually helps her save money, whereas pay before play would cause her to lose both money and time, rather than just time.
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She's not objecting to F2P, she's objecting to not knowing before she bothered how F2P for that particular game actually works. That's the whole point.

There's literally thousands of games on the market, and believe it or not, people actually don't think their time is free, even if the game is.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
stienman said:
As figmentPez points out, games where DLC is hidden and you have to buy it more than once to progress are obviously problematic, but this is something the publisher/creator chose to do, it's not necessarily the fault of the payment system. They could probably come up with just as obnoxious a payment plan under any app store while intentionally obfuscating the real cost of the game.
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I think it is the fault of the store/payment system, and you'll see a lot more of it if all games are forced to hide their costs. Having the option of a "free" game with in-game purchases isn't terribly bothersome, there are plent of F2P games on Steam, it's the fact that Ouya is going to require all games to follow that model that bothers me. It's encouraging business practices that are harmful to the consumer, and ultimately harmful to the long-term health of gaming as a hobby.
 
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