Dungeon Keeper
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Shacknews
replySteve Watts posted a new article, Opinion: EA, Dungeon Keeper, and when free-to-play isn't 'free'.
A UK advertising watchdog has called EA out on one of its "free-to-play" games. But this problem extends far past EA, and this only scratches the surface.-
Games that eventually force you to buy something should not be labeled Free to Play, rather something like Limited Freeplay or something like that. There are some (few) games that do this without forcing you to an IAP), only these deserve to be called Free to Play, the whole F2P thing has taking off where by now when I read "F2P" - it translates to "scam".
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not all f2p games are scams, but you are right in that many of them are underhanded in trying to get people to pay. The ones I really hate are the ones where you have to buy in game currency first, its a disconnect between the cost of the currency and the actual cost of the item you are trying to buy. Its sneaky and I am sure many people dont realise how much they are actually paying for an item in game.
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I still play this game and have since release and have not spent a penny on it. I do not feel that I need to either. They provide fairly easy way to get gems, which is the in game currency. I don't get how someone can say it is not F2P.
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Are you making special efforts to avoid the 24-hour dig timers?
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no, but through digging and raids I have enough gems to have 5 imps. The imps speed up digging time
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Why would you need to? Set up your imps and maybe slap them a few times throughout the day while you're doing raids, they'll be finished by the next morning. Do people lose their shit when playing animal crossing and the store they want to use is closed for the night? When is the ASA going to protect people from that?
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I think I remember Jeff Gerstmann having that complaint about Animal Crossing.
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Closed shops is a part of Animal Crossings design that makes the game unfortunately.
Charging to be able to continue playing a game that is free is another matter and if EA didn't call Dungeon Keeper "free-to-play" they would not have had this ruling made against them.
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Once you give up 'playing' the game and take it as a new grind so you can play it later (ie; have your dungeon fully built out), it changes your sense of the game. I gave up this game before really getting playing it, but I had the outside edge of my dungeon all dug out with 2 imps eventually. I just set it before I left for work and remembered to slap the imps throughout the day.
I never saw anything that you HAD to pay money for. Just speed things up. I'm okay with that.
The game itself wasn't great, but that's a completely different issue.
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5 years ago: Chris Remo in Idle Thumbs 23, 1 hour 4 minutes:
Before I say any of this, I want to put out the disclaimer, because everyone always... this is ALWAYS the comeback: I KNOW that the reason companies exist is to make money; I KNOW that people aren't doing things out of altruism. All that said, I don't give a shit. Like, as someone who does pay money for games, and does care about what I'm paying for, I just don't like the idea of a market in which there is even some expectation that these things are actual, like, that... you go out there, and you've got, the money you spend for your game, which is already more than you pay for any other entertainment product, no matter what, even a cheap game, and then, there's also just this other fuckin' boatload of shit that you might want. It's like, I shouldn't have to "maybe" want that. What am I getting out of that? Maybe some dude is getting something out of it; he probably wouldn't actually be having less fun with the game if he wasn't spending 99 cents here and there and there and there on this and this and this. And again, it's the consumer fuckin' beware; I'm not trying to say that the companies have to protect the consumers from spending their money. But I can say, that as a broad effect, I don't think that stuff is beneficial to consumers in any meaningful way. Like, I don't think that stuff being there is having any positive long-term beneficial effect on consumers who are buying games, and really, those are the only people I actually care about when it comes to markets. I care a lot about developers, and I want them to succeed, probably more than most gamers do. I go out of my way to spend a lot of money on full-priced games... So I don't mind spending a lot of money on games... but I do mind that stupid shit, and I think I'm coming from a reasonably legitimate point, because I don't get all of my shit for free.
This is off of a reader mail that was chaining off of the GDC 2009 keynote of Neil Young (then of Ngmoco): http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/113805/GDC_ngmocos_Young_iPhone_Better_Than_DS_Better_Than_PSP.php
"For those of you concerned [that we're going to] sell rocket launchers for 99 cents, don't worry," he reassured the crowd, referring to widely-publicized screenshots last week. "That's not going to happen. We're not going to prioritize greed over gameplay."
Right... I wish that that sentiment could've actually had some substance among mobile developers, but as we now know, it didn't, and EA's biz dev department decided to milk it for all its worth. EA CEO Andrew Wilson later apologized at this year's E3, but I have to wonder how much of that is the reflexive "predecessor blame game" card that new CEOs get to play in their first year.
The US really needs an equivalent of the ASA. But more importantly, there need to be better standards for free-to-play games, because the marketplace isn't working in its current state, which is heavily gamed by publisher marketing departments. -
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Sounds like the ASA has decided to finally defined "Free to Play", rather than letting companies do this grey area crap. I approve of the move, though there are far more blatant abuses which should be cited. Final Fantasy: All the Bravest springs to mind, which is exponentially worse than this.
I like the suggestion that "Limited Freeplay" be the term companies need to use for games that use this business model. Or we could just go back to calling it "shareware" like we did back in the 90s.-
They didn't define anything, read their ruling: http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2014/7/Electronic-Arts-Ltd/SHP_ADJ_258907.aspx#.U7P4LfldV8H
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It's only false advertising if you arbitrarily decide certain prevalent well-established mechanics are in violation of it. And then to specifically target one game from one publisher? It's not like I'm trying to white knight for EA here, but give me a break. Either this applies to any game that uses an "energy" mechanic or it doesn't.
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The ASA only replies to complaints which is why this judgement is against only one game.
This sort of action will most likely result in the creation of another term for Free To Play games that aren't able to be played properly without purchases.
This will in all likelihood be the start of consumers being told whether they can play a game freely or not.
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I said there was going to be an F2P backlash and there is one brewing. The problem is that F2P might work for some and there are companies that do it well, but there are enough games out there that do a shitty job of it that it's going to hurt the bottom line. Sure there are some well known F2P games at the top, but it's getting harder and harder to compete because small companies can't afford TV ads to keep their DAU and acquisition up. It's also getting more expensive to make F2P games because people expect polish and lots of content. So, the margins are getting thinner. I don't think there's going to be a market crash per se, but a big thinning of the herd is coming as there is less and less money to be made by more and more devs. It's just not sustainable IMO.
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