Do you like the person that you see? Is this what you want to be remembered by? Or do you want to be remembered as a game developer like Bullfrog, whom everyone loved because they made real games worth playing?Īnd if you are one of the very few developers who are still making real games (without the in-app purchase crap), I salute you. Walk into the closest bathroom and look yourself in the mirror. So for you mobile game developers I simply ask this of you. There is no way to fix this other than stop doing it. This is completely unacceptable behavior.Īs I started out saying, I wish I could end this article on a positive note and a constructive solution. This is not what we want our future to be like. You and I have a responsibility to speak out against it. They should be thrown in jail for deceptive business tactics, and not featured in the app store as an Editors' Choice. done by sick people who have nothing left in their lives other than selfish greed. That social engineering and scamming people is an acceptable way of doing business. They are going to grow up in a world, in which people actually think this is what gaming is like. How absolutely f*cked up is that? (.sorry for my choice of words, but this is one of those times where profanity is justified).Īs NerdCubed said in his review, the problem is that all the future generations of gamers are going to experience this as the default. This crap is featured as one of the five top picks on the front page of Apple's app store, as an Editors' choice. And you know what the worst part of this is? Let me show you. We don't have a mobile gaming industry anymore. What EA has done here has nothing to do with gaming, and the same is true for pretty much all other ' free-to-play + in-app purchase' games. Also, Nerdcubed does have a rather liberal use of words, and you probably shouldn't listen to it in the office.īut you *must* watch this because most people don't know how bad things are today.The total price: $5.99, and it only takes 2 minutes to dig out 45 squares. And since people don't remember what real gaming was like in the 90s, they are giving it the highest rating in the app store. The modern-day Dungeon Keeper is not even a game. It perfectly illustrates just how mind bogglingly bad things have gone. The review below is 8 minutes long, but you have to watch it all the way to the end. Now let's look at exactly the same game, but reimagined for the iPad/Android and in-app purchases.Īnd once again, NerdCubed reviews it. Build a large treasure room of 45 squares in just 2 minutes.Full game price + expansion packs included: $5.99.You feel the energy and the rhythm of the game. It's 45 squares big, and it takes the game about 2 minutes to complete. He is building a treasure room to store all his gold and jewels. You don't have to see the whole video, just go to 2:20 and watch how fast and easy it is to build a room. Your task is to build up your 'dungeon' by digging out rooms and battling other dungeon keeps around you.īelow is a (long) video from NerdCubed of what it is like to play. It's a game that you can buy today (full game, everything unlocked + all expansion packs included) for $5.99 over at GOG. Your iPad is running at 2048x1536.īut let's look at one of these games: Dungeon Keeper. Obviously, the games' graphics look horrible today, considering that the high-res screen resolution back then was only 640x480. You might remember games like Syndicate, Theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper. It created some of the best strategy games. Dungeon Keeper, 1997īack in the 1990s, one of the best game developers in the world was a company called Bullfrog Productions. Let's compare a game from the 1990s with the same game on the iPad today. With the help of NerdCubed (great guy), let me illustrate just how bad in-app purchases in games have become. And for an old geezer like me who remember the glory days of gaming back in the 1990s, it's just unbearable to watch. It doesn't mean that you sit around and wait for the game to annoy you for so long that you decide to pay credits to speed it up. We have reached a point in which mobile games couldn't even be said to be a game anymore. Note: Image from the wonderful ' Monty Python and the Holy Grail'. Why are these gaming studios so intent of killing themselves? but it's still engaging in a strategy that will only damage it further. Not only has the gaming industry shot itself in the foot, hacked off their other foot, and lost both its arms. The state of in-app purchases has now reached a level where we have completely lost it. I don't like writing negative articles that don't include a solution to the problem, but in this case, there is no solution.
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