 | Not so enthralled with this free to play economy |
So, the old man recently bought a smart phone. Before that, he was the office dinosaur, carrying around his old man’s flip phone. Strange devices, flip phones. Younger people might not believe it, but flip phones have but a single purpose: making phone calls.
For business reasons, I had to upgrade. Of course, not valuing phones, I went cheap and got a ZTE for 80 bucks. It does everything I need it to, and more. LOTS more.
Being a gamer, I was interested in the gaming offerings on phones. We’ve had phone games for a long time, but real gamers dismissed them, and most other folks did too. The devices just weren’t up to supporting anything too complex or interesting. Obviously, that has changed. My buddy at work has an iPhone upon which he plays Square Enix RPGs and pretty nice-looking MMOs. Probably y’all do too.
My phone, of course, has a pretty limited storage capacity. You don’t get many bells and whistles for $80. But I had some fun poking around in the Google Play Store.
I tried to download a game called Monument, but didn’t have sufficient storage. That one, I want to find another way of playing.
So, I went to old standbys. I downloaded a Sudoku game that was pretty cool, and in some ways has capabilities that exceed the pencil and paper Sudoku I’ve been playing for a long time. I downloaded Killer Sudoku, not because I like playing it, but my mom does...I had a dinner planned with her, and wanted to show it to her. She is another new smart phone adoptee.
I downloaded a little RPG called Machine Knight. I started playing it, and then recognized...duh...that I had already purchased and downloaded this game for my 3DS! So I turned off the phone, happy to be reminded of this game. I don’t know about y’all, but I prefer playing games with physical buttons than with a touch screen.
But, to get to the point of my little screed, here, I also downloaded and deleted several casual games and puzzle games. Something called Block Toon (I think), which was pretty fun. It actually required me to develop some skill in the game...at least it did until it wanted me to buy a bunch of add ons, which explode things on the board so that I don’t have to surgically remove them using my finger and my brain. The game seems to be designed so that you learn these early skills, but then can’t use them...later levels are very claustrophobic, without enough blocks to build any of the combinations you spent earlier levels learning to master.
I sort of like match 3 puzzles, too. I know that Candy Crush is a huge thing in the world (or once was, maybe. I’m always way behind the curve on these things). I didn’t want to play that, of course, because, you know, that’s for girls. (Just joshin’, folks. I know some of y’all are probably politically correct and liberal and Hillary supporters and such things). But really, being distrustful of fads, and being the curmudgeon that I am, I ignored Candy Crush and found a surely-very-nearly-identical replacement called Fish Crush. Reminded me of the “Fish” character on Barney Miller, and “A Fish Called Wanda,” and the progressive rock pioneer Fish and all sorts of other fishes.
I found a puzzle game where there are electronic “wooden” blocks in a defined space that must be moved to release a further “wooden” block. These blocks even sound like wood when you move them across the screen with your finger. Turns out, there are at least three or four VERY SIMILAR games on the Play Store, with only the names changed. There aren’t that many new ideas, here, just new packaging.
It didn’t take me very long to delete each of these games. Y’all know this, of course, but these “free to play” games come with an awful lot of ads, or an awful lot of manipulative come-ons, at which point of course they’re no longer free to play.
Now, I don’t mind paying for entertainment. But I’ve gone this free to play route once before, on my Nintendo 3DS. There, I played Pokemon Shuffle. I enjoyed the game. I put some money into the game. Happily. But what I eventually learned was that the money disappeared pretty quickly, and I didn’t have any more in front of me than I had previously. You could put a ton of money into the thing...hundreds of dollars if you wanted to and could afford to...and still not have a game that you can play any time you want, and in the way you want.
I wish that these things had a buy-in point at which the game would truly be yours.
As a gamer, I want to support people who develop good games. Most of the games I tried, though, aren’t all that good. They COULD BE good, but they’re not designed to be so. They’re designed to be fun and addictive, and to give rewards that are more easily arrived at if you chip in a few bucks.
At that point, we’re not primates learning a new interesting skill, we’re rats pressing the bar so that another little jolt of electricity is sent through the pleasure center of our brains. Rats, if you don’t know, will keep pressing that bar and pressing that bar, ignoring food and water and eschewing sleep until they’re dehydrated, delusional, insane, and finally dead.
Developers, fortunately, aren’t quite that good yet. Maybe they don’t want to be quite that good. They want us alive, with our fingers at the ready, so that they can hawk their next fix at us.
I just bought a game called Connection for my phone. It’s another puzzle game. It actually requires some “gray matter” (as we used to call it). I paid $6.99 for it, I think, though they would have let me pay $1.99 or $4.99 on up to $22.99, as I remember...sort of a “pay what you think it’s worth” model. It started out free to play, but with ads. Sort of obnoxious ones that took up the whole screen, taking me away from the game, and demanded my attention (thankfully, they let me turn the sound off).
I was offered a chance to buy the game, and I took them up on it. I’m not even sure I like the game that much. But I surely do like being able to turn it on and play it without seeing a bunch of ads, without being pummeled with offers for things that will help me “win” the game without having to work too hard at it, etc. I bought it, and thus restored my integrity. As a gamer and as a human being.
Feels good.
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honestgamer - May 21, 2018 (01:34 PM) There are games you can download for free on smartphones, play for a bit, and then pay to play whenever you like. And doing that tends to be reasonably inexpensive, because the point isn't necessarily to gouge you... the way it is with a lot of other free-to-play offerings. I enjoyed a few weeks of Super Mario Run, which you can download for free but must pay $10 to essentially own. I paid to own it and don't regret it. And Alphabear has an option to buy unlimited play outright, if you like what it is doing (which I did). I have bought some other mobile games, too, like Part Time UFO (which I haven't yet played, but it was cheap and developed by HAL Laboratory so I figured I might as well) and some of the early Dragon Quest games. Largely, I'm like you in that I prefer games with actual buttons and conventional input. Touchscreens don't work for me, so I usually play free-to-play money traps like my current obsessions, Castle Creeps TD and Marvel Strike Force. I'm not sure either of those have a version available that would work well on your particular smartphone, though... particularly the latter. |
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dirtsheep - May 21, 2018 (07:32 PM) Yes. For sure I am brand new at this, and largely ignorant regarding what is available (I definitely noted with interest those Dragon Quest games). I need to become more sophisticated about it. And, I need to get a better smart phone if I really want to dive in (which I may not do). I do maintain that a lot of the more popular stuff out there is not that great for us as gamers or indeed as a species. Lotsa time and money being poured into these games toward nothing like enlightenment. And yeah, I'd go so far as to say that something like "enlightenment" is a possibility with a well-developed game. Video games can be an art form, but these recent explorations of mine turned up little that resembled art. I will however look up your recommendations! Thank you. |
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dirtsheep - May 27, 2018 (12:04 PM) Alphabear! What a cool little treat this is. |
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overdrive - June 02, 2018 (11:34 AM) I use the cheap tablet I got when I bought for phone for gaming. I know what you mean about buttons being better than touch screens. Makes me glad I only really play those Kemco games on it, because it's one thing to struggle with controls in a JRPG, where the only real cost of blundering around is a couple extra battles; as opposed to a more action game. And if there's one legit positive of their games, it's that the cash-grab stuff is far less intrusive. Most games make it easy (if time-consuming) to earn points simply by playing and many of those games primarily (or only) sell items and goods that mainly serve the purpose of making a game that's naturally easy or, at most, mid-level difficulty REALLY easy. About all you have to watch for is Exe-Create because they've taken to releasing premium and freemium versions and you tend to want the premium because you (a) get a good bit of currency and (b) without buying their XP doubler and a couple other items, you'd have to grind a fair bit to get places. |
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dirtsheep - June 02, 2018 (07:03 PM) Exe-Create. I've not heard of them, or played any of the games. I note you've played the Asdivine games, and I've read good things about them. I read a review yesterday that indicated that one of them was available for the PS4? I think. (I just looked at the PlayStation store, and confirm that Asdivine Hearts is listed there). Maybe I'll check that out! I seem to have sort of drifted away from using my phone for much but making phone calls. Call me a traditionalist. Still like Alphabear. No doubt there are many great offerings. But I'm enjoying my systems with controllers and buttons and such, and have begun playing with my new GPD XD...which gives me a chance to play Android games, but WITH buttons. I'll be the guy at the nursing home bent over in my wheelchair, playing Pokemon. But probably not on a phone. Though the brain grows ever more concrete, I'm still enjoying the games. I'm much like Kakuna in that way...my only move being "Harden." The exterior becomes more and more impenetrable, but there is poison within. Goodness. |
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overdrive - June 03, 2018 (12:05 AM) Asdivine Hearts is, so far, probably my favorite of their, if not all of Kemco's teams, games. It's generally fun and gets pretty challenging at times (hell, put it on "easy" and the post-game bosses are still tough, even if that does trivialize previously brutal main game bosses). While it did start E-C's annoying "harem" concept where the main protagonist is a guy and his three party members are females whom you can boost relationship status with, it at least comes off as somewhat natural (by the standards of weak character development) and almost as more a side-quest than anything. Unlike Asdivine Dios, where, as far as dialogue goes, that is possibly more important than the whole RPG "save world from villain" plot. If not for that, I might like the game more than Hearts. It's easier, but that's because you get these super-strong attacks that can simply break it, allowing you to kill most bosses in one turn, which is perversely fun because those guys tend to have really powerful attacks and have enough speed to usually get first strike, so it's kind of neat that for once, the game essentially says, "These guys will mess you up...so how about we give you the ability to get them first!" |
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