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[PA Comic] Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - Chronomancy
Geth
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Posts
why is he everywhere
Steam: adamjnet
Making sure it's free of couch gremlins.
Gamer Dater - My Video Game Dating Website full of Faygo
Strip Search Wastebasket of Broken Dreams App I made
Steam: pazython
That's the thing though. It's barely a game. They aren't looking to build a dedicated user base. It's not like Coca-Cola where everyone buys one for a buck. They are fishing for addicts.
Here are a couple of articles on this:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/194933/The_Top_F2P_Monetization_Tricks.php?print=1
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/195806/chasing_the_whale_examining_the_.php?page=7 (This one is long, the link is to the page on gambling psychology)
There was another one on what the conversion was between time and money in the mobile version of The Sims Social that was good, but I"m having trouble finding it.
Edit: Boom found it: http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=1076
I really like this article and it has some good thoughts on F2P and monetization gone wrong. It's pretty long and the formatting isn't great, but there were 2 take-homes from the article:
1. Most users spend zero, the average spending of people who spend money at all is $60.
2. If you wanted to max out your stats in The Sims Social by paying cash, it would cost $20,833 and no gameplay. In order to get to that state by playing with no cash input, it would take over 17 years. If you wanted to pay to get in-game advantages but still play to that same end point, it would take a meager 4,200 hours of game time - but would cost $166,000.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
Only this one is funny and relevant.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
1 : Why do people keep playing those (increasingly more) ridiculous F2P abominations, ensuring this fraudulous business model stays alive, and
2 : WTF Tycho?
Same, curse it for being such a good mobile racing game with a terrible monetization strategy. At least after you get a couple of cars (by racing not paying) the waiting for repairs is a non-factor.
That's the weirdest one, because the only truly punished player is the new player.
After 3-4 hours of gameplay, you never have to stop racing or give them money ever again unless you don't like the racing and just want the pretty cars (which is weird; if you didn't like the racing you would have bailed well before this point).
I never paid any money and ended up with dozens of cars before I lost interest.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
They nickel and dime those things to hell and back, and it's extremely difficult to get much gameplay out of most of them for more than maybe ten or so minutes before you're out of (insert made-up currency) and have to wait for more which usually means waiting at least an hour or more.
I made it to 347 that way, till I got to a level that I'm not sure any of the buyable stuff would get me a reasonable chance to beat anyway.
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
Ahhh, *that* is the little tickle my brain was trying to place.
They are pretty great.
Bzzzzt. Wrong. But good try.
http://www.harkavagrant.com/about.php
Well that's... a pretty damn obscure reference.
Steam: adamjnet
well I guess he just proved his internet hipster cred then.
I'm "into" webcomics and I honestly have never heard of it. but I'm sure there are a lot of "popular" webcomics out there I have never heard of, I discover a tiny gem every now and then, but if it doesn't grab me right away, it won't become part of my daily reading.
Hark! A Vagrant is awesome, but I wouldn't say that Tycho's poses remind me of Beaton's styles. I mean, I can think of examples in her work (one with Dracula peeping through a window at Mina comes to mind, so do just about every panel where someone is holding a piece of paper), but it's very much in context, rather than just half-hidden behind something like Tycho was in every panel.
I was introduced to this game by this strip, and today, mere minutes ago, I beat level 90. There are no more levels for me at the moment. No money was given, no items were used, I'll need to start going back to three star the levels or something. Or find another game for killing time while waiting in line for coffee every morning and afternoon.