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Penny Arcade - Comic - Interpolation
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - Interpolation
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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Edit:
My app store search results for "Grindstone" are as follows:
-Grindstone Time Tracker
-Grindstone Devotional
-E145WB
-Grindstone Coworking Sticker
-Grindstone Coworking App
-Humminbird FishSmart
And that's it. No games.
Based on the newspost, I think it might be on Apple Arcade?
-Tycho Brahe
I think it's on the new Apple Arcade subscription thing. It's definitely not showing up on Android Playstore (and the search results are even more scattered).
You're missing a fundamental difference. Yes, things cost money. That's a constant of the universe. It's very hard to feed yourself with all the money you're not getting by not charging for things. So that you pay either way goes without saying.
But HOW you charge for things determines what shape your game takes. These games not needing to "monetize" game play mean that they don't cram in a bunch of f2p gimmicks and tricks, things you would never put in the design of a properly made game if you didn't have to. You are freed to choose the design that actually delivers the most fun, rather than saying "Whoah, hold up there pardner. You're having too much fun! If you want to keep having this amount of fun, it's time to buy some fuckin' berries!"
OK, if that question confused you, don't worry, 'cause I got a looong rant about this coming up (because unlike Dennis, I hate making my point in a concise and short manner):
Most console and PC games, if you pay for something, it's so that you can play the game at all, or at least play more of it. Even if it's something as superficial as a new skin you like; you'll spend a little more time thinking how cool you look, taking some screenshots, what have you not. When you buy deluxe versions, you usually get more missions and maps to play in. Apart from a discussion on what the price should be of these things; this is the acceptable way to do it.
With way too many mobile phone games, on the other hand; you pay to play the game -less-. You pay to avoid an otherwise practically endless amount of grinding. They deliberately stretch out the game in order for you to eventually buy their stuff out of exhaustion. They use every manipulation trick available. They are, in short, fucking bastards, the lot of them.
So when PC/console games are doing mobile game trends, that makes me insanely angry. I will f.ex. never buy a game from Kemco; because they churn out what appears at first glance to be mediocre "classic-style" RPG games that includes DLC items like "Triple EXP" and "No encounters".
Let me repeat that: You buy their game... And -then- you buy a DLC that essentially takes away the gameplay This DLC costs three dollars. For a twelve-dollar game.
It's not just frustrating, it's also basically an admission by Kemco. They must know that their gameplay just can't be very good. They are, in effect, punting the ball*. They are deliberately giving up. They clearly have no interest in making a game that makes me so entranced that I want to buy DLCs that expands my time with them. If I want to play a game entirely for the story without any other gameplay aspects, I'll damn well just buy a visual novel.
A similar thing happens with the Forza Horizon games, where they'll gladly charge you three dollars just to give you a map that shows you where the breakable boards are. They know that only a very tiny percentage of players has the mental stamina to search for all of them; and that means they know that the boards are too many, and the world simply too big for that kind of hard-to-find scavenger hunt. Finding the boards stops being fun, and instead becomes a chore.
Incidentally, it seems like they are unaware that internet exists, and that it's possible to post these maps on there.
So yeah, in light of all this, if Apple has a subscription service that is simply this: "Pay us a modest fee, and you get access to games that simply are games"; then I applaud them for that. I mean, I've used PSNow, and damn, if I didn't get my money's worth on that subscription. It's upfront, it's straight-forward, and it means you pay to play -more-. Whether their fees are reasonable (I mean, this is Apple we're talking about) is a different discussion; but at least they're in principle doing the right thing.
*For more on punting and how it is one of the very few "deliberately giving up" moves in sports that is actually an essential and important part of the whole thing, I recommend this amazing video by Jon Bois. Trust me, it's worth it. The guy has an amazing ability of making sports and sports statistics become alive and interesting, even for people that doesn't follow sports. Sometimes -especially- people that don't follow sports.
I see this type of thing in Final Fantasy XIV. There are items you can buy to skip the older portions of the main storyline quests (which you have to go through to unlock the things that everyone else does in the game). I wouldn't dream of saying that Square Enix "knows their gameplay is bad" and that is why they offer these items. It's because some new players whine about how they have to go through soooo many hours of quests to get to the endgame that their friends are playing. I don't really get it myself. The game is fun, but the endgame grind hasn't changed that much in the past few expansions. It's much like any other MMO: Get these items to exchange for gear, fight these harder versions of battles for gear, then a couple patches later you get different items for slightly better gear, and fight different harder version of battles for slightly better gear, and on and on. If it wasn't for my interest in the game's story, I probably wouldn't still be playing it. But for some people, the grind seems to be all that they care about. To be honest, I think some of them think they still live in an age where everyone gapes in awe at them in their epic gearz, so they want to get that gear as soon as they can and parade around the player hubs in it. Even though I suspect, in FFXIV anyway, that most people don't really care...but perhaps that's because most of the high level gear tends to be not as ostentatious as it was in the old days of WoW. You aren't going to see people with erupting volcanoes on their giant shoulder pads or what have you.
-Tycho Brahe