Take a moment to check out the current top grossing apps on the App Store. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Ok, do you notice anything interesting? How about the fact that out of the top ten apps on the App Store that are currently grossing the most money, six to eight of them are “free”. There’s no doubt in my mind that you will see the same pattern if you’re reading this article the day it was posted or six months from now. The fact is, free games make boatloads of money, and have done so for years now. But how?
This is the first of a multi-part series on the current state of free-to-play (freemium) games on the App Store. Your feedback is welcome and appreciated, whether it be via the comment section below, tweeting me @thesmi1ey, or emailing me directly via matt (at) touchgen (dot) com. If you are an iOS game developer and would like to provide your particular story or input to be included in a future article, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Part 1: From Free-to-Play to Slave-to-Pay
The free-to-play business model, or “freemium” as buzzwords go, has proved extremely successful in more than just the App Store. In fact, the birth of one of the most successful (if not the most successful) F2P title of all time, Farmville, took place on Facebook of all places. Farmville was released by Zynga on Facebook as a free flash farming game in 2009, and quickly captured the hearts of housewives, retirees, and casual gamers everywhere. As with all freemium titles, progressing in Farmville is not a fast process. Some crops are full grown in minutes, while others can take hours or even days to reach maturity. That is, unless you are willing to cough up the real-world cash necessary to expedite the process.
The idea of paying to “power-level” your character in a game is not a new one. There are fully-functioning companies, mostly out of China, that will raise your World of Warcraft character to any level for a monetary fee. There are also “gold farmers” in practically every MMORPG in existence that will trade IRL cash for in-game credits, used to purchase virtual goods that improve your character. Interestingly, in most MMOs this way of playing is against the terms of service, and will get your account banned, or worse. Why is it that so many modern games can follow the same model, one that is generally frowned upon by triple A titles, and be met with so much success in the casual arena?
People Want to be Known for Something
We live in a society that is ruled by those who are lifted up on pedestals above us. Celebrities, musicians, politicians, athletes… these people have all become famous in some way or another, and are idolized by “the rest of us” in our lowly, unknown state. But what if there was a way for us to make ourselves known? As of March, 2011, it was reported that 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. How many of these videos are people trying to catch a break, hoping they become the next viral internet sensation so they can cash in on their fame?
You will be hard-pressed to find a freemium game that does not include a leaderboard or leveling system that grants bonuses and “fame” to those who have played the longest, reached the highest level, made the most money, attained the highest score, or any other number of seemingly trivial accomplishments. This gives the player a goal to strive for, even when the gameplay itself doesn’t offer any direct means to an end. I have played a few freemium titles in the past year, and up until recently, none of them provided anything more than mindless grinding to get to the next level, class, etc. Sure, there may have been “mini-missions” scattered throughout, but ultimately there was never an end in sight at any point while playing. Freemium titles also tend to lack any real storyline, interesting characters, plot twists, or anything else that makes modern “hardcore” games memorable and interesting. By “hardcore”, I’m referring to pretty much any game that’s not “casual”, as it seems the industry has painted a mostly-clear line between the two genres. Defining the differences between casual and hardcore games is the topic of another article.
In the end, casual freemium games are generally created in such a way that the player is forced to create his or her own goals in order to feel like they have truly achieved something. Games that let you choose your own goals are scary, because it’s human nature to want to be the best at what you do, whether it’s possible or not. If Skyrim had a linear story that forced me along a certain series of quests, I wouldn’t have already spent 120 hours trying to explore every damn cave in the world. As dumb of a goal that is, it’s something that I set for myself when I started the game, and so-help-me I’m going to be the best damn Skyrim spelunker that ever lived.
Taking this attitude into the time-intensive grind-fests that are freemium casual games provides a problem, because there’s simply not that much to actually do in these games. In a game like Skyrim or World of Warcraft, I can take on any number of quests, join a guild, practice a trade, and many other activities to pass the time and progress my character. Most casual freemium games focus on only a few types of activity, whether it’s planting a farm, running a fashion store, building a magic school, godfathering a mafia family, or managing a village of tiny blue men. More modern freemium games will throw in “minigames” here and there to try to spice things up, but these tend to be just as repetitive as the rest of the activities in the game.
People Want to Be Known for Something NOW
To summarize, most freemium titles lack an end goal, offer little in way of gameplay variety, and don’t evolve much as you progress as a character. What they do accomplish, is forcing the player to create their own mental goals. Because these games require such a large time commitment, it’s natural that players want recognition for all the “work” they’ve put into their farm/mafia/village/whatever. The only way to attain this recognition is try to be the very best at the game, whether it means getting the highest score, creating the most things, having the most friends, or any other seemingly meaningless vision of glory. When you fall into this mindset in a freemium game, you are in trouble- or rather, your bank account is.
Sure, you could wait a week for each one of your crops to grow. You could slowly save up gems or gold (or whatever the “premium currency” is in the game) to get the items that would make your job easier. You could grind until your fingers are numb, but in reality, who really wants to do that? We live in a society that wants what they want, and they want it now. You have set yourself a goal of being the best, and dammit if you’re not going to achieve that goal – no matter the cost! So you’ll buy the thing that lets you grow faster, or enables you to win more battles, or lets you cast spells with more efficiency. It only makes sense, right? Oh wait… the latest update introduced a new thing that does things faster and better…
So it begins: the race with no finish line. The carrot on the string that keeps you moving forward without any real sense of accomplishment. Your friends have left you, your children despise you, and moths have built an apartment complex in your bank account. Ok, maybe this is an extreme example, but I think you get where this is going. A good friend of mine has poured thousands of dollars into a popular mafia game that he bought on his iPhone a year ago. Oh wait, my bad. He didn’t buy it because it was “free”. A year later he is still playing the game constantly so he can have “the best mob in the world”. I use the word “playing” quite loosely, as this particular game, like many other freemium titles, is light on actual gameplay, and heavy on farming/grinding via simple, mundane tasks.
As it turns out, there are a hell of a lot of people out there who are entertained by simple, mundane tasks. Who knew? Do I see this empty crawl to the “top” as worthless and a waste of money? Absolutely. Does that mean that the poor saps who dump all their money into these games are simply being manipulated by a specific psychological method of marketing? It’s possible, but then again there are people who think that game critics are a worthless and a waste of money, too. Obviously we’re all entitled to our own opinion, and obviously there are people out there who are genuinely entertained by games like Farmville or Mafia.
Personally, I think that more people play these games (and pour countless hours and cash into them) out of a desire to succeed than they do a desire to be entertained, and to me, that’s really sad. Yes, you could say the same thing about games like World of Warcraft or Call of Duty, but at least most of these games offer varied gameplay, immersive story lines, interesting characters, and an eventual ending- even if it’s in the form of a simple level cap. You may be asking yourself, “Who cares? If the people who pour all their resources into playing a game, but enjoy doing it, isn’t that their decision to make?” It sure is, it’s a free country after all (for now). But does that make it ok that so many “free games” are designed to take advantage of inherent human desires and emotions? More specifically, is it ok that these games profit from manipulating these aspects of our modern-day culture?
The goal of most freemium games is not to bring you a feeling of satisfaction or a sense of accomplishment. Rather, like much of modern advertising, they are designed to make you feel like you aren’t good enough. They want you do feel an inadequacy that drives you to keep going, to keep playing for fear that you might fall behind. This is apparent in the plethora of notifications that come from these games. You can’t leave your device for two minutes without some sort of pop up notifying you that you’re missing out on some reward in the game. The feeling of gratification that most normal games provide when you complete them simply doesn’t exist in freemium titles.
Unless, of course, you pay for that feeling.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of The Freemium Manefesto, and follow Matt on Twitter @thesmi1ey if you feel like it.
