Molyneux: Mobile F2P 'abuses and confuses' gamers

I was wondering that, too. Any explanation about what that means?

"The best thing to do is to get people to enjoy the games, and then to tempt them." -Peter Molyneux-  Feb 2014, pocketgamer.biz interview

tempt
tem(p)t/Submit
verb

Entice or attempt to entice (someone) to do or acquire something that they find attractive but know to be wrong or not beneficial.

Now there's an oxymoron if I ever heard one

Molyneux: Mobile F2P 'abuses and confuses' gamers

That just feels so much better.  That man should never do another interview about anything.  At best, he is insulting and at worst he's vaguely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

So essentially what you're saying is that any monetization is justified and non-abusive. Because people have the alternative of waiting days/weeks for it to finish aswell.
They didn't "have to" pay, they could have waited. And therefor its not abusive.

Knowing full well that you're looking at a target audience that doesn't really have a high level of patience (most mobile players will simply delete the games that aren't compelling) and you retain that small group of players that will cash out regardless.
Using the excuse that people *COULD* wait and therefor aren't forced to pay is really just one of those excuses to make yourself feel better.
But at the end of the day, those people will still cash out - oh, but thats okay, you offered them an alternative so they *CHOSE* to pay thousands of dollars - its not YOUR fault is it?


As for the expectations - that one remains clear as day from the start. The original pitch claimed to emulate certain titles. That pitch set certain expectations and drew in a very specific target audience. It most definitely was NOT oriented to a slower paced mobile crowd.
Yet that seems to be the primary target audience right now, since that is the *largest* target audience (and therefor the potentially most profitable target audience).
Conflicting priorities, bad communications and mismatching expectations - thats the name of the game.

Personally I don't believe anyone can excuse a game that has day(s) or week(s) long timers/queues if it doesn't offer you something solid to do in the meantime.
While I am very much a PC gamer, I'm fairly certain that a large group of mobile players would not stick around if they kept running into 24 hour timers with nothing else to do.
You might come back once or twice - but at some point you'll lose interest and leave entirely.
For Godus to be successful in that sense, it needs something solid to keep players busy. Something more than chores and minigames.

And especially in that sense, Godus is no different from its F2P brethren. A namechange ('invest-to-play') and a coat of paint don't change that.

Agreed. Homogenization can be a dangerous road, especially when you are trying to captivate, enchant, and fleece... er, um... "monetise" multiple audiences.

The big difference, in my mind, is that Blizzard and Valve are very up front with their costs. Want a crate? Sure, here are your odds of getting that item you wanted. With Blizzard, you know a WoW expansion's cost well in advance and can weigh the value before you buy. With many F2P/F2D games, you usually have no way of gauging your "costs" unless you luck into a walk-through or review online that clearly outlines the frequency and cost of the paywalls, content fees, or how much you can expect to shell out for having an "uninterrupted" gaming experience. I'm sure there are some "good guy" studios out there that will tell you straight up what you may end up paying for a full experience, but I have yet to see one. I'm guessing this is mainly due to the fact that no F2P studio wants to dissuade whales from flinging their money at those paywalls (last time I checked whales made up something like 5% of the mobile gaming community population, but were responsible for most of the revenue.)

The thing is, looking at the mobile market, we're seeing a small percentage of people that actually pay. And an even smaller percentage representing the major cashflow (the "whales").
Some bullshit ideology claiming that *my game isn't as abusive as all the others* isn't going to change that.

If you offer people cash shortcuts - these players WILL spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on it. Not a week goes by without seeing some kid who maxed out their parents/grandparents creditcard or something of the sort on yet ANOTHER micro-transaction game.
Sure, there are plenty of intelligent people that make the choice to pay or not to pay. But those aren't really the problem are they?

Its knowing that there's that smaller group that will pay hundreds/thousands of dollars and that statistically represents the majority cashflow around most mobile titles.
And then taking advantage of that as a business model. THAT is what makes it abusive.
Any fancy words claiming how you want to make your game to be trancending that behaviour. Any claims that you want to bring casual and core gamers together. ANY ideals that you want to create a game that everyone can enjoy...
All of that stands in the shadow of the fact that you are CHARGING people for artificial roadblock removal.

Don't want to wait for that 24h timer? Pay some gems (cash). Don't want to grind all those stickers? Pay some gems! Don't want to..... Pay gems!
At every single turn, Godus has put emphasis on the fact that making money is their primary motivation. Making a good game? Secondary *at best*.


You see, there are plenty of alternatives for monetization that work very well and do not take advantage of the spending habits of people.
Monetization that is truely optional. That does not stand in your way of progressing in the game.
No, claiming that you *could've waited* doesn't really work here. When you're looking at timers that take DAYS.
(A fun little fact here, the UK has ruled that Dungeon Keeper is no longer allowed to carry the name "free" because of that very same practice...)

At multiple turns Peter has criticized the abusive nature of mobile games in his interviews.
Yet he turns around and applies those very same practices to his own game and claims that he has INNOVATED and done something different.
No... Just fucking no.


If he wanted to innovate, he should've come with something new, rather than picking up the most popular buzzwords and slapping them together with ducttape.
He also should not have taken a niche genre and forcebly turn it onto the largest market possible, just because of money.
Most of all, he should not have acquired his initial funding by appealing to the original audience only to completely abandon them.

I'll grant you this, Godus has improved over the past 6 months. Yet if you start off with a major deficit, its not that hard to improve. And it still has a very long way to go.
If you choose to compare Godus against other garbage mobile titles - then sure, it might be better... But who in his right mind would make such a comparison?
Two wrongs don't suddenly make a right.


At the end of the day, Godus is no different when it comes to all these other titles. There's jackshit to do (there still is no overarching goal other than infinite expansion...), its riddled with roadblocks and you're met with microtransactionable content at every turn. There is no PC title at this point in time, there's only a mobile release focus. Because hey... *MONEY*


I ask you this, when you have openly stated that your primary focus is making money. When your game shows this focus at every turn.
Can you truely still claim that you're *different* from your competition? That your business model isn't abusive?
Sorry, but no... Godus isn't different. No matter how often they repeat words like innovation and 'delicious'.