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lorddeath2400
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A member registered May 21, 2023
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Again, man, I don't feel that I deserve anything. Even food and water and shelter, I do not deserve that, I am not owed that. I am owed NOTHING in this world, and even if I work for it and don't get it, that doesn't mean I deserve it.
I disagree with your mindset on it tho. I feel that marketing and labeling are incredibly important and I feel that having a satisfactory monetization model on the client side is a greatly important thing.
I bring up Activision a lot, so let me make a comparison, if you will. Back before 2019, CoD Games had DLCs, a model which, while I despise, I understood. You paid $50-$60 for a full game, and you got a full game's worth of content. Then, for $15 you could purchase more content, which was developed on top of an already complete game. Sounds simple enough. During those games, there were free-to-play weekends, where anyone could install and play the game freely, but the catch was that you wouldn't get access to the campaign. This much was blatantly stated when downloading the free version. On top of that, there was typically a Demo you could install separately, which gave you access to the first mission of the campaign. Between the ftp timeframes and the demo you could separately try, you would get an accurate reading of the game well before even purchasing, and they were labeled properly. Nowadays, the model has changed even more. To play Warzone, it's free. You can unlock every gun for free. For paying $70, you get a full game's worth of content (debatably, but still). Inside of that game, you get to access all of it for free after purchase. New maps? Free. New guns? Free. So how is it monetized? Cosmetics, boosts, and events. While cosmetics are difficult without an entire team working on assets, and events are about impossible with a game that's rather tedious to update comparatively, this is where I think those boosts could come in. Watching an ad for +20% Cell Production for 5 minutes sounds perfectly reasonable to me, and I would absolutely do that. But to have a flat $5 paywall, I think is absurd, particularly for this genre.
Perhaps my view of the world is skewed and I've been blessed and spoiled my entire life. But my perspective is just as integral to understanding the world as anyone else's. I like this game. Genuinely, I do. But being progression locked is insane, and having a paywall for a clicker game is a scummy tactic.
I'll say it again. I don't mind people charging for things. I get it. You gotta pay the bills, we live in a world where you can't exist without money. I have no issues with them charging money for it, and I more than appreciate the abundance of free art that's readily available. But I will say this. On here, on Nutaku, and with just a simple Google search, there is near infinite free art of whatever you'd like, everything and anything you can think of and if it doesn't exist yet, it can in seconds using AI.
Not once did I say I DESERVED any of it. I don't. And I know that I don't. And in the same vain, the creator of this game does not DESERVE any money they're making off of it, because the concept of deserving something in itself is entitled and self-righteous. But you're right, I do have standards, and this game, as it stands, doesn't live up to them. If people have lower standards, that's fine, if your standards are so low that you're willing to pay the paywall, that's cool too, I have nothing against that whatsoever. But what I will say is that thanks to that abundance of free art, a lot of it is better than this game. Not most, this game is incredible, which is why I criticized it for having a paywall. I think this game has incredible potential, but I feel it won't live up to it with its current model. As it stands, eventually, it'll plateu. Everyone who would buy it will have, and the dev will eventually have to stop supporting the game due to that.
I call scummy tactics because it is scummy to put up a paywall. Again, Activision learned that the hard way. Now as I said, I've been fairly harsh, but that's because I enjoy this game, and I would genuinely like to see it prosper. I won't criticize something I don't care about.
My recommendations were laid out. A Patreon early access model, which most artists of this nature follow, will give it a consistent stream of income rather than one that falls off. A voluntary ad system will not only give the players options other than paying to support the creator, because living is too expensive for me to pay for this kind of thing but by god would I love to support the dev regardless, but it'll also give the developer yet another consistent stream of income. There are ways to monetize a game outside of a paywall, and I feel that many companies and developers should take note.
Alternatively, again, he could just properly label the Demo and Standard versions and I couldn't care less about the paywall. If wanting to download a game labeled the standard edition of the game and get the full content of the base game is "asking for a life full of bitter disappointment" then I suppose that is exactly what I'm doing.
Also, I have no formal game development experience (I've dabbled a bit personally, but I've never developed a game and went public with it), but I'd bet with a few sketches for sprites and a week or so of coding, I could remake this game from the ground up and then add content faster than he currently is. I know game development takes time and effort, I respect that, and when the game gets bigger and more immersive, I might be willing to join the patreon for an earlier update. But for a clicker game? A pay wall is insane. I might've been a bit harsh but that's some top tier delusion if you ask me. And while I may not be able to enforce it, I can still state my opinion. I don't consume that much NSFW Media at all, this game was one of a few until I realized how much is being cut just for the paywall.
Max I'm willing to pay is $0. Yep. If it's not free, I couldn't care less. There's tons of other stuff for free. If this was some open world game filled to the brim with content and they allowed you to go and play the intro for free, cool. But this doesn't exactly scream "full of content" now does it? It's an idle clicker game. The most anybody should be willing to pay for that is clicking on an ad to get some extra gold. If it had voluntary ads, such as the ones you explicitly click on to get a bonus, they'd make more money and you wouldn't even have to make a paywall. Also, the artist has a patreon! They already have voluntary patrons. If the free version was just an update behind, like every other patreon artist, I wouldn't care less. Making a game free to play and then charging extra for functional in game content is a scummy practice that even Activision has stepped away from.
Another thing, the other guy said "bros never heard of a demo" and as a matter of fact, I have. And I actually like a lot of demos. The demo of Castle Crashers is actually what inspired me to purchase the game. The difference is that this is just called "X" and "X Deluxe". If it said "X Demo" and "X", I'd also be cool with that. But it doesn't. It strips content out of the base game and releases that as the base game while locking the rest of the content that should have been included behind a paywall. The current model is literally the one we see with EA and Ubisoft and it's frankly disgusting.
Make the game free and profit off your patreon, add in voluntary ads and profit off of that, or properly label the demo version and standard versions.