Free of what you ask? Mobile gaming of course.

 

The implications given the title I used probably make it sound like I’m going to spend all of these  words doing nothing more than unnecessarily demonizing an innocent and by all measures prosperous industry. Probably true, at least for a lot of it. That isn’t to say that the whole of mobile gaming is rotten but there is a high percentage of casino-like predatory practices which are almost wholly divorced from the noble goal of putting out a quality product. It is not impossible to find classic gaming options on mobile devices where you pay a flat fee for an enclosed experience but a large number of otherwise promising games are locked behind monetization schemes that are little better than having a gun shoved in your ribs in exchange for entertainment. Obviously that example will have people shouting, “But NonWashable! No one is forcing you to play!” and they would be absolutely correct. The flaw I see there is that people want to play these games because they look, and sometimes are, really fun. Much like I did with the couple games which ate up the last couple years of my life I got in thinking, “I know I can pay but I’m just going to go the f2p (Free to play) route and grind out the good stuff. Ostensibly these games are designed so that you can play for free or pay to advance “faster”. The reason I put quotes around “faster” is that what it should really say is “at all”. The advancement is so torturously slow for people playing for free that it becomes clear the only way to truly play the game and participate at a moderate level is to open your wallet. For many people before they know it a line appears in their budget that is specifically for their chosen mobile game. After all, whats $20 a week, really?

The option to pay as many will tell you is for people who just don’t have time to dedicate to advancing without it, a way for on-the-go professionals to have their fun for a swipe of the credit card. It seems entirely reasonable when it’s presented to you and it’s obviously been successful enough as there is a litany of well known lingo within the mobile gaming industry to describe such people.

• Whales – These are the real catches, the ones who fund the entire f2p mobile gaming industry. They account for nearly %70 of in-app purchases at a rate of nearly ~$350 per month. Whales who have spent in the thousands are not as uncommon as you would imagine.
• Dolphins – These cap out somewhere around ~$20 per month although it varies up to triple digits in my experience for people who would classify themselves as this.
• Minnows – Barely a blip on the radar really but cash is cash in these schemes. Often I find these types of players are ones that take advantage of the occasional anniversary deals to get the most bang for their buck.  

There are probably more detailed breakdowns out there available on the internet if you are curious but I’ll let you find those, the above is just to give you a general idea of where the money flows from. While the argument is not wholly without merit that the boosts offered by real cash investments are for people with more money than time, the ugly truth is that the business model of convenience is used as cover to make the games nearly unplayable for low playing or free players. Energy meters are also a popular way of regulating the amount of time you can play in a sitting and forcing players to use valuable in-game currency to continue and then money for more currency. You’ll hear it said that this is an intentional move by developers in order to make it so people don’t binge and burn themselves out on the game, artificially limiting their play time to short bursts. Perfect for where a mobile game should fit into your day. Seems like a legitimately altruistic move on the part of the development team up until a plethora of time limited events and exclusive rewards force you to dip into your game currency or wallet to acquire them. This isn’t even getting into what is required to be moderately competitive for the game’s best rewards, spending money is an absolute requirement. Effectively nickel and diming you for your entertainment, although in the cases of these games it’s usually $2, $5 and $10 dollaring you, up to purchases of $100 at a time. Naturally the more you purchase the bigger “bonus” you get for these virtual currencies. Why spend 5 when I can spend 10 and get a better deal? Then again why spend 10 when 20 is even better deal?   

The most galling part of this for me as someone who loves games is that quite often they are well designed and outside of the predatory practices of the industry in which they are published they would probably be commercially successful. Even the games industry proper is having trouble shrugging off the overtly profitable fleecing practices of nickel and diming its customers but we at least have a history of precedence for fighting against it. The mobile gaming industry fell to this sort of business model so early and so quickly that their customers really have not known any other way. What is worse is that many of the studios who develop these games have bought into the accepted business model so much so that planned obsolescence is factored in from the get-go. They extract as much profit as they can from whatever community jumps into the game when it releases and then let it die or kill it intentionally at the end of it’s “life cycle”. What’s worse still is when the developers for these games are clearly passionate about the content and work tirelessly with the community in order to continually make the experience better only to have it overshadowed by the business decisions.

All of this is not to say that the economics of these games is not important as the revenue they generate is how they continue to function. We’ve seen over the years how the non-mobile gaming industry has had to expand its business to generate cash flow beyond the release of games. While these schemes have been met with varying amounts of success or failure there is a constant battle being fought between customers who demand a certain level of quality and studios who want to maximize the profitability of everything they create. There are certainly a plethora of examples to choose from but two that come easily to mind are Fallout 4 and Witcher 3. Taking a quick stroll through the games respective Steam pages paints a pretty vivid picture of what good management of an IP can do.

Fallout 4 while an overall decent game has had much of it’s DLC roundly denounced by its community for being overpriced and delivering too little, while also failing to address problems that were present in the original release.

Witcher 3 on the other hand as seen below delivered, in addition to a quantity of free updates, DLC of such a high quality that the community couldn’t wait to spend their money on it.

Ultimately whether you are dealing with mobile or traditional games there is no shortage of people who are looking for any reason to pay for them, sometimes before the quality of it is even known. A business model that is built upon anything but giving customers a product that is worthy of their money is nothing short of insanity. Traditional gaming has been fighting against the slide towards ubiquitous microtransactions and I expect that to continue while modern mobile gaming started there. I think it’s possible for that industry as a whole to pull back from it’s slot machine style schemes and in some limited ways we have seen it although its been largely from major studios re-releasing old games on todays more powerful devices. I can only hope that more of the larger mobile development studios see the value in focusing more on an experience people want to pay for as opposed to games which sucker people into feeling they should pay lest all of their time and investment up till now be wasted via the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

Mobile gaming is certainly not all doom and gloom but after spending a significant amount of my free time over the past couple of years invested in them I do not feel like my time with them was worth the cost, especially financially. The communities themselves were fantastic and keeping in contact with the folks I met has certainly been a joy but it is still overshadowed by the general feeling that we all regret what we invested in the game but not eachother. Not matter how we look at the experiences we had the positive feelings are generally in spite of the game that brought us there and not because of it. Given how much work goes into making and maintaining these games that is a failure in the worst possible way.

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the read and I hope I’ve made some interesting points! Someday I might delve a little deeper into the games I played specifically or some other aspects of mobile vs traditional gaming but for now I think this sums up my feelings on it.

Have a great day!

• NonWashable

Tyranny is, in short, a fantastic RPG set in a familiar fantasy world full of monsters, magic and bizarre but memorable characters.

The world of Terratus is in a bit of upheaval as Kyros the Overlord marches her armies south to the Tiers in a move to consolidate the last free realm into her empire. You are a Fatebinder of Kyros’ court that is overseen by Tunon the Archon of Justice. The character creation will be very familiar for anyone whose played an RPG  in the last ten or fifteen years. Character customization, origin, profession and skill-set and a myriad of accompanying menus will keep you occupied for as long as you wish to tinker. Tyranny proper begins with an optional Conquest Mode which provides you the opportunity to make choices that set the groundwork for the relationships that will evolve through the course of the game. Along the way it also provides you with some important context and information for the factions you’ll come in contact with during the game.

 

One of the great things they also do is provide hyperlinked text in every aspect of the game, even dialogue trees, that if you hover over you can see brief descriptions reminding you of what something is. Instead of having to consume dozens of long codex entries in an effort to memorize them just in case it’s important down the line this design ensures that the information is available to you without having to go and track it down. The assumption being that your character should be able to recall this information on demand even if you the player cannot.

Once you are finished making choices in Conquest Mode you are deposited on the front lines of Kyros’ war in the Tiers with orders to get the stalled advance moving again by delivering an Edict.

Kyros’ Edicts are a unique form of magic known only to the Overlord herself that are written and then delivered by the Fatebinders to their targets. Once the Edict has been read aloud as a sort of one sided contract the criterion must be met within the specified time or catastrophe will follow. The delivery of this Edict brings you into contact with the leaders of the armies responsible for bringing the Tiers to heel. Graven Ashe of the Disfavored, an elite army of highly disciplined iron-clad soldiers and the Voices of Nerat who commands the Scarlet Chorus, a horde of barely organized bloodthirsty criminals, outcasts and conscripts harvested from their conquests.

Tyranny wastes no time thrusting you into the role of judge, jury and executioner of the Tiers and Kyros’ occupying armies. In true CRPG fashion the game allows you nearly any path you like through the story be it riding roughshod over anyone or anything in your way or playing delicate shadow politics to manipulate your way through the story. I did a little of each during my play-through and found both to be compelling with unique advantages or repercussions. Another enjoyable piece of gameplay related to the in depth conversation and allegiance system is numerous combo skills granted to you for exploring those relationships. Be it fear or loyalty that you inspire in those around you they will eventually grant you powerful team abilities to unleash in combat. A great way to reward players no matter their play-style.

The magic system in Tyranny is also not to be ignored since it allows you a wide array of versatility for your spell-slingers and even physically focused warriors. Throughout your travels in the Tiers you will collect Accents and Sigils which you can mix and match with different kinds of magic to alter the spells vital stats. With each additional tweak it increases the necessary spell-power needed by the user to cast it meaning that at their base level most characters can wield a little utility magic while dedicated casters harness the sort of cataclysmic power that will land you in the town criers notes.

Visually Tyranny stands right beside its cousin Pillars of Eternity and many other isometric RPGs  with the strange and memorable destinations found all around the Tiers.

 

 

The soundtrack and voice acting were both very well done and although I would not mark them down in the history books as genre defining they are certainly noteworthy. Among it’s other virtues they have cemented Terratus as a world I would like to re-visit as often as I possibly can. For fans of this style RPG and even better, people new to the genre, Tyranny is a worthwhile addition to their library.

• Non-Washable

Hopefully there is no statute of limitations on how long a game can be out before you play and comment on it because if there is I’m sure I’m definitely violating it with this post.

In a move which I have felt great shame over the last few years I finally got around to playing Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Season 1 and the special episode 400 Days. In news that will shock absolutely no one it was undeniably fantastic and I absolutely regret not getting around to it sooner. Four years after the fact though, with the game showing its age in parts, the experience wasn’t dulled one bit even though it had been spoiled for me years ago. I tend to waffle back and forth on whether or not I actually get invested in games like these where your choices matter and this time I had decided to just try and enjoy it while not getting too wrapped up in the consequences.

Any guesses on how long that lasted?

It started going downhill rapidly at the farm during the tractor incident, followed closely by the argument over whether Duck was bitten . My resolve was completely obliterated when it came time to choose who I saved during the siege of the Macon Drug Store. After that I was completely lost and agonized for as long as possible over each and every decision I made for the rest of the game, hoping that in the end I could do right by Clementine. Even characters I didn’t much care for ended up putting me in positions that didn’t have any easy answers which is a testament to Telltale’s writing and overall story construction. Even if a particular decision didn’t rate as major they had a way of sticking with you enough to doubt that you’d made the right call.

What surprised me most about the story being driven by meaningful decisions is that now after having finished it I don’t feel the need to go back and replay it even out of what-might-have-been curiosity. Don’t take that as a knock against the game because it surely isn’t but rather an indication that even the things I regret didn’t detract from it being complete. With the entirety of Season 1 behind me I feel that going back to redo anything would be a disservice to my experience of the game, with any decision we make in life it matters because we can’t go back and change it and in that spirit I’ll happily file this away as one of my favorite gaming experiences in quite some time.

While I’m sure there aren’t many of you out there if you find yourself mulling over purchasing or finally sitting down to play it stop debating and treat yourself to one hell of an emotional post-apocalyptic ride!

Till next time,

Non-Washable