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For the last couple of days I've been playing one of those little empire-building casual games, but I've decided to quit as it's pretty clear by now that after the first few rounds, progress becomes glacially slow unless you give in and pay the game company real money for extra fuel in the game.
I'd been lucky in my previous run-ins with online games, in that the point-and-click adventures I like tend to use the first level, or the first sixty minutes, as a sample, and then ask you to pay in order to access the rest of the game, which is not as sneaky as remaining free but basically becoming unplayable unless you ante up.
I wonder if Neopets, which I toyed with for a while a dozen or so years back, worked on the "free to play, but pay to play *enjoyably*" model and I just didn't notice. From what I recall, the real secret to Neopets was probably to have a large enough network of in-game friends that you could swap items with each other until everyone ended up with the specific things they needed -- playing alone, with the random way the game distributed prizes, was like trying to complete a scavenger hunt in Soviet Russia.
Obviously a lot of people must be better at these games than I am, going by their popularity. Thinking about Neopets and the possibilities of swapping, I suddenly wonder if there's a market for game in which you play a 1930s housewife, and the objects are to accumulate social capital while balancing the family budget. One of the regular missions could be Going to the Movies -- this costs you ten cents, but nets you social-interaction points (because you can discuss the latest movies with your neighbours) and once a week, it also nets you dishes, which you can trade to accumulate sets (the trading also garners social-interaction points.)
I'd been lucky in my previous run-ins with online games, in that the point-and-click adventures I like tend to use the first level, or the first sixty minutes, as a sample, and then ask you to pay in order to access the rest of the game, which is not as sneaky as remaining free but basically becoming unplayable unless you ante up.
I wonder if Neopets, which I toyed with for a while a dozen or so years back, worked on the "free to play, but pay to play *enjoyably*" model and I just didn't notice. From what I recall, the real secret to Neopets was probably to have a large enough network of in-game friends that you could swap items with each other until everyone ended up with the specific things they needed -- playing alone, with the random way the game distributed prizes, was like trying to complete a scavenger hunt in Soviet Russia.
Obviously a lot of people must be better at these games than I am, going by their popularity. Thinking about Neopets and the possibilities of swapping, I suddenly wonder if there's a market for game in which you play a 1930s housewife, and the objects are to accumulate social capital while balancing the family budget. One of the regular missions could be Going to the Movies -- this costs you ten cents, but nets you social-interaction points (because you can discuss the latest movies with your neighbours) and once a week, it also nets you dishes, which you can trade to accumulate sets (the trading also garners social-interaction points.)
