sunshinej wrote:

TiramaSue wrote:

Anybody else going to take the plunge?  

 

Tirama  I took the plunge and d/l it this morning.  I think it might be fun.  Still unsure of myself and don't know what I am doing yet.  Maybe since a few of us are playing we can have a Awakenings group play thread? 

I am like a kid in a candy store with my GameHouse Funpass.  So far I am playing 3 games right now  - Nearwood - Alex Hunter: Lord of the Mind & The Fog.

Maybe it is the stress of the holiday, but I can't seem to settle down with just 1 game.

Oscar...My holiday shopping is nearly done.  Just need 1 more gift for my daughter.  I am thinking of a homemade gift of her favorite recipes.  I will need to get a good quality 3 ring binder some tabs for the different catergories  and plastic sheet protectors and print out her favorites recipes.  She mentioned she wanted to learn how to start cooking.

Thread for Awakening Kingdoms started.

I'm also finding it difficult to stick with one game.  I've been cycling through my 2 F2P games (Road Trip and Awakenng), my "main game" (Ancient Mosaic), and my 2 someday I'll finish games (Jigsaws Galore and Sudoku Latin Squares).


 

I also found the following (from Allan from Boomzap on Pond Friends) really interesting about F2Ps and HOPAs in general ...

Lynne's estimate are a bit low for a HOPA in this generation; they've gotten MUCH more expensive to make in the last 12 months or so.. the additional cost is mostly more voice overs, more animations and more cutscenes .
Depending on how much love you want to lavish on it, you'd start around 250K (which as Lynne correctly said used to be on the high end of a HOPA budget), and go up from there. Some well-known external HOPA developers have spent north of 1 million, and are really struggling as a result; many of us worry the ranks of developers making these games will be drastically reduced in the next generation. Number of units sold hasn't grown at the same rate, so developers are being squeezed between a rock and a hard place ;)

Which gets us back to HOPA vs F2P. Why, who and how much.

HOPAs have about 1-2 months of 'shelf life', before they sink into obscurity. If you fail to make back your development budget in that time, there's going to be trouble. It's of course heart-rending to see people pirating stuff, but even assumed we invented some theoretically perfect DRM, and killed piracy outright, the audience just isn't growing as fast as the development cost is.

F2P games can (theoretically) be evergreen, with an average paying user putting in about the same as an SE game each month. More importantly, because the barrier to entry is so low, it can reach people who'd never have thought to purchase a game in the first place. There are people playing Candy Crush that never considered playing a game before; part of the hope is that if we can successfully get them playing a game like Awakening Kingdoms, we can also convince them to go try adventure games and HOPAs like Awakening: Sunhook Spire
On the challenge part, these games DO cost more to develop (because a HOPA is supposed to keep you entertained for 6 hours, while a F2P game needs enough content to keep you entertained for 6 months); they also have server and CS costs that we don't have in HOPA games. The team also can't just move onto the next game; each F2P game needs a dedicated team adding new content (like the recently launched Xmas update for Antique Road Trip).

For publishers in general, the potential upside for a Candy Crush style runaway success is very tempting. Much like you guys they've read revenue projections from King.com and Super Cell. The fact that the majority of F2P games fail to break even is offset by the dream that somewhere along the road you'll have a mega-hit; this is different from HOPAs, where the average revenue from a hit HOPA CE is pretty well known.

Anyway. We still love HOPAs, we've got several more in development, and as long as we can make the numbers balance we'll keep making them. We've got these two big F2P games with Bigfish, and will be working to support them. Some players will enjoy either the F2P games, or the HOPA games. Some will love both.

Hope that helps,

Allan

stusue wrote:

I was going to put this in the new Awakening Kingdoms thread but thought that if there were any others who weren't going to join in, like me, they might find this interesting as well.  I was quite surprised by this comment from Monika from Boomzap (found on Pond Friends) ...

"We know that most of you are not into F2P, but we'd still like to share with you some screenshots from the game. "

Why would they think people on Pond Friends (and I suppose all those who play HOPAs) wouldn't like F2P?  I can't remember, were people really vociferous when they started appearing on BFG?

It seems that heaps over there are joining in and all sharing their codes, or whatever they're called.

People were very vociferious in the individual game forums and in CCC when the first F2P game came out.  Even now, some people feel the need to pop into the game forums and voice their displeasue in the review thread with the CONCEPT of F2P,  rather than critique the actual game.

BF customers tend to be older and with age usually comes antipathy to change.  But many people who swore they would NEVER play a F2P game have tried them and discovered they like them.  And like any other genre of games offered by BF, some are good, and some are dismal.  Not because they're F2P, they would still be dire even if presented as a premium (pay) game

I've never played a FaceBook game, but am familiar with the complaints about people harassing each other for gifts.  I think BoomZap did their homework and have put safeguards in their games to keep that nonsense to a minimum (allowing you to unfriend people, charging to send ingame messages).

When you say heaps over there are sharing their codes, do you mean over at Pond Friends?  I know there's code sharing at BF, but many of the people are newbies to BF, judging by their post counts.

Maybe Monica has received e-mails or PM's from people on Pond Friends annoyed about F2P.
 

I just checked out the BoomZap thread over at Pod Friends and there wasn't that many codes listed compared to number of posters.

People seem to be on somewhat good behavior over in the developers corner, but I can't forget that many of the pond friends are the people who were creating the mayhem and nastiness the last week CCC was available.  I wonder how much kvetching about F2P is going on in the hidden areas.

 

stusue...That was realy interesting to read.

We need to keep our eyes out on magicindie the makers of Dorian Gray & Nearwood.  All of Their upcoming games are all for the ipad.