Lets face it the topic "micro-transaction funded gaming" sounds ridiculously boring. Like micro versus macro economics boring. Like how are we actually talking about video games boring. My eyes are glassed over boring. To circumvent the dull-drums, the industry calls it "free to play gaming". Wait i fucking love free, In fact that's my favorite price point.
Free to play mobile games are self explanatory in that you download the game to your desired device and start playing at no cost. The payment is to enrich your experience using an in game currency to buy little things in the game hence a micro transaction. The free to play games can be divided into two categories which are time and content.
The Time category gets your real life dollars by offering you the option of saving you time. These games often require you to build something or other and then you wait for that something to be built or stocked or grown or whatever time consuming method of acquiring an object the game has.
I'm going to use Tiny Tower as an example to conveniently bring up the factoid of it being the first mobile free to play game i played. TT has you construct floors in an apartment building. You gain points by building different business that are essentially a floor in your tower. You also have to make residence floors so you have customers to shop in your sky scraper. The more floors you build the longer you have to wait, in real time no less. This is where the in game currency comes in. You can get rid of the wait time of the floors being constructed.
Instead of closing the game and doing something productive you can get rid of the wait time so you can continue being active in the game while you finish your business call. Business call is code for pooping. I made the term up a few years ago while i was a shift leader at Blockbuster video. "You guys hold the fort i gotta make a business call." See it sounds much more classy than admitting you're going to go into the dank staff washroom to play tiny towers while you dump.
I'm going to use Tiny Tower as an example to conveniently bring up the factoid of it being the first mobile free to play game i played. TT has you construct floors in an apartment building. You gain points by building different business that are essentially a floor in your tower. You also have to make residence floors so you have customers to shop in your sky scraper. The more floors you build the longer you have to wait, in real time no less. This is where the in game currency comes in. You can get rid of the wait time of the floors being constructed.
Instead of closing the game and doing something productive you can get rid of the wait time so you can continue being active in the game while you finish your business call. Business call is code for pooping. I made the term up a few years ago while i was a shift leader at Blockbuster video. "You guys hold the fort i gotta make a business call." See it sounds much more classy than admitting you're going to go into the dank staff washroom to play tiny towers while you dump.
The game that has been occupying my time on the throne lately is Friendly Fire. You need to know about this game because redrobot finally perfected free to play. I say the game is perfect because you can play the full game for free just like Tiny tower the only thing you pay real money for is to skip wait times.
In FF you build an army base and over time you can upgrade your base, defenses and battle units. Your base operates in the same manner as a Real Time Strategy game. You mine for oil and metal to build the tanks and planes you need to attack other players bases. The unique twist is the fact that you pick where your base is set up by putting in your address. The game then uses the street layout in the area of your neighborhood as the layout for your base. This gives the game a nice personalized feel.
Of course the game is just a mobile experience so you can't expect an entirely indepth RTS experience. The game is simplified and streamlined. Instead of having full unit control you pick a drop off point for your tanks around the enemy base. Then your forces roll into the enemy base on auto pilot and wreak havok all the while you can drop bombs via airstrike with pin point accuracy. When you defeat an enemies base you take some of their dog tags but if you loose they take yours. There are leader boards for the world all the way down to your city. Another unique feature is when you are attacked by another player you can get revenge on them and you awarded bonus dog tags for your effort but then they can do the same to you. The more you attack each other the bigger the bonus.
In FF you build an army base and over time you can upgrade your base, defenses and battle units. Your base operates in the same manner as a Real Time Strategy game. You mine for oil and metal to build the tanks and planes you need to attack other players bases. The unique twist is the fact that you pick where your base is set up by putting in your address. The game then uses the street layout in the area of your neighborhood as the layout for your base. This gives the game a nice personalized feel.
Of course the game is just a mobile experience so you can't expect an entirely indepth RTS experience. The game is simplified and streamlined. Instead of having full unit control you pick a drop off point for your tanks around the enemy base. Then your forces roll into the enemy base on auto pilot and wreak havok all the while you can drop bombs via airstrike with pin point accuracy. When you defeat an enemies base you take some of their dog tags but if you loose they take yours. There are leader boards for the world all the way down to your city. Another unique feature is when you are attacked by another player you can get revenge on them and you awarded bonus dog tags for your effort but then they can do the same to you. The more you attack each other the bigger the bonus.
Now that i've talked about two good games I'll tell you how free to play games can be terrible?
Content games make you feel like you are missing a part of the game that you can only experience if you buy additional content. This is either new areas of play, equipment for your characters or the game can be so dick headed that they even want you to buy characters so you aren't outmatched by your enemies. These extremely frustrating because they ramp up the difficulty in a ham fisted attempt to coax you into making a purchase.
Blood brothers is a good example of this type of game. I rage quit that and then ended up playing multiple variations of the same formula. The formula is a team building battler. You get a starting team of a varying number of monsters. You can get more monsters by amassing in game points and then draw random monsters from an in game mechanic.
Problem is you never really get anything good without paying real money. Blood Brothers even limits the highest level of monsters to such rediculously high levels of in game currency you're basically left with no other option than to pay high amounts of money for a chance to draw for a powerful monster... Which means even if you do part with your hard earned money you can still get stuck with a shitty mage who has no real influence on your battles and you will end up getting ripped apart in all the PVP fights.
Eventually the frustration will be too much and you'll get sick of these games... all of them. Thanks but no thanks Blood brothers, Hell Fire, what ever that marvel game was called, that shitty transformers game and even Puzzle and Dragons. Yes Puzzle and Dragons is the top of the heap for these games but it's just a shitty stink heap anyway.
Problem is you never really get anything good without paying real money. Blood Brothers even limits the highest level of monsters to such rediculously high levels of in game currency you're basically left with no other option than to pay high amounts of money for a chance to draw for a powerful monster... Which means even if you do part with your hard earned money you can still get stuck with a shitty mage who has no real influence on your battles and you will end up getting ripped apart in all the PVP fights.
Eventually the frustration will be too much and you'll get sick of these games... all of them. Thanks but no thanks Blood brothers, Hell Fire, what ever that marvel game was called, that shitty transformers game and even Puzzle and Dragons. Yes Puzzle and Dragons is the top of the heap for these games but it's just a shitty stink heap anyway.
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