Called it, so the unofficial MC5 community tweeted that it will be out on the 18th of December for free. There's still time Gameloft, change the price, and I'm pretty sure it's gonna have IAPs and paywalls, just my speculation.
Game loft freemiums are ok to me, but if premium will not require internet connection, I am agains freemium
@TheMerc - well said, it's something people have glossed over, but it will have cost GL money to do this. They could have just pushed it out to make some money of what they originally developed, but the made the decision to completly overhaul the game. Well done GL. As for the freemium thing, GL don't actually do it that badly. For example (I know they are different genres, but still) Spider-Man Unlimited can be played perfectly fine and with a couple of workarounds (that the game encourages/allows) can be played without hitting timers. Same for asphalt 8 when I last played it (not sure about how it is now but I can't remember hitting pay walls, just grind walls). You can have a lot of fun with these games for no money at all.
If it is FTP then it will probably be one or more of these: Fuel system, 1 'fuel' per level/go with friend requests for more fuel. I imagine it will be like Spider-Man and you can stack refuels and have unlimited friends, so effectively you can make it so you never run out. you earn points/credits in game which can be used for buying body armour, bullets, new weapons, skills etc... And you can spend real money on them. Gold stars for completing levels and you need a certain number to unlock the next stage, or you can buy them with real money. Thats what I can see fitting in with GL's style of FTP
Hopefully it won't be like Glu Games style, where you have to buy something to complete a level, such as rocket launchers and ammo packs of you run out, like in that D-Day game and Overkill.
Haven't played them, but Mc4 had consumables you bought with in game earned credits, I just imagine it would be like that but you could buy the credits as well
Well yeah, these are the only two f2p GL games with kinda okay'ish IPA mechanics which were released in the last couple of months. They completely destroyed O&C, which was once the greatest MMO ever on any mobile platform imo. Same goes with DH4, which could have been the best D3 styled game on mobile but, nah. Nearly every other f2p game has bad iap mechanics. So, I kind of understand all the hatred towards GL (I've played O&C for more then two years until I've pulled the trigger and realizing what just happened. And ye, I was pretty pissed off). I just dont care enough to write walls of text to defend either side in any way. Most mobile gamers (especially core gamers) were grown to their awesome premium games over many years and then...this. And that's were all these prejudices come from even if a game hasnt been released yet. GL have kinda created this dilemma by themselfes. It's literally the same as it is with EA and there will always be people who just wont accept this behaviour. I think there is nothing wrong if those people expressing their personal opinions in public. Dont understand why this guy has been banned. If you compare his posts with all these posts in the official forums...I guess he was still very kind.^^
I don't mind much for IAPs but if this has the always online nosense, I'll be more than happy to not waste my time and space on it. Let's just hope that they are wrong (quite likely as there are the 'unofficial' community twitter).
The original source is the official Modern Combat Twitter, so it's official. Some unofficial retweeted and claimed. It's not like I didn't essentially tell ye the same back in November anyway. More or less anyway on page 16/17 as much as I could, so I don't really know why people are surprised. As to the anti always online or freemium versus premium debate, the problem is ye can rage all day long and complain all day long but the thing is because BIA3 will be free, it'll actually generate more download numbers in its first few hours than MC5 has to to date after nearly six months and exponentially generate more revenue, on a percentage scale, in that period of time than MC5 has as of yet. So, you tell me, as a business, what would you do? If people are buying in to it, well, that's what you have to sell. If you're not selling it, you're a bad business. Can you survive in business without selling what the market is "buying"? So you all are wasting you're time complaining about freemium, criticising developers and ranting all day long. The fact is all businesses, including game developers and publishers', are in business to make money not lose it on the niche market that won't generate the revenue to stay in business. It simply doesn't make sense to do other wise so maybe what ye should do is buy premium and stop waiting for the sales that developers inevitably have to push in order to keep the shutters up. Or the switches to freemium that they have no choice but to make because all these premium "supporters" are all mouth and no purchase. Put your money where your mouth is and a difference might be seen. All talk will make zero difference though. Download numbers and revenue percentages will though. Edit. And no Nekku, Gameloft didn't create it, people buying or not as it may be, created it. The market is too cheap to buy, but the upper 2% will buy and buy a lot. It's not really their fault that everybody wants everything for free but the top 2% will pay. Maybe if 20% would pay, we would be in a better position. But the thing is we won't. Spider-Man was always online and premium. Switched to offline and premium and it made zero difference. But Unlimited was free and online and it surpassed a premium Spider-Man games hours after release. And that's only one of thousands of examples that could be mentioned. Success in premium is few and far between. And what will prove that is that premium supporters will now mention all the premium success stories of the last year. The thing is they will be mentioning the same ten or fifteen games in a marketplace of, what, half a million? One? Two million? I don't even remember, but many many games and yet we can all pick the twenty premiums out of maybe 1000 new releases, that have been successful. And even at that, they'll be nowhere even in the same continent as to what would qualify as a successful freemium game as the revenue numbers would be just hugely different. A very (very) successful premium can generate a couple of million dollars over its lifespan and that's not even profit, it's just revenue. A successful freemium can generate the same amount in a week, even in a day or less in many cases. The numbers tell the story so you know, the market supports premium or it doesn't. And right now it doesn't. Gameloft didn't create the problem. EA didn't create the problem. Apple didn't create the problem. The consumer did.
Well obviously a free game is going to generate more downloads(it's free), and of course it will generate more revenue in the case of a popular publisher and license because whales exist willing to drop 100 dollars for packs, and it's easy to drop a few bucks here and there for the average user. But all too often there will be dreaded paywalls or pay to win situations combined with advertisements, and timers, and energy meters, and dual to triple currency systems, and, well, pretty much every soul sucking tactic attached like a tumor to the wonderful and beautiful world that is video games. People complain because they're passionate for the medium. You say we're all wasting our time, yet there are so many fantastic premium games that are PROUD to tell you that they are a one time pay experience, and have no ads, timers, IAPs, or any other nonsense. Obviously there are people in the industry listening, and are advocates themselves. Do you honestly think any publisher is PROUD to tell you they're freemium? Please. We're proud to get money from you by abusing compulsive human behavior and the wrinkles in human psychology. I had quite a laugh at that last bit as well. I can just picture you grinning all proud to end it on that note. But of course it was game developers/publishers that created the problem of F2P. The age of digital distribution and the very common pairing of psychologists with game publishers were the keys to unlocking it. The consumer is to blame for it to continue, but they're not the ones who came up with the concept and put it out there. And he who actually makes it, is who creates the problem. I recall a post I had read from Trevor Powell who has worked on various games including mobile when responding to a user asking why a psychology degree could come in handy for games development. "I've personally found that working in the game industry can be doubly stressful when you have a background in psychology. I've trained rats in skinner boxes, and I've been through the process of vetting human studies for ethics violations. And sometimes, the things you get asked to do to your players start feeling more like the players are rats in skinner boxes, rather than humans in ethically designed tests. And that can be a bit distressing, sometimes."
No matter what anybody says, that Internet connection requirement is bs in non multiplayer game. And I won spent a dime on a game with such requirement. 1000000000-1 will never equal to 1000000000
Wait, does this not have multiplayer, sorry if it's been said, don't feel like reading huge walls of text.
Agree with Rip. 'We' created freemium. How many people here get promo code after promo code? Enter competition after competition to win a 99c game or wait for a price drop on a 2 dollar game ? Devs/companies/shareholders need to make money To me that's the problem. Too many people unwilling to spend $2 on a game or who want 7 opinions on a 1 dollar game
We clearly didn't create freemium, it's the AppStore that allows apps to be free and in app purchases to made, back when the AppStore was first created there were no problems and very few free games if any were available.
Back then apps were more expensive and obvoiusly made a lot of money, now in a huge marketplace so many games seem to get missed or obviously didnt make as much money as the devs thought. I personally believe users are the reason for freemium. So many people waiting for price drops (of already cheap games), people begging for promo code after promo code. Freemium appears and 'somehow' makes a ton of money, more than premier priced games. More and more companies switch over to freemium as they make more. If we buy more premium i would like to think we can sway it the other way.
Exactly. We didn't create freemium as a method of making money but we (as in all iOS and android users) have made it stay. Don't forget how many iPhones and android devices are sold every year. Compare that to the number of folks on here that are actually willing to buy games. That's why freemium exists, if you can get you app on 1 million devices and only say 10% buy 1 iap for $.99, that's still like $70k. Compare that to getting 10,000 downloads for a $5 game it's half the money. Plus you are more likely to make a continuous stream on income from IAP's than a one time fixed price. But anyway, let's get back to the actual game rather than a discussion about FTP which we are not going to solve here *ps I have no idea about actual figures, was just an example I expect games like candy crush, or clash of clans make a lot more than that.
