Refreshing Game Design Ethics

Unknown

The below is an excerpt from an interview with the creators of Doctor Who: Legacy mobile game, it is so good to read i thought you should all have a look and imagine how things could be if MPQ was in the hands of someone else.

As anyone who's played Japanese mobile title Puzzle & Dragons can understand, the eventual decision was to create a game that was similar in style. Although it was the main inspiration though, there were still elements of the game that Lee and Susan felt needed to be changed.

"We had played Puzzle & Dragons after it launched on Android in the US and while we thought the core mechanic was great, there was a lot we thought could be improved, or completely removed," Lee recalls.

"We hated the energy system. It's one of those horrible places where design and monetisation meet in a really nasty way. One side should be screaming: 'But surely we should be encouraging users to play the game we've put so much time and love into building, not putting barriers in their way', while the other side sees it, rightly, as a way to monetise easily, in a way which users will be able to understand very easily. So we ripped it out."

The decision to remove a time-based energy system was one that Lee and Susan made with a degree of trepidation. Other games don't just use the system to make extra money, they're also used to stop people from playing through the whole game in a matter of days.

"We knew we had to launch with a substantial amount of content (we ended up with around 30 hours of content for the average gamer on launch day), and would have to keep content rolling out to keep the harder core gamers happy. But at the end of the day these are easily variable through hard work and long hours, and we thought we were up to it."

Also removed were the social elements that plague many free-to-play games. "We didn't want any horrible 'hey Facebook friends I get free gems if I coerce you into playing this game' stuff in there", Lee says.

"We also ripped out the 'pay gems to expand the boxes you keep monsters in' idea because we wanted people to collect allies, to mix and match, and having to pay for storage just flew in the face of that."


The whole article can be read here:
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/44 ... lay-right/

Unknown

Begs the obvious question, how are they making their money then?

Unknown

There are purchasable items in the game, dont get me wrong. It's just not the driving force behind decisions. That driving force seems to be making a game the fans will love and approve of and then in return spend money on. That's how things should be.

Unknown

Don't disagree with the sentiment, but I know I've said a lot of things (I'll pay you back tomorrow, one more drink and I'm done, just the tip) that I didn't really mean. Proof is, as always, in the actions.

That said, they have to act better than D3 - nowhere to go but up

simonsez

I like the way he thinks. But is the game any good? Not familiar with it.

Unknown

@Papa07
Very true, and only time will tell if they really do believe what they say. Reading the whole interview fills me with hope though.
The game launched last November and has had almost daily/weekly new content in that whole time and has never strayed yet from the free-to-play ideal.

And it's actually pretty good too! I still play MPQ, just not as much as I did and I now play this and Star Wars Assault Team in the downtime when heroes are dead and healing or just as a break.

@Simonsez
I would definitely recommend it to someone who is a fan of the Doctor. I am a big Dr Who fan so cant comment whether it would also appeal to someone who had never heard of him

Unknown

Just checked it on the Play store. Might be a decent game but maaaaaan... that is one **** game. My eyes are still burning.

Unknown

LMAO, okay so it aint the prettiest artstyle in the world, but look at Invisible Woman or Daredevil in MPQ

And it wasnt really the game I was singing the praises of (although I am loving playing it) but rather the reasons for the designs and the motivations behind making a game for fans of such of a well loved property.

Unknown

Played it before found MPQ. I loved the game, but it must have been before they expanded their content in it. Too bad my phone cannot handle the energy drain of two games.

Unknown

I don't know why everyone rails against timers. They slow the user down and allows them to actually form a deeper commitment to the game. It also helps sustain a larger userbase which allows your game to gain more traction in word-of-mouth advertising.

In a lot of ways, they save the user from themselves in burning out on a game in a week.

--- /// --

I think the Puzzles and Dragons example is flawed. The biggest reason for P&D's success if that it DOES get F2P right. Lots of content, original yet familar core mechanic, original artwork, decent amount of free in-game currency, a focus on single player experience, decent progression (not perfect), no barrage of social media linking, etc.

Unknown

Well, I say this!
Never spent a dime on MPQ because of their way to monetise things (I disagree, so I just play with what I can).
Right now I'm playing waaaay more Doctor Who Legacy than MPQ and I like it so much that I bought some time crystals to unlock the Fan Area. It's a branch inside the game that have some levels that drop some exclusive characters and outfits and have a higher chance of getting time fragments (like Susan and Lee says, it's a big hug for the supporting playerbase).

Best in-app purchase I made in my intire life and I don't think I'm the only one in that situation.

Squeezing money from it's costumers may be good in short-term period. But will quickly drive them away.

Susan and Lee are my new heroes!

PS. To those that think the game lacks content. There are right now 3 season with more 50 levels each. A expert level area that have some ridicuosly difficult level that drops Expert versions of some characters, and they are on the way to release early August The Hunt For The Greyhound One, wich is a new set of levels, with even more characters to level.

Unknown

Timers are needed in games where there is no meta game if you've infinite energy. Most games like PAD you'd be done with the game in one week because there's nothing to the game itself other than the timer. There isn't even a meta game like shield hopping in MPQ. Even if everyone has infinite health packs there would still be plenty of meta game action going on, and for PvE most people would hit a scaling point where they can no longer progress so you'd still have some kind of game even with infinite health packs.

Unfortunately I think people prefer to have games that are really just a timer because it's easy and you can always pay your way if you suck at the game, or at least spend a very long time. MPQ's health pack limits on progress but not playing the game. In most games if you run out of energy that's it. You can't even play anything if you want no matter what you have. In MPQ, PvE can be played almost indefinitely with a strong roster, and PvP can too if you're not particularly worried about defense (which means you'll probably be just messing around in SHIELD training).

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

I don't know why everyone rails against timers. They slow the user down and allows them to actually form a deeper commitment to the game. It also helps sustain a larger userbase which allows your game to gain more traction in word-of-mouth advertising.

In a lot of ways, they save the user from themselves in burning out on a game in a week.

--- /// --

I think the Puzzles and Dragons example is flawed. The biggest reason for P&D's success if that it DOES get F2P right. Lots of content, original yet familar core mechanic, original artwork, decent amount of free in-game currency, a focus on single player experience, decent progression (not perfect), no barrage of social media linking, etc.

Every reason you state for why P&D gets F2P right is exactly why the example is relevant, that is what Legacy has done, additionally they have removed the timer which is a great move. People do not require saving from themselves to avoid burnout, they are perfectly capable of deciding when to stop playing and go do something else (and if not, well, thats their problem).

How does being forced to stop playing a game forge a deeper commitment? Thats just backwards thinking. Like many, many others I had a much deeper commitment to MPQ when i could play when i wanted to. Now I play more of other games.

FaerieMyst

I played Dr Who Legacy for a short while. It was okay. It never grabbled me like MPQ did.

I am a Whovian. I love the Doctor. Four was my doctor but nine and ten totally stole my heart. I re-watch the new series often - but the game just never grabbed me like MPQ does.

As for the timed playing - that's the norm. Of course, it also suits my personality. I prefer to do small amounts of things and circle back around. It was so hard last night playing the last hour of PVE without stopping to do something else. Having a set number of lives to go through creates a time limit that works for me. I always have the option of buying more health (or in some games having it gifted) when I want to play more - like a really fun level of Farm Heroes.

Unknown

papa07 wrote:

Begs the obvious question, how are they making their money then?

Short answer: they don't.

I think timers are fine. They don't lock out content, just moderate it. If mpq had infinite health, you would get hundreds of retaliations per hour and in pve would have to grind dozens of matches.

If anyone played oldschool browser games that are similar to mafia wars, there is a strategy and depth to the energy system. It wasn't created solely for mobile devs to abuse pay2win. But like any mechanic, there are good and bad implementations of it.

Unknown

The PACman wrote:

How does being forced to stop playing a game forge a deeper commitment? Thats just backwards thinking. Like many, many others I had a much deeper commitment to MPQ when i could play when i wanted to. Now I play more of other games.

Because game playing is essentially ritualized behavior. Or at least, it taps into that part of our brain that gets relief from ritual. A ritual is more deeply ingrained/satisfying when repeated over a long period of time rather than a short one.

A timer can also function as 'a life', like in traditional gaming. Losing 50 stamina in PAD (when you fail) raises the stakes of the game because failure has a value. If you could just mindlessly keep repeating the same quests without repurcussion, then it doesn't have the same kind of engagement. You won't get the same kind of endorphin rush when you do succeed.

(This is all said with the caveat that yes, timers can ruin a good game (look at EA's Dungeon Keeper) and people will have wildly different tolerances of what they deem acceptable or not.)

Unknown

papa07 wrote:

Don't disagree with the sentiment, but I know I've said a lot of things (I'll pay you back tomorrow, one more drink and I'm done, just the tip) that I didn't really mean. Proof is, as always, in the actions.

That said, they have to act better than D3 - nowhere to go but up

can't believe no one else commented on this but thanks for the laugh.

hex706f726368

I just started playing "Doctor Who:Legacy". It's a fun game. The gem sliding (as opposed to swapping in mpq) was odd to get used to, but I get it now. I gave them $5 to open up the fan area. Don't know if I'll spend any more on the game, but I like it's structure much better than mpq. I play when I like and as much as I like.

- The daily bonus is a fixed series of 5 rewards. If you open the app daily, you'll cycle through them every five days. If you miss a day, you just go back to the first item in the cycle and start over. So it doesn't really set you back too much if you miss a day. Also, you don't even have to play the game, just open the app, collect and close, so it's not hard to keep up. Not that mpq's daily bonus is at all difficult, but it's a slightly different approach.

- Everything is PvE content that I can tell so far. Almost all missions I have played are you sending a team of chars against X waves of enemies, sometimes you have to beat it in a limited time. So it is kind of repetitive and my biggest gripe is I haven't seen a way to see enemy hp as a number yet (it's just a bar, could be 100, could be 10000). Difficult to see sometimes how big a hit I need to finish an enemy off.

- The game seems rather simple, especially once you have a couple color swapping characters. I'm sure the difficulty will ramp up eventually to combat that, but I haven't hit that wall yet.

- sometimes hitting the same mission over and over again to get that rare drop that you really want can be annoying.

overall, i really like the dr. who:legacy game. mpq could learn a few things from that game.

edit: i'm in the middle of season 6 in case anyone is curious. i have 12-15 companions, but i'm currently relying on a black->yellow and blue->red team.

Nightglider1

The PACman wrote:

LMAO, okay so it aint the prettiest artstyle in the world, but look at Invisible Woman or Daredevil in MPQ

And it wasnt really the game I was singing the praises of (although I am loving playing it) but rather the reasons for the designs and the motivations behind making a game for fans of such of a well loved property.

Folks always ripping on poor DD. It's the "jazz hands," isn't it?

Unknown

They are not the only ones doing this kind of stuff: Valve has a similar approach to monetization. First make it the best game you can, then people will happily throw money at you. Look at how much money people gave for The International 4: Each member of the winning team made more money that they'd get by winning the Tour de France.

MPQ is set up in such a way that, the more you play, the less valuable every extra purchase is, which seems completely backwards. If you play a lot of League of Legends, you'll get a whole lot of enjoyment out of your expenses. But what do you get from 1 guaranteed cover? what about the very silly 10 and 40 packs? The more you've played, the higher the chances that what you'll get is useless. and the less it'll change your gameplay experience. I'd have to spend over $100 to finish a relatively new character. 2 or 3 covers do nothing. If I spent that in league of legends, I could buy half the roster on sale.

The whole competitive focus, the health packs, the monetization... it's all actually fighting the game underneath, and it doesn't make any sense.

Unknown

Nightglider1 wrote:

The PACman wrote:

LMAO, okay so it aint the prettiest artstyle in the world, but look at Invisible Woman or Daredevil in MPQ

And it wasnt really the game I was singing the praises of (although I am loving playing it) but rather the reasons for the designs and the motivations behind making a game for fans of such of a well loved property.

Folks always ripping on poor DD. It's the "jazz hands," isn't it?

LOL, i hadnt even noticed they looked like that until youpointed it out.
Found a new example of the bad art now though - **** have they done with Captain Marvel's face?