but "Free To Play" (aka "Pay To Win") is the most abhorrent fucking thing to ever happen to the games industry. Games design is no longer about giving the player an honest fun game in return for a fixed sum, it's about manipulating the player and extorting small amounts of money over and over again, for as long as they can.

Actual gamers hate it like dick cancer, but the millions of casuals who never play proper games and just want to tit around with their phones fall for it like lemmings, and make these companies billions. 

Kinn, can we presume that you are celebrating the death of a bad thing?

Wait, what was that in reference to? 

Anyone who thinks they can download something for free and get good quality content for their phone is an idiot! Everything comes with a price, F2P design, a sea of adverts or Social media hooks.

It funny really, we all make extra content for a 15+ year old game and that's free right! what crazy fools we are ... :P 

Yeah, as someone who knows better you shouldn't simplify it like that. Some people create out of joy and share for free...

Some of my favourite more or less genuinely free Android games:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.watabou.pixeldungeon
http://chris.boyle.name/projects/android-puzzles/
http://www.dwellergame.com/
https://code.google.com/p/frozenbubbleandroid/
https://code.google.com/p/mathdoku/ 

 

It goes without saying that I'm not pissing on "free games" in general, I'm pissing on the skeevy, soulless, transaction-machine bullshit mentality that leads to games like Clash of Clans and its ilk being things that exist. 

Removing that shite "high res" texture on the columns would be an improvement. 

Kinn (&sock): of course, I feel the same. but people like to forget proper free culture or at least not advertise it. It's even worse with music where people think recordings have to be commercial. 

clearly there are good ones... but 95% of them are really genuinely garbage. 

@Spirit, yes there free games that exist, but the quality is often low (basic graphics) and the presentation is minimal. Yes there is certainly awesome people around who create free content, BUT they are getting real rare nowadays.

@FifthElephant, What F2P games are good? I can't understand how anyone thinks this, they are all designed to make you spend endless amounts of money, how is that good? 

never noticed how much dwarf fortress is similar to dungeon keeper (never played dungeon keeper) 

Hawken is fun, Hearthstone is fun, Team Fortress2, spelunky was a free game right at one point?!

When talking about mobile, I've killed a bit of time here and there playing games like gravity guy and various other endless runner games on the bus to work.

Perhaps these aren't your typical free to plays, I never felt compelled to drop cash on any "f2p" games, even the good ones. 

hats. loads of hats. 

Umm, so as if that Dungeon Keeper Mobile game wasn't scummy enough, it has just emerged that it fiddles its own App Store rating by allowing players to rate it from the game interface, but the game only actually submits the 5 star scores!. 

EA is doing what it does best: making shitty games to make money. 

Apparently that's just the Android version, not the iOS version

http://metro.co.uk/2014/02/07/dungeon-keeper-rating-system-rigged-against-negative-reviews-4294468/ 

They can get away with that because Android basically has no protections against that. Apple will actually kick you off their store for that. 

i went and got Dungeon Keeper 2 off of GoG because of Dungeon Keeper Mobile.

Very cool game! :D
I wish it was more sandbox though and not focused on the combat as the endgame. eg: more like dwarf fortress. I guess with the computers of the day they didn't want 200 monsters roaming around all calling AI and pathing.
Still, i'm very impressed with the AI, the imps in particular always seem to do what I want without me having to micro manage them. 

How are Hawken and TF not typical F2P games?
Those are the first two that come to my mind when F2P gets mentioned. 

I got them both from got as well - playing through 2 on and off now.

I tried 1, which many claim is better, but I could barely tell what I was looking at. 

yes, i found there's a lower limit to how far back in time I can go before I find I can't stand the visuals of a game. :S 

I remember being disappointed by DK2. 

I read a bit about DK2 vs DK1 and the biggest complaint seemed to be that there wasn't enough new in DK2. Since I never played either, I went for DK2. :D 

DK1 was the better game imho.
DK2 didn't even let you use sight of evil+lightning to obliterate enemy imps from afar!
but mostly, DK2 was crash-happy. 

I came to the same conclusion, having never played them before.

I have had a couple of crashes though, just dumped back to desktop.

Solution seems to be saving every now and again.

Wow, manual saving every ten minutes that takes me back!