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! 

DK2 was crash-happy uh oh... haven't seen one yet. this means I will see 4 next time I play. -_- 

Yeah I prefer DK1 myself, but DK2 is a fine game as well. Just... not as good. :p
KeeperFX allows you to use bigger resolution and fixes lots of stability issues and bugs. You should really get it. 

You can quicksave in DK2 with Ctrl+S and quickload with Ctrl+L. 

 

Mobile Games are often about Advert Management and Money 

sock - I only made it a little way into that article before I felt the vomit moving the wrong way in my oesophagus.

I will say this though (and it's not a direct reponse to that article you linked) I think as a form of monetisation, adverts are far less disgusting than paywalls and timewalls.

The only nice way (for the end user) of monetising a "free" game is through IAPs of cosmetic and optional stuff, like character skins, bonus guns and bonus missions and whatnot. Thing is, that requires work and new content, which is why people stick to just doing the awful paywall shite.

I will say this, because I left the company on Friday...

I have just spent 6 months working at a F2P mobile game studio, backed by a big publisher. I came into it fairly naive about the whole business philosophy, and anyway I needed a job quick.

The game we were making had no advertising, and minimal cosmetic IAPs - it was heavy on paywalls and timewalls though, which was a new concept to me. Funny thing is, I thought I'd blown my interview when I described these things as "evil", but it didn't matter in the end.

Anyway, long story short, even though most of the available IAPs were for items that you were supposed to use to "cheat" your way through the paywalls, it turned out that the vast majority of purchases (like 90% of them) happened very early on in the game, as soon as the item was available, and before any paywalls had kicked in - people just wanted to buy stuff not because they had to, but just because it was there and they wanted to check it out.

When the actual paywall came, guess what? Almost no-one bought their way through it - they just stopped playing the game.

Moral of the story - people will buy random optional stuff just because it's there, whilst those same people will probably get just as offended as the rest of us when they come to a paywall and would rather stop playing out of principle than buy their way through it.

I handed my notice in 3 months after joining, but I had signed a contract which required a 3 month notice period, so I was there for 6 months in the end... 

I am under no illusion of what a shithole the Mobile game industry is, I make mobile games myself and I do understand what goes on. As a developer not a marketing shark or "app flipper" when I see the top ten lists full of cloned apps, my developer soul dies inside.

Call it app flipping, re-skinning, or just good business

The fact that mobile users are happy to constantly download apps which are basically the same, full to the brim with adverts, IAPs and pay/time walls I think it is just sad. 

Moral of the story - people will buy random optional stuff just because it's there, whilst those same people will probably get just as offended as the rest of us when they come to a paywall and would rather stop playing out of principle than buy their way through it.

I wonder why that is? Maybe because the paywall is flat out telling you to use money while getting an IAP feels like it's a choice. 

I wonder why that is? Maybe because the paywall is flat out telling you to use money while getting an IAP feels like it's a choice.

Yeah you're buying something at your leisure because you're in the mood to see something new and it looks interesting, cool, fun or whatever.

A paywall on the other hand, just goes "fuck you, we've artificially increased the difficulty now to make it impossible to get past this bit unless you give us real money". It's nasty, and it exposes just how nefarious the design of the game balancing is. It's no longer a game at this point, just a thinly-veiled transaction machine. 

The fact that mobile users are happy to constantly download apps which are basically the same, full to the brim with adverts, IAPs and pay/time walls I think it is just sad.

Yeah, it boils down to the fact that the vast majority of mobile "gamers" are new to gaming and just accept that this is how it is, because they don't know any different. There's a good article here that suggests that the reason DK mobile is getting so shit on, is not because it's so much worse than other F2P games (it's not), but because of the brand, it is getting a lot of attention from the actual gamers who remember dungeon keeper and were excited to see a new version finally come out. Of course once these "traditional" gamers are exposed to the full face-melting horror of the mobile F2P cesspit, internet hilarity ensues:

http://kotaku.com/welcome-to-mobile-gaming-angry-dungeon-keeper-fans-1516926994

The really sad thing though is that the suckered-in casuals who make F2P companies billions, hugely outnumber core gamers, and thus F2P drivel is the way the industry is going to keep heading because that's where the money is. 

to work in a company making mobile video games than working in a really fucking busy call centre.

As for mobile games, I see a lot of my friends on facebook and other places get obsessed at the latest bejewelled game or endless runner all the time. It's always the same game every time. What really surprises me is how no-one has yet made a Tamagotchi style game that's taken the world by storm. 

I read that article a couple of days ago and I know full well what the current F2P mechanics are like. Mobile users do indeed outnumber core gamers by a huge amount and the current state of mobile apps (they are not really games) is what people like/want.