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Comment by Dartanion7 | Hacker News Reader

> If freemium were generally just a demo for a better game

It's not, and no one ever said it was. The demo analogy isn't valid; a free-to-play game is a fully functional game. IAPs may unlock additional functionality, or help bypass time gates, or whatever, but the "core loop" of a game shouldn't (under the guise of freemium, anyway) be restricted by payments.

This isn't to say that it doesn't happen -- not every developer really understands freemium, and some bastardize it. But can you really argue with consumer preference for freemium? If consumers hated freemium, it wouldn't dominate the app store.

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> a free-to-play game is a fully functional game

I suspect my definition for "fully functional" is different from yours, but I have high standards.

> If consumers hated freemium, it wouldn't dominate the app store.

Actually it's entirely possible for something hated to also be the most profitable course of action given things like information asymmetry. For instance, if people would be happier with good $20 apps, but it's so hard to tell which $20 apps are good that no one is willing to risk buying them, then you end up with the current situation.

I'm not necessarily saying that this is the case (much as I hope it is), but I would love nothing more than for reviews like this to bring people around to how exploitative this model is, and how much it encourages bad game design.

This is verifiably not the case; for example, see the positive reviews of Candy Crush Saga and any number of other F2P titles. It's pretty clear that consumers prefer the freemium model, it's just a vocal minority that continues to single out specific games (like the one in the OP) and use them to denigrate the business model.

Also, isn't your argument re: information asymmetry an argument in favor of F2P? In the case where a developer has made a great game, it behooves them to release it for free, not only because that's obviously what consumers prefer (see the App Store), but because it allows the app to be more widely distributed and critiqued (and thus the worst apps would be quickly identified as bad and not downloaded -- perfect information).

> Also, isn't your argument re: information asymmetry an argument in favor of F2P?

It's an argument that developers and consumers can both be correct to gravitate toward F2P. It's not an argument that this is the happiest equilibrium for either. It's the same rationale behind lemon laws; the absence of such laws pushes the market toward a position where buyers have to assume all cars are secretly busted, sellers have to price their cars accordingly, and the market ultimately gravitates toward people selling busted cars because nothing else is profitable.

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