Gog.com giving away Dungeon Keeper for free | Hacker News Reader

Gog.com giving away Dungeon Keeper for free

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95 pointscmsefton69 comments

Whatever you do, do not let your enjoyment of Dungeon Keeper tempt you into even installing Dungeon Keeper Mobile: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpdoBwezFVA

It's the new poster child for the suckage that is Free to Play games with In App Purchases.

I assumed this promotion was GOG using the news about Dungeon Keeper Mobile's awfulness to attract attention to their own (great) service.

Popular games of previous years, cheap, no DRM, no IAPs, no weird social network tentacles. Just games to enjoy.

Dungeon Keeper Mobile's complete, abject failure (as an enjoyable game) is the reason I went to GoG and purchased the original last week. I can't be alone. Maybe GoG saw a trend in purchases like mine and decided to act.

I'm curious where most HNers would draw the line between Doom's "Get 3 levels for free, pay us $50 for the rest" and something like Candy Crush's "Play the whole game for free, pay us $x for any x to get more out of it."

I'm playing a bit of devil's advocate here, because I am very much against in-app purchases. But, when you think about it, you can play Dungeon Keeper Mobile for free, or you can pay something like $20 (or $10, or $5, maybe even $1) to get more out of it (boosts, etc).

So where does the issue lie? I here a lot of people saying "Well they reel you in with a free app and then make you pay for it!" but isn't that exactly how shareware works?

You can't really play it for free. That's the thing. It's basically unplayable without payments. Why people don't just avoid it, though, that's beyond me.

It's more like Doom being "You can play the whole game for free, but you have to pay $0.50 every time you want to reload your gun."

But why not spend $20 right off the bat and get plenty of gems to enjoy the game? That's the point I'm bringing up.

Because that's not how they sell it. And once that $20 is gone you'll need to spend more. If they had a single IAP of $20 to remove all timers it'd still be stupid and hated, but at least justifiable as a demo / full product model.

The "free" game sucks. It is intentionally entirely gimped. Playing Dungeon Keeper Mobile "for free" allows you, what, 5 minutes of gameplay per day? The whole game design is centered on making money with IAP. Even if you had unlimited funds, you still have to deal with the in-game store layer (e.g. "click here to spend X to do this thing"...not fun gameplay).

With Doom, they just make a full and complete game without a ton of distractions designed to continually sap money from you.

It's like getting "free Internet!!!" but it's at dial-up speed and you have to jump through a bunch of hoops and layers of microtransactions just to get a decent experience. Most people would rather pay a a simple up-front fee and not deal with that BS.

Dungeon Keeper Mobile uses the worst IAP model of all: pay to reduce the arbitrary timers. As you build out your dungeon, various tasks require time to complete. In no time at all, the game starts asking you to wait a day or more to finish basic, essential tasks. Don't want to wait? Pay up.

As a result, the free player can only spend about five to ten minutes playing every day or two. At that burn rate, it's just not interesting enough to hold the player's attention. It's basically unplayable. That's why everyone is so shocked by Dungeon Keeper Mobile. It's at a new, uncharted level of IAP done wrong.

At risk of turning this into an echo chamber:

In-App Purchases become intrinsic mechanical elements of a player's experience of the game. This results in the design skewing towards encouraging "positive" events, namely making purchases. At this point, the mechanical goals of the game become abstracted, or even split - your game isn't about the mechanics of the puzzle anymore, it's about producing those positive events.

I was surprised to see a review of a game. The review liked the game, but said it used a sleazy tactic. The game was available for free, but after a few levels there was a single IAP to unlock the whole game. No more IAPs and it wasn't a large price. So, that's the Doom model and it was called sleazy. (I don't know of it's okay if they call it $GAME_LITE).

I hate IAPs if they're tied to timing. It just seems a weird way of getting user engagement to slow down he amount that people play with your game.

I found one thing that makes me pay is some kind of timer telling me how many hourS I spent playing. If I spend three hours on a demo I can totally justify paying a few quid on a game.

There's a fundamental difference between shareware / free trial apps and apps that require constant in-app purchases to... well... play. Doom and others use the free trial model, which is what we used to call shareware (before the internet, they wanted people to share the free trial with each other to inspire them to then go buy the full version). As long as these are properly listed as such, there's nothing sleazy about them at all. And it's fine to use an in-app purchase to go from trial to full version. Again, as long as its clear to the user that this is the way it works.

Games that have in-app purchases run the spectrum. Some use in-app purchases to do customizations and other fun things that don't affect gameplay. Then there are those like Dungeon Keeper which are basically unplayable without in-app purchases. Watch the video I linked above for details on why. You have to pay over and over and over just to keep the game playable.

This is very different from a shareware/free trial model. You pay ONE TIME and you own the whole game. It's a classic commercial game scenario except they give you a taste of it... a trial... for free. It's the same thing with 'lite' versions of commercial software that are also free.

The in-app purchasing model is more akin to getting a free version of an FTP client that only allowed you to upload software at 10KB/s. You can then pay $0.99 to upload that one file at full speed. But, your very next upload would again be 10KB/s unless you also paid $0.99 to upload that one at full speed. But wait, for an even better value, you can buy a 20-pack of full-speed uploads for only $9.99 or a 100-pack of full-speed uploads for only $29.99. Once those run out, of course, you're back to 10KB/s. Unless you spend even more money.

Now, it seems silly with the FTP client example above. Who would ever use that software? But this is exactly how many of the free to play games work. And this is the way a lot of people coming in to gaming for the first time think games work.

Great explanations, thanks. I think the biggest difference is that some games (like Dungeon Keeper Mobile IIRC) have IAP into perpetuity - meaning you can essentially never unlock the full game. I like your FTP client example, I'll be using that.

Its (DK1/DK2) faithful successor would be War For The Overworld: https://wftogame.com/. Looks quite cool and the atmosphere certainly is there, but I don't know how far the development already has progressed.

Last I heard, they were said to have Windows, Mac and Linux betas for pre-orders.

But I concur, the mobile app is an insult to the original IP.

I've always loved GOG's value proposition: DRM-free, old-school exe installers on your disk, no activation needed, no limit on the number of installs, can redownload at any time with all associated assets.

No confusion over who actually owns the games. You buy a copy of a game, not some ill-defined permission to play a game.

I'm just concerned these constant promotions will condition their customers to always wait for the next massive sale, never paying full price for anything. Isn't that unsustainable?

I think they've been forced to follow the market there. In the early days they criticised this approach in interviews, and stuck to just two pricepoints ($5.99 and $9.99). As they've expanded, they've increased the range of pricepoints and now you have things like the Telltale Games adventures which have massive RRPs but are ~75-85% off in a sale http://www.gog.com/game/tales_of_monkey_island

I think it's sustainable, it's not exclusively about getting the games cheaply it's also about removing the consequences for buying games you don't like. If I buy a game on GOG or HumbleBundle and never play it I don't feel any remorse, and I do it again and again and again.

I think that you underestimate most people's overwhelming desire for instant gratification.

I'm not sure the economics of the gaming industry work the way most of us would intuitively expect. Gabe Newell has published some fascinating information about how Steam evolved to its current model and the effects of their short-term, massive-cut sales. Spoiler: They can be very profitable, because you increase your number of sales by a much higher multiplier than you reduced the price.

I did not like Dungeon Keeper first time round. The optimal strategy is turtle, making missions 3 hour affairs. Furthermore, you get to keep your best monster in the next level, so you need to mine every map to death if min/maxing. Multiplayer was very wonky strategically too. The outcome was decided in the first 10 mins based on whether you could out recruit monsters, but the death blow could not be dealt until about an hour later :s

The actual concept was pretty amazing though. It certainly stuck in my mind for one of the coolest concepts for a game. Playing the baddie is always fun. Just the actual dynamics of the game were pretty flawed. I bought Dungeon Keeper 2 though anyway, haha.

In the days when I had too much time on my hands, I used the editor to pit every combination of monster against each other in the arenas. The balancing was way-off, and monster's fighting abilities are inconsistent with their description in the manual.

For instance, dragons, supposedly tough hombres, are singularly useless. No matter how many spells they learn, they only ever use their puny fire breath, presumably due to a bug.

Your best troops are orcs by a large margin, followed by mistresses. At high levels, orcs can kill everything except the horned reaper in single combat, and are incredibly cheap to train (1/10 the expense of reapers, and 1/2 of mistresses). Build an army of these guys as soon as you can and you're sorted.

It's a great concept, but for this sort of game, I thought Bullfrog's Populous: the Beginning, was infinitely superior. Get hold of that in GOG! It plays beautifully under WINE (even better than on Windows, and not arbitrarily limited to a maximum 800x600 resolution).

That's really interesting.

Powermonger I liked better than populous. Populous was too many levels and maps were too big IMHO. I never understood the ecenomic strategy (build big houses or small ?) but I was quite young (small then big I spose).

Ah, you want Populous: The Beginning, not the original Populous.

The original Populous is a simulation. Populous: The Beginning is a fully 3D real-time strategy game, where you control individual units.

AHhhhh. I'll check it out!

They've also got Temple of Elemental Evil at 80% off at the moment. That's one of the most under-appreciated D&D games I've ever played. The turn-based combat is rich and interesting without dragging to a crawl. Unfortunately it's marred by bugs, though the unofficial patches alleviate most (but not quite all) of that problem. It's the closest to a true pencil and paper experience I've ever had on the computer.

For those interested note that ToEE, while good, is about combat and combat only. The story and npc are not interesting (compared to the other games in that sale).

And Dungeon Keeper 2 [1] discounted to $1.49 which is a bargain :)

[1] http://www.gog.com/game/dungeon_keeper_2

Shame it's Windows only :(

You can download free Windows VMs from Microsoft, run them in VirtualBox and give it a whirl. It should work, in theory!

I believe you would be violating the eula/whatever by doing that. You might as well install and maintain your own windows to VM, without the 30 day limit.

A Hackers Newser violating a EULA? That'd be a first ;) As far as I know the EULA for them is use as you want for 30 days, then after that you have to reinstall it (or use an older snapshot etc).

Or use the re-arm mechanism (for XP, it gives a total of 120 days). The desktop background after install of those VMs is a text wall of how to do that :)

That's why I was suggesting just getting it from elsewhere, without the limit. But if it's "use as you want" then it's fine.

There is a way to run DK2 (from GOG) on Linux using PlayOnLinux [1]

[1] http://www.playonlinux.com/en/source-1023-GOGcom__Dungeon_Ke...

For those that never used this, it is super easy and takes about 3 clicks on "next" in a GUI.

Dungeon Keeper 2 works fine on Linux using Wine: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId...

Dungeon Keeper 1 works fine on Linux using Wine: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId...

What about OS X?

Crossover.

It works on WINE, but I didn't install it through WINE but through dual boot, but I can play it in Ubuntu 13.10.

Just open a terminal, type "wine", hit space and drag and drop the DKII.exe after it and hit ENTER. That at least works here.

The top system bar of Ubuntu stays showing (with the date and speaker icons etc), but that doesn't bother me that much, and can possibly be hidden I think (but my wine-fu is lacking).

Hm, I got a "You'll get an e-mail when your copy is ready", something about supply depleted or so. Can't even visit the game link[1] anymore. Guess it's in high demand? =)

[1] http://www.gog.com/game/dungeon_keeper

Might have been a burp; I got that e-mail right away, and downloaded a couple of them. :)

I got the eMail straight away, with some great free games I wasn't even expecting.

Ultima 4, DragonSphere, Treasure Hunter...

But as yet no Dungeons for me :-)

Yeah I got that first miscellaneous-free-games email immediately; got the Dungeon Keeper email about 90 minutes later.

GoG started doing this on their high profile offers. It's probably to avoid download servers being overloaded without frustrating users.

In some previous sales their servers got overloaded and people ended up being unable to grab the game, and forgot to come back.

I guess that's why they now make it this way

And this is true free to play Dungeon Keeper, not the EA abomination on mobile.

What a brilliant stunt this is. I only heard about Dungeon Keeper in the backlash to what EA is doing, now I am curiuos and GOG comes in to scoop up some good will. Nice.

Looks like EA is directly involved in this[1]. A less charitable person would say it's their attempt to save face after their gaming media drubbing over their money-sink mobile version.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1xw0kw/dungeon_keeper...

I seriously doubt it. I am having difficulty imagining EA giving away anything for free and without DRM.

Well the alternative is that GOG is lying, since one of their verified employees said this in the linked thread.

Given my biased and prejudicial opinion of EA, I haven't ruled that out as a possibility.

On the other hand, EA is very large, so I also cannot rule out the possibility that its left hand is facepalming even while its right hand is giving all gamers everywhere the longest, fattest middle finger yet seen in the world of microtransaction-driven gaming.

Even the less charitable interpretation is pretty cool. EA taking steps to repair their image is a lot better than EA just being EA

And a more cynical person would say this is EA's ironic way of showing how much they care about classic PC gaming in light of their sleazy ways on mobile and modern PC and console gaming.

I've spent quite some money on GOG but haven't really played many of the games. DRM-free is great though and I'm just snatching up stuff on sale here and there.

I enjoy retroish games and have a pipeline of entertainment for years to come lined up so that's good :)

Edit: Just checked, my collection contains 137 games

I've done similar with Steam seasonal sales and HumbleBundle's. I've got pile of games just waiting for the arrival of the mythical "spare time".

It would be great if GOG would provide also the Win32 version (which works with minor glitches on modern Windows).

GOG provides the DOS version that runs using Dosbox and feels a bit slower.

Btw. to increase the resolution make it fullscreen with Alt+Enter and then press Strg+G to double the output.

Hint: to rotate the map, press Del / PageDwn. To zoom press Pos1 / End.

I'm pretty sure the D3D versions are included, but by default it fires up DosBox. Good luck getting them to work on the latest windows though. I remember having issues getting them to work even on XP.

It's only the DOS version, as I said.

The original CD back in 1997 contained both the DOS and Win32 version. The DOS version has a lower resultion and runs slower in Dosbox even on a high-end PC.

Nevertheless, I love the game and had played it the last few days, one level per night ;)

Dungeon Keeper is the only game I've ever enjoyed in a localized, swedish voice version. It's really very well produced.

Yes, true. The german voice-over is in my opinion even better than the good original english one.

GOG provides only the English edition, good that I have still the orginal german CD edition.

The evil assistant is one of the best voiceovers ever in german as well.

Odd, I have that same sentiment with the Dutch voiceover for DKII, seems Bullfrog really worked out the details there.

I had some great fun playing DK and it's sequel years ago. What amazes me is that there hasn't been any A-title clones made of it in all these years. Closest I've seen is the indie title War of the Overlord, still in development though.

GOG has been pulling off some fantastic marketing lately. Good for them.

Between this and De La Soul, looks like my entire weekend's entertainment is going to be free..!

I've been watching DK on gog for a long time, thank you so much for saving me some bucks!

Good to know! brb, telling this to my friends. All of them. Which is 3.

Some classics in that list.

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