Free-to-play mobile games have a “lack of respect for players.”
Edmund McMillen’s Team Meat has been one of the recent indie success stories with Super Meat Boy, which launched across multiple platforms in 2010 to critical acclaim and commercial success. Team Meat is looking to bring the fiendishly-difficult SMB experience to mobile devices with the touch-based Super Meat Boy: The Game – but on the Team Meat blog, McMillen lambasted the “free to play” model that runs predominant on mobile devices these days.
“As many of you may have noticed, there is a whole shit load of wrong [with the mobile market] out there these days, from abusive and manipulative money making tactics, to flat out stealing,” wrote McMillen. “To us the core of what is wrong with the mobile platform is the lack of respect for players, it really seems like a large number of these companies out there view their audience as dumb cattle who they round up, milk and then send them on their way feeling empty or at times violated…”
McMillen said that too many games dangled a carrot in front of the player that could be obtained with some repetitious actions, only to dangle another once the player had succeeded. This time, though, the player could pay a dollar to automatically get the carrot, or “better yet pay [$10] and unlock all your goals without even having to ever play the game!”
“[This] business tactic is a slap in the face to actual game design and embodies everything that is wrong with the mobile/casual video game scene,” said McMillen. “[We] want to make a game that we would love to see on the platform, a feature length reflex driven platformer with solid controls that doesn’t manipulate you with business bullshit in order to cash in.”
SMB:TG would offer players a real challenge, said McMillen, and a “real sense of fulfillment when they have achieved something that’s difficult… you know, like real games do.”
I’m not sure I entirely agree with McMillen’s sentiment that “real” games have to be super difficult to offer a sense of fulfillment, but the dude did make Super Meat Boy, so at least he’s being consistent.
Source: Team Meat
