
Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play - fragsworth
http://www.clickerheroes2.com/paytowin.php
======
Deimorz
I'm really surprised to see this from a company that makes, of all possible
genres, _clicker games_.

Clicker games usually have almost no actual gameplay, and pretty much only
interest people because they exploit many of the same type of psychological
tricks that free-to-play games use to keep players hooked. They're a great
demonstration of how the illusion of progressing at something is all you need
to keep people interested, even when the only thing they're progressing
towards is... the opportunity for more progression.

I honestly don't think that charging people up front will work, especially not
at a $30 price point. Microtransactions work for this game style because you
can take advantage of all the time people feel like they've "invested" into
the game. Once they've spent hundreds of hours progressing, it's not difficult
for some people to justify spending money here and there to make things a bit
faster. I don't think many people will feel the same way when they're asked to
pay $30 before they can even start getting addicted.

~~~
rangibaby
> They're a great demonstration of how the illusion of progressing at
> something is all you need to keep people interested, even when the only
> thing they're progressing towards is... the opportunity for more
> progression.

If anyone wants to try this type of "game" give cookie clicker a try.

~~~
rplnt
One more with the niche of this forum, and one that doesn't take that much
time (depending on your take on the task), is Paperclips
[http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/](http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/)

~~~
alexmorenodev
I love how paperclips is extremely addicting, but short. These games can eat
up all your free time for months easily. Paperclips takes one day or two.

~~~
dEnigma
Spaceplan
([http://jhollands.co.uk/spaceplan/](http://jhollands.co.uk/spaceplan/)) also
ends after a while and was very entertaining for a clicker game. Apparently
they have paid versions now too, which I haven't tried.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I paid for the mobile version, and it was easily worth it.

~~~
dEnigma
So it is a significant upgrade compared to the free prototype?

~~~
pavel_lishin
I don't know; I didn't play the free prototype, but I definitely felt like my
money was well spent on the Android app.

------
0xcde4c3db
> Also, we like games with mods and we want mods. Real-money shops make little
> sense with mods, when you can just download a mod to quadruple the number of
> rubies you get. Also, it is simply too easy to cheat.

I think this touches on an important aspect of microtransactions that to my
knowledge remains largely unexamined (but maybe I'm just not reading the right
critics). Specifically, games are traditionally built as tools that players
use to have fun. From house rules in tabletop games to Game Genie/Action
Replay to Automatic Mario rom hacks to Minecraft texture packs, players
changing games is something that's been part of gaming culture for a long
time. When publishers turn a game into a marketing venue for
microtransactions, however, they're essentially laying claim to that entire
space, turning it into a dictated, manufactured product rather than a self-
directed process in the player community.

~~~
mirashii
I think Valve's model of pure cosmetics with an active workshop and ability to
implement custom games shows you can still have microtransactions without
turning away the notion of a player community. It just seems to me that the
common monetization schemes implemented in other games is a bit of a blatant
money grab made by forcing people to artificially grind.

~~~
spondyl
On one hand I agree but on the other, Team Fortress 2, where the model
originated has stagnated with only a handful of team members shipping actual
content updates to the game with the majority of it just seemingly being
community items made canon.

There is still a community but it doesn't feel like the same game since
microtransactions were added. It's still a fascinating example of a player run
economy though with (virtual) "Mac OSX Earbuds" being used as a primary
currency at one point

~~~
SXX
This is tell nothing about monetization model though. It's just how Valve
operate: too few developers interested in working on game so its stagnates.

------
kelukelugames
A cute story about whales.

Jeremy Lin, the NBA player, talked about getting his teammates to play Clash
Royale with him. He was shocked that everyone had better troops than him after
two days. Apparently they all dropped thousands.

~~~
csours
Clash Royale brands their philosophy as pay-to-advance. You can upgrade faster
with real money, but that doesn't mean you will win matches. At some point at
the top I assume everyone is spending a lot of money, and is matched up with
similar level cards.

As a player it doesn't really bug me.

~~~
jon_richards
That is an interesting point, but I think most companies incentivise whales by
putting them up against people who they can crush, whether it is deliberately
(as in the case of activision's patent) or by having a matchmaking system that
doesn't strictly separate people by their in-game power.

Imagine a game where players only interact if they are the same level. If you
can pay to gain levels, that doesn't necessarily make the game unfair. If you
can pay to gain an advantage at the same level, that is unfair.

~~~
ansible
There was an article recently about someone (perhaps EA) who was looking to
implement a scheme to reward players for purchasing upgrades.

Right after purchasing a new gizmo, you (in PvP matches) would be matched
against players who don't have that gizmo. So you get to enjoy yourself with
the purchase for a while. After that, the matchmaking system would then send
you against players who have some other more awesome gizmo which you don't
have yet. So you get to lose more, and are they incentivized to but the new
gizmo too.

~~~
lightbyte
That was indeed EA, they do this type of matchmaking in FIFA.

------
colmvp
I hope (though I'm not truly that optimistic) in a decade that the trend of
F2P will have passed. I find them extremely parasitic, exploiting human
behavior.

I also hate the term free-to-play, because it purposefully hides the fact that
for many games, you either need to grind a lot to acquire content/in-game
currency or have to spend a lot.

~~~
stingraycharles
Just yesterday I was looking for a simcity-like game for my iPad to play that
didn’t use microtransactions. It’s simply not there. Not a single city
simulator that you can actually play without paying for some stupid credit
system.

I was easily willing to spend $10 for such a game, because of the scarcity. I
would expect some indy dev to jump into this space, but I guess
microtransactions are just too lucrative?

~~~
cwyers
> I was easily willing to spend $10 for such a game, because of the scarcity.

Your willingness to pay $10 for a SimCity-style game probably explains the
scarcity. If you and enough others were willing to pay $40-60, you'd find that
game.

~~~
gberger
I would pay $40-60 for an AAA console or PC game, not for a random mobile
game. For that, $10 is about right.

~~~
Noos
but if you want the sim city experience, you want a AAA game. It's just not
profitable to make that kind of game for $10. So you're never going to get it.

If you only want to pay $10 for a mobile game tops, you will get what that $10
is worth; a 4-5 hour experience with little replayability, but has great
graphics and is fun. Someone is not going to recreate a AAA title that had
millions of dollars put into it in their bedroom for maybe 23k people to pay
$10 for it, or even less.

~~~
stingraycharles
I don’t expect game mechanics as refined as SimCity, or graphics like that.
All I want is a sim game that doesn’t land me into a brick wall after a day
because they want me to pay to expand my territory beyond 100 square foot.

~~~
cwyers
And if it was worth it to do that for ten bucks, someone probably would have
already. But mobile app consumers are incredibly price sensitive, and so you
see the market dominated by crap and F2P, and sometimes even F2P crap.

~~~
stingraycharles
So you think this is an actual requirement, rather than game studios just
trying to maximize ROI by going after the whales using F2P?

I simply find it hard to believe game development suddenly became so much more
expensive in the last few years of F2P rise. Isn’t this just about a whole
industry discovering an opportunity, and accordingly a new standard of
expectations of money to be made ?

~~~
cwyers
When was $10 for a SimCity-like game ever viable? Even if you say that you can
live with reduced graphics fidelity and functionality, that's still a lot of
work involved. I don't even think the original SimCity was $10 in 1980s
dollars.

I guess the canonical example of "you can deliver a premium gaming experience
on phones for under $10" is Minecraft, but unless you can sell the volume
Minecraft is, you need to make more per user than they do.

~~~
CydeWeys
There are lots of amazing mobile game experiences available that cost under
$10 for a one-time purchase. I don't understand why you think they must all
necessarily have AAA budgets in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
One person or a small team of people can easily make an amazing game.

------
angarg12
I'm active in the clicker/idle game scene so I can give a bit of background:

It isn't rare lately for people to come to
[https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/](https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/)
and discuss possible ways to monetise games. How to best implement
microtransactions, opt-in ads, or even some talk lately about cripto mining.

Then yesterday someone wrote a post about the 'unannoying way to monetise',
which is to make the game paid.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/7e1u9f/t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/7e1u9f/the_unannoying_way_to_monetize/)

It wasn't massively well received. If you look at the top comments, they still
prefer F2P and microtransactions. And then CH2 dropped this bomb today.

From my personal experience, I am quite skeptic about a paid model for this
particular genre of games. Also, 30$ for this kind of game seems a little bit
too step.

Nevertheless I wish them best. Hopefully if they are successful they will show
the way for others and we will move away from these kind of predatory
techniques.

~~~
jquery
$30 isn't really steep given the thousands of hours of... ahem... gameplay.
It's easily justifiable for a niche hobby purchase. I've been idling Clicker
Heroes for thousands of hours and it has a very soothing mathematical zen
rhythm to it. I highly recommend it to anyone who's enjoyed Cookie Clicker or
other idle-type games. What makes Clicker Heroes extra special is the high-
quality design and the lovely math that's gone into making sure progress is
smooth and eternal. I have high hopes for CH2 and will pre-order it as a vote
of confidence.

~~~
mnsc
I'm at the end of cookie clicker and I honestly don't see any interesting
progressions forward. I just got 350 chancemakers so now I'm just creating
spreadsheets to try to time the "get xxx777777 levels on ascension".

But actually this is a feature and not a bug since I actually appreciate the
sense of "I'm done for now" that lets me pause gameplay for a couple of months
and wait for a new tier building or something else. I think a more polished
clicker game sounds rather scary given my player profile since I could easily
see myself get totally absorbed. So CH2 being $30 is good news for me
personally since that guarantees I wont get caught. =)

~~~
jquery
Heh, I just used JS to get that achievement in Cookie Clicker.

I would say that Clicker Heroes is far less demanding of your time than Cookie
Clicker. It's difficult to play Cookie Clicker and be mostly idle. Clicker
Heroes only asks a few minutes a week to make meaningful progress. It's a
different beast than most clicker games, because your game makes significant
progress when you're not playing.

------
sago
A great piece, an ethical decision, and I hope the start of something bigger.
I agree that free to play is often horribly exploitative, not to mention
horrible game design.

But that price point. That makes me worried. Browse around Steam to see the
company they are trying to keep at $30. In the reddit thread the dev said
they've chosen this price point based on $2m production budget. Fair enough
they've done their homework and run the models. I'm sure they've done a
competitive analysis. But it _feels_ too expensive to me.

I really really hope I am proved wrong. As spectacularly as possible.

~~~
romanovcode
If it has no in-game shop the price is perfectly valid IMO, and I wish every
mobile game was like this.

~~~
wccrawford
The problem isn't the price point, but what you _get_ for that price. From the
video, it looks just the same as the original, and I definitely wouldn't pay
$30 for that.

~~~
sago
One of the problems with game development is that consumers aren't always very
good at judging what they're getting (in terms of quantity, I'm not suggesting
consumers can't be trusted to decide whether they like something).

A game with one repeating background, versus a game with a whole range of
varied backgrounds, can be order of magnitude cheaper to make. But typically
this will be reviewed as "crappy graphics" or "boring art", and the more
expensive version will be panned for being too expensive. Sometimes crappy
graphics won't matter, sometimes it will.

From the video, there is no comparison in terms of development resource. There
is much much more art, many more frames of animation, much less smoke and
mirrors in the engine. I can understand why the development budget is $2m.

But I have a horrible feeling that most consumers will be like you, and not
see that, and not think that all that effort is worth it, or that they've put
much effort into the new game at all. And a good chunk of them (not you) will
be very entitled about it, about not getting it for free. The reality of game
development, unfortunately.

~~~
wccrawford
I only looked at the gameplay. The graphics would only have entered into my
decision if they were horrible. I'm a long-time incremental game fan and I've
played a ton of them. Most of them have pretty bad graphics, and that's okay.
The incremental portion, especially the choices you make (what to upgrade,
when, etc) are the interesting parts.

So yeah, I expect a lot of incremental gamers will view it the same way.

And gamers that aren't fans of incrementals are going to be even harsher on
the gameplay.

------
Pxtl
I love this essay. Thinking about people who've damaged their lives on
addictive gaming.... those people behind the four-figure numbers on the
spreadsheet of Whales. That's sad as hell.

But... it's a clicker game. A hilarious-looking clicker game... but a clicker
game. Would anybody spend $30 on a clicker game?

~~~
Lazare
> A hilarious-looking clicker game... but a clicker game. Would anybody spend
> $30 on a clicker game?

Well that's the thing, isn't it: A lot of people spent a lot more than $30 on
Clicker Heroes 1. So yes, obviously people will spend $30 on a clicker game.
The question is whether they'll do so via an ethical business model.

~~~
bduerst
Aren't clicker games notorious for hidden difficulty curves, which are
sometimes exponential?

The whole p2w model is based off of getting players invested with their time
before making it too difficult to progress without investing cash. I'd bet the
people who spend $30+ on the p2w version won't be willing to pay $30 up front
to start investing time into a brand new game.

~~~
dragontamer
It should be noted that ClickerHeroes didn't have p2w for months, maybe years.

I did quit after the addition of Rubies. But the game was legitimately good at
balancing the heroes. A good amount of my effort in Clicker Heroes was spent
on optimizing builds through linear algebra and other optimization problems.

------
alanfalcon
Awesome, good on them! Another studio who dipped their toe in the F2P model
then ran away screaming (in their case, to great success) is Butterscotch
Shenanigans--three brothers in Saint Louis who released the game Crashlands
for mobile and Steam which I've probably sunk 300 hours into (but I'm weird
like that). I really hope this works well for the Clicker Heroes 2 developers.
I've enjoyed Clicker Heroes and I'm really looking forward to everything
they've layed out for CH2.

Of course dropping $30 for what had been a free game is a bit of a shock on
first hearing the price (price anchoring can be a major hurdle), but after
reading this (and reflecting for a moment: most games that I spend any real
time playing are easily worth $100 or more to me even if it's rare that I end
up having to spend that much on them) I'll definitely be pre-ordering.

~~~
woogley
For those who haven't seen it, the development story behind Crashlands is very
inspiring:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQHtOg46eOw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQHtOg46eOw)

------
cortesoft
I wonder if you could still have free to play, but just had a limit to how
many different things to buy. Say, you could buy everything for $60. That way,
you don’t have to worry about someone spending thousands because they wouldn’t
get any more than if they spent $60.

~~~
rocky1138
Train Simulator 2018 does that. All the DLC comes to $7800.

~~~
frik
The sad thing is that Pay2Win is coming to triple A games like Need for Speed
Payday, Forza 7, Star Wars B2. These completely wrong trend deserves all the
outcry that happens right now. If EA and MS try to destroy video games, it's
just stupid, their greed will scare the real players away.

~~~
alasdair_
Exactly. I have no real problem with a company charging for cosmetic stuff
(unless it's limited-time-only, which hurts addicts) but pay2win makes the
games pointless.

------
greggman
it concerns me how many of my friends in free to play game dev are okay with
exploting whales for profit.

~~~
patio11
I go back and forth on this, because there seems to be material disagreement
on whether whales are, in fact, a) folks with problems or b) folks with
hobbies which are, relative to a single video game, expensive.

There is a good presentation from the CEO of Kongregate talking about this
here: [https://www.slideshare.net/emily_greer/dont-call-them-
whales...](https://www.slideshare.net/emily_greer/dont-call-them-whales-
freetoplay-spenders-virtual-value-gdc-2015)

I share your moral intuitions about exploiting whales if whales are, in fact,
little old ladies suffering from social isolation or teenagers with
undiagnosed depression. But the F2P companies say that they've done the
research and come to the conclusion that most of their whales are gainfully
employed professionals.

That sounds... not intrinsically implausible to me? I enjoy video games, quite
a bit. Games, books, and hating on Bitcoin are my hobbies, and hating on
Bitcoin is cheap. I have probably sustained $100 a month on video games for
ten years now, and that would frequently be concentrated on a single game for
an extended while (e.g. LoL for 2 years), likely resulting in me easily
hitting their whale lists.

I feel like if I'm a central example of a whale that it isn't unethical to
sell me things that I like? It's not a material amount of money given my
financial situation. It compares very favorably to the time commitment for my
main hobby, which causes _much_ more friction than the money does. (The
primary reason I don't play LoL anymore is an unpauseable 40 minute game
doesn't play well with having young children.) Most external observers would
categorize me under Either A Responsible Adult Or At Least Fakes It Decently
Most Of The Time. Similarly well-adjusted people in my social class spend
similar amounts of money on things which are not morally different than
Evelynn skins, for example Hamilton tickets.

~~~
aeontech
Right, but I don’t think 100/mo is quite what is considered a whale.

Just as in casino gambling, where I believe the term came from, a whale is
someone who throws a few hundred to several thousand into a game in a month,
possibly in a large number of smaller transactions so they don’t even realize
their running total. It’s the people for whom the “10’000 rubies for 49.99”
in-app currency chests are meant for.

~~~
karrotwaltz
Side story, I shortly worked for a big game company that dived into mobile
games, and learnt from the market team that the most bought packages where the
cheapest and the most expensive ones. The intermediary ones were nearing 0
sales.

So they kept adding new packages at higher prices until it reached about 120$
IIRC. All intermediary packages are just there to make the "best value" (read
highest price) package more enticing.

------
Lazare
Well written and thought provoking.

I'm not super interested in clicker games, but I pre-ordered anyhow, because I
have to believe the future of gaming isn't _just_ a never-ending series of
venal cash grabs.

~~~
swivelmaster
Clicker Heroes one is a lot of fun. I "played" it for about six months...
which means I left the browser window open at work and bought upgrades every
few hours.

(bought with in-game currency; I never spent real money)

------
makecheck
In-app purchases have such an absurdly high probability of being scams that I
literally shop only by filtering them out. It’s why I can’t be bothered to tap
into each and every game to see if it’s “only” using purchases to unlock the
full game; I just assume it’s probably gem bags.

They really need a built-into-store way of saying “Buy If Not Deleted In 24
Hours”, and then I would try _so_ much more.

------
awjr
I have a habit of playing a F2P game to understand how easy it is to advance.
They really do understand how to get you hooked, and then put you up against
players/AI where you either have to grind for the next 10 weeks or handover
money, and even then I suspect you'd hit another wall every 10 or so levels. I
usually end up uninstalling very quickly at this point.

------
kbutler
Solve the ethical dilemma/charged too much issue:

Cap the max expenditure in the real money shop. After that level, players can
continue to purchase, but they won't actually be charged real money.

If desired, can also add a "donate" button for the hypothetical players who
pay huge amounts to support the game/company.

~~~
wccrawford
This would see me willing to pay a lot more to many f2p games, but would curb
their income considerably from their whales.

Also, it'd ruin most games, because of the way they're designed.

For instance, gacha games like Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, Record Keeper, and
Mobius. If you could cap out at (for example) $300 and then pull for free from
then on, you'd end up with everything you ever wanted, all the time. There'd
be nothing to stop you from just pulling until you got everything.

The entire game would need a redesign to deal with that situation.

Premium currency in _most_ F2P games is the same way.

I'm not arguing with you, just exposing the reason that nobody except Nintendo
has done your suggestion so far.

And to my knowledge, they've only done it twice. Pokemon Picross and another
Pokemon spinoff game.

------
partycoder
In free to play games, significant money may be spent in user acquisition. The
business model for many games is:

    
    
        effective cost per new unique user <= life time value of the user
    

That gives you a profitability margin. Then, you need to acquire a lot of
users, put them in the game and, move them from 1 to 3:

1\. New user

2\. Recurring user

3\. Paying user

Additionally, if users invite other users, that lowers your effective cost per
new user, increasing your profitability.

The process of getting paying users is very lossy, with only a small minority
becoming paying users. That's why paying users have to pay so much.

For a while it was generally accepted that freemium games monetize more than
premium games. But with the recent proliferation of games I am unaware if that
is the case anymore.

------
gldev3
Incredible, good luck with Clicker Heroes 2 you guys deserve it. Keep up the
good work.

------
ge0rg
_We made a lot of money from these players who spent thousands. They are known
to the industry as "Whales"._

I haven't seen this addressed yet, but what if the whales we are seeing are
not poor addicted victims nor rich people but simple fraudsters?

It really makes sense if you are a person with access to "unlimited" credit
that you can't spend in a way that can be traced back to you.

There is so much credit card fraud going on, and it's surely possible to
decouple that from the actual in-game transactions by buying cash cards. The
credit companies can't trace back the money, and the in-game transactions
never get challenged.

~~~
koonsolo
I've heard multiple stories (firsthand) of kids accidentally ordering virtual
stuff on mobile for thousand(s). It happens only once, but there is no way to
recover the money.

~~~
exDM69
Might depend on your location but I've heard several stories of successfully
getting a refund from kids purchases in games and app stores. It's still a lot
of trouble to file for a refund, not worth doing for a few bucks.

But this might be because in my legislation there are strong consumer
protection laws. Ymmv.

------
fuscy
Good for them. I don’t have the numbers or business plan but I have faith they
did their homework.

There seems to be a counter trend in the current micro transaction game market
which will catch some of the people who long for pure premium games.

My guess is they intend to use the first game as a platform to bring people
into the second. The drawback of premium is that 1 in 50 people who see a game
buy it. The drawback of F2P is that 2% of players will spend money in it. This
is a move to cause a conversion higher than that by effectively selling the
F2P players, a premium game.

------
richrichardsson
A bit off topic, but I would be extremely interested in a post mortem of the
disaster that befell Micro Machines on mobile. My guess is people have
completely abandoned the game due to it not working in iOS 11 for nigh on 6
weeks, and now there just aren't enough players to get regularly matched into
a game. This must have decimated their revenue stream.

------
mxfh
Would like to see this resonate with IP holders in the creative industries
too. I don't think the people who created a franchise like _Bob 's Burgers_ as
used in _AnimationThrowdown_ are ok with causing some collateral damage to
kids or other addicition sensitive audiences and will put some restrictions
into their licensing contracts.

------
Nursie
I've been enjoying a f2p game for a while - Paladins. I understand it's a lot
like Overwatch, and that the comparison annoys both camps.

They charge for skipping a bunch of grind, but in this case 'grind' is playing
matches, which is why I'm here in the first place so...

------
bpicolo
Wonder if there will be a free trial. Giving people a level or two free might
create a stronger draw into the paid product.

That's a pretty common thing out there - wonder how well that model actually
works in reality? I've never seen hard data.

------
jdlyga
I can't see this working out for them. But I'm definitely willing to support
it.

------
sigi45
hahahahah ... no.

Clicker games are somehow idle fun but i never thought about paying for a
clicker 'game'.

Nope nope nope.

------
tallanvor
> New updates can change the game to be incompatible with old saves (which
> will be rare, maybe once or twice a year), and there will be plenty of
> advance warning when it happens. Players then have the option to continue
> playing on the old version, or start fresh on the new version.

And without knowing anything about the game, they've guaranteed that I'll
never buy it. Corrupted or incompatible saved games is a great way to kill
interest in your game.

