HIMA'S PROFILE

I think he means micro-transaction. Like freemium games, maybe? I could be wrong though. But if he means micro-transaction, then it's like you release the game for free, but charge something for premium players.

For example, in Maple Story, going from one town to another takes time. You can buy an item that teleport you instantly to the desired place. People who want to save money will not buy it and walk there by themselves. But there will be a group of people who want to save time and think that they'd rather spend money than time. With this model, you want this small group of people to compensate for releasing the game for free.

Most competitive or hard core gamers hate this, since most freemium game make them think that they're playing a crippled games, or the gameplay favour paid players too much, or feels that the game force them to pay money to have fun.

I've been following seminars of GREE, which is pretty much a Japanese Zynga, so if you want more information on this I can tell you. It's pretty evil, and the fact that they admit it with a smiling face and spread the knowledge kinda make me feel sick in my stomach though.

As for Radiohead, they're a music band that release their music for free on the internet. They also offer an option for people to pay whatever they want for their music. I think they sell physical CDs as well. They're a great example of releasing stuff for free doesn't mean you cannot make money from it anymore, as there are many people that pay for their music, even though the music is free.

Thinking about a non-linear match 3 games where the story changes depending how well you play. While match 3 games aim at casual players, I feel that many of these casual players will get better at the game and go through a transition of being a hardcore gamer ( at least at that specific game ) without knowing it.

One thing I'm wondering is, what does the OP mean by making money with the games you made. Surely, making money from the game isn't limited to selling them.

Look at Dwarf Fortress. The game is free and runs on donation, and I'm sure it's making money than many indie games out there.

Or Kingdom of Loathing, a free browser-based MMORPG, doesn't charge players money and doesn't show any advertisement either. The game runs on donation and selling merchandise. It's been around for many years now and the maker quit his job and is now working on this full time, even hire people to help working on it.

Though I wonder are these qualified as 'commercial games'? Or commercial games mean you have to sell the actual game itself?

I don't think judging a game by its name is dumb at all. Attention is scarce. People don't download every game and play all of them to find out that they are great. Heck, they don't even click to see the info page of every game.

Unless known beforehand, your game's name, icons, and screenshots are the only resources that players use to make a decision. I kinda agree with the red flag list here, that if I only see these names without an impressive screenshots, I'd most likely look pass them.

No, this has nothing to do with the quality of the game itself, but it's about luring player to get to play the game in the first place. You might say that 'Well, you'll miss one of the greatest games!' The thing is, I doubt that. If the game is great, I'll hear about it one way or another. And I can always come back and play it later after I have more information on the game.

OT : I find mixing the name in the red flag list to create a new title pretty entertaining. Would be funny if there's a contest based on these names or something :P

I'd like to mention one problem regarding allowing player to save everywhere. The problem is you'll have a harder time controlling the game's difficulty.

With a save-point system, you have more control on the level design part. This can prevent a situation where a player cannot get out of the dungeon because he's in too deep, save there, and cannot getting out of the dungeon alive. Romancing Saga series is the game with this problem, especially when a character dies, he/she is gone for good.

Of course, you can say that this could be the player's fault. But this problem can be prevented by the periodic save point system. Poor level design with periodic save point system can cause this problem as well ( Dual Orb 2 )

With that said, that might be a problem many years ago due to the limited in memory. Now that can have unlimited amount of save slots, I doubt this is a problem anymore.

--------------------------------

Moving on to the one that I HATE the most, is probably dead with heavy penalty + periodic save system. It's useless to have a penalty, because if you'll always load the save instead of continuing with that penalty. In Dragon Quest, I think the penalty is half of the money you currently carry with you and not in the bank. I really don't know why would they even have the bank system. I found it to be a waste of time and doesn't really add any depth to the game.


Makes me wonder whether the death needs any penalty at all? Having to fight the boss again is already enough penalty in my opinion. So, the one I'd like to see would probably be
- If you die in the dungeon during a normal fight, you restart outside the dungeon, back to the state before you enter the dungeon
- If you die during the boss fight, you restart to the point before you enter the boss fight

Thinking about it more, it seems like the penalty of death in RPG game are
1.) Lost progress
2.) Lost playtime
Most players don't want to lose their progress and feel like what they did was a waste of time. I think it would be more interesting if all the progress not lost, but there is still some indirect penalty. Something that force the player to think and make a decision between restarting the game from a save point or keep the progress and accept the additional penalty. Like, maybe the ending's changed or something.