Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time

Good and bad news, everyone!

Good: Plants vs. Zombies 2 was apparently released last month. Yay!

Not so good: The game is only for iOS for now, which means I can't play it. Huh.

Bad: Popcap was bought by EA in 2011 (didn't know that) and EA changed the distribution model to Free-to-Play. In 2012, "PopCap fired 50 employees in North America in a move to address a shift to mobile and free-to-play games" (from Wikipedia), including the creator of the original PvZ (!). And the original composer wasn't involved in PvZ either (except for one song or so).

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Come on!

On the plus side, micro-transactions supposedly don't get in the way much at all.
Has anyone tried the game yet?

EA strikes again!, I'll not touch this.

Too bad... The first game was a lot of fun.

... Not even with a 12 foot pole.

Was completely disgusted when I read about this a couple of months ago.

*sees EA logo, walks away*

These morons could ruin ice cream.

You've got a game that was a huge hit that required only minimal resources to create. You've got a marketplace demonstrated to embrace more-of-the-same sequels. Massive sales are nearly guaranteed for minimal upfront investment. It's a license to print money, which should appeal to the beancounters. And yet...

I couldn't get into the first one (and Amazon gave me a few copy) so I not even gonna look at this one.

I absolutely adored the first game and have it on pretty much every possible platform.

The sequel is actually decent fun based on playing for a while, but the in-app stuff reeks. It isn't even like you can get everything using in-game earnings, either! There are many things that explicitly cost money. Sucks.

The English version is actually pretty good from what I read and supposedly you don't really need the 6 plants that are cash-only. Everything else you can get through play. Still, it seems the game wasn't made for "maximum enjoyment but for maximum revenue generation". (source)

Now the Chinese version, apparently, is really bad about the micro-payment stuff. Get this: The game was made significantly harder for the Chinese market in order to force the players to purchase the paid extras sooner, which are also more expensive compared to PvZ1 (so they tried the model there, already?).
Source: PvZ2 gets scathing reviews in China.

I don't mind Free-2-Play if micro-payments are used only for cosmetic things and don't get in the way of game design. But Pay-2-Win in this form has to go.


Speaking of which, have there been cases where F2P games were re-released as normal games at some point? If so, I'd still be very happy to get the game on PC eventually.

Arhu said:

I don't mind Free-2-Play if micro-payments are used only for cosmetic things and don't get in the way of game design. But Pay-2-Win in this form has to go.


Speaking of which, have there been cases where F2P games were re-released as normal games at some point? If so, I'd still be very happy to get the game on PC eventually.

Click to expand...

The Top F2P Monetization Tricks: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/194933/
I don't see how such games can evolve as a normal game.

There's some more "fair" F2P games, for example I have seen full game free with a delimited series of cheap DLC. Those evolves easily as a normal game because even the core game is a normal game. There isn't much tricks in those F2P because the maximum price you spend has a known max, and even the free game is fully playable. Obviously those games didn't achieved huge money success and rely on a core base of fans.

Ihaterpg said:

The Top F2P Monetization Tricks: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/194933/
I don't see how such games can evolve as a normal game.

There's some more "fair" F2P games, for example I have seen full game free with a delimited series of cheap DLC. Those evolves easily as a normal game because even the core game is a normal game. There isn't much tricks in those F2P because the maximum price you spend has a known max, and even the free game is fully playable. Obviously those games didn't achieved huge money success and rely on a core base of fans.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the link!

I think in most places the in-app charges have a limit much lower than the Asian games noted, but players can still rack up sizable charges.

But they are the minority - the ones making EA and others the big money are those spending ~$20 on a game ...

I never ever paid for something in a F2P except very few time in the special category I quoted, free full games with a series of small DLC. But I had no clue F2P was that perverse as explain this article, it's legal, it's business, but it's a taste of a bit of hell.

txa1265 said:

…
But they are the minority - the ones making EA and others the big money are those spending ~$20 on a game …

Click to expand...

As I already mentioned in some other threads, the apple store is one of the rare clear list of games incomes, it's ios so it's special, but there's regularly F2P games at first place of top income games, as they are free their income is obviously through F2P mechanisms. And we have no clues about facebook games.

EDIT: Moreover the base income from game sell is only one point, the time production and the cost production is a major part of the element as is the risk factor. I can imagine AE trying setup business through 20 cheap games instead of one big.

EDIT:
When looking information about Ultima Forever I gave a look at current top income games, the top 15 of best income is fully F2P, in top 32 of best income 30 are F2P. It's just my country but I never seen that ever, not that I check anymore but some time ago when I did it wasn't this picture at all. Ultima Forever, another F2P isn't even in this top 200 but it's 182 in top free games (most downloaded).

EDIT: And to stick more to the thread, again it's just my country and ios stuff, PvZ2 is still top 1 in free download and only top 48 in top income, certainly not much income.

And for EA, in top 20 income there's 2 games, both F2P, top 3 a Simpson stuff, and top 12 a Real Racing stuff.

I learned that there's a Plants vs. Zombies comic in the making or already ready err finished.

Plants are *not* the protagonists, though (stupid idea, if you ask me, it isn't called "men vs. zombies" without a reason …).

The catalogue of Germany's biggest comic publisher (it's panini, who had bought Dino Comics several years ago) is full of dark & gritty & zombie comics - there's actually nearly nothing without swords and blood to be found there … Oh, and zombies, of course …