My current iPhone game addiction is Pac-Man 256 which is wonderful and you should play it. It takes the classic elements from the original game and reinvents them as an endless runner with power-ups. It wins for both nostagia and freshness in equal measure, which is so rare. The way they incorporate the map 256 glitch is genius.
Really, get it, it’s great. With one caveat: their so-called Free-to-Play (FTP) model tips the wrong way. See this post by Jason Kottke (which has since been updated to reference this take by John Gruber).
Generally, these are the two major FTP strategies that games can employ:
- You can buy things with in-game currency that makes the game more fun. You earn currency in-game in dribs and drabs, but can progress much faster if you buy in-game currency with real-world currency, or if you watch ads. Playing the game only with earned-in-game currency is a grind, so you’re encouraged by buy.
- You can only play for a certain time allotment, and then the game is disabled or crippled in some manner. If you don’t want to wait to be allotted more time, you have to buy more time.
These strategies make money. Lots of money if you have a hit. But at the expense of fun. If you set out to make the most fun game you could make, you’d never do these things.
Pac-Man 256 implements both of those strategies as follows:
You upgrade your power-ups (laser, stealth mode, etc.) with coins. It costs 4,080 coins to upgrade a power-up all the way. There are 16 power-ups. You earn coins in-game by finding them. There aren’t many; maybe you can get 10-20/game if you focus on them. But if you want a better score you are better off ignoring coins. You can also earn coins by completing challenges. These pay better. Randomly somewhere between 16-256 coins, but mostly 16-64 coins. You can also earn coins by watching 15-30 second video ads, which pay off similarly. Sometimes each of those things gives you “credits” instead of coins (see #2 below). You can buy a “coin doubler” for $5.00 which doubles the payouts. Presumably it doubles both in-game coins and challenge/ad coins, but I haven’t bought it so I don’t know.
You get six credits to start. When you play, you can either choose to play with power-ups (more fun) which costs a credit, or you can play for free (no credit required) with no power-ups (less fun). When your credits are used up, you can only play without power-ups. Your credits replenish at a rate of one every 10 minutes. Sometimes when you complete a challenge or watch an ad you get two credits instead of coins. For $8.00 you can get infinite credits.
Unfortunately, this runs afoul of my golden rule for game monetization: always make it possible for the player to buy, with a one-time purchase, the optimized-for-fun version of your game.
Pac-Man 256, and most other FTP games, falls short on this front. Even if you buy everything, the game will still be more fun if you watch ads to earn coins at a faster rate. There is no way to buy an optimized-for-fun version.
On the bright side, Pac-Man 256 is still relatively benign on the FTP front. It doesn’t provide a path where anybody is going to wipe out their savings. It just doesn’t let me pay for the best possible version of Pac-Man 256, and that makes me sad.
