If it's a free-to-play, make it free.
I want all game developers to print the above sentence out and put it on their monitors, their refrigerators and their bathroom mirrors. Because their is nothing more insulting than paying for a game only to discover that it is actually a free-to-play game. Hardlight's 'Sonic Dash', released on Thursday on iOS, is a $1.99 endless runner that falls into that category.
Obviously I believe developers and publishers need to make money. They have bills just like the rest of us. But when they are already charging for a game it's wrong for them to put in slimy in-app purchases in as well.
What makes these in-app purchases so slimy?
There's a store front where you can only buy certain items that make the game fun with real money. There's a secondary currency that you earn so slowly, but need so much of, it becomes easier to just pay real money for it. When your game ends there's an option to continue but only if you have enough of the slowly earned secondary currency.
This is one of those games that when it inevitably goes free-to-play, the publisher will say something like, "This won't change the game play experience at all because it was built from the ground-up to have free-to-play hooks." And for that, I sentence them to free-to-play jail where there's nothing to do but play free-to-play MMORPG's. However, their credit cards don't work and even the smallest amount of progress requires 50 hours of grinding.
'Sonic Dash', aside from some touchy jump controls, plays fine. If you've played any of the 'Temple Run' iterations, you've played this game. Just imagine it's Sonic instead of the dude from "Temple Run" and you're in a world with lots of loops and coins instead of a jungle with lots of trees that need to be slid under. But really, if you want to play this game just wait a few weeks. It will be free-to-play soon enough.
