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Can the free to play business model work for story-based games?

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In case you haven’t noticed, the whole games market is moving towards the so called “Free to play” business model. It started in the asian countries and now it seems that it’s going to be the “next big thing”. On Facebook games is already the “norm”.

How it works? quite simple. Instead of having the traditional time/feature limited demo and one-time fee to get the game fullversion, here you can “in theory” play for free as long as you want. In practice, the gameplay is crafted in such a way that first draws you into the game, and then when you’re just about to have fun, it starts cutting off your fun by telling you how lame you are because you didn’t spend 500 “virtual gold” to buy a new horse, or how the “platinum membership” would make the game much more fun.

Personally I don’t like it, I tried a few games but the fact that the designer had to design the gameplay around this system restrict the gameplay innovation. Indeed this system works well mostly on RPG (MMORPG) or strategy/simulation games. But what will happen to story-based games? Visual Novel, Dating Sims or maybe even just FPS with a good story like Max Payne or Assassin Creed?

I really don’t think is possible to successfully implement this in a heavy story-driven game. What would you do, show one chapter at time and ask for a small microtransaction every chapter? why don’t just ask people to “pay upfront” the amount and be done with it? or in a dating sim for example, ask $5 each dateable character? what would be the fun in spending $5 to date only 1 character in a game? it seems quite silly to me, especially since we’re talking about very low amount of money. I don’t need to make again the classic example that if you go out with friends to watch a movie you easily spend in drinks, fuel, and extras x2-3 times the amount of a regular indie game ($20) and have fun for one day, instead of weeks or in some cases months.

And in all other F2P games you can play free, but in practice the experience is so awful that either you pay nothing, play a few hours/days and quit, or you decide to invest your time (and money) in the game and then you’ll easily exceed $20 … by a lot! That’s fine of course, everyone can do what they want with their money.

But speaking about a possible implementation of F2P in story-based games, my answer it’s still: no. I really think it wouldn’t make much sense at all.

Also I really don’t believe that in few years ALL games (even RPG/strategy games) will become F2P. There are many downsides to that (being always online, annoying multiplayer experiences, the worst value for money as player, lots of maintenance as developers, possible hackers attack, and I could go on) and in general not everyone wants to make a game that has severe gameplay/game design restrictions. At least, I hope! 🙂

And now enough talking about the game business and here are some news about the current games in development!

Spirited Heart Girl’s Love

That’s how I’m going to officially call the Spirited Heart expansion. I will also change the purchase options: you can buy either the “normal” version or the Girl’s Love for $19.99, or if you have already bought the original game the expansion will cost $9.99. If you don’t have either and you buy them together, the final price will be $29.99 (so still only $9.99 more than the normal version). The game will expand the original one with 6 different (and unique!) dateable girls and also the endings reflect your race now (even for the males). So if you were disappointed by Frebo ending in the original game, this time pick a human or even better a demoness and you’ll see that will be better 🙂

Ria Yana

The Spirited Heart expansion is at very good point (all plot is finished) and will be surely out by August if not sooner.

Loren The Amazon Princess

Things are going well: I decided was time to ask the help of someone that knows coding better than me, and we’re building up a RPG Framework so that I can reuse it for future titles. As you can see from the gallery screen below, the game interface is taking shape and we’ll have a skilltree with several specializations, a full inventory with many equippable slots (yes I changed my mind about the inventory!) and a very good quest screen, with the possibility of having sub-quests (so more powerful than the Planet Stronghold one for example).

Class_icons_002_backpack Class_icons_002_questbook Class_icons_002_skills

While things are going forward at good speed, because this game will use a completely new system will need good testing and also the plot still needs to be written in good part, so it’s very unlikely that I’ll have even just beta preorders before September (and even that is an optimistic date). Much will depend on artist/writer/coder speed as always!

Finally, I want to leave you with a nice graph showing all the romance possibilities of Loren RPG:

Romances

There’s something cooking…

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But fear not, I’m not going to cook my sweet cat Gilda, who in the picture above found a new way to use my pot 🙂

Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook

We’re getting close to finish it. I know I’ve been saying this already, but there are still a few backgrounds missing, and some more testing needed, but definitely not much! Is really likely to be finished in July!

Spirited Heart Deluxe Girl’s Side

Even this expansion is at a very good point. Only a character subplot left to finish and then will need to test and check everything. This is very likely to be done either in end of July or August. The sprites are not yet all ready, but what has been done so far is absolutely lovely. Check the image below:

Reid

But don’t think all the girls will be like Reid, the sexy demoness dancer. Each one has her own personality and different life goals: cute princesses, fearsome thieves, anti-social genius and more bizarre characters will be present in the expansion, who is going to be as big as the main game! I think there’s really a very good variety of situations in the game and even if the theme is girl’s love, I think some scenes are really beautiful and everyone should play it 😉

Loren Amazon Princess

This is going to be delayed a bit, since I’m getting a complete RPG framework done by a “real coder” (that’s not me! lol). This way I can re-use it for future games or add-ons (even in different settings/game worlds). I should have done this before, but as they say, better late than never! Meanwhile, right now the romance scenes are being drawn, the first ones are Loren and Elenor/Saren. Everything will happen during a full moon night, when Loren goes in a lake nearby to take a bath… As said already the scenes will be completely optional because will be more sexy than usual, and you won’t see them at all if you disable the option in the preferences screen.

Undead Lily and The Elemental Avengers

The final battle poses of the last two heroes are being made right now! Though there are still all the romance scenes, and probably will also need more art for the strategic map… this game is becoming really bigger than I thought, hopefully my efforts and investment will be rewarded! 🙂

More news and surprises coming soon…

I’ll be also promoting soon some games made by indie game developers friends, and I am also getting ready to launch an interesting promotion somewhere in July, offering several themed games that will make sci-fi fans happy. Stay tuned for more news!

Karaoke contest winner and Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook update

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It was a while since I last posted a picture of my cats, so here’s Otello in a very uncomfortable pose…! And here are the latest news:

The Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook release date

I know last week I said that on next blog post (this one) I could have made an official announcement… well, I am making one but unfortunately is not the beginning of the pre-orders ! As some of you that follow Sakevisual blog already know, Ayu (the writer of the game) had a car accident while driving back from a convention. She’s fine but need to rest, so the game release is going to be delayed by a few weeks. We hope at end of this month to have at least the pre-orders though, since there isn’t really much left to do!

As you can see from the portraits below, even Natalie was shocked when she heard the news!

Nat2_preview2

And now for some good news:

Always Remember Me karaoke contest winners!

The winners have been already notified, I waited some days to see if Cristina Vee could make a video announcement but she’s too busy right now so I’m officially posting the winning videos on my blog. I have to say that was amazed when I listened to them (and also to many other videos submitted), the response was awesome! Thank you everyone <3

Note that the winners are in no particular order. All 3 deserve fame and glory, this isn’t a ranking, I just list them in random order:

For masterful singing and mixing, especially impressive use of transposition and harmony. A natural and credible rendition from a male vocalist.

For vocal creativity, spot-on harmony, and dynamic mixing. We especially loved her “lalala” melody during the introduction.

For an endearing and youthful vocal presence. Bringing earnestness and a beautiful vibrato, this emerging talent shows a lot of promise.

 

Loren Amazon Princess base classes

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Chapterone Lorenelenor

This week finally started working on Loren Amazon Princess RPG ruleset. I want to be very clear that this is going to be a more casual RPG! So nothing complex as Planet Stronghold. However this time I’ll design it in a way that I can easily add more features later. Working for 6 months on Planet Stronghold helped me to understand the various coding problems you can encounter while developing a RPG, but I had to hurry up to finish that game (especially in the last months) so the resulting codebase can’t really be “re-used” with other games as I hoped.

It was a mistake and something I don’t want to repeat with this RPG. So don’t  be shocked if I tell you that very likely the game won’t have an inventory. Yes, you read it right ! But before you delete my site from the bookmark  “indie RPG”, read on 🙂

The game will focus, like Planet Stronghold, mainly on battles and character relationships. The main features of this new RPG will be:

  1. the overall polishing level: is very likely will have another custom theme song, will have top quality artwork (as you can see from the screenshots) and I also want to include more cinematic scenes during the battles. For the battle itself I have an idea how to make it, in a way where you’ll be able to see the heroes positions on the battlefield (more info about this later after I’ve done some tests to see the feasibility of this feature).
  2. the skilltrees system: every character starts with 3 skilltrees, each of them has 3 or more skills. Of those three skilltrees, one is the character Class (which can be Warrior, Thief and Mage), one is a character specialization (for example Loren has Dual Wield, the playing character has Healer) and a unique skilltree for each character. This way every character will have a real personality and will be much more fun to play each of them (you can use 12 characters in the game). Below is a work-in-progress flowchart of the three base skilltrees:
    Loren Amazon Princess RPG base classes For a more detailed explanation, check the game official forums here.
  3. game currency: when you defeat enemies, you’ll get money, and items. Wait, didn’t I say that the game won’t have an inventory? yes, indeed the items will be resource materials that you’ll be able to use to upgrade your weapons and equipment, increasing your character power. During the game you’ll encounter several places with blacksmiths or enchanters that will be able to improve your equipment if you bring them the right materials. This way, even without a real inventory, you can still grow your characters.
  4. choose male or female character: yes, even Planet Stronghold featured two genders. This time though, the gender you choose will influence the gameplay. Saren, a human male warrior, will have unique melee combat skills. While Elenor, elf female thief, will have unique long-range combat skills. Obviously, like my other games, the gender will also influence which romance subplots you’ll be able to unlock in the game.
  5. better movement map: I plan to have some scripted scenes, to advance the story, but also allow freedom of movement in a bigger map. I’m not sure yet about this last feature since would require some work, so for now this is the only thing that falls under the category “maybe if I have enough time/budget”!

I really think that if you liked Planet Stronghold, you’ll like Loren The Amazon Princess RPG! And for those waiting for The Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook or more otome games, don’t worry, next week I might be doing an official announcement… stay tuned! 😉

Winter In Fairbrook – Meet Ryan

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Ryan

This is the last blog post about Winter In Fairbook cast, and I’m pleased to introduce you Ryan, the only male character what wasn’t present in the main game. As you can see from this video, he doesn’t seem to take himself in much consideration, thinking that talking about his personal life is not an interesting subject. I have the impression that Natalie will have to try her best to get something out of this boy!

Anyway, we discover some information about him: that he studies biology in a college out of state, and he doesn’t live in Fairbrook all year round. Since he runs the general store of Fairbrook, and that’s where Natalie can buy lots of stuff including flower seeds, I’m sure that our heroine will have many more occasions to talk with him again.

Lastly I have some good news about the game release. Since Sakevisual wants to sell this one at the June conventions in USA, is very likely that a pre-order version will be available before next weekend. Of course, the best way to keep up with the latest news is to follow me on twitter or facebook.