Pokémon No Go

Review

Pokémon GO, Niantic (iOS)

Abstract: Pokémon GO by Niantic is one the most engaging mediocre games in recent memory. Behind the worldwide Pokémon GO sensation is an experience that’s riddled with problems. Pokémon GO is not a good game: it has scarce gameplay, unexplained mechanics, boring monotony and poor optimization. Pokémon GO is also not a good Pokémon game: terrible battles, frustrating candy systems, and a combat power rating that both obsoletes your catches and transforms Pokémon into lifeless numbers. Yet I can’t help but be excited when I find a Pokémon I’ve never seen before. Pokémon GO is something special. I just wish it were special AND good. It’s not.

Pokémon GO is a hit. A global sensation. In the span of only a few days it became one of the largest trending topics across old media and new. Its release was momentous. In one day, it skyrocketed Nintendo’s shares by 25%, the largest one-day increase since the release of the Famicom in 1983. An jump that increased Nintendo’s market capital by $9 billion. Data shows that Pokémon GO is likely earning over $2 million a day for Nintendo and developer Niantic. Just the other night, a Pokémon GO Twitter account tweeted that server issues were due to nearly 48 million users try to log on simultaneously. Regardless of what I write in this review, it won’t change those facts. Pokémon GO is a titan of a release, something to a degree we’ve never quite seen before. My duty, however, is to separate myself from Pokémon GO the cultural artifact and look at Pokémon GO the game. Unfortunately, that’s where everything begins to fall apart.

I wanted to like Pokémon GO. No, more than that. I wanted to love Pokémon GO. Like most children of the 90’s, I grew up catching Pokémon. My nostalgia runs deep. Pokémon Blue is among the first games I can remember playing start to finish. I sat diligently plugging away at my translucent Gameboy Pocket, Pokémon Blue cartridge in tow, catching them all and defeating gym leaders. It was one of the first games I got really deep into. I remember writing up prospective team compositions, moves I wanted my favorites to learn, and strategies to tackle the Elite 4. It wasn’t a passing phase for me either. I have played every Pokémon generation to date: Blue to Silver to Ruby to Diamond to White to X. If Pokémon GO could deliver an experience even a fraction of what I enjoyed before, I would be happy. After playing, I’m not very happy.

If only Pokémon GO were a little more like this.

Let’s first get into what Pokémon GO is. Pokémon GO is a location-based Pokémon catching game that mixes traditional elements of the monster collecting franchise with augmented reality. Like all Pokémon games, you start by selecting your trainer, speaking with a professor, and catching your starter Pokémon. Catching is done by swiping your finger upwards, throwing a Pokéball that must collide the Pokémon. Using the camera, you can have the monster appear “in the real world” right in front of you—sitting on your coffee table or at your work desk or at the park. Seeing the nicely rendered 3D models of classic Pokémon appear in the real world is great. It’s fun to whip your phone around to see where the little critter is hiding. Even 20+ hours in, I still get joy out of seeing a Zubat hovering on top of my stove or outside my lab’s window. Catching and collecting isn’t great, though. Thrown Pokéballs don’t always follow the trajectory of your swipe, resulting in wasted throws. Unlike in the Pokémon games themselves, there is no real strategy to catching wild Pokémon. You just throw the ball and see if the Pokémon decides to stay in or not. There is a timing mechanic, in which you are asked to throw the ball in the middle of a colored circle that expands and shrinks, but at best this marginally affects capture rate.

It's fun to see a Pidgey behind my laptop
at work, even 20+ hours in.

After collecting your starter, you’re off to the real world. There is where Pokémon GO shines the brightest. Following the model of its spiritual predecessor Ingress, Pokémon GO plops you down on a simplified map based on your current location. Pulling from Google Maps data, you can see the buildings and streets and rivers nearby. Certain real world landmarks play important roles in Pokémon GO. Some locations are Pokéstops, places where you can check-in to receive in-game items like extra Pokéballs or potions/revives. Other locations are gyms, places where you can do battle with other players (kind of). Everything else is open space in which to hunt Pokémon. Pokémon spawn in real world locations. A menu shows Pokémon with the closest proximity to the player. Some will be right next to you, others further away as denoted by 1 to 3 footprint symbols under their picture. You can then run, walk, bike, drive, whatever, to get close enough to the Pokémon to capture them. There are common and rare spawns, each lasting for an undisclosed but fixed period of time. The location-based nature of Pokémon GO is fantastic. I love checking in on where I am in the world and seeing what creatures are lurking nearby. Pokémon GO has fun design choices too, like water type Pokémon appearing more often near real world bodies of water, or rock type Pokémon appearing by mountains or deserts. Pokémon GO does a great job at encouraging people to get up and moving, to explore new parts of their city, and to chase their next catch.

Exploring the real world in a Pokémon GO
lens is by far the game's best feature.

As much as I like Pokémon GO’s premise, it fails in so many fundamental ways as a video game. From a gameplay perspective, there is little to nothing to actually do while playing. You walk around in the real world, see a Pokémon, throw a couple balls at it, it gets caught or it doesn’t, and then you rinse & repeat. Collection, Pokémon GO’s central mechanic, is nothing but luck and persistence. The game requires no skill whatsoever, so that even the rarest captures can feel unrewarding. When not catching Pokémon you have a precious few things to do. Candies can be used to evolve your Pokémon. You receive three of that species’ candy with each capture, and one from transferring (deleting) that Pokémon away. To evolve a Pidgey into a Pidgeotto, for example, you need to catch 4 separate Pidgeys. You can also power up Pokémon using candies and Stardust—a resource that’s gained with each capture. Powering up a Pokémon increases its Combat Power, or CP, but I’ll get to that more in a bit. The moment to moment gameplay in Pokémon GO is deeply repetitive. It’s a slow, relatively unrewarding slog.

To make matters worse, Pokémon GO never explains its gameplay nuances to players. From capture experience to differences in a Pokémon’s base stats to gym battles, nothing is told to players. Perhaps this was intentional, designed to get players socializing, but it comes across poorly. Speaking of socializing, for a game that encourages players to interact with one another, Pokémon GO has absolutely no social features built in. No friends lists, no messaging, no leaderboards, no trading. Some of these are allegedly coming in an update, but the launch version of Pokémon GO is devoid of any such feature. Moreover, Pokémon GO feels so poorly coded. Server issues aside (which are maybe excusable due to the gargantuan demand), Pokémon GO just doesn’t run well. I need to hard close the app after nearly every use. I get stuck on loading screens constantly. Sometimes I’ll catch a Pokémon only to have it never appear in my box. The location services are finicky at best. My avatar will pop around a map as it searches, or I’ll be greeted with a giant red bar stating ‘GPS signal not found.’ Trying to actually play Pokémon GO is frustrating, and when the game you’re treated to once everything loads is astonishingly lackluster, it makes the experience all the worse.

Yay it's working! For now. And only kind of.

The issues don’t stop there. Pokémon GO is not only a poorly designed video game, it’s also a bad Pokémon game. Strategy, a centerpiece of the franchise, is replaced with luck and persistence in all facets of Pokémon GO. The candy-based evolution and powerup systems work against the core of what Pokémon games accomplished: forming a connection between you and your monsters. I can still remember by Pokémon Blue team. The Blastoise I raised from the beginning, the Aerodactyl I got from a fossil, the Moltres I found on Victory Road. But in Pokémon GO, every new catch is a checkbox. You need to catch 4 Pidgeys to get one Pidgeotto, and then another 17 to evolve Pidgeotto into Pidgeot. The trademark line of Pokémon is “Gotta Catch ‘Em All,” not “Gotta Catch Several Dozen Of The Same Boring Ones You Already Have.” New catches become numbers on a screen, losing the life and personality of the distinct Pokémon.

You can't see the bottom of this list, but trust
me, it's all Pidgey's and Zubats.

Battling is by far the worst part of Pokémon GO. For starters, battling in Pokémon GO can only happen at gyms. After claiming a gym for the first time, Pokémon GO players can choose one of their Pokémon to stay and guard it. Other players can then come in and do battle against the incumbent gym leaders. Battles are asynchronous, meaning that the Pokémon and trainers you’re fighting against are controlled by A.I and not players. The tried and true turn based battles are replaced instead by real time tap fests. Tapping the screen causes your Pokémon to use its basic attack, swiping can (sort of) be used to dodge attacks, and once your power meter fills, holding down on the screen for a second or two unleashes your big attack. But really, and I’ve seen this in person too, it’s just tapping on your screen as fast as possible hoping to do enough damage before your Pokémon is knocked out. (I should mention, none of this is explained to players, you’re just dropped in). Battling requires no skill, no thought. It is unfun in the worst possible way. What determines victory more often than not is a Pokémon's Combat Power (CP) rating. Perhaps unsurprisingly by this point in the review, CP is another thing I took issue with.

Battling your Pokémon is irredeemably awful.

Each Pokémon you catch has a set CP number. This number can be increased by powering them up with candies and Stardust, or by evolving them. As I just mentioned, aside from exploiting type weaknesses, CP is the biggest determinate in which Pokémon will win a fight. Finding high CP critters is critical. The issues with CP are multifaceted. First, the lifelessness and disconnect you feel with your team is compounded by always looking for the Pokémon with the highest CP. As your profile levels up, you start to find higher CP Pokémon in the wild. That means that those Pokémon you spent candies and Stardust on just the other day quickly become obsolete. Pokémon GO discourages you from evolving Pokémon until your account is a very high level, but that unfortunately means there is even less to do while playing. Pokémon GO has you in the role of a Pokémon catcher, not a Pokémon trainer. I got excited the first time I caught a leveled up a 230 CP Pinsir (a rare find), only to be bummed two days later when I caught a 279 Clefairy and a 240 Pidgey. CP also makes it so that only the most devoted players can control gyms. I’ve tried exploiting type weaknesses and specifically tailoring a team to take out a nearby gym, only to get soundly defeated because the gym’s leader had a 1300 CP Lapras that annihilated my 540 CP Jolteon. Battling is a steep uphill climb I don’t want to make.

Exploiting type weaknesses won't matter - I have no
chance to win. At my level, I can't even get a 1000+ CP Pokémon.

So if Pokémon GO is neither a good game nor a good Pokémon game, why am I still playing? Why did I feel a rush of excitement today when I came across my first Vulpix on my morning walk to lab? Pokémon GO has an indefinable appeal. I want to collect ‘em all. I want to see my trainer be a gym leader for a day or two. Gameplay, design, and coding missteps aside, Pokémon GO offers something so unique and clever I can’t help but suffer through it (for the time being). Pokémon GO is one of the most engaging mediocre, bordering on bad, games I’ve ever played. At times my frustration overrides the novelty and I doubt I’ll still be playing a few weeks from now, but for the moment, I’ll keep going. I wanna be the very best, after all.

Pokémon GO

2/5

Clash For Gold

Review

Clash Royale, Supercell (iOS)

Abstract: Clash Royale is a PVP deck-based real time strategy tower defense game from Supercell, developers of the infamous Clash of Clans. This strange genre fusion works perfectly. It is a game that I never knew I wanted. Smart design permeates the entire experience: from gameplay, to player progress, to card utility, to match length. Unfortunately, Clash Royale still bears its microtransaction-heavy lineage prominently as overlong chest timers, painfully slow rate of currency acquisition, and pay-to-win card leveling at the highest levels of play mar an otherwise exceptional experience. All things considered, however, Clash Royale is an impressive package that has more than proved its worth.

Clash Royale is a game I never thought I would play. In fact, at first glance, Clash Royale seemed like another smartphone title I would openly disparage here on the blog or on the podcast. The game comes from the notorious mobile developer Supercell, who made it big with Clash of Clans. Ostensibly ‘free,’ Clash of Clans is a mundane, resource management tower defense game that quickly dulled. The game also felt exploitative with how badly real money purchases shaped the play experience. So when Clash Royale went live on the App Store, I was less than thrilled. The game started getting high praise from critics and sites I respect, however, and once I learned it was a card-based mobile title I knew I had to try it out. Which brings me to today. I like Clash Royale. I’m still playing Clash Royale weeks after downloading it. I think Clash Royale is well designed. It’s weird, I know.

Describing Clash Royale is a mouthful, especially for a game that plays as simply as it does. Clash Royale is a player versus player deck-based real time strategy tower defense game. Phew. Each player has three towers, two minor and one King. Each player builds a deck of eight cards. Cards can be divided into a couple groups. You have troop cards, which place units onto the field that move to attack your opponent’s towers or troops.  You have building cards, which place defensive structures on your side of the field. And finally you have spells, which generally do some kind of area of effect damage. The objective of each match is to destroy your opponent’s towers while defending your own. The player with the fewest towers at the end of the match loses.

Clash Royale in a nutshell.

Within this simple conceit, however, is some pretty remarkable complexity. Don’t let the naysayers fool you: Clash Royale is a tactical game. Every card in your deck costs a certain amount of elixir. A meter at the bottom of your screen represents elixir and it slowly regenerates throughout the match. Playing cards costs meter, limiting the number of cards you can play at any given moment. Further, each card has to be placed on the grid-like field of play. Some troops move fast, others slow. Each defense structure has a certain area it can attack or distract enemy troops within. Spells deal set amount of damage in a small area. Like all great card games, Clash Royale is all about gaining a strategic & resource advantage over your opponents, like playing a card that costs less elixir than your opponent’s to counter it (thereby giving you an elixir advantage). Card placement is crucial. Play a weak card without support too close to your opponent’s side of the field and it can die instantly, allowing your opponent to punish your mistake. Play too many cards too quickly and you can run out of elixir, meaning that you won’t have the ability to counter your opponent’s next move. As I’ve progressed up the ranked ladder, I’ve seen a bevy of strategies emerge. My misplays are heavily punished and my smart plays win me games. It’s a satisfying feeling done best in card games, and it is done extremely well in Clash Royale.

Elixir, placement, attacking, defending.
A lot goes into a game of Clash Royale.

New cards are obtained via chests. It's devious but compelling nonetheless. The player receives a free chest every four hours. Destroying 10 of your opponents’ towers grants you one Crown Chest each day. The bulk of your chests comes from winning, however. Each win grants one chest of a random rarity. Silver is the worst, followed by Gold, then Giant, then Magical, and finally Super Magical. The player has four chest slots, meaning you can only ever hold 4 "card packs" at a time. Each chest has an unlock timer. When you tap to open a chest you’re presented with two options: wait the full time it takes to open on its own (3, 8, 12, 12, and 24 hours respectively) or bypass through use of the premium currency, gems. Here’s where we get to one of my major issues with Clash Royale. Clash Royale is a game that simply doesn’t want you to play it without spending money. Waiting for chests to open, to give you those new cards and gold (which I’ll talk about in a second) is excruciating. Once you get your four chest slots full there is essentially no reward to keep playing, aside for gaining more ranked trophies to move you up higher on the ladder. As one might expect, gems are dolled out painfully slowly. The way chests are handled has completely shaped the way I play this game, especially in comparison to other F2P mobile card games (i.e. Hearthstone). Once my chest slots are full, I stop playing. I don’t want to stop playing, but I do because playing while full feels like a waste of my time. Bummer.

Yeah, no thanks. Winning when your chest
slots are full gives essentially no reward.

All of that said, I enjoy the way Clash Royale handles its card collection. First and foremost, each of the 48 total cards offer something new to how you play the game. Barbarians are a go to defensive card that can wreak havoc on offense, but gets countered easily by the fireball spell. I love the hard-hitting Pekka card and the swift flying Baby Dragon. For the most part, card balance in the game is great. All cards (except for maybe one, looking at you Freeze spell) have counters. All strategies have counters too. Further, the way you use the cards you obtain is great. Once you get a new card you unlock it for use in any of your decks. That card starts at Level 1. Cards can be leveled up to more powerful versions of themselves by acquiring duplicates, and then consuming those duplicates for the price of gold. It’s a crucial part of making a more powerful deck. The card leveling system is an elegant solution to the classic card game problem: when you feel like the cards you get out of a pack are useless. Every card is useful in Clash Royale. Commons are easier to level up due to rarity, while Epics can take quite some time. Having cards at the right level for your rank comes pretty naturally, though you will encounter players that have spent real money whose troops are a higher level than your own. At most levels of play, card level deficits can be countered by strategy.

Every aspect of Clash Royale highlights player progress. As I just mentioned, seeing your collection grow and your cards level up is a huge incentivizer to keep playing. One way to speed up progress is by joining a clan. It enables friendly battles and card donation. Like one card in particular? Ask your clanmates to donate and you can level it up in no time. Your own donations are incentivized with gold, too. As you level up cards or donate you also add to your King Level. The higher it gets, the more health your towers have and the more damage they do to enemy troops. King Level is a smart solution to balancing the needs of early game, mid game, and high level play. At low levels, the health + attack of towers compared to enemy troops favors the tower, thereby giving the player more leeway to make mistakes. At high levels, the advantage goes to the troops, meaning players are more punished for their mistakes. It’s been so fun seeing how my play has evolved throughout my time with the game, and how far I’ve come.

Arena 6 isn't bad for a free player I guess?

Clash Royale is a game designed from the ground up to be a great mobile, and competitive, experience. The match making is nearly instantaneous. I have never waited more than 10 seconds to find an opponent. Every single match I’ve had has been lag free, even when playing people from Korea or Russia. A game of Clash Royale takes at longest four minutes. The standard game length is three minutes with a one minute overtime if the players are tied. You are in and out fast, making Clash Royale great while waiting for the bus, in the bathroom, or otherwise. Results are saved after every match and you even have access, for a limited time, to watch a replay of your past games (great for learning from your mistakes). So much of Clash Royale’s design is so clever. It’s remarkable. It’s quality worth killing for.

I can't help but squeeze the quick game or
two in whenever I get the chance.

I could spend another thousand words going through the specifics of what I like about Clash Royale’s gameplay. The risk-reward of troop placement, how to best counters certain strategies, how to negotiate when to push towers and when to play defensively. Suffice to say, there is a lot to like. And if you’re still confused about the ins-and-outs you can check up a great write up over here.

I do want to spend a couple dozen pointing out some of the game’s flaws, though. As I said before, Clash Royale’s attempts at converting F2P players into paying can feel downright dirty. Aside from what I’ve already written about, having enough gold to actually level up cards is a rarity. There’s too much of a focus on disengaging the player. A substantial portion of the game’s community is toxic. Currently clan chat is not moderated (I was momentarily in a clan in which several people joked about committing suicide) and your opponent’s can spam taunts without any recourse (a squelch option would be much appreciated). Though not an issue for me yet, Supercell also needs to address how the highest level of play is completely pay-to-win. You cannot make it to the highest ranks without dropping thousands of dollars on the game, period.

Here are all the cards I would level up, if
I had enough gold. I never have enough gold.

As it stands now, I still play Clash Royale every day. And I’m still enjoying the heck out of it. Clash Royale is such a smart fusion of what Supercell has done in the past while incorporating recent trends of the mobile gaming market. Most impressively, however, Clash Royale is a superbly designed video game. Trust me, I’m as, if not more, surprised than you are. We live in exciting times.

Clash Royale

4/5

A Devious Pairing: Card Packs and Monetizing Free-to-Play

Article

Abstract: The race to the bottom in mobile gaming markets has led to an advent of free to play (F2P) games that monetize via in-game purchases. Subtractive and exploitative in-game purchases sullied the image of F2P games and left developers & companies alike searching for solutions. The wild success of the F2P card game Hearthstone has fueled a revolution in the F2P space, in which buying card packs fuels huge revenues. Opening card packs is deeply satisfying and, for now, a novel (but devious) solution to monetizing free games. The perceived value, guaranteed rewards and the joy of collection keeps players opening packs and invested in the game, be it financially or otherwise. It looks like card packs might be here to stay.

It’s electric. Your purchase of ten packs has been so-so. You’ve gotten rares that you have already opened before and a bevy of commons. But you’re down to your last two packs. Your big win is coming. That epic you’ve always wanted. That legendary that forever seemed out of your grasp. You know that, while unlikely, these next two packs could be the best you’ve ever opened. It’s the fuel that keeps you buying, keeps you opening, and keeps you invested. Welcome to the wonderful world of card packs.

It’s a feeling, a high, I’ve felt off and on throughout my life. I started playing Magic: The Gathering when I was five or six. I loved the art, the strategies, the deck building, the community. But above all, I liked the packs. 15 glorious cards packed perfectly into a thin foil wrapper. A wonderful mystery sold for the low price of just a few bucks. Money burned a hole in my pocket in my early childhood—as soon as I got my allowance I begged to go to the card store so I could finally get my pack opening fix. Each new pack was an endorphin shot. It was gambling, but not really. Every pack worked towards my end goals of collection and of having the cards I needed to build new decks. I was hooked.

The opiate of my early childhood.

What I never expected, especially once I had mostly moved away from buying Magic cards, was that I would get trapped in the pack opening vortex once again, but this time in free-to-play (F2P) mobile games. It took the video game industry a while but they finally stumbled upon the secret sauce Magic had been pumping out for nearly 20 years. And from what I can tell, that ‘sauce’ has fueled a revolution in F2P games that’s shaping the future of gaming.

Mobile gaming is a market largely defined by its sweeping trends. An idea is sparked and it catches like wildfire, with the biggest of the big hoping to secure their place and the small and the imitators hoping to get a small sliver of the gigantic pie. One such trend is the so-called “race to the bottom.” The crowded gaming ecosystem made it harder and harder for developers to convince consumers to play their titles, let alone to spend money on their game. Game developers and analysts alike noticed that mobile consumers budgeted very little money towards buying smartphone games. In response, the price for mobile games dropped dramatically. From $10 to $5 to $2 to the bottom: to free. Making games, marketing them, and getting them placed on digital store fronts is not an inexpensive process, however, so companies needed to find ways to make back their financial investment.

There is a whole lot of 'free' out there.

The solution for most was microtransactions: small purchases that contribute to your gameplay experience. Generally these microtransactions ask for just a few dollars at a time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, companies found that players already invested in the game’s ecosystem by playing for free were more likely to spend money on the final product. Plus, since the game is advertised as free, many thousands more might try it out. Playing is as simple as downloading the app. As it turns out, however, F2P games with microtransactions did not turn out as pro-player as they seemed. In order to ensure some financial return, key gameplay features were often gated behind microtransactions. For example, you could have a racing game that offers one track and one car for free, but all remaining tracks and cars would have to be purchased for real money. Microtransactions were also used to allow players to keep playing. Many F2P games used artificial walls to halt player progress that could only be bypassed by either a) waiting for several hours or b) spending money. Other F2P titles would pit players against immense challenges that could only be beaten by a) spending many hours doing repetitious leveling up / resource collecting or b) spending money to skip that ‘grind.’ F2P-game microtransactions got so bad that many players moved away from these kinds of games entirely. They felt exploitative. They felt unfair. They felt mean. So if you were a developer hoping to make a F2P game with microtransactions as your revenue source, you needed to do something different.

I enjoyed Jurassic Park Builder for a while, but the obtrusive and mean-spirited
pay walls killed all my enthusiasm.

That something different, it turns out, was Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. Hearthstone is a F2P card game that I’ve written about a lot here on The Impact Factor (my review, my joy of playing, card balance, new set reviews, & more). Though it started as a PC/Mac title, Hearthstone rapidly found its home in the mobile market. Smart design and good marketing made Hearthstone a fast success. Players and critics alike were raving about it. And Hearthstone was making a lot of money. Hearthstone was a huge contributor to Blizzard’s record 2015, with greatly increased revenues over the previous year. It’s been reported that Hearthstone pulls in more than $20 million a month. The bulk of that revenue? Players spending money buying packs. Hearthstone found a way to get players to spend money on a F2P game and not feel cheated.

Hearthstone's unexpected success has shifted the F2P game space profoundly. We’re seeing an increasing number of games adopting Hearthstone’s pack-buying microtransactions to fuel their new titles. Some are card games, some just use the pack-buying content-collection loop to keep players invested. Duelyst adapts a card game into a grid-based tactical battle where your units are found by drawing cards out of your deck. Clash Royale is a tower defense slash real-time strategy fusion that has players drawing troop cards from a deck. Plants vs Zombies: Heroes is a new F2P card-based battle game using the beloved PvZ IP. Even Pokemon is jumping on board with Pokemon Co-Master, a F2P board game for smartphones where you can buy packs containing Pokemon figurines. And the list goes on.

It might not look like it, but Duelyst is a card game through and through.
Sprit orbs = card packs.

All of this got me this got me thinking: why are card packs such a successful monetization method for F2P games? What works about card packs that fails so miserably with premium currencies or time-walls? I have boiled it down to three reasons.

1. Perceived Value

The contentiousness surrounding microtransactions often centers around that fact that they are subtractive. The notion is that developers take aspects of their game and remove them from the free experience and charge for them. Or they put in mechanisms that prevent you from playing without spending money. Card packs work around this cleverly—the feel additive. You can play the base game, all modes and features, for free. Cracking packs and getting new cards simply changes the kind of experience you are having, rather than fill in the missing pieces. Hearthstone, Duelyst and Clash Royale alike provide the player with a decent suite of free cards to experiment with and build decks. For the best among these F2P card-based games, new cards augment an already stellar base game. Buying a pack is therefore valuable not because it completes your experience, but rather, gives you a new one.

New cards mean new experiences.

Further, the permanence of card acquisition goes a long way. Each new pack you open gives you something concrete, and something that could potentially affect the way you play the game for the duration of your experience. Spending real money on a card pack feels worthwhile because the cards are not a one-time thing. Your monetary investment doesn’t disappear after you spend it. Traditional microtransaction purchases are transient—getting past that annoying 12 hour wait by spending money doesn’t remove your future 12 hour waits. Whereas that card you got from the pack will be sitting in your collection forever. Your purchase has visual permanence. It’s easier to justify. It feels like a real, physical commodity.

2. Guaranteed Reward

Gambling taps into deeply rooted pleasure centers in the human brain. If history is any indication, promising big rewards for small investments is a great way to motivate people. And to get them to spend money. The problem with gambling, especially in the context of F2P microtransactions, is that you lose. A lot. And losing feels bad. Losing can feel like a complete waste of your money. In a casino, you can just leave or move to a different game. If you walk away from a video game that you feel has ripped you off, chances aren’t great that you’ll come back to be burned again. Navigating gambling-like F2P purchases while avoiding that loosing feeling is a tough one. In Puzzle and Dragons (a mobile F2P RPG-match 3 dungeon crawler), for example, the most powerful monsters in the game are obtained through playing a premium slot machine. To play the slot machine more than a few times every couple of weeks, you need to spend money. When you pull the handle and get a terrible result, it feels awful. Your investment feels worthless.

Card packs (partially) solve that problem. Like their real world counterparts, each pack is guaranteed to have certain kinds of cards within. In Hearthstone, each pack contains at least one rare. In Clash Royale, each chest tells you the gold & cards to expect. Opening a card pack isn’t exactly gambling, because you know you’re guaranteed to ‘win,’ it just how much you win that’s in question. It still feels bad to get the bare minimum rewards from a pack, but it never feels like a total loss. The best F2P card games have ways to make even the ‘bad’ rewards worth something. In Hearthstone, cards can be discarded for a resource used to craft any card you want. In Clash Royale, repeat cards can be used to level up your units or donated to members of your clan for gold. When you open a pack, you are guaranteed to use every single card you open in some way. Turns out that goes a long way.

All the rush of gambling with the reassurance
of guaranteed rewards.

3. The Joy of Collection

Opening packs of cards taps into ingrained parts of the human psyche about making progress, building up a collection, and getting the newest & best of whatever you care about. Each new pack you open could fill in that missing slot in your collection, or that missing slot in a deck you want to make. You’re one step closer to completing something that takes a lot of effort to finish. The joyous moment of when you open up a pack of cards should not be overlooked, either.  You get to see your rewards unfurl one by one, like opening presents on your birthday. The gradual reveal of a pack’s contents heightens tension for all subsequent cards and protracts out that high you feel when you get something new. A pack of five cards has five separate moments for you to be surprised, elated, or crushed. Each pack is a rollercoaster. It makes sense people want to pay to ride.

Pack opening is a one of the best rollercoasters I know.

However the future might look, F2P games with monetized cards packs are the new now. And it’s easy to see why. Just be careful out there. It is easy to get trapped in the endorphin vortex. I would know, I live there.

News & Views

10/17/15-10/23/15

Another Friday closer to Halloween and another heaping helping of great video game writing from around the web! If you haven’t already, please give the second episode of Snuggle & Scream a listen: my fiancée and I talk about The Guest!

In this week’s News & Views I found stories about one player’s quest to achieve the (nearly) impossible, surrealist humor in Undertale, and how a first-person shooter helped someone to discover their sexuality.

And of course you can check out the brand new episode of The Impact Factor podcast that was posted today! You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or if you prefer other methods, check out our SoundCloud. We’re on YouTube too!

Spotlight

The Messy True Story Behind The Making Of Destiny

Jason Schreier, Kotaku

Worth Reading

Borderlands & Asexual Representation: How I Discovered My Sexuality While Playing a First-Person Shooter

Nico W., The Mary Sue

Meet the secret new horror mistress of video games

Leigh Alexander, Offworld

How One Player Unlocked One of the PS4's Hardest Trophies

Patrick Klepek, Kotaku

Behind the humor of Toby Fox's Undertale

David Bennett, Kill Screen

With Comments

Balancing Act: Fixing Hearthstone's Patron Warrior Problem

Eric Van Allen, Paste

For Hearthstone addicts like myself, this week was pretty huge. One of the most dominant cards in one of the most dominant decks was made substantially less powerful. It’s a change I understand, but done in a way that still upsets me. Blizzard has a strange way of weakening cards, one that almost always makes them so bad they come unplayable. Still, the Warsong Commander change will be ultimately good for the future design space of the game. A new meta awaits.

The mobile games market is an absolute mess, thanks to you

Askel Junkilla, Polygon

This piece is worth reading if only for the stir it caused online following its publication. While Junkilla raises some fair points about the state of mobile development and the mobile games market, his bitterness (and ignorance) takes center stage. Many of his complaints seem to boil down to blaming consumers for his misreading of the market. I feel for the struggling developer, I really do, but his mindset isn’t a great one to have moving forward.

Skullgirls dev explains why Indivisible costs $3.5m to make

Jeffrey Matulef, Eurogamer

I included this article as well because of controversy. Skullgirls developer Lab Zero is trying to crowdfund their new RPG, Indivisible. There was some anger online about how much money the developers asked for ($1.5mil). The anger is demonstrative of ‘gamer’ ignorance about what it costs to develop games, though. I’m sick a tired of seeing Kickstarter games asking for a meager sum and pretending that it will be enough to make the next Skyrim. It’s BS. Mike Z in his interview with Eurogamer breaks down the ‘big ask’ and attempts to demystify game budgets. I’ve always respected Mike Z and the team at Lab Zero games, but it’s always great to have my trust re-confirmed. Tell the folks like it is, Mike. 

TIF Plays: Hearthstone Ranked! [4]

Gameplay

Another day, another Hearthstone stream. Check out an archive of my stream linked below, and be sure to catch me when I go live by following me on Twitter (@alexsamocha) and Twitch (MegalodonPhD) Enjoy!

News & Views

9/5/15-9/11/15

Welcome back everyone! We’re getting deeper and deeper into the packed Fall season. Metal Gear Solid V has been making news, big Hearthstone tournaments are happening every weekend, Until Dawn has the biggest numbers on YouTube, and plenty more. I’ve been having a great time using my September to play smaller titles that have been sitting in my backlog for far too long. Three titles beaten already!

As always, I’m back with another jam-packed entry into the long running News & Views series. This week I found writing about Hot Ryu and how sexiness is not sexual objectification, how Microsoft consulted with a Native American tribe for Killer Instinct, and the torment of being Mario. Check out the articles below and be sure to let me know what you think!

And of course you can check out the brand new episode of The Impact Factor podcast that was posted today! You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or if you prefer other methods, check out our SoundCloud. We’re on YouTube too!

Spotlight

'Good' isn't good enough - release an indie game in 2015

Daniel West, Gamasutra

Worth Reading

The Hell of Being Mario

Paul King, KillScreen

Animal Crossing is a Cracked Mirror

Steven Messner, Unwinnable

How Microsoft enlisted a Native American tribe to design a Killer Instinct character

Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat

How to train players right, so they don't hate learning to play

Mike Stout, Gamasutra

The "Hot Ryu" Meme: Sexiness vs. Sexual Objectification                                                                

Maddy Myers, The Mary Sue

With Comments

Things of Beauty: Super Smash Bros. as Spectator Sport

Innuendo Studios, YouTube

Innuendo Studios produces some absolutely phenomenal content. If you haven’t, his series “Why Are You So Angry” is a must watch. Taking a step back from heavier subjects, Innuendo Studios articulately and brilliantly describes his deep dive into eSports and competitive Smash Bros. play. Well worth your time.

Coherence and Dissonance

Lana Polansky, Sufficiently Human

Polansky touches on a truth in gaming that we, as an industry of writers and commentators, haven’t ever been able to precisely define. A couple years ago, the separation between gameplay and story was termed Ludonarrative Dissonance. A mouthful, I know. Here, Polansky argues that idea needs to be redefined. Thought about in new ways. Her idea is that of coherence versus dissonance. She argues, amongst many great points, that gameplay needs to support themes. I’m all for having better ways to describe video game phenomena.

Here's That Big Spoiler About Why Quiet Wears A Bikini in Metal Gear Solid V

Maddy Myers, The Mary Sue

Yeah, I had to put this in here. Sorry. Quiet is, well, Quiet. Kojima has a long history of not-so-great portrayals of women in his Metal Gear Solid franchise. On the character design side, Quiet is downright atrocious. Kojima himself said that Quiet was designed to cater to cosplayers because of her, uhm, outfit (or lack thereof). However, the game also offers a preposterous ‘reason’ for Quiet to be dressed like she is. So that raises the question found in this piece: Why not just be honest that Quiet’s design is purely for male fan-service?

The PlayStation Turns 20 Today -- What's Your Favorite Memory?

Patrick Klepek, Kotaku

I want to wish PlayStation a happy 20^th anniversary! I’ve been a huge fan of their consoles since the PS1 came out. My first PlayStation memory is going over to Mike’s house and sitting down to watch him play games like Twisted Metal, Jet Moto, and Metal Gear Solid. As soon as I saved up enough money (my parents REFUSED to buy me one, something something video games are bad for you something), I went to the game store and bought my own. 1998 was a good year.

The queer masculinity of stealth games

Riley Macleod, Offworld

Macleod offers a fascinating take on the male body in games. Often we see male characters that represent the male power fantasy: tall, muscle-laden badasses. But male protagonists in stealth games offer something different. To quote Macleod here, “In games, men's bodies often represent brute strength. Stealth games are the focal point for an alternative masculinity: sleek, illusory, sensitive, and self-reflective.” Great read.

Bosses, Rogues and Badasses: Chatting with Voice Actress Laura Bailey

Javy Gwaltney, Paste

Laura Bailey is a prolific voice actress. She also happens to be one of my favorites. It’s great to hear what she has to say about voice acting, the characters she plays and more. By the way, my favorites are Fetch (Infamous Second Son), Fiona (Tales from the Borderlands), and Rise (Persona 4 Golden).

TIF Plays: Hearthstone Ranked! [3]

Gameplay

Another day, another Hearthstone stream. Check out an archive of my stream linked below, and be sure to catch me when I go live by following me on Twitter (@alexsamocha) and Twitch (MegalodonPhD) Enjoy!

TIF Plays: Hearthstone Ranked! [2]

Gameplay

Another day, another Hearthstone stream. Check out an archive of my stream linked below, and be sure to catch me when I go live by following me on Twitter (@alexsamocha) and Twitch (MegalodonPhD) Enjoy!

More Like Pac-Mehn

Review

Pac-Man 256, Hipster Whale (Android)

Abstract: Despite a clear knowledge of what makes endless runners and Pac-Man fun, Pac-Man 256 falls flat. A monotonous gameplay loop lacks the ability to hold player attention for more than a handful of minutes. Restrictive F2P elements further frustrate the play experience. Excellent visuals and nostalgia-inducing sounds make for a pretty game, but Pac-Man 256 is ultimately hard to recommend. It’s just not very fun.

As a point of disclosure before I begin this review: I’m not a huge fan of the Pac-Man IP. Despite my many cherished arcade memories, playing a Namco Pac-Man title has never been one of them. Sure, I got a decent amount of enjoyment out of the tabletop-styled Ms. Pac-Man machine, but the gameplay loop never gripped me. To say my expectations were low coming into Pac-Man 256 would be an understatement. But the game had a hell of a lot of buzz coming from game designers and writers I trust, so I had to try it out.

Pac-Man 256 comes from Hipster Whale, a mobile game dev studio famous for their mega-hit Crossy Road. For those of you who don’t know, Crossy Road is a hybrid of the ever-popular genre on mobile devices, the endless runner, with classic Frogger gameplay. The charming aesthetic and simple control scheme had players, myself included, making their way through traffic, over rivers and through woods. Crossy Road isn’t a particularly deep experience, but one that satisfies the gaming on-the-go itch. Though not compelling for long play sessions, you could tell Hipster Whale understood what worked at the core of the Frogger experience, and translated it well into a smartphone game framework.

Part of the inspiration behind the game. The (in)famous Map 256 glitch.

Continuing their legacy of adding a mobile design twist to older arcade properties is Pac-Man 256. Made in collaboration with the IP holders, Bandai Namco, Pac-Man 256 is an endless runner fused together with standard Pac-Man maze exploration, dot eating, and ghost slaying. The game is inspired by the classic Map 256 glitch, a “kill screen” in which the entire right side of the screen was covered in a jumbled up mess of numbers. Your objective while playing Pac-Man 256 is characteristically simple: you must move upward through the maze, eating fruit and dots and power pellets, avoiding and or killing ghosts, until you die. Death comes in one of two forms. You can get hit by a ghost or, if you take too long moving upwards, get swallowed by an ever-encroaching glitch wave at the bottom of the screen. Like all endless runners, you play for high scores—seeking to beat your personal best, your friends, or to do well enough to place on the online leaderboards.

Moving through the maze isn’t as simple as it was in arcade Pac-Man, however. Pac-Man 256 gives the player a number of things to consider. Each ghost has a unique movement pattern. Inky (Blue) and Clyde (Orange) patrol areas. Pinky is still until it spots the player, after which it speeds quickly in your direction. Other ghosts move in a deadly conga line and others chase the player relentlessly after being awakened. Power-ups aid your struggle against the glitches and ghosts . Found at a similar frequency as power pellets, each power-up has a unique effect. You can collect a laser that shoots in a line in front of you, destroying all ghosts, or a bomb that will trigger on the next ghost that hits you. All of the above work together to add layers to gameplay, albeit thin ones.

Chomp your way to high scores. Be sure to mind the
lethal glitch wave behind you, too.

Pac-Man 256 offers players enough to do, but I never felt engaged with the content. It’s momentarily fun to start up a run, but the fun quickly fades as you play. Collecting power-ups can offer moments of intrigue in the relatively plodding pace of gameplay, but not enough to keep the moment-to-moment gameplay engaging. Moving through the maze lacks tension. There’s some fun to be found in trying to navigate the strange combinations of ghost movement patterns, but at times the random ghost layout can create nearly impassable blockades. Further, I never felt like I was doing enough. The only input is directional swiping, which due to a combination of some input lag and maze layout, felt poorly responsive. In a game in which you do one thing, that thing (swiping) better work perfectly. And in my experience, it didn’t.

Some ghost layouts can be downright mean.

Outside of runs you can use coins you’ve collected to level up your power-ups, but the upgrades felt insubstantial. Powering up your laser makes it last fractionally longer. Powering up your freeze blast makes it last fractionally longer. Yay. And that’s all you can do.

Making a laser last slightly longer isn't the best motivation.

Hipster Whale was pretty good at not implementing ‘shady’ free-to-play game design in Crossy Road, so I had hoped that Pac-Man 256 would follow suit. It doesn’t. Well, at least not in one crucial way. Each attempt at the endless maze costs players one credit. Players are allotted 6 credits each day. When you run out of credits you have three choices: pay real money for more credits, wait to play until tomorrow, or play without access to power-ups. As I just wrote above, power-ups are the one exciting moment of gameplay in Pac-Man 256 and are certainly major determinants in obtaining high scores. There’s no reason to play the game without power-ups. Period. To be fair, you can spend $7 for unlimited credits, essentially ‘buying’ the game. But for the limited amount of content and relatively monotonous gameplay, I find $7 a tough sell. So while Hipster Whale doesn’t implement the classic pay-wall or gameplay altering microtransactions into Pac-Man 256, the credit system feels notably restrictive. I find it hard to become invested in a game that tells me how much or how little I can play it.

On the plus side, Pac-Man 256 looks and sounds phenomenal. The game perfectly captures the Pac-Man aesthetic and seamlessly turns the original’s pixelated splendor into modern voxel beauty. The partnership with Bandai Namco comes through clearly here, with all the classic sounds and visual effects making their way into Pac-Man 256. From a presentation standpoint, it doesn’t get any better than chomping through a wave of ghosts while your power pellet is active. You can tell Pac-Man 256 was made as a love letter to the arcade hit of yesteryear and to an IP that so many people hold dear.

Pac-Man 256 looks and sounds great. If only that were enough.

Pac-Man 256 ultimately suffers from the same problem that so many other smartphone titles do: the game isn’t fun for more than 5 to 10 minutes at a time. I understand that games can exist in the small playtime niche, but I would argue they need to be a great 5-10 minutes to make the game worth your time. Pac-Man 256 is not a great 5-10 minutes. It’s an ok one. I don’t inherently hate the endless runner genre, either. I reviewed Race the Sun here on TIF and gave it 3/5 because it gave players a compelling 5-10 minutes. But Pac-Man 256, unfortunately, felt mostly like a time waster. It’s for that reason I cannot recommend the game. I found much more enjoyment out of Crossy Road. There are other, better time wasters on your phone. I would love to have more positivity about Pac-Man 256 because I can recognize the talent behind this colorful, vibrant and clever homage to Pac-Man. In the end, though, the game is just not that fun to play. Bummer.

Pac-Man 256

2/5