Fireproof: Free-to-play isn't giving players 'what they want'

Fireproof Games's Barry Meade has issued a blunt jeremiad to what he sees as a mobile gaming industry hurtling towards creative irrelevance due to its reliance on data.

In an article published on Polygon, Meade lamented the reality that Fireproof's The Room franchise is an extremely rare exception in mobile gaming: standalone experiences that earn good revenue from paid downloads.

"In a market as huge as mobile how the fuck are Fireproof among the only makers of premium games that saw this kind of success?" Meade asked, citing data indicating low levels of engagement (66 per cent of mobile games are not played beyond the first 24 hours) and incredibly small numbers of paying customers (two to three per cent) as evidence that the dominant free-to-play model is not providing quality entertainment to the market

"This is a statistically insignificant amount of happy gamers and nothing that gives you a basis to make claims about 'what people want'. I think it just as likely that mobile's orgy of casual titles is due to simple bandwagon-ism or, in other words, not knowing what people want.

"This is a statistically insignificant amount of happy gamers and nothing that gives you a basis to make claims about 'what people want'"

"So it bothers me to hear game developers talking as if casual games are the new paradigm on mobile when so very few developers are actually happy with the games as they are, and mobile gamers clearly seem to "care" least of all. Free-to-play and casual titles should be a part of a greater gaming ecosystem, but right now they are the entirety of it on mobile."

For further evidence, Meade pointed towards the top-ten grossing charts, which are dominated by an unchanging crop of huge titles that do little more than trade their relative positions of dominance. To the public, however, these "ten cute grinding games that are clones of each other" seem like the best the industry has to offer, and continue to reap the vast majority of the rewards.

"The free-to-play model itself serves a million uses to developers and gamers, I've chucked lots of time and money into World of Tanks, Warhammer Quest and many others myself - the model is not the problem," Meade continued.

"The problem is more general, that taken as a whole the games industry is making mobile games that nobody cares about available to millions of players for nothing. Free-to-play producers chime that quality levels are obviously fine, 'If it's making money it's objectively good, see?'

"Well no, not quite, shit sells by the ton every day. In the real world Burger King doesn't get three Michelin stars. Burger King gets to be happy with its revenue not its reviews, and our industry's inability to see the difference will only pull us further into our creative vacuum."

The dominance of the free-to-play model in mobile continues to be divisive, and there are certainly counterpoints to Meade's take on the matter - most notably from Ben Cousins, who has argued the relative merits of free-to-play both at conferences and in the press. However, Meade is far from alone in his doubt, and that includes developers who have spent years working with the free-to-play model.

"I don't think its radical for the industry to start listening to the 98 percent of mobile gamers out there saying 'I don't care'"

At Casual Connect Europe this year, The Workshop's Laralyn McWilliams gave a talk in which she warned the industry about mistaking data for an emotional connection. "There's no measuring spoon for love. You can't quantify it," she said. "Retention is not the same as happiness."

Meeting with GamesIndustry International after her talk, McWilliams expressed very real concern that the amount of money being made is masking the negative connections created by free-to-play games, and the possible long-term damage that could result from that relationship.

"The moment that you monetise in Candy Crush you're probably extremely frustrated. You want to get past this level you've failed to complete 40 or 50 times, and that's the moment you spend. But mixed into that moment where you spend is that frustration. It's building a bad connection. I'm not monetising at a positive moment."

Meade concludes his argument with perhaps the most salient point of all: "The audience knows better than all of us and if our mobile public truly does signal 'I care' through purchasing, I don't think its radical for the industry to start listening to the 98 per cent of mobile gamers out there saying 'I don't care'."

The full version of the article is over on Polygon, and it's well worth your time.