Real Racing 3 Causes Me to Worry About Gaming's Future

Posted: 2013-02-18 11:07:48.233

Like its predecessors, Real Racing 3 looks as if it'll be another high-quality racing experience on iOS, one that looks and plays better than most other racing games found on the App Store. What it doesn't have in common with the numbered Real Racing games that came before it is its business model: Real Racing 3 will be a free-to-play game.

That's not in and of itself a surprising thing to see on the App Store, which is routinely dominated by free apps -- it's not until number 30 on the iPhone's Top Grossing charts that you find a second app that can't be downloaded for free, and the only one prior to that is Minecraft, which is a veritable sensation. And although it'll be nice for anyone to be able to stumble onto the game and give it a try without having to pay a dime, the particular way Real Racing has been turned into a microtransaction-based game isn't what I would have hoped for.

As reported last week, Real Racing 3 takes the approach that many Facebook games do, where players are asked to either be patient or pay up. As your vehicles take damage or endure the unavoidable wear and tear of racing, the effects suffered go beyond cosmetics. Each vehicle's statistics, things like top speed, will decline as the vehicle is worn down. What that means is that, at some point, it'll need to be repaired and get an oil change. When that happens, you have the option of either waiting -- a process that can take anywhere from a couple minutes to several hours in real time, depending upon the severity of the damage -- or paying to expedite the process with a currency that is doled out rarely through play and is primarily earned by shelling out some real-world money.

What stops this from being as egregious as it could be, and it's no doubt the defense Electronic Arts and Firemonkeys will present, is the fact that this is all vehicle-specific. In other words, if I want to play without paying, I can drive around my BMW Z4 while my busted-up Audi R8 (hypothetically, the car I actually want to be driving) is repaired for free. And indeed, I suspect many players will go that route without complaining. But I take issue with it.

Make no mistake, I don't mean to suggest this is the single worst free-to-play offense we've seen; in recent memory, Final Fantasy: All the Bravest remains a shockingly appalling excuse for a game, with dreadful microtransactions to boot. Compared to that, Real Racing 3 is a breath of fresh air, but viewed in the proper context, I think it's a poor example of how to adapt a game to the free-to-play model, and just the sort of thing that makes me worry about the future of gaming.

There are other games that use this pay-or-wait scheme, many of them on Facebook. But it's one thing to see a game like FarmVille operate like this, and quite another to see an otherwise standard racing game deviate from what we've been used to seeing for the better part of two decades to take advantage of an increasingly popular business model. That there are reportedly cars that can only be obtained with the currency you're only likely to see much of by paying for it -- and that one of these cars costs $70, and another a mind-blowing $100 -- makes this all the more maddening. Sure, it's up to players to decide what they're willing to spend money on, but why is this even an option? In what world is it reasonable to ask $100 for a virtual car in a mobile racing game?

The ridiculously expensive, but optional, vehicles aside, the free-to-play application here wouldn't bother me if EA did what Hi-Rez Studios is trying out with Tribes: Ascend, and offered the game for a flat fee -- you know, like the old days. If some way of making the game free-to-play can't be developed that avoids being contingent upon testing players' patience, all I want is for EA to do this: Strip out all of the waiting, make repairs something you pay for with money earned by competing in races, and slap a price tag on the game so I can buy it and play it as I would a traditional game. Such a version wouldn't have to take the place of the free-to-play version; I just wish my only option for playing the game didn't mean having to take a break from driving the car I want to spend time with every so often. My real-life car has dings in it that I haven't paid to fix; I don't want to pay to fix the bumper on my virtual dream car.

It's a shame, too, because Real Racing 3 looks good. Its visuals are among the best you'll find on iOS, and its clever asynchronous mode -- AI racers' performances are dictated by race times set by other players -- is an interesting take on multiplayer I'm looking forward to trying out for myself. I do still plan on giving the game a try once it's released at the end of the month; tweaks have already been made (and then un-made) to the version of the game released as part of a soft launch in certain countries, though none of them involve pulling out the waits altogether.

At least at this point, it's easy to imagine this being a game I don't play for as long or as much as I would if it weren't for all this. By all indications, it is possible to play the game without ever spending a dime, although doing so will invariably inhibit your play experience, and I'm not OK with that. It's not as if I'm asking for a free game I can play as I wish; I'm willing to spend money to play, just not on microtransactions that temporarily repair my vehicle that might get beaten right back up during the next race I play. There was nothing wrong with racing games where you paid a price to play and that was the end of it, barring any tracks or cars that are released post-launch. A future where what we're seeing happen to Real Racing extends to other franchises and genre is a future I'm not sure I want any part of.

After Burner: Climax Will Make You Beg for a Controller

Posted: 2013-02-14 13:14:26.34

Sometimes when you pick up a game, you can tell something is going to be wrong with it after just a few moments of playing. That's precisely the feeling I had after just a minute or two in the tutorial for After Burner: Climax on iOS. It wasn't necessarily because anything is wrong with Climax, which was originally released in arcades in 2006 and has since made it to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network, but because playing it on iOS means abandoning the physical controls found in all of those other versions. In their absence, you're left with an inferior version of a game that also happens to be a complete hassle to play.

Climax is a relatively standard, on-rails, combat flight sim game; choose one of three jets and you're immediately thrown into the thick of things, shooting down enemy aircraft (and occasionally ground-based enemies) with either a machine gun or homing missiles. A run through Arcade mode can be completed in about 10 or 15 minutes, or you can choose to quickly play an individual stage, making it a nice fit for iOS in at least one regard. There are lots of achievements to unlock, and many of them provide you with extra options to customize the experience -- more armor, improved weapons, easier aiming, and so on -- that can help to mix things up.

That's a welcome option, because whether you're playing Arcade mode or Score Attack, there isn't a lot of variety to be had, even with the branching paths and secret stages that allow one round to be a bit different than the one before it. As with most games of this sort, enemies come in the same patterns each time you play; the only thing that changes is how quickly you shoot them down.

Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem. Pre-defined waves allow you to focus on improving your score. But as I spent most of my time fighting the controls rather than that, facing identical waves of enemies over and over again seemed less than appealing to me. And although I did eventually get a better handle on the controls than I expected I'd be able to while playing the tutorial, they are still an absolute mess.

I initially tried out the touchscreen controls, which have you aiming with a virtual joystick, altering speed with a slider in the upper right corner, and firing with buttons in the bottom right corner. Aiming with this setup is a tremendous hassle, as is performing combat rolls. Changing speeds while playing is also less than ideal because it requires you to take your fingers off the fire buttons. An alternative setup allows you to control your speed by tilting your iOS device forward or backward, though I found this difficult to use effectively because of inadvertent speed changes that occurred whenever I returned to holding my iPad in a comfortable position.

After making it through Arcade mode with the first of these control schemes, I turned to the accelerometer-based one that still has you firing and changing speeds with the same on-screen controls, but moving and aiming by tilting the device. Rolls were even harder to pull off like this, and aiming was an absolute crapshoot -- any success hitting enemies felt more like sheer luck than any skill on my part, particularly when it came to using the machine gun (which was also a chore to aim with any consistency using the virtual joystick). Making matter worse was the way the game frequently lost track of the neutral position I'd set for the accelerometer; I'd be playing and suddenly find myself ramming into the side of a mountain and losing a life while holding my iPad in the same spot that had me flying straight ahead just a minute earlier.

Whether using the accelerometer or virtual controls, I found the most effectively strategy was simply swinging the cursor around the screen and mashing the missile button to take down everything I locked onto. It wasn't a particularly elegant way of going about things, but your default allotment of 50 missiles (which refill over time) was enough that I was able to do this without constantly running out.

But really, it wasn't until I started using the aforementioned options unlocked by earning achievements that I felt more like I did playing the game with a controller. In particular, the option to increase the size of the cursor (making it significantly easier to lock on to enemies) made targeting enemies a cinch, although things like this, auto firing the machine gun or missiles, increasing your armor, and downgrading enemy attacks all swing the pendulum too far in the opposite direction, as everything becomes too easy. Suddenly shooting down a very high percentage of targets is all but guaranteed provided you can move the cursor back and forth and mash the fire button, and while this makes for a fun change in pace, it doesn't feel like a fun way to play the game for long.

Making matters worse are all the rough edges. Climax's visuals are far from mind-blowing on consoles, but they look fairly nice. Here they're not quite as good, and though I wouldn't call it a bad-looking game, the technical issues are hard to look past. At times you'll see enemies flying right through mountains that would kill you if you were to do the same -- except for when the game takes control of your jet at the end of each stage, at which point it will sometimes fly you through a mountain as if it weren't even there.

Load times can stretch on for a long time, too, though what's far worse is the lag. It's sporadic, and most often comes in between stages, mitigating the problems that it can cause, but that makes it no less annoying to see. Lag has, however, sprung up in the midst of playing, most noticeably on one particular stage set in the clouds that is all but unplayable almost every time I play it. Were it not for the missiles being homing, I'd have been lucky to get even a single kill -- it gets that choppy. And this was happening to me on a third-gen iPad, making its presence all the more inexplicable.

Climax itself is far from a bad game; it's simply a game that doesn't lend itself to being played without a physical controller of some sort. With controls that can be so incredibly frustrating at times, I find it hard to recommend picking up here, particularly when it can be downloaded on consoles (albeit for more than three times the price as on the App Store). If you're looking for a shooter on iOS, Namco's Sky Gamblers has a much better reputation. If you'd a prefer a shooter that really feels at home on a touchscreen, Cave's assortment of shoot-em-ups work quite well, but they come with a price tag to match.

Tribes: Ascend's New Free-to-Play Wrinkle Looks Backwards

Posted: 2013-02-13 15:00:49.997

Many different approaches have been tried as developers transition from selling games for a flat fee to offering them for free in the hopes that you'll then choose to spend money on in-game content. Like it or not, this all remains one big test experiment, and gamers are the subjects. Some free-to-play games offer purely cosmetic items for a fee, some restrict the amount you can play without waiting or paying, and others lock content behind a price tag. Tribes: Ascend has fit into the latter category since its launch last year, providing players with only a limited selection of classes, weapons, and equipment unless they're willing to fork over some money. That model isn't being abandoned, but an additional way of getting a premium experience will soon be offered that is a lot closer to what we're accustomed to.

As things currently stand, you have one of two options for unlocking content in Ascend. The first is to purchase gold that can then be spent on anything in the game -- unlocking any of the six classes you don't start out with, or weapons and items for any of the nine classes (but not weapon and item upgrades, which are earned by simply using them following a patch released last year). Alternatively, you can just play the game and accumulate experience, which can then be spent on these same things. With none of the game's modes or maps restricted to paying players and the default weapons and classes being more than serviceable, this is, in theory, a fine setup.

In reality, it's flawed because of the high XP costs of almost everything, an issue that was addressed at long last a few weeks ago when developer Hi-Rez decided to see what would happen if it cut the XP cost of all unlocks in half. The move was originally portrayed as a measure that might be temporary, but it's one I'm hoping remains permanent. Even with it, a hurdle remains for Hi-Rez to overcome in the form of gamers who simply aren't interested in acquiring a game in this sort of piecemeal fashion. Going through and buying everything Ascend has to offer would be both a time-consuming and costly process, and though you hardly need access to every last weapon and item on offer to have an enjoyable time, that is what some people want.

Rather than fight that desire or possibly scare a segment gamers off from ever spending any money with this a la carte model -- psychologically, some people are going to view buying everything a game has to offer and an individual weapon or item much differently -- Hi-Rez plans to offer a bundle that includes everything. More specifically, it consists of all the gameplay-altering content (i.e. none of the pricey cosmetic stuff; you'll have to continue paying extra for that) that's already available. The package is being positioned as a Game of the Year edition, but really, it's taking a free-to-play game and offering it up in a fashion similar to a traditional game. Just as importantly, it allows someone to plunk down some money and feel as if they're not at any sort of disadvantage (imagined or otherwise) in multiplayer.

What this notably excludes is any future content. This GotY edition will be released on February 15 (in conjunction with a new map pack that will be available to all players for free), but those who buy it won't be entitled to any of the weapons or perks released going forward. Nor would you expect to be for the $30 Hi-Rez intends to charge considering the real-world cost of unlocking everything, at least at one point, was well in excess of $100. That price will only be available at launch; what it will jump up to hasn't been announced, though the company did state earlier this week it would aim to "price it in the ballpark of other PC multiplayer shooters."

Tribes VIPs, a group that includes anyone who has spent real-world money on the game, will be entitled to a more heavily discounted GotY edition price of $20. That makes this an especially good deal for anyone who's made a small investment in the game and wants more. Those like myself, though, who have spent what you might consider to be 'considerable' amounts are left in somewhat of an awkward position. I've already purchased so many of the unlocks I want and still have gold sitting in my account, making it hard to determine whether I've crossed the point where another $20 is no longer worth it.

Of course, this offering wasn't thought up for someone like me who has already sunk a good deal of money into the game. The idea with a free-to-play game like this, no doubt, is to keep it alive and supported for a long period of time, so coming along with this option 10 months after release isn't the biggest issue in and of itself, though I do wish it had been offered long ago. While it may simply be an experiment or a reaction to fan feedback, to dedicated fans who have spent more than $20 or $30 on Tribes gold, it could look like fans willing to spend were milked for the better part of a year before a much more reasonable way of obtaining everything was made available. I don't actually think that was necessarily Hi-Rez's goal with the way it handled things, but like rapid price drops for $60 retail games, I could see this giving me pause next time a new free-to-play game asks for my money -- after all, who's to say whether a bit of patience won't present me with an option like this to get everything for less money?

The one thing that would assuage that concern in a game where you can buy your way into a different gameplay experience -- games like Dota 2 where you're only buying cosmetic items don't present the same situation -- would be an option like this right out of the gate. The solution tried by Planetside 2, which can be resoundingly expensive if you choose to buy a lot of what it has to offer, is to offer a subscription and various bundles. The latter of these is on the right track, but it still fails to offer the game in a manner similar enough to a traditional game where you hand over some cash for a complete experience (save for any downloadable content or expansions that are developed post-release).

Maybe that's just an archaic concept and this Game of the Year edition of Tribes is not the start of a trend among free-to-play games. I'd like to believe otherwise, because I think some games better lend themselves to being sold as a single package, but something tells me we're only going to see less of this in the future, not more.