Until very recently I was playing a few free-to-play games. All three were known for still being fun to play without having to pay. They were:
- The Simpsons Tapped Out (TSTO)
- Final Fantasy Dungeon Keeper (FFDK)
- Candy Crush Soda Saga (CCSS)
To start with the last one. I only had it on my phone for a few weeks. The game is a simple match-em-up puzzler in the style of Bejeweled. The clever thing the makers added is that instead of playing whenever you want, your ability to play (ATP) is limited and is replenished through time. If you've run out of ATP you can beg 'friends' for extra or pay cold hard cash. Or simply stop playing and pick up again in a few hours. That's what I did.
Popular games usually mix skill with chance. The better ones rely more on skill. Unfortunately CCSS isn't one of those. Quite quickly it was clear that skill only got you so far, and you just had to be lucky if you could pass. Scores on the same level would highly fluctuate, because of this. On top of that CCSS ramped up the difficulty pretty fast. Because more failure meant faster depletion of ATP, which meant more moolah for the makers.
After getting to level 32 (with mostly full 3 star evaluations) I threw in the towel: this was more frustration than fun.
Final Fantasy Dungeon Keeper is an RPG (a game with characters that fight and level up through time). There have been many Final Fantasy games over time (over fifty) and this is sort of the anthology. The game is aimed at mobile play. Like CCSS it has limited ATP.
This makes the time you get to play more precious. You have to plan ahead and choose when to do what, in order to maximize the bonuses you get. FFDK certainly has enough of those. It's slightly annoying that in the later levels you usually only get to play about 15 minutes before you run out of ATP.
Usually when I woke up in the morning I played a session, so it would be replenished by the time I'd travel by train to my work. This is a great example of how a game starts to play you. I adjusted my routine because of the game mechanics.
No game did this more than The Simpsons Tapped Out. I'm not sure I'd call it a game. It's one of those build-em-ups like Farmville. It takes zero skill. There is very little chance. It is basically: get here, tap on shit, get rewarded. Over time your town/empire/farm grows. And it's all time based. Thing A takes so many minutes to build, thing B so many hours etc.
This means you have to come back sometime in the future. There's no reason for haste (other than the occasional temporary quest or item that perishes) but your own impatience and hunger for rewards will make you return again and again.
If you're a slight perfectionist like myself this means careful planning. If item C takes 6 hours to make you can make 4 a day, but you have to sleep, so it's only 3. If you're busy during the day it's only 2. Combine this with many other items and characters and it quickly becomes a pretty complex operation, for something that is so simple in its setup. And I was doing it to myself. Because there was always that new thing just around the corner - the makers make sure of that.
Till last week. When I realised I wasn't enjoying FFDK much. This wasn't because of the limited ATP. It was mostly due to a balancing issue in the design of the game, where your party is usually either too weak or too strong for the opposition. This is a result of the game being modular, instead of linear. Also, the game gives you way too many rewards (an ilness many modern-day RPGs suffer from) making receiving them feel unspecial and their management a hassle. So I removed the game.
I noticed I felt relieved. Gone was its constant demand of my attention. No longer did I have to plan around its demands. It only took me a couple of days to wipe TSTO from my phone as well (which I was still playing pretty fanatically up to that point).
I still miss them from time to time, in the few minutes I have to wait for something, for example. But mostly I'm happy I escaped their claws. It's easy to forget that these things are designed to be addictive. But they are and they are very clever about how they do it. South Park did a pretty insightful expose on them (watch it here).
Luckily they didn't get me to spend any money and I enjoyed playing these games - especially TSTO, it is extremely well produced and has that typical Simpsons brand of humour. But I'm happy I've moved beyond these time sinks.
Hmmm... Now what shall I do with my time?
