How clones, fear, sanitisation and free-to-play soured Apple’s iOS gaming revolution

March 13th, 2014, 23:13 Posted By: wraggster

Much has changed in the two years since we called Apple “the hottest property in handheld gaming” and said that the company had “changed the videogame industry irrevocably”. Between E236 and today, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has passed away, iPhone 5 has launched and bifurcated, Game Center’s poker-table felt has been torn off in favour of a spartan interface, and a wave of licensed iOS controllers has reached the market, drawing iPhones and iPads closer to the traditional world of videogame hardware. In other respects, though, nothing is different – Apple seems no closer to infiltrating the home console business through its set-top box, for example.But crucially – at least for the people who have seen iOS platforms become integral parts of their gaming lives – it feels like the potential we saw in Apple’s devices to become a disruptive force has dissipated. Where we once saw a promising new marketplace of fresh ideas, unrestricted creativity, and daring new ways to play, the App Store of 2014 is swamped with cash-guzzling junk, shameless knockoffs and predictable sequels. Games worth discovering still exist, but they mostly dwell on the fringes and in the shadows, while endless horror stories suggest that paid-for games are simply no longer profitable and are dying out. What happened to the iOS gaming revolution?The App Store is still turning over an extraordinary amount of money – the marketplace attracted spending in the region of $1bn in December 2013 alone – but the lion’s share of the profits is going to an elite cabal of developers making free-to-play games. The App Store’s Top Grossing chart, which remains the most prominent method of getting games in front of players, has effectively frozen. “All of the top-ten-grossing apps in 2013 were over a year old,” says free-to-play design consultant Nicholas Lovell. “There is no other entertainment industry where month on month it’s the same things at the top of the charts – not for books, not for DVDs, not for movies.”This chart has become a self-sustaining cycle, acting as a billboard for games such as King’s Candy Crush Saga the whole year round, which in turn keeps them at the top. And while the most egregious ways to game the rankings have been stamped out by Apple, “people are definitely buying their way to chart positions”, according to Lovell. “There’s no doubt about that.”The App Store’s Top Grossing chart remains largely static, acting as a year-round banner advertisement for hugely successful games like Candy Crush Saga.

“I think the Top Grossing charts should be removed from the stores,” says Barry Meade of The Room developer Fireproof Games. “It’s entirely unreflective of what is actually for sale and teaches users nothing about the exciting new stuff that’s out there on their devices.”But no matter how much the stagnant chart positions have played a role in free-to-play’s uprising, it’s not surprising that the model would become dominant on iOS and Android. These platforms have always been skewed towards those looking to fill snatched moments here and there, and they’re markets where straightforward, inexpensive games such as Angry Birds have long ruled the roost. But dropping up-front pricetags has smashed even the perceived barrier to entry, massively broadening the player pool.In itself, free-to-play isn’t an evil phrase or business model. Even self-identifying ‘hardcore’ gamers have flocked to free PC games such as Dota 2 and PlanetSide 2, after all. And there are certainly cases on iOS where the model supports, rather than undermines, an enjoyable game design, most notably in GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragons. But there’s still a problem. “With seemingly everybody in mobile development hearing the call of the cash, free-to-play mechanics are skewing investment into an ever-narrowing field of game types,” Meade warns.Successful free-to-play games tend to be endless runners, match-three puzzlers, lightweight city builders and strategy games, with few exceptions. Attempts to adopt the model beyond this narrow band have not been positively received: hyped FPS The Drowning was critically panned, while even a big-name, well-promoted title such as PopCap’s Plants Vs Zombies 2 dropped out of the top 100 in many countries’ Top Grossing charts in a matter of months.

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