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August 16, 2013 10:48 AM   Subscribe

EA is setting it's hopes for the future on Plant's Vs Zombies 2's "freemium" model, hoping they've done it "the PopCap way". Here's how to play it without paying to win.
posted by Artw (94 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'd pay $4.99 for it to not crash and freeze so much.

Kind of annoying this new model of fidget gaming; "skipping" past things you can't earn right away, so you can presumably double back around when you've earned enough bonusy things. At least the money is good for something (dont' try to pinch on a broken screen - glass shards ahoy!) in game when it comes to "ZOMBIE CRUSH - ELECTROCUTE".
posted by tilde at 10:55 AM on August 16, 2013


The fact that it needs a front facing camera to play makes me engorged with rage as my otherwise perfectly fine iPad 1 can't play it.

( hurls a frozen melon at EA)
posted by The Whelk at 10:55 AM on August 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


I was the one whining about this yesterday in the Gone Home thread, but the Kotaku review posted there soothed my fears and I played about 2/3 of the first level last night and definitely didn't have even a passing thought about needing to buy anything.

I did feel that way about the Facebook game. I bought several packs of jewels before I decided you know what, it's a Facebook game and it's such a hog my old MacBook can't really handle it anyway.

Maybe when it gets harder - I know I would have paid money the first time I dealt with the damn roof in the first one, though I eventually figured out my system for that, too.

It still works shockingly well even on an iPhone screen with my giant paws, too.

On preview: I had no idea it required a front-facing camera. What the hell?
posted by Lyn Never at 10:57 AM on August 16, 2013 [3 favorites]


From the Forbes article:

... just enough credits for me to play Real Racing 3 the way I wanted (which admittedly, would be classed as ‘casula’) ...

I thought I was really out of touch with gaming lingo until I realized he meant "casual". Although it's fun to imagine him nonchalantly drinking someone's blood while playing racing games.
posted by gurple at 10:59 AM on August 16, 2013 [7 favorites]


On preview: I had no idea it required a front-facing camera. What the hell?

I, too, am WTF at that. Googling I'm seeing it suggested they're excluding older systems that way.
posted by Artw at 11:00 AM on August 16, 2013


most of those plants (all but one) can be unlocked through normal play
Which one? I was not happy skipping the double sun ...
The fact that it needs a front facing camera to play makes me engorged with rage as my otherwise perfectly fine iPad 1 can't play it.
So, The Whelk - I shouldn't play it while in skivvies? /skeeved


(I think it's actually a processor limitation and the fact that game cos/Apple don't want to support the original iPad any more.)

I do wish that the "turn off in-game purchases in app store for this game" actually turned the view of "you could just buy if enabled" bits off. Too much to ask, I guess (though I'd pay $4.99 for that!)
posted by tilde at 11:00 AM on August 16, 2013


I realize that EA isn't a paragon of foresight and planning, but maybe they should wait for something to be out more than a day before declaring it has solved the problem of free vs. freemium vs. cash-up-front.
posted by Copronymus at 11:05 AM on August 16, 2013 [4 favorites]


That whoosh sound you just heard is my kids racing to get to the iPad first. There has seriously not been a day gone by in the last year that I haven't heard one of them updating the other on when PvZ2 is coming out or what it will include.

Freemium play? Fine. I don't have to have any cash on hand for their allowances for a few months.
posted by Etrigan at 11:06 AM on August 16, 2013


So we have an iPad 1. Since I am not the guy who gets a new TV every two years, this feels like a recent purchase to me. My kids have been super excited about PvZ 2 and I have to break it to them that we won't be playing it.

Why the hell does it need a camera? Why does any iPad game need a camera? Totally stupid, unless really they are just excluding gen 1 because of older iOS, slower processor etc.

Sigh. I guess we go ride bikes this weekend instead.
posted by freecellwizard at 11:11 AM on August 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


My son (he's 7) has been crazy -- CRAZY -- waiting for this. The original release date was on his birthday, then that didn't happen, and so we waited.

While we waited, we found this YouTube channel that has featured, over time, an entire playthrough of the game (and he's never spent a dime on upgrades, so my fears are totally soothed about that - walkthrough starts here).

Then, yesterday (release day!) I gave my son the two new kids books they just released, and sat down to download the game (my son doesn't get screen time during the week, so he would have to wait until Saturday to play the game, hence the books). Imagine my horror when I discover that none of the iOS devices we have in the house would download the damn thing -- they're all too old.

Now, imagine my son first freaking out, and then bursting into tears when he realizes that he's not going to get to play it for some unknown length of time -- probably months. He actually gathered up all his PvZ related 'stuff' -- a t shirt, some stuffed walnuts, the new books, and pitched them in the trash, then stomped upstairs saying "I'm never playing that stupid zombie game again."

Had PopCap been upfront about this (staggered release, no older iDevices) we could have managed expectations. As things stand, I am furious with them for the mess that this release has been. We knew (and I don't really remember how, now) that the first release would be iOS only, but had NO HINT that it would require a front facing camera. What's stupid is that, if you watch the play-through (and, trust me, we've watched all the many hours of it) there isn't anything in the actual game that requires the FFcamera. So, I guess they just didn't feel like making it work for the older OS? Or, perhaps they decided that only people with the more current iThings would tend to pay? I dunno.

What I do know is that it's been a tough week all around for my kid, and they ruined a day he'd been looking forward to for months. In the process, they made him not ever want to have anything to do with their game or the collateral merch again, which I'm pretty sure is not at all what they intended to do.
posted by anastasiav at 11:11 AM on August 16, 2013 [25 favorites]


People, it doesn't need a camera, it just needs a faster iPad. (Front-facing camera is just short hand for any iPad that isn't the first iPad.)
posted by chunking express at 11:15 AM on August 16, 2013 [6 favorites]


Aw, anastasiav. Your poor kiddo.

And my kiddo plays PvZ a lot but is not that attached to it. We have an old iPad so I guess that means we're not going any farther with it! Too bad really.
posted by emjaybee at 11:17 AM on August 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


I assume they'll release it for the web/xbox/something eventually. What gets me is that the new merch is all totally kid focused - two books based on fairy tales, another book that is mazes and brain teasers and whatnot, plus the (any age) toys. So they are actively trying to grow their kid-base -- why, then, screw up this release so badly?
posted by anastasiav at 11:20 AM on August 16, 2013




Requiring a front-facing camera is a sneaky way of getting around the fact that Apple won't let you limit your app to certain hardware explicitly. But also that Apple's app screeners have rejected submissions in the past that didn't make obvious and necessary use of the camera, so they were on to this trick. But EA probably has enough clout to get away with it. I'm surprised they didn't just say that it requires iOS 6 instead - that covers the same devices (no original iPad), and iOS 6 penetration is very high by now.
posted by Space Coyote at 11:24 AM on August 16, 2013 [3 favorites]


The Whelk: "The fact that it needs a front facing camera to play makes me engorged with rage as my otherwise perfectly fine iPad 1 can't play it.

( hurls a frozen melon at EA)
"

(Also hurls frozen melon. Then throws a thawed melon for the splatter factor.)
posted by Samizdata at 11:26 AM on August 16, 2013


I'm empathetic to anastasiav's kid, it sucks to be looking forward to something and not being able to get it.

But I suspect it came down to a point where they had to choose between a) shipping a version that only supported recent models, b) shipping a version that was a terrible experience on older models, c) spending more time and money developing an optimized version that could run on older devices.
posted by justkevin at 11:27 AM on August 16, 2013


Whatevs, it's no Candy Crush.
posted by Mister_A at 11:29 AM on August 16, 2013 [3 favorites]


I'm surprised they didn't just say that it requires iOS 6 instead - that covers the same devices (no original iPad), and iOS 6 penetration is very high by now.

I would have been much happier with that. I can (and have) upgrade the 3GS to 6. (My son uses my old phone as a Touch.) I cannot, however, install a FFcamera in it.

I suspect it came down to a point where they had to choose between...

Oh, I get all the tech reasons why it would be easier/better experience to ship it as it is now. My furor isn't directed at the programmers at all. It's the marketing. They had to know weeks ago they weren't going to support older iThings, even if they didn't have an exact release date. So, announce that. Manage that. Don't say "coming for iOS" and then have it only be for part of the iOS market. (And that leaves aside all the pissed off Android people who didn't know until a few days ago it was iOS only.)
posted by anastasiav at 11:30 AM on August 16, 2013


It's the marketing. They had to know weeks months ago they weren't going to support older iThings, even if they didn't have an exact release date.
FTFY.
posted by tilde at 11:32 AM on August 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


Yep, for sure. It's 70,000 times more interesting than Candy Crush.
posted by agregoli at 11:33 AM on August 16, 2013 [3 favorites]


The more I think and read about it, the more I think PopCap is maybe the only game company that has figured out how to equally please both the casual and hardcore crowd within the framework of any single game. My first experience with them was Peggle, a game that my purely-casual friends could spend a few minutes on and get sucked in to the Pachinko-on-Zoloft gameplay without feeling taxed, while my more intense friends would swear that the game is 95% skill, that a really insightful Peggle player can do things you wouldn't believe. And they demonstrated that on the hardest challenges of the game.

Now we have Kotaku saying stuff like this: "In the old days, back before all of these newfangled free-to-play games, we had a different way of dealing with a spike in difficulty. Instead of tossing money at it, we just kept playing until we got it right.... You're no sheep. You're a lion rampant, ready to tear your claws into any problem, grabbing it by the throat with your powerful jaws and shaking it until it falls at your feet, nothing more than a rapidly cooling pile of torn meat and crushed bones."

All of which is to say, look, Kotaku reader, we know you're not like them. You can play Plants vs Zombies 2 like a game from the old days, you can make it as satisfying and challenging as Spelunky. And I think PopCap fully anticipates that sort of player getting a lot from PvZ2, even if they don't pay anything, as much as they anticipate the player who purchases everything to make the ride smoother. I've been wary of freemium gaming since it became a thing, but I think there's considerable strength to this model. If the hardcore players are at least talking about the game as being worth the time of "serious gamers" (in quotes), they're spreading the word. And that's not a loss by any means.
posted by naju at 11:34 AM on August 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


Goddamn front facing camera requirement.

From what I understand there is no way to determine hardware version without tricks like requiring a front facing camera.

Oh well. I didn't want to play anyway.
posted by Ad hominem at 11:35 AM on August 16, 2013


I, for one, had no idea there were so many original iPads out there.
posted by GuyZero at 11:36 AM on August 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


Where did you think they went, into the trash?
posted by I am the Walrus at 11:37 AM on August 16, 2013 [5 favorites]


It's the marketing. They had to know weeks months ago they weren't going to support older iThings, even if they didn't have an exact release date.
FTFY.


Possibly, but you might be overestimating the accuracy of planning in game development. It would not stun me if someone in their marketing department learned they weren't supporting older devices while reading this post.
posted by justkevin at 11:40 AM on August 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


Freemium, premium, selenium, whatever -- this is one of the most gorgeously animated games I've seen on a mobile platform yet.
posted by oceanjesse at 11:42 AM on August 16, 2013


Now, imagine my son first freaking out, and then bursting into tears when he realizes that he's not going to get to play it for some unknown length of time -- probably months. He actually gathered up all his PvZ related 'stuff' -- a t shirt, some stuffed walnuts, the new books, and pitched them in the trash, then stomped upstairs saying "I'm never playing that stupid zombie game again."

Yes. Let the hate flow through him. Soon he will innately understand that EA should die in a fire made of fires that are themselves on fire with fires of fire.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 11:44 AM on August 16, 2013 [22 favorites]


I, for one, had no idea there were so many original iPads out there.

If I had a new one, I'd be reluctant to let my 8-year-old Stickyfingers McGee use it instead of the old one.
posted by emjaybee at 11:46 AM on August 16, 2013


Yes. Let the hate flow through him. Soon he will innately understand that EA should die in a fire made of fires that are themselves on fire with fires of fire.

Origin story.

note: has not tried Origin, entirely possible it is just less-popular Steam and not a source of evil.
posted by Artw at 11:47 AM on August 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


The reviews for this game are stuffed with "IAP RUINED MY GAME AND KILLED MY DOG", which is a pretty good sign that no one has played it. Here's the rub: When you finish a world (About a dozen levels, not counting the bonus forks), you need x# stars to get to the next world. You can pay $5.99 to get there immediately, or you can go back to the dozen+ levels you just finished and complete new challenges to earn stars to unlock the new world.

Its actually pretty fair, feels great and plays on a lot of the grind-y, optimization stuff that made PvZ such a blast in the first place.

Also, all this "EA SHOULD DIE AND EAT ITS OWN POOP" stuff also drives me nuts. I'm not always in love with their output, but they were one of the few AAA's to risk new IP this gen (Dead Space, Mirror's Edge) and they've always been on the cutting edge of new business models. At the end of the day, the indie games scene is healthy enough that if EA is driving you to hate mail, there are plenty of other options.
posted by GilloD at 11:47 AM on August 16, 2013


Most of the reviews I've read have been along the lines of "this is all doable without IAP, and if you ignore the IAP it's better". Nobody really *likes* that it has IAP, but it's Pretty non-hostile for that.
posted by Artw at 11:51 AM on August 16, 2013


Unless we're talking iTunes reviews, which, well, pinch of salt the size of your head.
posted by Artw at 11:52 AM on August 16, 2013


Soon he will innately understand that EA should die in a fire made of fires that are themselves on fire with fires of fire.

Heh. This was his first experience with a promised release date, and it's gone ... poorly. The bummer part is that he probably doesn't know that EA exists. PopCap is the brand name he knows.

I, for one, had no idea there were so many original iPads out there.

I just spent a half hour looking for an ipad 2 on eBay but I figure if I buy one I'm at least 85% likely to get a rock in a box. If anyone happens to have an "antique" iPad 2 that is somehow gathering dust in a drawer, mail me. You'll make a sad boy who got kicked out of camp this week for his spectrum-y behavior very happy.

posted by anastasiav at 11:55 AM on August 16, 2013




EA (Popcap) fired the creator of Plants vs Zombies the day after it announced a sequel. Fuck that noise.
posted by furtive at 12:01 PM on August 16, 2013 [9 favorites]


Your attitude to IAPs is probably different if you have children: without kids they are sort of irritating and ugly, with kids they are basically Satan. My kids will never learn of the existance of this game.
posted by Artw at 12:04 PM on August 16, 2013 [8 favorites]


anastasiav: "Soon he will innately understand that EA should die in a fire made of fires that are themselves on fire with fires of fire.

Heh. This was his first experience with a promised release date, and it's gone ... poorly. The bummer part is that he probably doesn't know that EA exists. PopCap is the brand name he knows.

I, for one, had no idea there were so many original iPads out there.

I just spent a half hour looking for an ipad 2 on eBay but I figure if I buy one I'm at least 85% likely to get a rock in a box. If anyone happens to have an "antique" iPad 2 that is somehow gathering dust in a drawer, mail me. You'll make a sad boy who got kicked out of camp this week for his spectrum-y behavior very happy.
"

I would ever so love to help you, but my only iDevice is a 32GB iPad 1 that's a loaner from a friend. (Also has dodgy charging and the battery sucks.)
posted by Samizdata at 12:08 PM on August 16, 2013


anastasiav, check the apple store online in the refurbished ipad section - you can get refurb ipad2s for around $320, if that's within your budget. That's where I got mine, and its indistinguishable from a new one.
posted by Joh at 12:11 PM on August 16, 2013


I love the original PvZ and have played that more than any other iOS game. I was looking forward to PvZ2, but the IAP spoilt the game for me. It's no-doubt possible to finish the game without them, but the experience feels so money grabbing and desperate. The main reason I don't on a TV because I don't want to be endlessly begged for money in my own home, and I deleted PvZ2 after 24 hours for the same reason.
posted by TheDonF at 12:12 PM on August 16, 2013 [5 favorites]


Your attitude to IAPs is probably different if you have children: without kids they are sort of irritating and ugly, with kids they are basically Satan. My kids will never learn of the existance of this game.

The newer Angry Birds games are pretty stress-inducing. I always have to make sure my phone's WiFi and data is turned off to prevent any accidental in-game purchases.

I don't understand why they can't charge $10 or $20 for a game license, and do-away with all the in-game purchases.

Actually, I do know why.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:13 PM on August 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


Oh god, Angry Birds...

/twitches uncontrolably.
posted by Artw at 12:15 PM on August 16, 2013


I, for one, had no idea there were so many original iPads out there.

The iPad 1 is only three years old, and the iPads have changed very little compared to the phones. By the time I got an iPhone 5, my iPhone 3G was painfully slow and lots of things I wanted to use couldn't run on it. My iPad 1 runs as fast as the day I got it, and this is the first app I've ever heard of that's not compatible with it.
posted by escabeche at 12:23 PM on August 16, 2013 [4 favorites]


Tower Defense variant #12, next.

(What? I'm a cynical bastard whose been playing games since Combat, I'm entitled to be cantankerous. It's no skin off your vegetable noses.)
posted by JHarris at 12:27 PM on August 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


Also, why is it a big deal that the new Plants vs. Zombies is free to play, when the old Plants and Zombies costs 99 cents?
posted by escabeche at 12:27 PM on August 16, 2013


EA defenders will never pacify the members of the Cult of NFL2K5.

It STILL HURTS.
posted by delfin at 12:30 PM on August 16, 2013 [3 favorites]


At the end of the day, the indie games scene is healthy enough that if EA is driving you to hate mail, there are plenty of other options.

God, enough of us expressed why EA sucks in the still-warm Humble EA Bundle thread, from how they treat employees to their Disney-like sitting on countless classic properties to their rapacious buying and shuttering of old game companies to how they used to be one of the most awesome companies going. There, that's a summary, none of it applies any less here.
posted by JHarris at 12:32 PM on August 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


Hey, anyone here know how to log in to EA's marketing intranet? I'm asking for a friend of a friend.

No problem. It unlocks for $5.99.
posted by Spatch at 12:40 PM on August 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


So I hate to go all C.R.E.A.M. on y'all, but anyone know the likelihood of making IAPs on older hardware as opposed to customers who routinely drop several hundred dollars on the newest shiny tablet every year? If you're mad about being excluded because of your old hardware, the reality is that you're far less likely to fork over your money to EA. Wear that like a badge of pride.
posted by antonymous at 12:41 PM on August 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


I wonder how many new iDevices will be purchased just to play this game. (I was on the precipice anyways because of the Magic the Gathering 2014 game.)

It's an Apple conspiracy, that's what it is.
posted by wenat at 1:10 PM on August 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


EA (Popcap) fired the creator of Plants vs Zombies the day after it announced a sequel. Fuck that noise.

Tower Defense variant #12, next.


I wonder what George Fan is up to? I have to say that other than some extra set dressing I haven't really found anything all that new and innovative about PVZ2 so far - here's hoping he's cooking up something truly suprising to knock everybody's socks off.
posted by Artw at 1:10 PM on August 16, 2013 [4 favorites]


I wonder what George Fan is up to?
He and the Mine Craft guy and the guy behind Black and White are getting together to form a new ga ....
posted by tilde at 1:16 PM on August 16, 2013


Also, why is it a big deal that the new Plants vs. Zombies is free to play, when the old Plants and Zombies costs 99 cents?

The original game was fun to play and pretty compelling. "Freemium" games are pretty tacky and intrusive.
posted by KokuRyu at 1:21 PM on August 16, 2013 [3 favorites]


escabeche: "Also, why is it a big deal that the new Plants vs. Zombies is free to play, when the old Plants and Zombies costs 99 cents?"

The original Plants Vs. Zombies (2009) was originally $20 and released on PC. It was ported to IOS less than a year later for $3 and make more than $1M in 10 days. Its price point dropped to $1 after its port to Android sometime in 2011.

It is cheap now merely as a function of amortization.
posted by boo_radley at 1:44 PM on August 16, 2013


Currently, Five Star reviews in iTunes outnumber One Stars at ~14 to 1.

It is worth noting that the game prompts you to review before it introduces the "fremium" features, though.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:59 PM on August 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


i have purchased plants vs zombies 4 different times. i played it today. i play it multiple times a week. there are few games i've played more. pvz2 is basically exactly the sort of thing i was talking about in humble bundle thread - where ea buys up a property, guts everything good from the team, and then releases a social media optimized iap game to get the most clicks for second or whatever the fuck, and i'm standing here like "just let the dude make a second game and take my $15 for every single platform you release it on that i own." - but i'm just not important to ea. which makes me sad because they keep buying up everything i love.
posted by nadawi at 2:20 PM on August 16, 2013 [3 favorites]


I guess I avoided anastasiav's problems partly by not getting obsessed, or letting my son get obsessed with all that marketing, media and merchandise. I just randomly opened the app store a few weeks ago, and there it was, a pleasant surprise! No stuffed walnuts required. It does run very slowly on an old iPhone 4 tho - I don't know how its processor measures up to an iPad 1.

My main complaint with the game is not the in-app-purchases, but rather the in-app-content downloads. When you download the game, its 44mb, I believe, but that's not all - to proceed to other levels it has to download additional data. It never gives you any indication of how much its downloading, but based on how slow that progress bar moves, it feels like a hell of a lot.
posted by Jimbob at 2:45 PM on August 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


When you download the game, its 44mb, I believe, but that's not all - to proceed to other levels it has to download additional data. It never gives you any indication of how much its downloading, but based on how slow that progress bar moves, it feels like a hell of a lot.

If you go to Settings > General > Usage you can see that the total size it's taking up after the update is around 170MB, so it seems like this is probably in the service of getting around the 50MB(?) upper limit for applications downloadable over a cell connection. Pretty tricksy.
posted by nobody at 2:53 PM on August 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


Man, between that and the camera thing they are really skating close to the edge even before flashing a pricetag in the users face every other minute.
posted by Artw at 2:58 PM on August 16, 2013


I would have been much happier with that. I can (and have) upgrade the 3GS to 6. (My son uses my old phone as a Touch.) I cannot, however, install a FFcamera in it.

I had a 3GS until early this year, and it had long since stopped keeping up with the combined memory requirements of the operating system and newly released apps (this was a problem starting with the release of iOS 5. It only got worse from there). Games were constantly crashing to the home screen and text designed for the Retina resolution was illegible.

The 3GS was sort of the last of the first "generation" of iPhones: the original model laid a foundation, the 3G added some vital improvements while still not being all that great, and the 3GS was the first one that felt feature-complete -- it was the first Real iPhone. I loved mine, but it's been left in the dust technically. PvZ 2 would be a miserable and highly unstable experience on the 3GS, but Apple wants to make it seem like their apps Just Worktm, so they only allow developers to limit based on OS version.

The phone from 2009 is still receiving OS updates into 2013, though. That's a four-year gap. No matter what Apple believes, developers don't want to be held back by having to target four-year-old hardware (especially when the footprint of running the most recent version of the OS eats up a greater percentage of that four-year-old hardware's memory than ever before). So they throw in a front-facing camera requirement, which is kinda dumb on the surface but at least aims to prevent the frustrating and un-fun time you'd surely have trying to play PvZ2 on a 3GS.

This is all still a million times better than the clusterfuck that is the state of Android OS updates.
posted by EmGeeJay at 3:21 PM on August 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


/Remembers game of brinksmanship over which OS update would finally render 3G phone useless with distinct lack of fondness.
posted by Artw at 3:24 PM on August 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


So we have an iPad 1. Since I am not the guy who gets a new TV every two years, this feels like a recent purchase to me.

I hate this too, people who bought the iPad one got shafted so quickly. It was obsoleted as soon as the iPad 3 came out despite the fact that the iPad 2 is still getting updates. And that the iPhone 4 is still getting updates despite being almost identical internally.

The iPad 1 is less than 3 years old and now called "old" and "obsolete". That's kind of insane, especially for apple. My 2007 iMac is still running all the latest software perfectly(i was recently editing 1080p video in the latest version of premiere. 1080p! Adobe CS6 on a 6 year old machine! it works perfectly. It isn't even slow), and my friends iphone 4's are still running the latest software and will get a free update to iOS 7 when it comes out in a few weeks.

I can't think of a modern apple product, especially what was very recently a flagship model that's been deprecated that quickly in recent history. It was actually chopped down when it was two, in 2012.

I get that it only has 256mb of ram and a single core processor/single core graphics, but it still feels pretty half-assed that it was chucked in the bin so quickly when a lot of people paid $500+ for it.
posted by emptythought at 3:28 PM on August 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


Plants Vs Zombies Vs In-app purchases
posted by Artw at 3:30 PM on August 16, 2013


$4.99 TO UNLOCK COMMENTS ON THIS THREAD

Yeah right. Hidden extra charge of an additional $0.01, same as in town.
posted by yohko at 3:34 PM on August 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


/Remembers game of brinksmanship over which OS update would finally render 3G phone useless with distinct lack of fondness.

I still remember this with "fondness" as well. When i got my 3g it was running i think, 2.1 and it was fast. I mean, it would probably feel slow now but it really didn't then. I remember regularly marveling at how the thing handled stuff.

And one of the things people seem to forget is that iOS in those days wasn't as bad as say, early OSX, but it definitely didn't feel like super polished like it does now. Apps crashed a lot, the built in apps like mail and the browser would randomly crash and dump you to the home screen quite often. I even remember the ipod app crashing several times(although, to it's credit, i don't think the music ever stopped).

OS 3 ran relatively ok, but was noticeably slower. I still welcomed it since it made the whole phone feel more stable and added some features like copy-paste, picture messaging(why the fuck wasn't this in there in the first place anyways?) and battery life. I never remember really going "Wow this works like shit now!", just it feeling a bit slower.

And then iOS 4 was like running OSX on the original CRT imacs, or windows 95 on my 486... I actually didn't even see it until the 4 came out since i had exploded my 3G, and went on craigslist and got a cheap 2G iphone to use. But when i tried it out on a couple friends phones i was like JESUS CHRIST WHAT IS THIS GARBAGE.

I love love love this video on the subject.
posted by emptythought at 3:41 PM on August 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


Even if you don't pay for the IAP, they make the game worse. In the first game, you got a new plant or something useful after every level. It was a short game, but interesting the whole way.

In this game, I've been playing with the same 6 or 7 plants for 30 games now. It's grind, grind, grind and hope you find enough keys or earn enough stars to get somewhere new.
posted by Gary at 4:08 PM on August 16, 2013


Or you could just buy the zombie blaster deluxe, gary. Why don't you? It's only 99¢!
posted by Mister_A at 4:10 PM on August 16, 2013


I dunno, given that the original iPad is a single-core CPU and has a weaker GPU and half the memory of the more recent versions, it's no surprise the game doesn't run on it. The OS may run fast still (which is great) but it is pretty dated hardware by modern standards.
posted by GuyZero at 4:26 PM on August 16, 2013


I get that it only has 256mb of ram and a single core processor/single core graphics, but it still feels pretty half-assed that it was chucked in the bin so quickly when a lot of people paid $500+ for it.

Apple learned something from Sony before destroying them.
posted by GuyZero at 4:27 PM on August 16, 2013


I played PvZ a lot on my phone and I'd gladly pay for a sequel. These FTP games often feel like your neighbour inviting you for a BBQ and every now and then asking "Would you like a cool glass of water, neighbour? Only $3.99!". Just let me pay upfront.
posted by ersatz at 6:00 PM on August 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


I wonder if they have a bell in their office that goes off if anyone buys the $99.99 coin package - maybe streamers could fall down from the ceiling or something.
posted by Artw at 6:17 PM on August 16, 2013


Maybe EA can make their employees pay $4.99 to unlock the coin purchase indication bell and streamers
posted by Phssthpok at 6:42 PM on August 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


So, I guess they just didn't feel like making it work for the older OS? Or, perhaps they decided that only people with the more current iThings would tend to pay?

At my studio within Zynga, we made the decision to whether to support older OSs and older devices by 1) looking at the percentage of our current MAU using those devices on existing games and 2) the engineering required to get it to a minimally viable state of playability (and I do mean MINIMAL, not even looking to get close to as good as how it performed on the newest iDevice).

For an iPhone 3GS, the answer to 1 was below 5% of world-wide iOS users, and the answer to 2 was estimated to be 3-4 weeks of engineering time, time that could be used to add features or polish the game further or begin the port to Android devices or the iPad. If you ask me whether I want to make a shitty experience for 5% of the market, or get a month's start on making a great experience for people on the Galaxy 3 or Nexus 7, I'm going with option B.

I'm saddened that your child had such a heartbreaking experience, but the cost benefit analysis is overwhelmingly in favor of not supporting a tiny percentage of the market (who, as you suggested, probably won't spend money in games if they won't upgrade from a phone released almost 4 years ago).
posted by shen1138 at 6:51 PM on August 16, 2013 [10 favorites]


And you can turn off cell data downloads. The old game was only downloadable via wifi.

It still feels like a sheisty way to shoehorn in more downloads by turning off that 50mb warning though. Idk, it feels like one of those "in letter but not in spirit" things.

Is it not pretty obvious how much "well you can turn off cell downloads!" sounds like an excuse someone would make when they were skirting the edge of the rules here? This is total "Well you said i could only eat one cookie a day, so i cut up 4 cookies and put the halves together to make one cookie. Ignore the fact that it's larger, it's still one cookie!" smart but dickish little kid stuff.

I wonder if they have a bell in their office that goes off if anyone buys the $99.99 coin package - maybe streamers could fall down from the ceiling or something.

This immediately reminded me of a comment i made about insurance.

mainly this bit: This is their dream. Someone might even get a bonus for catching you in this. It'll be like one of those crowd shots of a football game where people are chest-bumping and fist pumping, confetti canons will probably go off in the hallways.

Do in app purchases require a password entry now? I remember when they didn't and that one kid racked up like 1500 in charges on some game and his parents heads exploded. Because i could totally see that being the only purchases of this $99 thing that will happen here.
posted by emptythought at 8:32 PM on August 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


Oh I am so pissed at EA over the recent update to Real Racing 3. I had just saved up enough money to buy the Lambo and then the update locked all the high end cars so you have to waste money buying piece-of-crap 2013 bloated Ford and Dodge muscle cars, just to work your way up through the racing circuit, high enough to qualify to get your hands on the serious racing cars. And that means you have to win races with the cheap crap cars, which means you have to spend all your racing prize "money" on expensive upgrades. By the time you qualify to purchase the Murcielago, you will have blown the $590k you needed, purchasing ridiculous crap like upgraded tires and wheels for a 2013 Dodge Challenger. That MOPAR POS will be outclassed after only a few races. In order to complete that racing circuit and progress through the game, you have to upgrade to the clumsy 2013 Mustang GT. Oh hey the Bugatti Veyron is on sale this week, half price, only $850k. Even if I had the money, too bad it's locked and it will take me weeks, if not months, to work my way to that car, since it is the highest ranked car in the game. Or I could just buy upgrades with cash, using real money to purchase "Racing Dollars." Unfortunately the upgrade system is horrible. Your car is completely outclassed until you complete most of the upgrades, then suddenly it is twice as fast as the other cars and you leave the competition behind by the end of lap 1, by lap 3 you're lapping the field. This is not racing, this is resource management.

I wouldn't be so mad, but the new upgrade broke the racing AI too. RR3 uses "time shifted multiplayer." All your competition is a "virtual racer," a computer AI version of race car that competed in a game someone already played hours ago. It wasn't too bad before the upgrade, and you could totally cheat by turning off your iPhone's data link and the AI cars would lose contact with the EA servers and become braindead. You could beat them easily. Unfortunately, my actual iPhone calls went to voicemail, so I had to stop doing this. Now after the upgrade, everything went to hell. Suddenly the other cars are behaving completely differently. Now when you try to pass them, suddenly they zig-zag in front of you, to keep you from passing. It looks like the TSM car is trying to outmaneuver a car that it encountered back when it was racing live, but that car isn't there anymore. You are racing ghosts, and those ghosts are racing ghosts. But these ghosts will block you from passing, a major transgression of racing etiquette. One car can block you for a whole lap, and then the entire field is so far ahead, you can never catch up. Oh but it gets worse. If you manage to pass the blocking car, it will deliberately sideswipe you and damage your car, which slows you down and the damage costs Racing Dollars to repair. So I use a trick I learned from watching live CHP car chases on LA TV stations, "The PIT Maneuver." It's great seeing that goddam blocking car get what's coming to him, putting him out of the race. But you're not putting him out of the race. It's a Time Shifted car, it finished that race hours ago, and nothing you do can go back in time and affect his results. And even worse, you do a PIT Maneuver with an expensive car like the McLaren (the fastest car I could unlock) and it is really expensive to repair the damage, and it puts your car in the shop for 8 hours or more. Yes, 8 realtime hours. So you have to race in the evenings, and then let the car go for service overnight while you sleep.

And yes, it gets even worse. Since the time shifted cars aren't really racing in the same time stream with each other, when you put them all on the same track, they don't interact well. They certainly aren't racing in the same time stream as you are. This is especially bad at the beginning of a race. Sometimes the cars will all jam together at the first turn, and you're caught in the middle. The cars are all trying to outrace and out-turn some car that it was racing an hour ago, but isn't there in this race. So the cars bunch up and actually come to a complete stop. They can't untangle themselves, you just have to blast through them and push them out of the way. Or else you have to go off the track and just go around them, which damages your car just as bad as bashing through the pack.

And the way to fix this is obvious: pay for the upgrades. Buy the most expensive cars you can unlock and upgrade them completely. Then you can blow away the competition before they even get to the first corner and the traffic jam. Then your car is so fast, you just do boring laps all by yourself, until you start lapping the pack, and you're probably going to crash into the slower cars because they were all driven by noobs and their TSM car is a menace on the road. But a good race car with full upgrades can cost $150 or more, in real money. So you either grind through the lower levels of the game until you can upgrade and beat everyone, or you just buy your way to #1 and it's no fun.

I have seen this problem in other freemium games. Infinity Blade II is particularly bad. I ran through the whole game, aggressively upgrading to the heaviest weapons and armor. But you can't play it that way. Your weapons and armor get experience points, not your character. Once your weapon or armor is maxed out, you can't get get more points, so you can't level up. So once you peak, you have to play your way back down, using progressively worse items, because those items aren't maxed out yet. Well, before I figured this out, my character was at Level 50 and suddenly I can't progress or level up because I have all the max weapons, but the foes are at Level 130. I can't get above L50. So I wiped my character and started over. I used the smallest upgrades I could find, so I got the max experience points and leveled up as much as possible. But now I'm at L90 and the foes are at like L250, it's even worse! And there are no more weapons that aren't maxed out, unless I want to go into battle completely unarmed or completely defenseless. I can keep one maxed weapon and give up my good armor and use an unmaxed flimsy armor. Or I can go into battle with a crappy but unmaxed weapon and heavy armor. Neither option will work. Now I'm completely stuck again. And I haven't even been able to get to the higher levels of the game, where you have to fight the Deathless Kings. At L90, they kill me with one blow. It looks like I have to get above L200 just to have a chance to beat them. So I have to wipe my character yet again, and try to build it up again so I can get past L90. This is ridiculous.

I have seen this many times before. You would think developers would be aware of the pitfalls, but they keep repeating the same mistakes. Just as an example, the old V for Victory Mac games started out pretty well, with titles like D-Day Utah Beach. It was a perfect recreation of the old hex-grid board games. The computer took care of all the difficult game management, which was pretty damn amazing considering they were running on dinky hardware like my Mac IIcx with a pathetic 16MHz 68030 CPU chip. But Atomic Games totally screwed the games up. By the time the later titles came out, like the Russian game Velikiye Luki, they "enhanced" the supply and replacement part of the game. You had to allocate resources to different units, and micromanage the game. You had to decide if you wanted just one new machine gun now and no replacements for a long time, or a continuous flow of pop gun bolt action rifles that would be totally ineffective in battle. So you spent hours and hours manipulating the supply chain, and for about every hour of boring resource management, you'd finally get a minute of realtime battles, which you had preplanned, hey would play out automatically, faster than you could follow. So now in a few seconds, the game played out a couple of realtime hours, and you are back doing supply chain management. Realism was up, playability is down. And Atomic Games knew better. Their program notes said that realistic war games are unplayable, they are too complex and unenjoyable. Everyone spends hours doing ineffective resource management and then everyone goes into a poorly planned battle and gets blown to shit. Kind of like real wars.

Well would someone get their head out of their asses and look at the history of gaming, and write decent games that avoid these stupid pitfalls? Those who fail to learn from the past, will repeat it (which was a particularly pathetic error for a company producing historical war games intended to teach this very lesson). I think this is a problem of developers in general. You've got a bunch of kids fresh out of college, developing games, while the experienced developers who know better are greylisted and can't get a job because EA thinks it can hire two inexperienced kids cheaper than one experienced senior developer. And senior developers won't work 60 hour weeks for low wages like young kids will. Hell, companies like EA can't even properly manage their own development resources. What makes them think they can write games that depend on resource management without totally fucking it up?
posted by charlie don't surf at 10:11 PM on August 16, 2013 [4 favorites]


I wonder if they have a bell in their office that goes off if anyone buys the $99.99 coin package - maybe streamers could fall down from the ceiling or something.

Based on my experience, this would probably happen about once a day on average, although with a truly popular game like PvZ, its probably higher, maybe 2-3 times a day. I haven't played PvZ 2, but even with our games that had no real pinch, you'd get players hitting the $99.99 package at least 1-2 times a week.
posted by shen1138 at 11:10 PM on August 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


.
posted by Artw at 2:59 AM on August 17, 2013


It still feels like a sheisty way to shoehorn in more downloads by turning off that 50mb warning though. Idk, it feels like one of those "in letter but not in spirit" things.

For what it's worth, it looks like there's a dedicated in-game setting for disallowing cell downloads of the update(s) and it looks like that's set to disallow by default. I'd be curious to know what the game looks like without the extra ~120MB download (and whether it prompts you if you're not on wifi), but I'm not sure I want to wipe my progress to find out.
posted by nobody at 4:04 AM on August 17, 2013


I'm saddened that your child had such a heartbreaking experience, but the cost benefit analysis is overwhelmingly in favor of not supporting a tiny percentage of the market (who, as you suggested, probably won't spend money in games if they won't upgrade from a phone released almost 4 years ago).

That's fine, but why not manage the PR part of it by being upfront about it prior to the release? Saying "Available for iOS" sort of implies it's going to be (as most things are) be available for ALL of the iOS, vs. just a certain segment. Again, it's not the development that irks me (I get the why, even if my kid does not) - it's the marketing.
posted by anastasiav at 6:17 AM on August 17, 2013


Having the constant nagging feeling that I'm getting ripped off would destroy any enjoyment that I'd get out of playing a fremium game no matter how good it was.
posted by octothorpe at 6:56 AM on August 17, 2013


My experience do far is that instead of the constant revelation of new plants, zombies, maps and so in PVZ the sequel settles very quickly into a very samey grind. Those extra plants may be available without grinding but right now the path to them is looking a bit tedious.
posted by Artw at 8:05 AM on August 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


I have a rule. I do not play Fremium games. I will not play PvZ 2. I don't care how well it's implemented, it's a fundamentally flawed model, and I am boycotting it.
posted by salmacis at 8:08 AM on August 17, 2013


I'm surprised some folks are still having a good experience with the first gen iPad. My housemate has one and it is so painfully slow that it has been relegated to sit on a shelf and ONLY play Spotify for the living room.
posted by lazaruslong at 8:21 AM on August 17, 2013


I'm on the first map, played through to the 7th step and two gates. I have gotten a new plant every 2-3 steps and aside from Dave showing up once to tell me to check out the store, I haven't been invited to buy anything.

Only the power-ups are too expensive (to me) to use without buying more coins, and I don't really like or need them all that much.

I get bored easily, and I get irritated easily. I'm not having a problem with either one.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:13 AM on August 17, 2013


That's fine, but why not manage the PR part of it by being upfront about it prior to the release? Saying "Available for iOS" sort of implies it's going to be (as most things are) be available for ALL of the iOS, vs. just a certain segment. Again, it's not the development that irks me (I get the why, even if my kid does not) - it's the marketing.

I can't speak to EA, but there's a couple reasons why it wouldn't happen at Zynga. First, we don't know up front whether support for older devices will suck or not. We build the games with the devices we have in hand, and none of us own a 3GS anymore (we're all gamer nerds, we have the newest gadget). Once we finally finish principal engineering on the game, that's when we start testing on other devices, usually iPads and the next gen down. So if we've been developing on iPhone 5 for months, we move to iPad 3 and iPhone 4S before we go further. 3GS is way way down the list, and the Android advocates in the studio are going to get a start porting the game for their phones before we start checking out the 3GS.

Meanwhile, after greenlight but before we come close to finishing the game, Marketing starts doing their thing. In a big company like Zynga, the game studios dont run their own marketing, its not our area of expertise and its very complicated when you're as big as Zynga (you have to manage ad inventory across a dozen networks, both on web and mobile, and you have to coordinate releases so that two big games don't overlap and steal each other's thunder, etc etc etc etc). So the Marketing team is doing their thing well before we have any idea whether its going to work on the 3GS or not.

Sometimes we get lucky, and a game we've made on a new device works just fine on an older device (admittedly, this happens way more often on Android since there are so many older devices where we can test and occasionally go "holy shit it works!"). But more likely, its going to suck, and we're not going to know how much engineering work its going to take until well after Marketing has momentum (and we've told Marketing what we want as our ship date usually. We're not going to delay our ship date just to add in 3GS support. We'll work on that afterwards if we think there's a good reason, or it won't take a lot of time, or someone just wants to scratch that itch.
posted by shen1138 at 12:07 PM on August 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm surprised some folks are still having a good experience with the first gen iPad. My housemate has one and it is so painfully slow that it has been relegated to sit on a shelf and ONLY play Spotify for the living room.

I gave one to my mom last Christmas and it was working great until a weird glitch made it unusable(EVERY app quits, even safari and such. Instantly, right when you open it. Restore and it starts happening again in a few hours).

It wasn't too slow, or awful feeling at all. It was noticeably slower than my iPad 3, but in no way felt worthless. It just felt a bit slower like my iPhone 4 did on iOS 5 and 6. All the apps still ran fine, etc.

If your roommates is actually that bad I'd try restoring it. I know several people who are still using iPad 1's right now, or were up until a month or two ago and had no complaints.

Then again, I'm a bit of a "keep using old stuff for ages/intentionally buy older stuff because its cheap" guy.
posted by emptythought at 12:45 PM on August 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


I wonder if they have a bell in their office that goes off if anyone buys the $99.99 coin package - maybe streamers could fall down from the ceiling or something.

Based on my experience, this would probably happen about once a day on average, although with a truly popular game like PvZ, its probably higher, maybe 2-3 times a day. I haven't played PvZ 2, but even with our games that had no real pinch, you'd get players hitting the $99.99 package at least 1-2 times a week.


I'm pretty sure this exists, and I'm pretty sure the employees have to pay 5.99 a day to keep it muffled.
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 2:07 PM on August 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Probably they just put in ear plugs. They need to keep SOME money in reserve so they can go to the bathroom.
posted by Artw at 2:14 PM on August 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Oh hell, they just updated Real Racing 3 again. And a whole new set of nightmares is dropped on the game. I am not surprised that the only real solution to the new problems is to buy in-game purchases.

Once again, they have completely changed the game physics, they call it "difficulty tuning." Now it is even more difficult to outrace your opponents unless you have a completely upgraded car. There are two currencies in the game R$ and Gold. You get R$ as prize money for winning races. You get gold for leveling up, like completing 25%, 50% and 100% of a race series. You have to win a bunch of races and spend the R$ on upgrades, so it involves a lot of grinding to upgrade cars. Oh hey new update 1.3, you can buy upgrades with gold instead of R$. But gold is really hard to acquire, unless you buy it with an in-game purchase.

So I decided to go back to the early stages of the game and grind away to earn gold by completing 100% of some race series. This is a huge pain in the ass because you can win all the races by acquiring the top end car, but then you still have to buy every single car available to the series, even the crappy ones. There's a "showcase" for each car, you have to own that car and finish the race as #1, so you'll probably have to spend some R$ upgrading it too. Fortunately I'm completing some low level race series, the cars are cheap. Oh holy crap, they just added a new car, a '66 Shelby Cobra 427. I was just about to finish the final race in the series, now they added this car and I have to buy it to finish the series and get 15 gold pieces. But the Shelby Cobra costs 180 gold pieces. That makes it one of the most expensive cars in the game. It will be virtually impossible to advance in the racing series without in-game purchases of gold. To get 180 gold pieces, I can't buy the 150 pack for $20. I have to buy the 400 pack for $50. They've been teasing people for weeks that the upgrade would include some hot new muscle cars. They didn't tell us it would change the game balance and force people with weeks of time spent in the game for free, avoiding freemiums, to buy expensive in-game purchases just to continue playing.

The customer service forums for RR3 are going crazy. People are livid. They're quitting the game. I think I'm through with it too. There will be no way to advance without boring grinding. I think I'm through with this one. Thanks for killing my favorite game.
posted by charlie don't surf at 10:25 PM on August 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


That sounds a lot like work, TBH.
posted by Artw at 4:19 AM on August 23, 2013




I think I already know what I can do about it. When I see something on the App Store, I look for the list of most sold in-app purchases. If there are any, then 90% of the time I won't be getting that app. The exceptions are when I know the app is a shell for the things I'll be purchasing (for Pinball Arcade, the purchases are more like the main attraction and the app itself is just a shell for them), and certain limited cases where I want to support the developer (board games and indie games are often like this).
posted by JHarris at 11:21 AM on August 24, 2013


I got a small measure of revenge on EA today. Once in a while, an icon pops up on the Real Racing 3 start page, offering 1 Gold unit if you watch a commercial. Today it offered 3 Gold. Sure I'll waste 30 seconds for 3 Gold, and if it's obnoxious (like that Mountain Dew commercial was) I'll just turn the sound off.

This time, it was an anti-drunk driving PSA from the Michigan Highway Patrol. Blah blah blah, 30 seconds later, Ka-ching, hey wait a minute, I didn't get my 3 Gold. Let's try that again. 30 seconds later, Ka-ching, hey no Gold. Oh there it is, 6 Gold. Hey let's see if that works again. Ka-ching, 9 Gold. Ooh server glitch, time to cash in. Turn the sound off, tap, 30 secs, tap tap, 30 secs tap tap, I managed to extract about 60 Gold before the bug was fixed and the icon disappeared like it was supposed to. I was kinda hoping I could extract more and get the 1966 Cobra 427 for 180 Gold. I would have sat there for an hour, tapping while reading my email, etc. But that was enough to buy the Corvette ZR-1. I better buy the car before EA tries to take back the Gold. Ka-ching! Thanks, Michigan Highway Patrol! Thanks to drunk drivers, now I have the unaffordable Corvette, and I can go out and be a menace on the road.
posted by charlie don't surf at 6:35 PM on August 31, 2013 [2 favorites]


I am not "a cancer" on the game industry - because horrible and destructive models are inevitable due to capitalism.
posted by Artw at 7:49 AM on September 1, 2013


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