User blog:Alfred cloutier/In-app purchases

Walking War Robots is an "in-app" purchase game, which means the cost to the user is spread out among in-game choices that cost real money. In Walking War Robots (WWR), you would be spending real money for in-game "Gold" or "Au" (which is the chemical symbol for gold). I know most of you know this already, but just in case a random person is cruising through here, they might appreciate the explanation.

The in-app purchase system creates a couple of situations:
 * 1) If you are patient, and play a *lot*, you don't have to spend any real money on this game.
 * 2) If you do choose to spend money, you will spend more money the less "smart" you are.
 * 3) If you have enough money, you can bypass a good portion of the "building" phase of the game, and skip right to the highest level of the game.

The first point is ironic to me because the implied incentive to buy gold is that the game is a boring grind. "If you want to skip grinding hour after hour, you can just spend real money, and get right to the good stuff." It's ironic because the game should be fun to play, and "grinding" should actually be fun and not grinding. It's ironic because even if you buy your way to the top, you're not going to get a different game. If you're at the top, with maxxed out bots and weapons, you're going to be matched with other players who also have maxxed out bots and weapons... you're going to be playing almost the same game.

I chose to spend some money on this game: I spent $10 to get a month of "Premium." (As an aside: I originally thought this $10 was to *permanently* get premium, the "30 D" that accompanies the price is an obscure way to say "Thirty days of Premium." Premium seems to be a safe investment that rewards more play. I believe Premium should be permanent, and it should include a gold boost.) Regarding my second point in the list above, I'm assuming there are some weapons, robots, and other options that are sub-optimal. There are robots that just aren't good. If you are smart, you will avoid buying those. For options can only be purchased with gold, and if you are spending real money on gold, the less smart you are, the more you have to buy to figure out which weapons and robots (and combinations) are good.

For example, I spent gold (earned in-game, not with dollars) on the Hydra Medium Missle weapon. I misread the missles per second part of the description, and it turns out the Hydra is a terrible weapon. The stretch on the delivery of damage is way too long compared with the platform lifespan. If I had spend real dollars, it would have been a total waste of money. It equals a "stupidity tax."

The last point I'll address quickly--I may expand on this in a later post. I'm guessing it might take over $1,000 to do what I'm suggesting--gold is way overpriced in this game by the way--buying your way to the top. You can spend gold to get silver, and you can spend gold to skip upgrade wait times. I don't think you can skip the first 20 levels, but once you get to 20th level, you can spend gold to get Workshop Points. The bigger point I'm making here is that with enough money, you won't even be playing the same game as the average person, you'll fly right by them and be playing the regular non-building mode of the game. You will be playing the actual game, not perpetually waiting to get to the highest level.