My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a free-to-play nightmare

by Jasmine Maleficent Rea, BITMOB STAFF

Saturday, November 10, 2012

My Little Pony

French developer Gameloft looked at the rich character depth and cheerful world in My Little Pony: Frienship is Magic and decided "Yeah, that'd be a pretty good free-to-play game." I'm not sure why I'm surprised by that decision, since pony-themed microtransactions and hordes of bronies (serious adult fans) equals infinite financial gain for both Hasbro (the company that owns MLP) and Gameloft, but I am.

The whimical Ponyville is suddenly enveloped in darkness. All the citizens flee as thier homes and livelihoods vanish into nothingness. It's up to the player to lure the characters back by rebuilding all the homes and shops featured in Hasbro's Saturday morning cartoon show.

What this means is that you'll build a shop, wait 20 minutes to collect a meager amount of in-game currency, then start the process over again as you scramble to gather enough money to purchase increasingly over-priced characters and items. Sure, you could buy more gold and even progress gems (like action items in other city-building games) but spending your money wisely is next to impossible when some unlockables cost well over $50 that way.

One of the most annoying examples is unlocking the god-like Princess Celestia. To get her, you need 950 gems, something that will take months to earn in-game or set you back $100 in microtransactions. You can buy a talking Celestia toy in virtually any toy store for less than half of that!

The key to a decent freemium title is letting players take their time and not making them over-reliant on microtansactions. I've played Friendship is Magic for the last three days and can already tell you that making progress is dependent on spending money rather than fairly allowing players to just wiat around. Trying to build an expensive house to progress a quest you've been working on for the last day? In the end, the best solution to the probelm is usually a bunch of gems.

Besides perpetually wanting you to spend money, Friendship is Magic has a rotten drop rate on items you need to peform basic tasks around town. Occasionally, especially after you buy a new plot of land, horrible bugs known as parasprites will swoop into the airea. The only way to defeat them in the mobile game is to tap them while you have the fly's corresponding collectable in your inventory.

Right now I'm stuck slowly elemenating two batches of parasprites that require a very rare collectable that I've only ever seen three of in the game. This means I can't build anything new in the parasprite-infected area until I happen across more of the necessary item.

Worse still is that some collectables require you to interact with your Gameloft Live accquintances. Since Friendship is Magic went live on Wednesday night, the friend mechanic hasn't worked at all. This means ponies and items that require you to spend "friendship hearts" are just unobtainable until further notice.

Perhaps I'm not cut out for free-to-play games, but these basic complaints seem very severe when included in a game marketed primarily at children. Sure, lots of adults love My Little Pony, and are currently playing it, but the show and its tie-in products are first and foremost for children. Including horrible wait times, untested friends lists, and near-impossible item drops just seems cruel in the long run.

At least I didn't pay for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, right? Oh wait, I have, I needed gems to finish a quest I couldn't complete because I had to intereact with other players to finish it....

Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

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Sandy Morley

November 10, 2012

Ahh, bronies. How many would there be were it not for the plague of the internet known as 4chan? 2? 3?

I digress. In my opening statement, no less. I think as soon as developers stop thinking of freemium games as a cash cow, we'll see a huge influx of good freemium games. It doesn't have to be a copy of FarmVille. Jagex have been doing alright for themselves for over a decade, after all.

Slightly off topic (again) but I wonder how the monetisation for Happy Wars is going along. A fantastic freemium title--server issues aside--and certainly not one that feels like it's trying to fleece you. Still, I haven't put in a penny (nor ever felt close to), and I wonder how many feel the same. I almost want to pay the extra, just to say 'hey guys, it's worth it, keep going', but I just can't afford to do that.

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Ed Grabowski

November 11, 2012

Free to play games = The worst thing to happen to games since downloadable content. Because so many idiots, morons, and fart napkins are playing these "free" games, companies like EA, THQ and Ubisoft are now shoving micro transactions into paid games that we just dropped $60. And all three of those publishers have been clear that when next gen arrives, these micro transactions will be in ALL of their games, paid and free.

Welcome to the world of shit, population: Everyone who plays these terrible rip-offs. Free to Play games are the death of gaming. For every developer who makes an honest, great free-to-play game, a dozen other mean, scheming free to play games get dropped on to consumers. This whole genre is terrible, disgusting and insulting. They aren't free, they aren't designed to be fun, they are designed to drain you of as much money as humanly possible.

Remember when you used to just spend a dollar on an App in the app store and get everything? Wasn't that great? Suddenly people forgot about that, and for some crazy idiotic reason that I will never understand, these same people now think that because the game is free to download, having to spend a ton of money on micro transactions is fine...even though they used to be able to get these games for $1.

Free to play games are the most expensive games on the market. They are scams. They are schemes. They are hurtful. They are hurting the industry. This generation will be my last if free to play games get in the way of my traditional games in any way. If by next generation my favorite fracnhise start being changed to the manipulative "free" to play model, I will officially quit gaming for good. I've put up with a lot in this industry, but I will NOT stand for this shit. The moment I can no longer go into a store and buy a complete game for one flat price is the moment I put the controller down for good.

I hate very, very few things in this world as much as I hate this scam.

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Samuel Kramer

November 11, 2012

I certainly appreciate your passion on this topic as I agree that free-to-play models have very little to add to proper games. At best they're a compromise between the game's integrity and its marketability (League of Legends), and at worst they're operant conditioning chambers designed to maximize the amount of money you'll pay for things that only persist so long as you keep playing (Farmville).

It should be noted that many free-to-play models have a lot in common with gambling (Team Fortress 2), but have thus far avoided being legislated as such. Just like a casino is designed to keep you playing (and keep you paying) by repeatedly making you feel good about your activities, the design of the most callous free-to-play games are designed to keep you on the dependency train as long as possible. They're not designing interesting and challenging interactions of rule systems, they're purposefully designing a drug that works on a scientific level that they're very aware of; in fact, they may be leading the charge on that branch of research as they've incorporated social dependancies into the formula to add a self-validating quality to the system.

However I would encourage you personally to start thinking of ways to do something about it. The gamer space is becoming saturated by players who have just accepted that free-to-play is not only fine but desirable because they aren't charged money up front. It creates pressure, or at least inspires apathy, on the part of other players who also come to accept it. If you're concerned with the integrity of games (and you'd be right to be), study free-to-play and understand why it works. Approach friends who are addicts (they are), and inform them of the insidious cycle to which they've become subject. I personally do a weekly podcast where I try to inform as many people as possible of exactly what they've welcomed into the gaming fold.

I understand cynicism, and I know things don't seem like they often get better, but participation and education are a better option than the "I'm moving to Canada!" approach.

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jane sailors

November 14, 2012

Coin op--->home console--->free to play+microtransactions. The circle of life continues. This is not the first time a game was designed to drain the most money possible from a consumer.

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Sandy Morley

November 14, 2012

No, but it's the first time they've not been designed as games, but as a series of psychological triggers which promote emotional dependence and the shelling out of shit loads of money. They're made up of all the tricks of the casino without the potential for reward, and developers get away with it just because they're dressed up as 'games'.

And by dressing them up as 'games', and being successful doing so, they're demolishing the market and reputation of actual video games and saying "hey, Mr Kotick, I'm a shiny chuffing leprechaun, and here's my pot of gold"

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jane sailors

November 14, 2012

Can you expand on this? Having not played many of them, I 'm not sure I fully understand the emotional dependence angle or how they differ from a normal game, other than the obvious $ for unlockables.