{"id":674,"date":"2013-11-04T05:40:50","date_gmt":"2013-11-04T12:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/?p=674"},"modified":"2013-11-04T06:41:14","modified_gmt":"2013-11-04T13:41:14","slug":"674","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/674\/","title":{"rendered":"Plants vs. Zombies 2: Between Scylla and Charybdis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\">The following two articles form an interesting diptych on <em>Plants vs. Zombies 2<\/em>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Owen Faraday slams the game because it <a style=\"font-style: normal;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pockettactics.com\/reviews\/review-plants-vs-zombies-2-its-about-time\/\">\u201cit exists primarily to wheedle you for money\u201d<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Michail Katkoff argues the opposite, describing it as\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.deconstructoroffun.com\/2013\/10\/why-plants-vs-zombies-2-cant-make-it-to.html\">\u201cpretty much a paid game without the price tag\u201d<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In other words, the first author believes that the game is ruined by microtransactions while the second author believes that EA didn\u2019t do nearly enough because it was \u201cafraid to upset players.\u201d Did EA ruin <em>PvZ2<\/em> by going free-to-play? Or did it simply not go far enough? These two pieces seem to emerge from parallel dimensions.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Indeed, the two writers are from very different worlds. Faraday is the founder of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pockettactics.com\/\">Pocket Tactics<\/a>, the premier mobile strategy game blog. As it caters to core gamers, free-to-play is generally considered a dirty word there. Katkoff, in contrast, was a Product Manager for Supercell\u2019s cash-cow free-to-play strategy MMO <em>Clash of Clans<\/em>, a game notorious for attracting whales willing to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/gamelife\/2012\/11\/meet-the-whales\/\">drop thousands of dollars<\/a> on the game.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">For Katkoff, <em>PvZ2<\/em> represents great unfulfilled potential as a free-to-play game because EA did not aggressively tempt players enough to spend. For one thing, the game is not hard enough to force players to buy boosters:<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Sadly <em>PvZ2<\/em> is ridiculously easy. It takes absolutely no effort to pass levels, making the game unchallenging and boring. . . . <em>PvZ2<\/em> offers boosters for real currency, which enable players to clear levels with some consumable super powers. But to create the demand for these boosters players need to have those moments where they\u2019re just about to clear a level and realize that they\u2019ll lose without the help of a booster. Lack of challenge results in low demand for boosters, which causes stagnant revenue.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Furthermore, the game lacks the gates that typically restrict players in free-to-play environments, which then creates demand for various unlocks and powers:<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>PvZ2<\/em> has no restriction mechanics and thus no core loop. An ideal core loop for the game would have been similar to the one in <em>Candy Crush Saga<\/em>, where sessions are restricted with energy mechanics. I\u2019d argue that energy-based core loops would have increased monetization of the game by creating consistent demand for energy and increasing demand for power ups \u2013 when level restarts have a cost, not failing a level becomes valuable.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">EA created plenty of ways to spend money &#8211; plant unlocks, special powers, extra plant food, and so on &#8211; but the game is not engineered to push players to spend. Hence, the game quickly dropped out of the top 20 in the Top Grossing list for iOS games and now hovers around number 50, which Katkoff considers a failure for a game with such high promotion and anticipation.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In contrast, the game simply disgusts Faraday; the experience is ruined because commerce becomes a constant and unwelcome guest, poisoning the atmosphere and taking the focus away from pleasing the player:<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Plants vs. Zombies 2<\/em> is designed to be fun, of course, but it\u2019s very obviously designed to be just fun enough that the frustration of playing it will force you to open up your wallet to buy an early unlock of a plant for $5, or spend $6 to see a new part of the game world. It\u2019s crass. It\u2019s gauche.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">After praising the charm and originality of the original, Faraday declares that \u201cthe biggest mistake EA and PopCap could have made with <em>Plants vs Zombies 2<\/em> would have been to make it a slow, grindy treadmill.\u201d Unfortunately, to extend the gameplay and create room for an in-game store, EA did just that:<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">After the first eleven levels, <em>PvZ2<\/em> grabs the treadmill\u2019s speed control and slams it all the way back. Once you\u2019ve finished the 11th level in Egypt and seen everything that that game world has to offer, <em>Plants vs Zombies 2<\/em> informs you that to progress to the next world, you have to go play all of the levels over (and over) again, gaining stars to unlock the pirates. Or you can just pay six bucks.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In some ways, the two authors seem to differ factually (the star system Faraday describes does sound a bit like the type of core loop, with built-in gates restricting the player, that Katkoff recommends). Nonetheless, that both Faraday and Katkoff view <em>PvZ2<\/em> as a failure is damning for EA; if they couldn\u2019t please either the free-to-play money guy or the original fan of the series, then who were they trying to please? Perhaps the ugly lesson here is that if a company decides to risk losing its core audience, then it might as well go all the way and make sure it gets the money.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">EA is caught between the Scylla of core gamers and the Charybdis of whales. Core gamers care about what they play, and for decades, they made EA a very wealthy company. Unfortunately, whales are going to make other companies even wealthier. They turned Supercell into a <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/news\/articles\/SB10001424052702303376904579136873973130670\">$3 billion company<\/a> from just two free-to-play games, which now generate over $2.5 million per day at an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pocketgamer.biz\/r\/PG.Biz\/Supercell+news\/feature.asp?c=54524\">insane 75% profit margin<\/a>. By comparison, EA had an anemic 2.5% profit margin last year, and they made a lot more than two games. As a public company, how can EA ignore whales and compete with companies like Supercell which cater to them? The answer is that they can&#8217;t, and Popcap won\u2019t be making games like the original <em>Plants vs. Zombies<\/em> anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following two articles form an interesting diptych on Plants vs. Zombies 2: Owen Faraday slams the game because it \u201cit exists primarily to wheedle you for money\u201d Michail Katkoff argues the opposite, describing it as\u00a0\u201cpretty much a paid game &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/674\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-games"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/PvZ2.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3EGlq-674","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":685,"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions\/685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}