Check Out These Rad Dino Skins For League Of Legends
It’s like Land Before Time, only now the pterodactyl is trying to kill you.
Call of Duty Online is a Big Surprise
Forget everything you saw and experienced in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, forget Jack Mitchell and harken back to the days of Soap, Ghost and Price. Remember those good ol' days with them boys? Well, you can relive that whole experience again and then some in the China-only Call of Duty: Online.
South Park Craps All Over Free-To-Play Games
Last night's episode of South Park was an ode to all things freemium, and as you might expect from the longrunning comedy show, they went in hard on the unethical free-to-play menace that has been plaguing video games for the past few years.
Final Fantasy Agito is the Most Fun I’ve Had with a Freemium Game
Once upon a time, there was a game developed for cell phones called Final Fantasy Agito XIII. And when that game was moved to the PSP and became Final Fantasy Type-0, that meant the name was free to be used—which it has been by the new iOS/Android title Final Fantasy Agito.
Genius And His Lego Robot Take Cheating To A New Level
Uli Kilian once set a world record by solving 100 Rubik's Cubes while running a marathon at the same time. So he's smart. And fit. But the smartest thing he's done might have been building a robot to tap his iPad screen in the middle of the night so that he wakes up to a ton of money in a mediocre free-to-play game.…
Problem Gaming: When You Take Five iPads Into The Shower
"I hate my job," George Yao told The New York Times. After moving across the country to a tiny apartment, to a city where he had no friends, he found an outlet in Clash of Clans. Then Yao found himself standing in the shower with five iPads—individually bagged—struggling to preserve his No. 1 ranking in the game.
Summon The Gods! It's Time For Tower Defense
Cartoonish graphics, simple and intuitive game play, free-to-play, Oh My Gods: Tower Defence has it all, and yet even though it's a grand game that's 100 percent free, it's not exactly a perfect ten.
Third-Graders Really Don't Like Video Games Tracking What They Do
By now, most adults are used to the idea that the software and services they use—including video games—record what they do to send feedback to the companies that make them. But when some third-graders found out that games they love have some kind of data-mining, it was a heartbreaking combination of funny and sad.
Kids Reveal The Real Flaws Of Free-To-Play Games
If a certain system can be used to trick children into spending thousands of dollars, then it's probably not a very ethical system.
Real Racing 3 is a Beautiful Game Strangled By Freemium Nonsense
In 2009, Australian developer Firemint released Real Racing for the iPhone, stunning mobile gamers with amazing visuals and setting the standard for realistic mobile racing games. In 2010 the studio released Real Racing 2, adding licensed cars from major manufacturers and online play for up to 16 players. In May of…
There are Plenty of Ways to Pay in the Free-to-Play Real Racing 3
Firemonkeys' eagerly-anticipated Real Racing 3 is the first free-to-play entry in the popular mobile racing franchise. How far you can get without paying real money depends entirely on how much patience you possess—do you mind waiting 10 minutes for tire repair?
There's Something Strange in iOS' Neighborhood. You Know Who to Call.
Available today on iTunes, Beeline Interactive's Ghostbusters is a freemium game about busting ghosts, which I've heard makes people feel good.
There's No Such Thing as a Free-to-Play Game
I've tried to be fair to the concept of free-to-play games, which you see a lot of in mobile gaming. Yes, it all seems a bit cynical—it trades a single price for a potentially unlimited revenue stream, but there's nothing necessarily illegal or unethical about that. It does depend on making some substantive portion of…
Some Free-to-Play Games Work Out Just Like Shareware Used to: Badly
Gamers who are old enough to remember the PC experience before AOL brought dial-up internet access into everyone's homes will probably also remember shareware. My family had dozens of these discs and, later, CD-ROMS over the years. Each one promised HUNDREDS! OF! GAMES! and while most were simply trashy clones of…
Once Crysis 3 is Done, Crytek will be Working on Nothing but Free-to-Play Games
Crytek is building Warface, the studio's first freemium shooter, shown recently at E3. It's also going to deliver Crysis 3, a more traditional FPS, sometime in 2013. Whenever the studio finishes off its current committments, CEO Cevat Yerli told VideoGamer.com, it will be developing free-to-play games only.
Zynga's Next Big Game Sounds Like ... a Farmville Sequel
Zynga's next big Facebook game is an improved version of FarmVille currently beta testing under the name Big Harvest, reports TechCrunch. Their source says the game is being tested out in the Phillippines.
The Emotions Free-to-Play Games Prey on to Get Players to Pay
"In a freemium game it's not a rational decision to pay; it's an emotional one." Wednesday at the East Coast Games Conference in North Carolina, former BioWare design manager Ethan Levy explained how free-to-play games can harness to emotions of their players in order to profit.
Nearly 40% Of The US Population Enjoys Free-To-Play Games, And Bunches Of Them Pay
Free-to-play games are all the rage here in 2012. With MMOs, social games, and mobile games leading the way, some analysts see the model as the inevitable wave of the future across genres. And given how very well freemium games seem to be doing, they might just be right.
Would You Pay $1,300 for a Virtual Spaceship? [Update]
When EVE Online began selling premium vanity items this summer, everyone lost their minds and rioted. Granted, these were $68 virtual monocles and such, but they didn't offer any kind of performance advantage. Another space-based MMO, Dark Orbit decided to offer a rare spacecraft with a value of €1.000 (roughly…
Study: Bulk of iPhone Game Earnings Come From "Free" Titles
Nearly two-thirds of all revenue generated from the top 100 games in the Apple App store in June came from people spending cash inside "free" games, according to a recent study.
