There is downtime in this game, see. Participate in a race and take some damage and you’ll need to wait a couple of minutes after the race is completed for the damage to be repaired (unless you use a gold coin to make it happen instantly, naturally). After a couple of races the car’s tyres, oil levels and so on will drop dangerously low and the car will need to be serviced. This downtime can take a couple of hours, depending on what is being serviced (unless you use a couple of gold coins to make it happen instantly, naturally).
That’s fine once you’ve spent the time grinding up enough cash to own a couple of cars - while one is in the garage being repaired, just race with something else. But at the start of the game, when people are at their absolute most keen to play it, the game is forcing them to either cough up cash (because gold coins are rare without spending money), or not play their new game for hours at a time.
Because I really, really want to play Real Racing 3 more. This is one slick game, with absolutely spectacular visuals and an incredibly clean, efficient racing engine. There’s over 40 cars to unlock, the faster ones have an incredible sensation of speed, and I am amazed at how well it controls. I can’t stand gyro controls, but the gyro controls in this game are soft, elegant, and comfortable. Even in public it’s possible to play this game without moving around like an idiot. The more traditional virtual controls also work wonderfully well, and there’s a set-up that should appeal to just about everyone.
The depth of content is amazing, too. There’s everything from traditional races to drag racing, across a wide range of real race tracks. I laughed out loud the first time I played the Melbourne track, because it’s close to spot-on in capturing some famous Melbourne landmarks.
Facebook is also used to help deepen the social experience even further. It’s an amazingly addictive title, which is precisely why I am so annoyed that I can’t play it more.
It’s games like Real Racing 3 that make me wish publishers had more respect for their own products, and followed the likes of Nintendo and Activision in insisting that their games have value and people should pay for them.
- Matt S
Find me on Twitter! @digitallydownld
4 comments:
"People will point the finger at EA for these microtransactions and blame it for being corporate on this, Firemonkey’s first racing game since being acquired."
Hahah, you read my mind. Not that its a bad thing to have microtransactions, a FTP game has got to make money back.
Pricing dynamics for mobile games is a fascinating development to follow. The race to the bottom for the vast majority of these games leaves developers with seemingly little choice but to follow suit. It blows my mind that I recently downloaded five fantastic games, space shooters, action rpgs, puzzle games all with high production value and play time, for free on my i-device.
Your belief that developers and publishers should stick to their guns, so to speak, and price their wares according with their investment and play value...makes a whole lot of sense. If the customer they are chasing is like you and me and conditioned to paying upfront for this content. The question this brings to mind, seeing how Real Racing 1 and 2 were "high-priced" iOS titles and not FTP, is whether EA is simply pursuing an overall higher payoff by lowering the barrier of entry, or if they feel they can't sell this product at $10-20 and earn a suitable ROI.
I think with the racing genre EA did feel like its hand was forced. CSR Racing exists, looks great, and is F2P. Real Racing is up to its third game, but it's not as bankable as, say Need for Speed as a franchise. The only solution may well have been make it F2P and hope people invest in it after downloading it.
I know I've thrown EA about $10 for the title in DLC cars. I don't know if I'll spend more though. I can grind up and earn the rest of the cars I like. So EA could have earned another $10-$20 from me by pricing the game as its AAA-status deserves.
It's unfortunate that the pricing model has become core to the Real Racing 3 discussion. It's such a great game, we really should be discussing the racing rather than the pricing. :-(
It doesnt look like that [assuming EA press kit] on older but still 'modern' mobile hardware such as NVIDIA Tegra 2, and I don't see how any race downtime is any different to a respawn counter in multiplayer games/getting booted off a server.
I am new to the series so I do not have any pre-conceptions of the franchise but i've tried almost every 'racer' on mobile platforms.
Unless a game forces you to buy something or you buy something without realising it, any claims of freemium conspiracy are moot despite older games being a different model. This has roots in mobile devices where parents authorise their credit card on their devices and let their kids unknowlingly buy ingame purchases.
Anyone remeber SHAREWARE... You got the first episode for free and the rest were greyed out unless unlocked by purchase. People didnt complain back then. People loved the concept. Of course shiny mobile devices that could exploit pay to play didnt exist back then.
Google image search, actually, but the game looks like that on my iPad 3.
I think we are in agreeance here. My problem with Real Racing 3's microtransactions is not that they exist, just that they meant I wasn't able to play the game when I had freshly downloaded it as much as I would have liked, which is the time I wanted to play it most
To me, that's a poor way of encouraging people to spend money on the game. The Microtransactions are a complete non-event now that I've logged 20 or so hours of play and have 10 cars.
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