The Casual Creep. A look into why Freemium games are becoming more popular and at the same time degrading in quality.

This is a rant on mobile and browser games becoming increasingly more devious about their casual nature and the monetization that is tied into it.

In online games with constant updates, namely MOBA and MMO titles, the community realizes and discusses openly the power creep that occurs when new characters, spells and items are added to the game.  Let's take that concept but now translate it to Freemium games.  Many people feel uncomfortable talking about what I like to call "The Casual Creep" that is taking place with Freemium games.  Freemiums are some of the most popular titles despite the acknowledgment that the vast majority of these games are genuinely bad or toxic  to the community.

Not saying all are bad and honestly some of my favorite and most played games are of this genre - Angry Birds & Bad Piggies being good examples.

As more of these games get added to their respective stores, Google Play, Apple Store, Chrome Web, Facebook, etc, we should see an increase in quality & Depth and to a degree that is true but overall these kinds of games are improving in comical ways.  Commercials, making good facebook banners, having really colorful loading screens, artistic cutscenes, things that truly do not impact the actual gameplay but rather in order to "sell" itself and deceive the would be players into downloading the game.

Some games will even STEAL artwork from popular known titles for ads and even in game! 
Wartune ad- stolen from League of Legends

In MMO and MOBA games, we see constant and consistent updates to the individual titles but when considering the mobile market and Freemium as a whole, it is the opposite.  It is more about spamming a multitude of different games rather than polishing any single title which is the exact opposite philosophy of what makes a truly great free to play title.  F2P and AAA should not have to be exclusive terms.  While it is fine to make episodic adventures and expansions like we see in Angry Birds, it is NOT okay to create 10 different versions of the same game with very slight differences that essentially all amount to being pay to win regardless so the actual gameplay becomes irrelevant then.

Some of these producers/developers hide under different company names.  R2 games, makers of Wartune and League of Angles, also are tied to other company names and even if they are truly separate identities, all these pay to win sites link to each other in order to garner a presence online and get higher ranked search results. R2Games Game321 GTArcade just some examples.

The Casual Creep is real, because it makes money and is easy to do.  Even if the games themselves make no money from in app purchases, the ads on their respective sites will make it worth.  Sadly, this isn't just effecting casual games or even just free to play games, rather, the entire industry.  More and more games are spending an exorbitant amount of money on advertising versus the actual games development.  Ads sell, partnerships make development easier, and sponsorships help pay the way.  While this isn't an entirely bad thing because sometimes we wouldn't have the game without them, we are seeing a gross trend with games becoming more lame and emptier versus more grande and epic.

I review games non stop, and the majority of my reviews are actually of these trash titles.  Here is a quick example of said games: One Piece Online.  Keep in mind that this game is NOT officially licensed, and gives the player NO choice in actual gameplay.  It plays itself.  It has 2 sister titles that rip the art from Bleach and Naruto as well but maintain almost the exact same self playing mechanics.

Right now I don't think consumers have a real say or impact for this topic.  I think laws and regulations need to be put in place in order to stop the false advertisement of these games and force the companies to actually make better games instead of better ads.  Things like forcing these kinds of games to be classified as "Pay to Win" instead of "Free to Play" or being more strict with how we define what an "MMO" is.   A lot of these games excite audiences with claims that they truly can't live up to like the slew of arena shooters which should be defined as such instead make it to many search results and websites for being self classified as an "MMO" even though that is an entire lie.

The Casual Creep, where with every additional game added to the casual video game market, they become increasingly more deceptive and simple.  Nothing wrong with simple games, nothing wrong with good ads, but there is something wrong with being deceptive and when it gets to a point where you are making games that play themselves and ask for money so that you can SKIP parts of the game, then we have gone too far.