Good job Devs! (Year of Adventure Bundle)

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I just spent money for the first time on a mobile app game, and it was on this one. Not a lot, just the "New Year of Adventure" bundle, but I found myself wondering why this game, of all games, when I never spent any before, and wanted to share some thoughts.

 

Although I buy lots of computer games and board games, I never spend any money on free-to-play games, partly because I like getting a good deal and playing FTP feels like that, but also because I enjoy the challenge of unlocking things and spending money feels a bit 'cheaty.' I enjoy the physical Pathfinder D&D system and I've been enjoying the app as an excellent iteration of the card game system, but I realised I could easily grind through and save up the gold to buy the next adventures I wanted (Legendary mode is an excellent way of doing that). That might be a problem for some players, but I was content to earn money in-game, seeing it like the standard grinding to level up in an RPG, and I'm usually pretty happy with that (I play a lot of Hearthstone, for example, and have never spent a penny).

 

No, I made my first ever in-app purchase simply to support the developers who make it. I don't think I've ever seen such an open, honest and generous development team in a game before. Simply engaging fully when people complain is a little unusual, to be honest, but to encourage such feedback and openly say you're a small team which is trying to get to grips with a tricky programming challenge is astonishing, and more than a little refreshing. The passion for the game really shows through when you're so open about your desire to continue development on the game and the challenges that you're facing in order to do that. Then of course there's the little holiday bonuses (the recent five free chests, for example, have got me hooked on those addictive booster packs).

 

As a result, instead of thinking 'what can I get for my money?' the motivation for my purchase was 'I hope this helps them keep working on this!' Whether that is (hopefully) Skulls and Shackles, or the PC development, I really want to make it worth their while to continue to develop this really enjoyable game.

 

That's not to say, of course, that there aren't problems. The bugs, of course, are persistent (although fortunately, I've personally not found any game breaking ones so far). The pricing structure is also off - I agree with some other posters that there should be a small initial unlockable cash purchase early in to your experience to test the waters and suck people in, rather than dropping down a £20 chunk of money in one go. The New Year of Adventure bundle does help with this though - it pacified my 'hey this is a good deal!' side and gave me access to new content. I suspect from my experience that more exclusives and promos as part of these bundles might encourage more uptake on the purchase packs.

 

I know from following these forums that the developers are eager for feedback on all aspects of the game, so I hope they find my experience useful. Maybe I'm the target market, maybe I'm not, but I spent money for the first time on a mobile game and I thought that was pretty remarkable, so I wanted to share some of the thoughts I've had over why that is.

 

In summary: thank you Devs! Please don't change your community engagement strategy, it's an asset to your team and to the game and makes me proud to have supported your game. I hope other readers find this comment interesting and helps them reflect on their own reasons for supporting the game.