Would you pay a hundred bucks to beat your friends at Tetris?
Probably not. According to data (.pdf) recently released by gaming analytics company Playnomics, 33 percent of all revenue earned by free-to-play games like Electronic Arts' new Tetris Blitz is generated by just 1 percent of players, the "whales" who are willing to spend thousands of dollars in order to maintain a position of power on the leaderboards of popular games.
Tetris Blitz is built to harness the spending power of those players. As one App Store reviewer puts it: "The 'blitz' is for your... dollars."
*Life After Disc is a series exploring new development in digital gaming platforms, from app stores to browsers to downloadable console games.*Tetris Blitz is a re-imagining of the classic Soviet-era puzzler for the mobile generation. It is, surprisingly, just as lightning-fast and accessible as the other crazy-successful EA game that it's modeled after, Bejeweled Blitz.
As in that game, players of Tetris Blitz can't actually lose, no matter how little thought or effort they put in. Instead, they are challenged to clear as many lines as possible within a two-minute time limit, and for the duration of that time Blitz overloads their senses with flashing lights and countless exploding power-ups. It's Tetris for the too-busy-to-devote-more-than-half-of-my-attention-to-any-one-thing generation: fast, addictive, vapid.
You can gain power-ups, but those cost coins. For the most devoted and wealthy of Tetris maniacs, one in-game package of coins costs $99.99.
In a way, the model bears resemblance to other pay-what-you-want forms of online commerce. When you overpay for a Humble Bundle or donate a little bit too much to a Kickstarter, you're engaging in a hybrid of commerce and charity.
This is, however, not why Tetris Blitz is free-to-play. Electronic Arts knows just as well as anyone else does that no one in the world would be willing to give them their money in the name of "supporting" one of the world's biggest games publishers.
The people generating all that revenue are simply spending it because they have a lot of disposable income, and get some sense of satisfaction from dominating other, less spendy players.
Make no mistake: every single person at the top of the leaderboards in games like Tetris Blitz has paid to be there. As long as a game allows players to spend unlimited money in exchange for unlimited advantages over others, somebody, somewhere, will take advantage of it, whether it costs them $25 or $2,000. At that point, it's no longer a high-score table, it's a list of the most profligate spenders.
Last October, I spoke with Giordano Contestabile, then working for EA as the executive producer of Bejeweled. We were discussing the ethics of free-to-play games, and I asked him why Bejeweled Blitz didn't offer any in-game items for over $20. The decision not to offer any high-price in-game items was intentional, he said at the time.
"It might be more profitable in the short term," Contestabile explained, "but it might negatively affect your business. I believe that probably can affect people's perception of the game, and sometimes the whole industry. There have been cases where games were too reliant on that."
Contestabile, now a vice president at a new mobile game firm called Tilting Point Media, would seem to be at least partially right that it's good in the short term. Supercell, developer of the hit mobile game Clash of Clans, is quickly becoming one of the most valuable tech startups in the world, thanks in part to its willingness to sell players a "chest of gems" for $99.
Is Contestabile right that $100 in-app purchases will eventually come back to bite developers in the long run? It's difficult to see what else would replace them and still make money. As Contestabile put it: "We can't create a new game mode every week. Once you've sold them a few game modes, then you're done."
And there's nothing left but coins.
