Some people might remember Dungeon Keeper. It's a game about setting up and running a dungeon or lair, while monsters try to invade it and steal your riches. It was released in 1997 and a large group of people still have fond memories of it.

That certain game, developed under the watchful eye of Peter Molyneux, has now made its comeback on mobile devices. The original team didn't develop it though. This certain game is made by money hunger geniuses. True business devils. And this is what they teach us.

A little taste is free

Our game isn't that good. What should we do?

Devil solution: give it away, give it away, give it away now!

Free-to-play videogames. It's a stroke of genius that takes inspiration from more traditional markets (narcotics for example). The last couple of years we've really seen this trend take off in the video game industry. And hey, it often works out pretty well for both the developing party as the playing party.

This time however… Sure, you can give away the game for free, but what to do if your product isn't all that? Take a name and brand a lot of people know and have fond memories of and give them a really small taste of it. Look, but don't touch. Play the tutorial, learn how the products works, look at all the shiny buttons that maybe one day the game will allow you to push, but don't touch them! Not now. Pay first!

Charge as much as you can, as many times as you can

We don't want to be fired. How to make this thing profitable?

Devil solution: force them to buy shit by breaking the game.

Okay, okay. They've got our product. Now what? How to make this thing profitable so we can run to the boss with big bags of money?

Simple my friend. Let's limit all the good stuff we just showed them up to the point that all the pleasure and possiblity is completely sucked out of the product. And now tell them they can have it back if they have the patient of a buddhist monk or pay up. And I'm not talking about loose change.

Case in point (USGamer):

And with even the most simple tasks occasionally taking up to 24 hours of real time to complete — yes, digging out a single square can take a whole day — EA is counting on impatient players to want to spend those gems as quickly and as often as possible, and as such has provided in-app purchase options that extend all the way up to $100 at a time to facilitate the collection of said gems.

If people don't like it, don't give them a chance to say it

Nobody likes our product anymore. Yikes!

Devil solution: don't give people the chance to rate your product.

You know how you can rate apps in either the App Store or Google Play? Well, Dungeon Keeper wants you to rate the game. It even asks you to rate it. Problem is, EA only gives you two options: 5 stars or 1-4 stars.

Okay, well then I'll take the option 1-4 stars. But hey, what's this? No option to choose an actual rating. EA smartly circumvents the rating process by not redirecting you to the App Store to give your rating, but instead forces you to either give feedback to the developer (which will never be publicly available) or just keep on playing.

But what about the 5 star option? Yep, works perfectly.

And if people start complaining just tell 'em this (Gamasutra):

The ‘rate this app’ feature in the Google Play version of Dungeon Keeper was designed to help us collect valuable feedback from players who don’t feel the game is worth a top rating.