EA’s entrenching on Dungeon Keeper: all you need to know
The one and only article you need to read about EA’s greedy fumble
Oh, surprise, blessed surprise. Yet another videogaming arch-corporation succeeds in outraging fans and critics alike. My heart can’t beat any faster, the hills are alive with the sound of music, and I wonder how much of ALF was in Family Dad’s Brian. The usual stuff, the little tribulations throughout daily life in the video gaming industry from yours humbly.
What’s Dungeon Keeper?
This is the easy one. Dungeon Keeper and Dungeon Keeper 2 are, in brief, video games from the 20th century. Although we may be tempted to pronounce that this au-to-ma-tic-ly implies they’re better than anything made later, the truth is that, well, almost.
There are some notable exceptions, of course. But according to the respectable hardcore gaming community, the 90s were so good that we might as well have gone back to the caverns with the Y2K effect and nothing to come would have been missed at all.
In addition, Dungeon Keeper games were innovative management games in many senses. Albeit in retrospect they may feel like technically improvable games, the designers were sanctimonious. Once you reached the thousandth hour of gameplay, you started to have your own ideas about how to make it better — ideas that can be summed up as “This game should really be PEGI 18.”
A Dungeon Keeper 3 was rumored but never saw the light, as if it were a Valve game.
The truth is that they were awesome games. First off, you were able to play as the evil Machiavellian Dungeon Master, place traps, feed monsters, and send minions to dwarf (Menzoberranzan version of “send to death”). You managed everything in order to stop the party of heroes when they broke through wielding Elven blades, casting light based spells and shamelessly bragging of their repugnant lawful good alignment.
The 3D graphics were great, there were some unneeded but wonderful features in the FPS option through possessing a servant. Plus there was humor, humor everywhere, and it likewise gathered high reviews and ratings everywhere.
Long story made short, everybody was happy.
Who’s EA?
Electronic Arts is a mega-über-large corporation, also known as The Devil Himself, He-who-must-not-be-named, Those Guys Who Took Over Bioware, and “I enjoyed Madden so much on the SNES, too.” In Forbes’ yearly poll about the most hated companies of America, it’s always among the top positions in the ranking, if not the very first.
On the other hand, it sells mEAllions of copies of its games worldwide, it’s one the most powerful video gaming powerhouse in the industry, and it’s become a major player in mobile gaming since its early beginnings.
Why EA?
Peter Molyneux, Dungeon Keeper’s creator, developed Dungeon Keeper in 1997 within Bullfrog studios, his own company, also acclaimed by other successful titles as Populous or Theme Park. The game was distributed by EA, still the legal owners of the trademark and the rights these days. When Mr. Molyneux created DK2 two years later, EA was there, too.
In 2011, EA signed a sort of declaration of good praxis to revise and adapt good oldies like Dungeon Keeper to the current generation of hardware.
What has happened in Dungeon Keeper Mobile?
Essentially, that it’s too mobile. It’s possible to legally download the original game for PC for less than $10, but at this point it’s actually easier to find it for free rather than otherwise. This new and revamped version of Dungeon Keeper features more cartoonish graphics, more PG-rated humor, and a few (very few) new constructions.
Compared to many mobile management games for mobile, it’s the king of the hill. Both the UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) have been adapted to mobile devices and mobile players for smooth playability and optimal performance, as long as you don’t disconnect from the Internet.
Where does all the rage come from, then?
We are facing a train crash between the old guard and the newbies.
The new Dungeon Keeper is free to play with in-app purchases, which shouldn’t shock anyone since it’s the standard in mobile gaming. Nobody ever complains until someone pushes the limit too far, which seems to be the case. Some upgrades cost as much as $65 (10K gems, you can buy 14K gems for 90$ — do the math), but the main complaint orbits around time.
Boosting constructions through premium currency isn’t anything new in mobile management games, and microtransactions are as old as mobile video gaming (or even polytones!). But the games force them down the players’ throats. Yes, the game has been revamped so as to be played for a brief while per day instead of several hours all in one go, but it’s impossible to not think of the original game all the time.
Anyway, if you want your modern DK experience be remotely similar to the original one, it means, at the least, tens of dollars in investment, enough to purchase major blockbusters like the GOTY The Last of Us, for either PC or consoles ($59), plus many major paid mobile games (like ShadowRun Returns, $9.99).
You can play Dungeon Keeper eternally for free, but it’s boring.
Arguably, you could also say that the original game was more within the real time strategy (RTS) genre, and the new one is closer to resource management, though each has elements of the other. RTS for mobile can be unkind for casual players, and the stats show that resource management monetizes far better.
Didn’t EA do a soft launch?
Yes. But soft launches can be fruitless if not accompanied by some feedback research, and it can’t ever substitute thorough beta testing.
I suppose that if someone complained, EA staff shuffled their feet behind the “it’s a free game, shut up” line. It’s unlikely they expected such a dramatic backlash. Even though many reviews were written immediately, based on the very first stages of game, critics already warned about the aggressiveness of the in-app shop. It wasn’t until players had time to dig deep enough in the game that the whole picture came to light.
There’s a star deep in you, but we want five
In a very recent interview with Tab Times, EA’s senior producer of DK Jeff Skalski defended the game based on users’ ratings in the stores, where it scores higher than 4 out of 5 on average. He also came to say that gamers had fond memories of the original, and as such they were never going to be completely happy about the mobile version.
However, the game isn’t only aggressive regarding in-app purchases; it also bullies you to rate it with five stars. If you tap on the 1-4 stars button (see below), a form is opened to send feedback to EA instead of actually sending you to the Store. Of course, this is a valuable way to gather feedback, but it corrupts the overall rating no matter how you look at it. In the case that you tapped on the 5 stars button, you would land on the Store where you could still rate it as you wish.
Is it freemium doomed henceforth?
No. Many companies have successfully exploited the freemium model with amazing results in mobile (any Game Insight management game), console (Team Ninja’s DOA5U) and even PC (Farmville anyone?).
The idea behind freemium-ness is to offer a $3 game for free expecting 1% of the downloaders to spend more than $4 in in-app goods. It’s a good idea in theory, because many players prefer to pay a little bit more once they’re sure the install is worthy of their time.
But nobody talked about free apps luring users to potentially spend upwards of $50…well, aside of malware, of course.
In conclusion, although freemium should actually be a win-win deal, EA made DK to into a Trojan horse (hey, here’s a gift for ya!).
What should EA do?
Using in-app purchases as fuel to make the engine run is deceptive. Micro-payments are OK if you’re paying for the game in installments, but there should always be an option to pay a lump sum and close the in-app store once and for all.
A blockbuster game as DK could ask as high as $6 or $9 for a complete unlock; many players will gladly pull their wallets out. Don’t forget that some players expected a mobile version of the original game just like it was — or just slightly enhanced — so in the end we’re talking about an option to make the game like people would like it to be.
Likewise, companies able to admit some degree of guilt usually get stronger and fitter to the environment in which they dwell, and some sort of correction would make things better for upcoming releases. Hardcore old school gamers are the strident minority in the video gaming community, so, thanks to the Internet, you shouldn’t bother them more than necessary.
Toying with icons as Dungeon Keeper is like playing with fire in a minefield when it’s raining napalm.
What should players do?
We wouldn’t like to discourage players from installing the game and forming their own opinion, because it’s technically a good game spoiled by a greedy monetization strategy.
Anyhow, for the most radical of you, know that Peter Molyneux himself endorsed an ongoing campaign at Kickstarter to make Dungeon Keeper 3 (renamed War for the Overlord for trademark reasons). There’s even an open beta and a demo (here), but it’s a long ways from market release, let alone to mobile devices.
Fortunately, there are many good management games out there. None of them are DK, but the mobile market is full of unicorns awaiting discovery. Look for yours, and help those developers who create original content instead of milking long-time ago dead franchises.
