My Bottom 10 of Modern Gaming

As we enter 2013, I think about how we as a society play, mostly with online and mobile gaming. Doing so, I have found a few things that can get frustratingly annoying, especially compared to gaming in prior decades. That got me thinking about those things, and it inspired me to compile a list of the most annoying things that plague today's world of gaming. This is not a Top 10, which would enumerate the best things, but a Bottom 10, which highlights the worst.

My Bottom 10 is as follows:

10. RATE ME!
Sneaking into the 10 spot is the ridiculous trend of pestering users to rate an application in the store at which they acquired it. "Rate me! I'll give you 500 coins!" or "Five-star reviews keep the development going!" Pish posh, I say. If I like your app, I'll rate it. If I don't like your app, I'm more likely to rate it! If I'm indifferent, you'll know it by my not rating it. If you bug me every time I run the app, and don't provide me with a "Never show me this again" button, you're just guaranteeing yourself a one-star review from me, not necessarily because I dislike the app, but because you simply asked me to rate it.

9. “Freemium”
Up next is the idea of a “Freemium” application. I suppose it's a way to get people to try something before they buy it. For example, being able to play a game up to a certain point, then asking for money before being able to play the rest. Or locking certain features unless the user pays up. I never really understood the concept, but I'm not cool with it.

8. Game Clones
Sliding into number 8 are game clones. It's just some sleazy developers' way to make a buck or nine off a game or pop culture theme that's already wildly popular. Look at all the games whose primary mechanics consist of controlling a running character by making him or her jump or slide to avoid obstacles, jump to collect power-ups, and move side to side to collect coins. That describes Temple Run and about a dozen or more other games that came after it, obviously trying to leech off Temple Run's popularity. This says nothing about the "match 3" theme, made popular by Bejeweled.

7. In-game Currency that Replenishes Insufficiently
Now this is just a sneaky plot for game developers to get you to do their bidding. "Rate the app, get 500 coins!" "Connect to your Facebook account, get 1,000 more!" Then there are the slot machines, wheels of fortune, and other devices where you gamble away your in-game currency in the hopes of receiving something more. You might gain something significant by doing these things, but then again, probably not. For instance, there are a lot of games where you can play once for free, but if you want to play again, it'll cost you. There are others that offer boosts to enhance your game, but in order to use one, you need to spend an amount far greater than what you can earn in one game. With the gambling devices, you'll most often get one go at it for free, but if you want more than that, you'll need to fork over some real cash. If you want a truckload of coins, you'll need to pay the figurative arm and leg. Disgusting.

6. Limited Replay Value
There are games where you want to play again and again. There are others where once you're finished, that's it. No advancement, no ability to play a more difficult version, no high score for you to beat, nothing. These games make me ask, Why bother?

5. Intrusive Advertising
You know those ads that rotate in on top of the main menu, advertising another game? Well, whoever invented that ought to be severely punished somehow. Those are the worst, along with any ad that takes up the whole screen, providing a tiny little X all the way up in one corner to dismiss it; any ad that blocks a portion of the user interface; any ad that appears as a modal dialog; and any ad that appears in a paid application, especially those whose price drops to free after a large number of users had paid for it.

4. Updating a Classic Game by Making It Worse than the Original
This has been going on for way too long. Taking a classic game and wedging in unnecessary new game elements, or frankly, any item on this Bottom 10 list. For example, adding multiple-choice responses to Jeopardy! (For those unfamiliar with the game (which I highly doubt, but just in case), here's a link to the Wikipedia article about it.)

In reality, you could say whatever you want as a response to a clue. In earlier releases of the Jeopardy! game, you actually had an on-screen keyboard, where you could move a cursor around to select each letter, one by one, until you completed your intended response (signified by selecting the provided "END" or "ENTER" key). The system was fairly tolerant, allowing some common misspellings to be accepted as correct, and filling in the start of your response question (Who is…, What is…, etc.) for you, so you can focus in filling in the blank. It was enjoyable.

However, the version for iOS drops that altogether (despite that operating system using an on-screen keyboard where you directly touch the letters to select them), and provides four possible answers for you to choose from. What is this, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

However, the most egregious example of Updating a Classic Game by Making It Worse than the Original involves The Oregon Trail. This classic game was intended as more of an educational game, giving players the experience of being virtual mid-19th century pioneers trekking westward from Independence, Missouri to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Thanks to the folks over at VirtualApple.org, you can play the original version of The Oregon Trail as I first did many years ago.

The version for iOS has updated graphics, but also has many features that weren't available, even to those pioneers. Namely, a "portable store," where you can buy things like food or a spare part for your wagon wherever you happen to be, even in the middle of the plains. Also added are missions and quests. Finally, one of the items we have yet to cover in this Bottom 10 list: two forms of in-game currency.

3. Social Gaming that Isn't So Social
There seems to have been a big push in social gaming lately, and while it can be good, it can also be bad. The bad being that most of the game's potential requires that friends participate in the game as well. That can cause problems. For instance, while I have a lot of friends, they all seem to have better things to do than play the games that I do. The result of this is that my progression in these types of games is rather stagnant. In fact, I had to cease involvement in a game because not only were none of my friends playing it, it became less enjoyable for me because none of my friends were playing it, nor did they want to!

2. In-game Currency That Can Only Be Easily Obtained with Real Money
The fact that there are games that use two forms of in-game currency really annoys me. What bugs me even more is that while it's quite easy to change currency one to currency two, it's impossible to go the other way. Take Pocket Planes and Tiny Tower, for example. In both games, there are two forms of in-game currency: coins, and what are called "bux." It's quite easy to change bux into coins. In Tiny Tower, for example, you can get 100,000 coins for 50 bux. However, if you have 100,000 coins, you can't go to the in-game bank and trade them in for 50 bux. You can't even trade in 100,000 coins for one buk (which is, I'm assuming, how the singular form of bux should be spelled). In Pocket Planes, there is an exchange rate of 500+⌊bux/2⌋ coins for each buk, but again, no way to turn coins into bux.

How do you quickly and easily get bux? Pay real money for them! There are options to plunk down up to $40 for bux, and what do you have to show for it? Some in-game content that isn't even an unlockable!

To demonstrate how crazy this sounds, let's try a real world scenario. Suppose you have 1,000 pennies. You take those pennies to the bank to change them to dollar bills. The exchange rate is 100 pennies for each dollar. Logically, you having 1,000 pennies would mean you have ten dollars' worth of pennies weighing yourself down. You walk up to the teller and tell him that you have 1,000 pennies, and would like to exchange them for $10 in bills. You begin to pile the pennies on the counter when the teller stops you. "You can't do that," he says. Puzzled, you ask for a reason, and he says, "You just can't." Determined, you ask him, "Can I get five dollars in exchange for 500 pennies?" "No," he replies. "Two dollars for 200 pennies?" He shakes his head. "One dollar for 100 pennies?" "Look," he says, quite obviously annoyed, "you can't change pennies for dollars. You just can't!" Desperate, you ask, "So how do I get dollars?" His reply, "You need to give me gold to get dollars! You give me an ounce of gold, and I'll give you $1,660." "But I don't have gold," you protest, "I have pennies!" "Tough tamales, kid," he says, promptly calling for the next customer in line.

I am of the opinion that this is an abuse of in-app purchasing. While it makes sense for certain types of "consumables," as they're called, to be purchased with real money, requiring them to achieve minimal progression in a game is nothing more than an all-out cash grab.

And the number one item on my Bottom 10 is…







































1. Making. You. Wait!
Now, this has nothing to do with loading screens. Rather, this waiting is part of the actual gameplay. You tell the game to perform a task, it tells you to wait two minutes, or thirty seconds, or an hour, or a week. You'll essentially be spending more time not playing the game than playing it! The worst ones are those that make you wait an insane amount of time (8 hours or more), then you only have a split second to collect whatever it is you were waiting for.

The nice thing about some of these waiting games is that you can easily work around the wait by adjusting your device's clock accordingly. However, if time is kept on a server that is not under your control, you're out of luck, unless you've got a lot of that in-game currency you can only easily acquire with real money burning a virtual hole in your virtual pocket. Then, you can eliminate the wait.


So there you go, my Bottom 10 of Modern Gaming. Hopefully, we'll see less of these in the new year. Happy gaming!