Comment Simpsons game... (Score 1) 17
EA had a Simpsons game that they killed last year. A friend had been playing it since the beginning, and she was actively upset about it.
The problem with these "freemium" games is that they cost the company money for people to play... bandwidth, storage of whatever data they're collecting, etc.
One solution would be to reduce to tracking and bandwidth, and maybe start deleting accounts for people who haven't logged in for a year or more.
It's pretty damned sad... I miss being about to spend a few bucks for a game (eg, Plants vs Zombies) and able to play an actually fun game, instead of some game that's going to try everything it can to get me addicted and decide I need to spend money to level up faster or get some special character (eg, Plants vs Zombies 2)... or even worse, the "how many ads can we get you to watch in the 15 minute break you took to play a game"
Some of these games might be salvageable if the addicted players coughed up $10 a year or something to keep playing... but they'd probably still need to trim back how much bandwidth and whatever it takes... and set up a billing system, etc.
It's a shame, because there have been a lot of games through the years that had absolutely no reason need an online component (other than to get you to try to hook your friends into playing, too), which meant you couldn't play them when flying or whatever... and now they're just completely dead.