As Sheldon Laframboise pointed out in his review of Candy Crush Saga this week, he has gotten to level 170 in that game without spending. Dedicated players with high pain tolerance can continue to advance indefinitely in these games, making it a sport of turning a money game back into a skill game. This is especially true of those over 25. I am going to take a wild guess here and say you are over 25. You are not the target audience of this monetization model. You are a necessary evil that must be encouraged to maintain the illusion of a skill game for others with less willpower. Your selfishness in not spending (yes I am being satirical here) would be quite aggravating to the dev team except that you are necessary to show evidence that the game is, indeed, a skill game when it is not.
Found in the comments of Gamasutra: Ramin Shokrizade’s Blog – The Top F2P Monetization Tricks
Candy crush is a lot of fun, but this article really shows some of the dirty tricks. Even though I’m on level 350 or whatever without spending money, Candy Crush is indeed at heart a money game out to con the unwary into giving them money.
The other problem seems to be that the higher production value money-games-disguised-as-skill-games seem to be devaluing the worth of skill games, making users unwilling to pay for an experience.
