Team Meat discusses mobile game, problem with free-to-play model

Edmund McMillen, one-half of Super Meat Boy developer Team Meat, recently posted a blog entry where he discussed the upcoming Super Meat Boy: The Game. According to the dev, the mobile game is certainly coming along, and the team is looking at different options to make this iOS title something special for gamers. Worth noting is McMillen's statement that the title's in-game content would "rival the original, but in very different ways."

Additionally, McMillen announced that Super Meat Boy: The Game would include dark worlds, which is freakin' awesome. I still have yet to beat all of the dark worlds in Super Meat Boy. It's a feat that takes a ton of dedication from both the player and the developer, and knowing that Team Meat will include an even more merciless set of levels is great to know.

Aside from the great news regarding Super Meat Boy: The Game and a new screenshot (above), McMillen also expressed some frustration with the current mobile game model. Specifically, he stated that he felt that gamers were being cheated by the whole free-to-play model, which has been known to string mobile players along and feed them tiny bits of content for a fixed price — content that should technically be in the game to provide the best experience possible.

"There is an ongoing theme these days to use a very basic video game shell and hang a 'power up carrot' in front of the player. The player sees this carrot, and wants it! All the player needs to do is a few very rudimentary repetitious actions to attain it, once they get to it, another drops down and asks them to do more … but then the catch … instead of achieving these 'goals' by running on the tread mill, you can instead just pay a single dollar and you instantly get to your goal! Better yet, pay 10 and unlock all your goals without even having to ever play the game!

"Words can not express how f*cking wrong and horrible this is, for games, for gamers, and for the platform as a whole … this business tactic is a slap in the face to actual game design and embodies everything that is wrong with the mobile/casual video game scene."

I couldn't agree more. While I'm not saying the free-to-play model is completely devoid of any integrity — because there are several games out there that give players outstanding content for a specific price and still never feel empty without it — there's no denying that countless mobile games and even some console games flat-out take gamers' money wrongly. Having said that, iOS gamers should be so damn stoked for Super Meat Boy: The Game!

[Team Meat]

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