GodFinger and the High Cost of Free

I was recently looking for a little diversion, so I fired up my iPhone and looked up the top free games. It's not uncommon for this list to contain limited demos and other apps that try to sell you on premium, paid version, but usually a little time on the free demo is enough for me.

This time I decided to download a game called GodFinger which is a Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game with a cute, drag-and-drop interface. The reviews weren't stellar but I thought I'd give it a try.

After it downloaded, I was surprised when the first thing the game did was demand that join the Plus+ game network. I really wasn't interested but by now I was eager to play, so I put in my information.

I got started and found that the game was more than a little addictive. The mechanism for navigating around the world using touch gestures was a fresh take on the genre, and there seemed to be a variety of different upgrade options.

One thing that did seem a bit confusing was that in the game you have three measures: Mana (your energy available for manipulating the weather, and eventually other parts of the world), Gold (what you followers harvest to help you buy new things for them), and Awe. This last was particularly puzzling because it seemed largely useful for buying short term effects (bring any dead followers back to life, for example) but there isn't any way to earn them. Instead you're expected to buy them (yes, with actual money) using in-app purchases.

The gameplay it self was fun, if a bit tedious. I was immediately concerned, however, to see that there was some built-in social media extortion. At a certain point you can't level up unless you divulge your Facebook or Twitter account. Again, I didn't really want to, but I wanted to keep going in GodFinger so I played along.

Not too long after that, the game announced that I needed to convert one of my followers into a Mystic. To do that, I was expected to link a follower to a friend on the Plus+ network. More social media extortion. Fortunately, the person to be linked to didn't have to accept, so I was able to link to people at random.

To this point the game really only had a couple of gameplay drawbacks. The longer I played the more tedious it became, and the followers seemed to require near-constant supervision to keep things moving. To cure the latter, I was working up to buying them a "Rustic Barn", which would allow them to continue mining gold uninterrupted for hours instead of minutes. It may not sound like a big deal, but within the GodFinger world, it is.

The kicker was that after several hours of playing I finally had enough gold to buy the Rustic Barn. I went into the store, but was dumbfounded to see that a number of the upgrades, including the Rustic Barn, could now only be purchased with Awe points, which meant having to spend actual money. It would be one thing to charge money up front for the game - I understand that developers want something in return for their time. I also understand when they let you get to a predefined point in the game, beyond which you need to pony up for the full version. To act like the game was essentially free and then arbitrarily switch over a number of key elements to paid only, however, made me feel like I was the victim of a digital bait and switch. Financial extortion on top of the social media extortion.

The kicker was when I later checked my twitter account. GodFinger had spammed my twitter account a couple of dozen times. There are no options for what events should trigger there posts, and no option to customize the messages at all.

I should note that I wasn't the only who objected to the changes within the game. When I went back into the app store, there were a number of negative comments about it, and the game's rating had dropped from above 3 to below 2.

Within 24 hours, the values changed again. The upgrades were back to being priced in gold instead of Awe points, albeit at higher prices.

While I applaud the developer for listening to the community about the upgrade prices, for me the abuse of my social network is too high a price, even for a free app.

It seems there may be a lesson here for developers as well. The terms of the game when downloaded are a form of contract, even if based more on trust than on any kind of legal terms. Change the terms of that contract and the community will react, and you'll find yourself paying a high price too.