Designing games for Home with progressive levels of complexity must be very difficult indeed. Unfortunately, more ambitious game releases require more aggressive pricing structures.

If people are being asked to pay 10, 20…50 dollars to play a game on Home, they expect it to be functional. Users should be able to concede that the Home platform prevents developers from creating games to rival standalone blockbusters. It doesn’t make it any more palatable when some kid plunks down his whole PSN card on a hyped-up new game that doesn’t work.

But there’s a very simple way to cushion that blow; communication. When people are told directly from developers that things are being done to rectify any bad situation, they’re a lot more likely to have patience and give the product a fighting chance.

Are there times when there’s code that needs to be fixed? Frequently. But I can only imagine how it hurts a game’s monetization during that all-too-critical opening fortnight to be hamstrung by server load and every other problem that pops up every time there’s a new release. Sadly, such difficulties appear to be par for the course with the Home environment. It’s hard to build replay value into the mind of the consumer when their *first* exposure to a game is riddled with technical hurdles to try to work through. For all of the benefits the Home platform offers to a developer, its instability is perhaps its biggest drawback.

Of course, to be fair to Sony, it’s not like there’s a template for a console-based social MMO with more than a dozen different developers all contributing content to it, and somehow Sony as the platform provider has to make it work on infrastructure that dates back to a PS2 concept. That said, the average consumer doesn’t know — and doesn’t care — about any of that: they just want a gaming experience that works, hassle free.

Add to that fact that every game is hyped like mad and then released full of bugs. It tends to make the Home gaming experience quite frustrating. Unfortunately, most of the Home audience is not overly discriminating and happy follow the carrot from one half-cooked venture to the next.

The only game that I’ve ever played with any semblance to Home Tycoon would be Civilization IV on PC. That game was so mind-blowingly engrossing that you could play it over and over, trying different strategies each time for completely new experiences. If you made mistakes, it ruined your game or increased your challenge but didn’t force you to buy the game again. Plus, it only cost about £20 to buy it in the first place. I understand the economic factors outlined by Norse about “Home game” versus “standalone game” prices but this disparity seems a bridge too far.

The thought of paying twice that amount to basically lease a massively watered-down version of such a game is ridiculous. Theoretically, the biggest fans of Home Tycoon could end up spending well over $100 on it. More than likely, people will spend all their money up front and then give up when they’ve completed their city, only to move on to Home’s next big thing.

Developers are increasingly employing this smash-and-grab business strategy because most Home games lack any staying power or replay value, especially considering the short attention span of the Home audience. It sort of speaks to the nature of Home itself. As a constantly evolving platform, users are always looking to that next stage of evolution. That’s really the beauty of Home and the biggest challenge for developers. It was fine when most of Home’s spaces were drop-and-forget promos for disc-based games or movies. Now that Home is trying to generate revenue by selling deeper games, I’m not sure that the product justifies the expense in most cases.

At least, that’s my 2 cents…likely all I’ll be investing in Home Tycoon.

So far my workers regenerate while I’m offline if I quit the game before quitting home and shutting off the ps3. So my 30 workers do just enough for my slow pace.

What I feel Home Tycoon is missing for a long term investment is more involvement with metrics. Events triggerd when citizen are unhappy and others.

N.B. Novus-Cooldown said many times that you should receive full credits when you destroy something. Hopefully this is a bug you experienced.

This is where Home Tycoon misses the boat: I get the idea of selling power-ups to speed up the game, even though it works counter to the idea of trying to prolong the game. But if someone’s willing to blow fifty dollars on it, then the way to prolong their gaming is to blow the doors wide open by removing any restrictions or penalties which would stifle further play. Someone who invests $50 should have the freedom to create, destroy and experiment without feeling like every mistake and attempt at creative expression is going to cost more money. Without that freedom, I see no reason or incentive to continue playing the game, now that I’ve blown through my $50 in consumables and am right back where I started, with no permanent bonuses being conferred upon me to keep playing.

It sure was fun while it lasted, though.

Since none of the money invested goes into permanent buffs essentially you’re paying just to speed things up. I won’t lie here, when I played Sim City as a kid, I had way more fun with the money cheat than I did playing it sensibly, but it did open the game up so much that lack of challenge and problems to work around made it boring really fast too. Same with the Rosebud cheat fir the Sims…

The very core of these games is all about the time investment and meticulous forward planning on maximizing your growth and finances. You take that away, and there’s no game left to play. It’s a bit like playing Tekken with infinite health, it looses its point.

My issue isn’t really with the game. The game, for the most part, is quite entertaining. I like the Hellfire team, and I genuinely want to see them succeed. I plunked down fifty dollars because I want to support them and I figured it was worth the investment to have the full Home Tycoon experience.

That said, it bugs me when I see a freemium business model that isn’t structured as well as it could be. It bugged me with Cutthroats, and it bugs me with this game. That’s why I figured this article would be a decent Wishlist Saturday piece, because I’m trying to think of solutions that would optimize their revenue stream. I’m not one of these people on the forum who bleats for lower prices and free handouts; I’m trying to offer up a perspective on how their current structure really isn’t set up to best capitalize on those users who do choose to commit what is a premium price tag for a Home game.

Ultimately, I hope I’m dead wrong, and that the game is making loads of money. Hellfire deserves it. I just wish my fifty-dollar investment gave me months (or even weeks) of value instead of a few hours. Permanent upgrades instead of consumables, as well as a removal or reduction of the economic penalties for tinkering around with building, destroying and remaking cities, would neatly solve this problem.

That is the harshest indictment of all!

Considering that you spent $50 and the game has only been out for 2 days. Ouch.

You get temporary power-ups, some extra buildings and to build your city more quickly. Given the game’s limitations, you still end up with a city that looks pretty much like what everyone else has created. Especially when viewed from street level. The cities seem pretty stagnant and generic. Are the mini-games like fire control and racing around really worth any investment?

What is my incentive to create a city, return to create more cities or spend any money to do so? I’m not really sure. The game is interesting to a point but will it really have any replay value after a week or two?

I know that I’ve become a chronic dissenter to this point but I can’t imagine paying $50 for something like Home Tycoon.