(Edit: The author primarily plays incremental games via a web browser, and is not well-acquainted with the more casual mobile incremental game community if there is one. Because of this, please note that the “innovations in the genre” referred to in this post come mostly from web-based incrementals, and the “morally dubious practices” mostly refer to the monetization strategies used by mobile games.)
Historically, incremental games have primarily been free to play. They’re released either as mobile apps or on websites, with the mobile applications making money via advertisements and in-app purchases while the web games are made by hobbyists with little to no financial incentives. Because of this, much of the innovations in the incremental genre can trace their roots to free games. (and open source, though that may be simply because GitHub made free hosting more accessible. That’s a topic for another day, though.)
However, I’ve seen a trend in recent times where incremental game enthusiasts are more willing to play and recommend paid incremental games. Examples of these paid recommendations are Increlution, Magic Research, (the) Gnorp Apologue, and Sixty Four. On one hand, it’s nice that incremental gamedevs are able to make money without resorting to morally dubious practices. On the other hand, it kind of begs the question as to what these games do to warrant their price tags given the amount of quality incremental games that can be played for free. These highly recommended paid incremental games definitely have a unique component that makes players buy them whether it be story, graphic design (sorely missing in a lot of incrementals), or simply a nice blend of mechanics. But if that’s what a game needs to deserve money, then surely many of the free quality incremental games responsible for innovations in the genre deserve some support as well (if they’re willing to take it)?
(Idk where to put this but there’s also the consideration that incremental games may have harmful effects on a person’s mental health on a level more pronounced than most other genres. Make of that what you will.)
Okay, my thoughts are getting scrambled. I will leave you with a few questions (which are mostly the same question):
- What exactly determines how much you’d be willing to pay for an incremental? Are there any paid incremental games you would’ve purchased if it had a lower (non-zero) price tag?
- Similarly, are there any free incrementals you’d be willing to pay money to play? And how much would you be willing to pay in order to play them?
- What are your opinions on supporting the developers of free incremental games? (Or just free games in general)
Forgive me if this post is unclear or repeating itself. I spent an hour writing this and I don’t want to spend any more time on it.
Oh hey, I’m one of those enthusiasts who often recommends paid incremental games!
I think many of the completely unmonetized games are absolutely good enough to warrant some amount of money for their authors. I think there’s a lot of reasons why they don’t, but part of it is because of the stigma against monetization within the (browser based, not Roblox or mobile parts of the community) incremental games community. I think part of it is valid, due to concerns of games using predatory designs to compel you into spending money, but some of the stigma I think just comes from an unwarranted expectation that incremental games don’t deserve to be monetized.
I think that expectation partially comes from how many precedents there are. As you mentioned, there are so many completely unmonetized incremental games out there! That’s awesome, and I think it’s mostly explained because of how appealing incremental games are for people looking to learn how to design and make any kind of video game (I go in more detail on this point here.
That all said, I think the trend of having more incremental games with upfront price tags and no mtx are fully ethical and allow for incremental games to have higher production values that aren’t easily justifiable for unmonetized games. I’ll gladly support devs making games in a genre I care so deeply about, and I very rarely regret the amount I’ve paid (cough CH2 excluded cough).
I think it’s perfectly fine for both to co exist. I’ll keep buying and playing paid incremental games, and I don’t think they detract from how amazing it is that there are so many free, often open source incremental games. I especially want to continue new developers seeing the genre as a good place to first get into how to design and make games, without feeling like by doing so they’re lowering the relative value of those paid games. They can all co exist, just continue making things :)