Few people in the mobile game world are more passionate or outspoken than Gabe Leydon.
So if the founder and CEO of Machine Zone (previously Addmired) has been quiet recently, it's with good reason.
He's been working on a new game .
"It ended up being much more than I thought it would be," he says of the 16 month development of Game of War: Fire Age.
"It took on a life of its own."
Something different
Never one to shy away from an ambitious goal, Game of War is Machine Zone's latest attempt to combine the best elements of a PC MMOG with the 24/7 accessibility of mobile gaming.
It's a process that started for the company way back in 2009 with games such as iMob Online, Original Gangstaz and Global War.
Game of War is the culmination of those millions of downloads and ten of millions of hours of gameplay, not to mention the $8 million investment round Machine Zone closed in March 2012.
In Leydon's view, it's also a very different game from what's being offered by other mobile developers.
"We're going in the opposite direction to the mid-core trend," he explains.
"This is a complicated game. We're trying to make it more complicated. I think players need to feel like they are mastering something."
Making it mobile
It's a decision that seems to be bearing fruit, though.
During a prolonged soft launch in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, France and Mexico, Leydon says that the average player has been spending two hours daily in Game of War.
He says it's an amazing figure, particularly as it's broken down into across 10 sessions per day.
"People are playing it more than people play PC MMOGs," he says.
"It's because we put everyone into a single, persistent, real-time world and they can always play it, because it's on their phone. That's the strength of the game because that's the strength of mobile."
In this way Leydon argues developers who look to bring 'console experiences' to mobile, don't understand the market.
"You don't need to bring a console experience to mobile. You need to focus on the unique properties of mobile," he says.
"It's not about the graphics. And it's not about the touch interface. It's about accessible and persistent online gaming."
More than money
In a similar manner, Leydon has strong words about the industry's approach to monetisation.
Game of War is free-to-play (exclusive to iOS) but it's a longterm project for the company.
"If people play your game for 100 hours, it's not a big deal for them to spend money. But it is if you're trying to monetise after two hours," Leydon says.
Indeed, Machine Zone's entire approach is to focus on getting people to play its games, for long periods of time, and getting them deeply engaged with social features; in the case of Game of War its alliances system.
"There's special alliance currency which can be used to buy premium items for free," he points out.
"Getting people into an alliance is more important to us than getting money from them.
"Free-to-play isn't about pushing people to spend money. Not enough developers realise this."
It's about time
And this is why, for Leydon, the key metric is always time.
"I want players' time. Making the game fun is about trying to capture more of the players' time, and the time a player puts into the game is what makes it fun," he explains.
"We have loads of features in the game. There's a hierarchy of players, there's the whole history of your gameplay, and the game is a means of broadcasting this."
In that context, monetisation is a necessary - but secondary - outcome.
"The bottomline is you can't make money with free-to-play games if people aren't playing your game," Leydon ends.
"Free-to-play is the monetisation of time and this game is going to running for years."
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Why do u think they need to launch another game ??? As game of war is the biggest game on IOS and android , because thousands quoted in protest ,
I feel like I have been robbed, u decide ur self but just google a bit , might save u thousands of dollars,
Leydon only cares about his bank account.
Free to play- lmao. Ya if you wanna be destroyed daily and rebuild every time. The players that succeed in GoW are the players with $$$ to spend on the game. The game is always lagging, we are constantly being kicked, takes forever to logon. All that in a game that time means everything. It has become increasingly boring, with no kill events and all the big $$ spenders ruling everything.
Don't waste your time or $$$ on this game.
I wonder whether the helpdesk are there for the players.
1.) Faster game load (if you don't close the app fully)
2.) 200 new Customer Service Reps and a new CS facility in Las Vegas (which the community pays for)
3.) "Unfair combat buffs" are removed for Kingdom Event winners.
Machine Zone did absolutely NOTHING to reference the majority player requested changes to the game in the way that it is "scamming" players out of money to be able to participate in the game.... Sure the game is "Free to Play" but you won't get anywhere without spending. This is an RTS (Real Time Strategy) ALOT of the researches are 1,000+ days which no player will ever achieve playing for free. The drop rate of required materials (Golden Flakes, Blue Flames, Turquoise/Green Fireballs) is less that .05% chance per chest open! I personally spent about $1,000 USD just to test the drop rate percentage. I opened over 2,500 Xena Chests that drop Golden flakes. I received ZERO T6 Golden flakes and ONE T5 Golden flake out of over 2,500 chests. Thats less than a .05% drop rate. Well that is insane you might say to spend that much money on a video game let alone a video game with worse graphics than a 20 year old Windows 95 game Diablo 2... Why yes it is insane but the most insane part about it is you NEED that gear to be able to participate even slightly end game. There are 7 pieces of Xena gear that require 10 T6 Golden flakes. Through this test you would have to spend around $10,000 USD to create the full set of gear.... That is clearly a scam in the game forcing players to spend. Outside the Resource cost of Research and Training troops (which you have to buy $100 packs just to get the resources and speeds needed) the Inferno/Kingdom Event point cost is set so high that saving up Speeds/Resources you may freely receive in the game would be IMPOSSIBLE to reach these Event costs. For example an Inferno event costs me 70million points to complete. This will require the use of over Twenty Five 30day speed ups and will reward me 2 30day speed ups, some gold and 20 chests that will provide me less than a .05% material drop rate on required materials for gear.
Machine Zone ignored our requests and demands for change in the game. And, on top of that after the Boycott they released an updated ToS that "forced" you to accept or you could not log into your account you may have spent 100s-1,000s of dollars on. The updated ToS states that your account has NO value and any attempt to put a value on it will be an automatic ban to your account. As well as using any in game services created by people to make the game a bit easier, IE: Resource exchanging, help alliances for faster help button pushes. Due to these new ToS giving 100% control of paid for account to MZ and the lack of valued customer service and scamming from Machine Zone the community has decided to open a Class Action Lawsuit against MZ and filing complaints with the FTC and the European FTC. You can support the Lawsuit here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GameOfWar/comments/3nrbt9/information_about_the_class_action_lawsuit_vs
Many thousands of attempts for change through requests has been ignored, a demand in change through a boycott was ignored. This is our next step in action and I advise anyone thinking of picking up this game and investing into it to do some research and talk with current players. The game is a scam and is NOT free to participate, you must spend or expect Days of work to be gone in a matter of minutes.
See Machine Zone CEO Gabe's comments on rising ad costs - http://www.disruptnewmedia.com/tag/machine-zone-ceo-gabe-leydon/
My name is Tim Porter, before I explain my issue please take a second to understand a little about me. I am 48 years old, married with 5 children ages 26-2 and 2 grandchildren. Technology has always been an interest, I had my first real computer in 1985 just a few years after my first gaming system. I am a soldier, I joined the Army in 1987 as an aviator, have been to war, and still serve in the Army national guard as a leader of soldiers, holding the highest enlist rank possible. I am an active Christian, and local politician, I even ran for Sheriff last election. I say all of this so that you can understand, that I am no child, I am mature, intelligent, and well respected.
That being said, I tried Game of War, and really liked it. I have 4 accounts, and sometimes play on 3 devices at one time. I am new to the game, playing only for the last 6 months or so, but I have three alliances and am actively working within the 414 to educate new users on the gameplay. I have spent hundreds of dollars on gold, I accepted that. I also accept that there will be users that spend way more then everyone else to feed their need to be more powerful, and i get it.
My issue is with the Facebook interaction. I am a huge fan of social media. We started an alliance FB page, and I even have a FB page for each MZ account, and the friends there are multiplying faster then I can mange. Which is why I did separate FB pages for gaming.
When I built my first goldmine, there was no warning to verify which FB my phone was logged into. My phone was logged into my personal page, which i limit to friends and family. So as you well know, it automatically linked to that FB account. I did not know want his, and did not even realize it had happened at first. I upgraded my goldmine to the max, because I did the math and realized I would see a gold profit in a short time.
The trouble was noticed when I started getting the friend requests on my personal page. The reason I keep a separate page for friends and family, and professional links is most do not enjoy seeing gaming stuff, and it clogs up the stuff that is real in our lives.
So I thought I could fix this. I deleted the goldmine, deleted the app, unlinked that FB from GOW, and reloaded everything. My surprise came, when that did not work. GOW will not break the bond with that Fb page. So i started sending feedback.
My replies have been varied, from we are working on the issue to there is nothing we can so.
I find it hard to believe that there is nothing that can be done about this. i am asking you for your assistance to fix this issue. It is one of the only things bringing your game bad reviews, and it is fixable. I want to get behind the game, but I can not push it right now. Please help me, so that i can help you.
the other thing that is slowing your expansion, as great as what it is right now, and its not the money spending, is that there are no limitations on who can attack who and when. I have been all over speaking with newer players and they all ask for the same thing, BRACKETS. do not allow a 300,000,000,000 power player to attack a 10,000,000 power player. i have seen players with more power than an entire alliance of 100 members combined wipe them out in minutes. this allows no time for the news to grow, and they quit.
Something simple and broad, 0-5,000,000 5mil -25 mil, etc etc,
Better yet,and even simpler would be within a certain percentage of your own power. say 50%. So a 300mil empire is limited to attacking range of 450-150mil empires. 100mil is limited to 150-50mil, 50 mils are limited to 75-25mil, 24mil limited to 36-12mil, down to you real newbs 1mil is limited to 1.5mil-500k empires. THIS may be the thing that keeps more people in the game than anything else you could do.
Let the big spenders fight each other, let the low spenders stay in the game, and maybe they will start to spend as well, because they are not loosing everything daily.
Lastly, throw in some forced NAP days like Mon-tues-weds NAP. doesnâ
I been in business all my life and never seen someone so irresponsible, it's a great way to destroy a business, either you are surrounded by incompetent lazy people or you just don't care, for now I'll stay with the second one, by the way you just lost a great customer and if you look around the internet not the only one!
I asked for help
I ordered 3 Legendary packs on 1 day 17/9/2014 but i got 2 Legandry Packs and 1 VIP (Which i didn't order). I contacted the support for help.
Her reply was "The system shows that their was no error with your order"
I wonder is that how all you support team acts when facing a problem ??
This problem caused me to lose an inferno event which had 70k gold as a prize
I request the the issue or be fixed and your support team to learn how to properly treat customers.
If the issue didn't get resolved i am sorry but i will report to Google and will report the issue to the Department of Consumer Affairs in California . THANKS for the worst Support and treatment i have ever had
Griff LongFeather | 11:52 - 20 February 2014
BE AWARE this game has no customer support. You may say, who cares but think about this I have put in a HUGE number of hours into an account and have lost access to that account via hacking or account corruption but honestly not sure how I lost access but after weeks of trying to contact them through their advertised methods of support they refuse to even answer my requests for help and support!!! So I am trying to make people aware that if you start playing this game do so at your own risk. IT does NOT matter if you have spent money in game or not and I because of the lack of customer support I would highly recommend you NOT spend any money in game.
Just the worst support ever!
I been in business all my life and never seen someone so irresponsible, it's a great way to destroy a business, either you are surrounded by incompetent lazy people or you just don't care, for now I'll stay with the second one, by the way you just lost a great customer and if you look around the internet not the only one!
Being online allows for a few things:
A) Social connections to other people (making people content to people, lowering costs of developing new content as people have a meaningful relationship to the game and each other).
B) You can't monetize people who are offline directly
C) It's more fun when the game-world isn't empty
The reason why graphics are of vital importance to game quality is virality - and subsequently to UA cost - it's what I sometimes refer to as "Over the Shoulder Syndrome". People can discover other people playing a game without ever getting a direct referral. One person can ask another in the bus what he/she are playing. They can download it immediately because it's free.
It can explode in user base fast - because of graphics and interface and accessibility.
Quality of your graphics are naturally going to be an arms race, just as all the other times in the past when a new family of devices got powerful. It helps get mindshare. It helps you to get noticed. It helps virality immensely, and if companies don't have millions of dollars for initial user acquisition, that's important.
Multiplayer/Online play has always worked very well. Ever since the first network cards became available to most people when the prices we're cut in the 90ties. But it's not why mobile devices are special.
It's because they're in your hand.
"It's not about the graphics. And it's not about the touch interface. It's about accessible and persistent online gaming."
Our focus as a company is online technologies because we believe that the core differentiating features of mobile devices is that they are easily accessible and persistently online. From a design perspective we also believe online features are the most scalable in terms of capturing players attention over long periods of time.