itch.io

Again, man, I don't feel that I deserve anything. Even food and water and shelter, I do not deserve that, I am not owed that. I am owed NOTHING in this world, and even if I work for it and don't get it, that doesn't mean I deserve it. 

I disagree with your mindset on it tho. I feel that marketing and labeling are incredibly important and I feel that having a satisfactory monetization model on the client side is a greatly important thing. 

I bring up Activision a lot, so let me make a comparison, if you will. Back before 2019, CoD Games had DLCs, a model which, while I despise, I understood. You paid $50-$60 for a full game, and you got a full game's worth of content. Then, for $15 you could purchase more content, which was developed on top of an already complete game. Sounds simple enough. During those games, there were free-to-play weekends, where anyone could install and play the game freely, but the catch was that you wouldn't get access to the campaign. This much was blatantly stated when downloading the free version. On top of that, there was typically a Demo you could install separately, which gave you access to the first mission of the campaign. Between the ftp timeframes and the demo you could separately try, you would get an accurate reading of the game well before even purchasing, and they were labeled properly. Nowadays, the model has changed even more. To play Warzone, it's free. You can unlock every gun for free. For paying $70, you get a full game's worth of content (debatably, but still). Inside of that game, you get to access all of it for free after purchase. New maps? Free. New guns? Free. So how is it monetized? Cosmetics, boosts, and events. While cosmetics are difficult without an entire team working on assets, and events are about impossible with a game that's rather tedious to update comparatively, this is where I think those boosts could come in. Watching an ad for +20% Cell Production for 5 minutes sounds perfectly reasonable to me, and I would absolutely do that. But to have a flat $5 paywall, I think is absurd, particularly for this genre. 

Perhaps my view of the world is skewed and I've been blessed and spoiled my entire life. But my perspective is just as integral to understanding the world as anyone else's. I like this game. Genuinely, I do. But being progression locked is insane, and having a paywall for a clicker game is a scummy tactic.