John Smedley’s Twitter account continues to provide interesting food for thought related to his next project as well as the industry in general. The former SOE and Daybreak chief is apparently not a fan of the way microtransactions steer game development away from, well, game development.
“I am tired of having my conversations with players be about money. I want it to be 100 percent about the game,” Smedley tweeted. “Life is too short to spend a lot of time arguing about monetization. I’m done doing that,” he continued. “I’m done putting features in a game and having people wonder if they were put in to help monetize or make it more fun.”
Smedley says that his new game — which thus far is a mystery apart from some concept art — will be completely buy-to-play with a $20 price point. “F2P is a very tough business, but it’s tougher on game developers than you may realize,” Smedley explains. “No one wants to work on monetization.”
