Monopoly Go Hits $2B in 10 Months

Okay, my experience with this game has been limited to being astounded by how many advertisements I've seen for it -- and how their advertisement opens in SlickDeals, kicking me to the App Store, without my ever clicking it. Well, and increasingly seeing that it's doing bonkers business.

Which leads me to my question: Without telling me to go play and find out, is it any fun?

I'm sure people enjoy these free to play junk games, but I am not one of them. Full disclosure, have not played this particular game. But I owned Plants vs Zombies, the paid version, and it's better than the new free to play version, by far. I owned Oregon Trail back in the day, the paid one, and it was pretty solid, then they added all these pay to win aspects later, and the app went to crap as well. Among Us, I paid for, then it went free to play and the bugs were so bad for months after that, I don't even understand how it was still on the app stores… Finally it worked itself out and it was okay, but I haven't played it much in over a year so…

I feel like games that have one chapter free and then you buy each new chapter are pretty solid. I feel like games that are x amount of levels free (say 3-5 as a puzzler or shooter or whatever) and then you pay to unlock the whole game are fine. I feel like the loot box aspect of most free to play games and/or the constant ads/promotions render most games unplayable for me personally. Don't get me started on expensive computer/console games that add the same free to play junk type behavior on top of their ludicrously priced initial purchases.

Anyway, back to the original topic, from reading the reviews on Google Play, no this Monopoly game seems to be not very fun. Lots of talk about popups for purchases and golden tickets and what not. It honestly seems like just another fake gambling app, cough cough Pokemon Go, where you spend real money yet can never win anything of value. I honestly think actual gambling apps would be more honest at this point.

I played Pirates Outlaws, a pay to not be frustrated version of Slay the Spire.

I thought it was really good but then I got enough free credit from Google to buy Slay the Spire and it was such a big difference.

No stupid level up bars that constantly nagged me to play more or buy some Smurf berries. I thought it was only a minor annoyance, but once I could play a game without them I realized they had a bigger negative impact than I thought.

@Kristoffer
Yes! Exactly. I feel like coming from paid games/apps first before the freemium variety has irrevocably distorted how I see the latter. I just can't enjoy the "don't you want to pay for this upgrade to avoid this annoyance" kind of games. While I'm not big on buying cosmetics for in-game, at least we all realize it's merely decoration and meant to be frivolous but fun expenditures.

I'm old enough to have started playing arcade games first and remember the concept of the quarter muncher, but a good game with a skilled player can still be 1 credited. I feel like these mobile games are not on that level of design frankly. 😀️

There is a risk in painting all F2P games with the same brush. Something like Genshin Impact or Honkai Star Rail is ridiculously high quality, constantly updated with fresh content, and completely playable for free with no ads or nags. I celebrate the success of games like that, which are a different world from trash like this.

It's similar with Fortnite I guess, the issue I have with that is the social pressure to not have the free skin. My kids kept nagging me about smurf berries so that they could buy the latest skin, and then the next month there was another skin and on and on. But, you are right that people get acces to a big, well produced game with a lot of fun and content for free. As long as they don't care about peer pressure .

Haven't played Genshin or that Rail game so I can't comment.