A month or so ago, I sat on my couch, scrolling back and forth between two pages of apps on my phone that didn’t appeal to me in the slightest. I was sick of word games, trivia games, and silly games with “levels” that eventually get too hard to beat without spending money. (Looking at you, "Candy Crush.") In a moment of desperation, I went to the app store and downloaded one of the top games: "Game of War." I had seen it advertised everywhere. It seemed like something to hold my attention for a day or so until I was out of this mindless slump of not doing anything productive.
I downloaded the game almost totally to confirm my suspicions that it was a glorified version of "FarmVille"; I’m sure you remember that one. It was the most popular game on Facebook, and people set timers in the middle of the night so their crops wouldn’t die. It was solely “click and wait,” meaning you clicked on your crops to make them grow (or something along those lines) and then you waited for increasingly larger periods of time until you had the most plentiful harvest in the lands.
Thankfully, I managed to avoid the FarmVille" craze completely. I blocked my more adamant friends from sending me app requests. I pitied the fools who wasted so much time tending their digital pixels. I was completely dignified in my complete absence from the game.
Since "FarmVille" (and probably before it), many others have tried to recreate that magic, addictive formula.
Enter Machine Zone. Armed with two powerful allies: the iPhone and the lack of regulation on in-game purchases, Machine Zone is the company that created "Game of War: Fire Age." This is currently the third-highest grossing app of all time. Machine Zone is worth somewhere around three billion dollars.
You might not know it, looking at the game: It’s poorly designed, and while there are tons of different playing styles and strategies, the game itself just does not seem to offer what it should for the company to be in the 10-figure net worth.
The answer lies in the most obvious place: in-game purchases. The way "Game of War" works is simple: The game is heavily imbalanced in favor of large players. When you first begin, you are given the option to buy a $5 “pack” full of all kinds of things that will help you grow. Harmless, right? I bought it without thinking twice. But naturally, those things go fast – especially for a new player who doesn’t understand how to utilize their resources efficiently. It wasn’t long before I returned for another $5 pack, but instead, all I saw were packs valued at $10. They were significantly better than the $5 packs, so I thought “Hey, why not?” I bought one.
By this point, you might already see where I went wrong: I played into the hands of these marketers. They know that they can entice people to buy cheap packs. And they know that once you buy one, you are statistically more likely to buy another. So they keep raising the price and making cheaper packs unavailable to you.
After quickly dropping $120 on this game, I finally realized that I had fallen into a trap. I was still nowhere near the strength of a big player. Without buying more packs, I was stuck at my current level for months. "Game of War" is essentially a glorified "FarmVille"; I was right about that. Sure, there is an element of fighting others and much more strategy, but you still had to click buttons and wait for incrementally longer periods of time to advance.
Some very necessary parts of the game will have you waiting literally years. I’ve seen players with timers having over 700 days left on them.
But then, after spending money I didn’t really have and watching it go practically nowhere, my game began to glitch. I stopped receiving certain rewards that I had spent money to achieve. I stopped getting basic gifts that should be available to all players. As you can imagine, after spending over a hundred dollars on this game, I was none too thrilled to see that I was being cheated out of things I had earned.
I immediately contacted support. I sent them a “ticket” outlining my issues clearly and politely. And thus began a downward spiral into the worst customer service I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. Unrelated answers to questions I didn’t ask, automated responses that basically summed up to the assumption that I couldn’t read, feedback that basically asked me to “prove it” – I was fuming.
Other players were having the same problems, and receiving the same “answers” for them. The tactic used by their “customer service” was crystal clear: Frustrate the consumer into giving up. One of the most profitable app developers in the world, and they can’t even fix simple bugs for the players that hand them the paycheck.
A little more research led me to some interesting Google reviews of Machine Zone – a stunning 1.2 stars out of five reveals that other players have been locked out of their accounts for no reason, experienced frequent crashes and lagging that costs them the game (and therefore money), along with various other issues that almost unanimously resulted in being flat-out ignored by Machine Zone.
Even more research led me to talk of huge boycotts against Machine Zone with hundreds of thousands of players partaking. But the result of these boycotts? Nothing.
Machine Zone’s “Game of War” has its value. I’ve made friends through my alliance. The strategy of war is fascinating, and it’s exhilarating. But if someone were to ask me whether or not they should download this app, my answer would be “absolutely not.” I still play, but I have since stopped purchasing anything from this app. This game exists solely to sucker you out of your money... and then to literally scam you out of it.
Until Machine Zone fixes the problems that run rampant in their app, "Game of War" is not worth wasting your time or money on.
(Note: The image used in this article – as well as most other promotional materials – does not accurately represent gameplay.)
