EA Responds to Dungeon Keeper Controversy

Since its release this month, Dungeon Keeper on Android and iOS has been in the middle of controversy over its pay-to-play style.

In an interview with Tab Times, the senior producer of Dungeon Keeper, Jeff Skalski, defends EA Mythic's decisions in regards to payments.

We didn’t design this as a “pay to play” or “pay to win” game. It is designed as a free-to-play title where players can commit time or money towards their play experience, and every piece of content in the game is accessible without having to spend a dime. 

- Jeff Slaski, Senior Producer, EA Mythic

Although this is how almost every free mobile game operates - Theme Park, The Simpsons: Tapped Out, etc - Dungeon Keeper has received considerably more bad publicity.  This is largely because in the aforementioned examples you only require one or two freely available resources to build, with the option to use Premium currency if you want to speed up the process. In Dungeon Keeper it is difficult to build anything without shelling out real-world cash.

Part of the problem, it’s been suggested, is that you can no longer dig gold yourself, and that to get gems, which are the more important currency, you have to buy them. Do you think that’s part of the problem?

 

There are ways to win gems by the event raid that we run weekly, even for those players who dig out every one of their tiles. Moving forward we will be introducing even more ways for players to acquire gems. 

Slaski goes on to say that the reason for microtransactions, rather than a paid title, was to get it out to a wider audience.  However, he is puzzled as to why fans are against the microtransactions when it's had such good reviews.

Right, but it’s not just critics, fans have been making the same complaint.

 

We’re still figuring that out. One of the important data points we’re looking at is our store ratings and downloads. At the time of this interview, App Store ratings currently sit at 4 out of 5 stars and Google Play ratings sit at 4.5 out of 5 stars 

Since Slaski made this statement it has emerged that the rating system on Google Play has been partially tampered with by EA. When asked to review Dungeon Keeper within the game, players are only given two options: five stars, or one to four stars. If the five star option is selected then it is posted directly to the Google Play store. However, if the other option is chosen then the player is asked to write an email to EA in order to gauge why people don't believe it should receive a five star rating.

The only way to post a one to four star review is to send the email then return to the store and rate the game. This is undoubtedly the reason for the surprisingly high overall score on Google Play.

Another detraction that is addressed is the humour of the game.

Some have also said that this lacks the humor of the original. Again, do you think these criticism are fair?

 

I would disagree with that. We have a lot of funny content within Dungeon Keeper. In fact, there are over 500 recording lines just from the original Horny voice actor and fan-favorite Richard Ridings, but we also understand what’s funny to one person may not be to the next.

However, it takes more than the original voice actor to give it have the same feel. Michael Bay found that with the Transformers trilogy.  

You can read the whole interview over at Tab Times.