Madness Arena

we need Chinese

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[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtransaction]Warning: In-Game Cash Shop[/url][/b] This game is infested with a toxic mobile app style cash shop. You will be prompted to and expected to give money/credit card details to the developers through this cash shop to buy in-game goods so you can play the game.[/quote] [quote][b]Note: Dead PvP game[/b] This game contains no meaningful single player content. There are no available servers and no player population. This game cannot be played as intended.[/quote] This is a completely dead third person anime themed arena brawler where you fight bots or other players (just kidding, there are no players) as the developer pretends he finally got transported into an anime universe like he always wanted, which is why nobody in his high school anime club talks to him anymore. So, Madness Arena is a dead PvP game. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time! [i]Almost every PvP exclusive game on Steam fails.[/i] Only a tiny proportion of them "go viral". This game failed for many of the same reasons those others fail. The chief of which is the developer thinking that their game will "go viral" without actually creating any reason for it do so. Competition amongst PvP centric games is extreme, and there's only a finite player base to appeal to. This game failed to reach any kind of critical mass and died as a result. Let's go into some of the reasons this particular game failed to appeal to gamers, despite the zero up front cost. First and foremost, there's no meaningful single player content beyond thumping pointless mobs. The developer gambled that other players would be an acceptable substitute for adding storytelling, level design etc to the game. They lost that bet. Without a huge community of players or single player content to add a lasting value to the game, the game dies. Developers must learn that other players are not an acceptable substitute for adding content to a game. Despite not being in Early Access the developer makes it clear the game is not a finished product (but wants your money for it anyway), which is never okay. It's misleading, and makes this come across as a cash grab. If any game has a working cash shop before it's even finished, you know right away the developer is insincere and this can, and should be interpreted as at least unethical and misleading greed, and more likely, an attempt at a scam. The graphics in this game are passable, but could be better. And while it's vital for any game to have impressive visuals (gaming is a visual medium, after all), there's more to a game than just the graphics. To be worth a gamers time, the game must match top tier visuals with top tier gameplay, and that's not happening here. You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality product, this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me. There's no initial download price, but the developer was charging $15 USD for this. Price barriers, especially on low quality products, can be a direct cause of failure. It seems like a nice gesture for the game to have no up-front cost anymore, but it also tells us that the game wasn't good enough to succeed as a paid product. Even after that, this still isn't really free as you're expected to pay up more money to unlock content/DLC so you can keep playing. This is deceptive, misleading and somewhat unethical practice, putting hidden or inobvious pricing on a non-free product. Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at just a dozen or so concurrent players, and now there's basically nobody playing it. Even though it's free. This is a dismal public reception, but it's easy to see why gamers rejected it. Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? This isn't really a "free" game, it's got mobile app tier predatory pricing, which is the kind of thing PC gamers hate. That's just another reason not to bother downloading this "free" game.