Remedy Entertainment is more known for Max Payne and ALan Wake than Death Rally, but it that last game does point out there first real foray into the world of casual games.
Recently they were interviewed about taking Death Rally’s transition to a freemium based business model. One thing that cannot be ignored is how the game mechanics of the game had to change to reflect the new direction.
Because we built the game as a premium game, we hadn’t built it with in-app purchases, so it was quite difficult to add those on afterwards. We did some simple stuff like car packs. Grab a car and a gun and whatnot for 99 cents extra. But that’s not really built into the game. We started thinking, “Well, can we do multiplayer with in-app purchases?” You have this story mode where you earn everything, and you unlock all these bits by grinding it. When you enter the multiplayer, everybody’s on a level playing field. You start off again with a basic Vagabond and the basic gun. You have to purchase to upgrade. When we did that, it kind of worked, but again, it’s a little bit disjointed. At that point, you’ve already played through five or six hours of story mode and earned everything. Now we’re asking you to pay for those things on the multiplayer side.
Read the rest over at VentureBeat.