Is BF easing out of the HOA business?

You can't help noticing the proliferation of time management, Match3, jigsaw puzzle, Find-a-Whatever and solitaire games are filling up the Forum these days. Just curious.

There has generally only been one new HOPA a week released since the beginning of this year. Several well-known HOPA developers have been bought out by other companies and have stopped making them, some of them because they have switched to targeting the mobile market. I don't think this was Big Fish's decision entirely but rather that of the developers as well. We still have some HOPA developers creating new games including Elephant, Domini, Grandma Studios, and Friendly Fox, but there just aren't as many of them now as there were two years ago. This is why we are seeing fewer new HOPA games. HOPAs cost more to make than these other genres and in the final analysis, developers are going to do what proves to be most profitable for them.

Anyway, this is why we are seeing fewer of them, but they aren't going away altogether. Not sure what things will look like in another year or two.

Hi, Marian!

If ever Big Fish runs out of new HO games, I can always replay the ones I've bought over the last 11 years. Since I probably won't remember a thing about about any of them, they'll all be new to me and it won't cost me a cent .

I'm going to download the demo for "Secret City: Sacred Fire". Hopefully, it will be another good one because I've enjoyed that series so far.

Susan

Very true of me, too! I have enough of them now where I would not run out of HOPAs to play for the rest of my life.

I felt the same way, Marian. I have 600+ casuals that I have purchased and played over the years. However, less than half of them were good enough that I'd want to replay them, and some I have tried to replay wouldn't run on my Win10 with a solid-state HD. I may be in shorter clover than you. :-(

That's unfortunate about the games that don't want to play nice on Windows 10, Reenie. I made sure that when we ended up with Windows 10 in our house, that we still had a computer running Windows 7 as well. I would be really annoyed if I could no longer play some of the games that I had purchased.

Too True !!

When my Win10 machine is finished and ready to go I will have to retire my fantastic Win98SE - because I can only fit 3 working computers in my setup at any one time.
And they will be WinXP, Win7 and Win10
[Such a shame because it is still running perfectly. Even after 21 years of practically every day use - !!]

Reenie, maybe you should get your hubby to install an emulator on your Windows 10 - something that runs Windows 7 or Windows XP. That way you could play the BF games that aren't working for you on your current system in the emulator. Best of both worlds.

Mad, your Windows 98SE computer deserves some special award for years of service. It's a shame that you won't be able to use it anymore. I would take Windows 98 over Windows 10 any day of the week!

I also have enough games to last me the rest of my life even if I live to be 100 and still able to play, though that does not mean I want them to stop being made. Right now I still have a working Win 7 and XP though I am worrying about them both, especially the XP. I think that is one reason why I keep playing a lot of the older games instead of the new ones, except then the new ones keep getting old, so it's not really a solution.

Mad, I think that's what you mentioned before about your 98 that I mis-remembered thinking it bit the dust. Will you be able to unplug one and plug the 98 in if you so choose? I know it is a pain and after doing it a few times you stop doing it (my experience anyway) but will it be an option at all?

Marian ....
Email and internet might b a tad sticky now for Win98 .... although I understand what you are saying

Oldbroad ....
No. It would be too complicated to plug /unplug like that as the three computers are networked (with each other) AND are also linked by a KVM switch