Why are the pictures/entities Inanimate in freemium games?

[Yves]

In most successful freemium games like tap zoo, petshop, zoo story the graphical objects like animals are just pictures and only fire a cheap animation every couple of minutes or so.

Is this because of economical reasons or is it to spare the iphones memory/processing power?

Either way, how do you think the players of such games react to that limited feature? Do you think they barely notice, or does it have a large negative impact on what they think of the game?

Thank you very much!

[Domele]

I can't tell you why but if the games are successful, the users probably don't mind.

[Yves]

bump

[mavrik5150]

If you're going to bump something then at least explain what from the previous answer doesn't solve your question. Your questions revolves around speculation, and I'm guessing that you don't like Domele's answer but if that's the case then maybe you should do some further research like maybe looking for App reviews within the App Store and from various Blogs/Websites that review iPhone Apps. Nobody will be able to give some specific answer of, yes just use static images and people will love it and it can save you money that would be spent on an animator.

Personally, it all depends on the game. Some games have really limited animation and it works for that type of game (could be part of the actual gameplay that distracts the players attention from the minimal animation) while others are full of little animations. But again there is no definitive answer, you can assume that if you are going to make a similar game to ones listed that using minimal animation may be fine but that doesn't guarantee you can/will see the same success as these other games. Many of these games also have a large fan base that is already established from Facebook games and other areas so to them this is just another way to play a game they already enjoy.