3 ms·

Yes, and it's amazing how blind freemium game developers are to this. I'm a game developer, and I've done well off of freemium games, but no one wants to have t

Yes, and it's amazing how blind freemium game developers are to this. I'm a game developer, and I've done well off of freemium games, but no one wants to have this conversation.

mschuster91 11y ago
I wouldn't call it "blind". From a capitalist POV, they're doing their job very well.
- JabavuAdams 11y ago
  Well, devs generally admit that there's a spectrum of coerciveness and intrusiveness. It's just that all the devs I've talked to generally believe themselves to be on the "not as bad" end. So it's not purely A) devs don't think they're doing anything wrong or B) they don't care. It's the usual cognitive dissonance of "those other guys are doing something wrong, but we're not as bad, and we need to pay the bills." There is a real problem -- 98-99% of people will play your game but won't pay for it. So, that other 1-2% has to subsidize everyone else. Some other points that I rarely see discussed... Game developers don't have some inalienable right to make games AND be financially successful (unless we as a society decide they do and regulate them and the market). Here I'm drawing an analogy to other jobs that HN readers may be less sympathetic to, e.g. cab drivers or fishermen. They got disrupted. There's no reason why technical creatives are immune to disruption. Second, there's a black-hat / white-hat argument. Humans shipped with mental bugs. Many of these are exploitable. The gambling and game monetization industries basically identify, study, and exploit these bugs. Individuals have a choice to make -- do I work for the black-hats, or do I work for the white-hats? What about studying these mental bugs and inoculating users against being exploited? I know there are some resources for this out there, but this post is long enough and I'm getting too lazy to link.

3 ms·

Yes, and it's amazing how blind freemium game developers are to this. I'm a game developer, and I've done well off of freemium games, but no one wants to have t

by JabavuAdams 11y ago

Yes, and it's amazing how blind freemium game developers are to this. I'm a game developer, and I've done well off of freemium games, but no one wants to have this conversation.

mschuster91 11y ago
I wouldn't call it "blind". From a capitalist POV, they're doing their job very well.
- JabavuAdams 11y ago
  Well, devs generally admit that there's a spectrum of coerciveness and intrusiveness. It's just that all the devs I've talked to generally believe themselves to be on the "not as bad" end. So it's not purely A) devs don't think they're doing anything wrong or B) they don't care. It's the usual cognitive dissonance of "those other guys are doing something wrong, but we're not as bad, and we need to pay the bills." There is a real problem -- 98-99% of people will play your game but won't pay for it. So, that other 1-2% has to subsidize everyone else. Some other points that I rarely see discussed... Game developers don't have some inalienable right to make games AND be financially successful (unless we as a society decide they do and regulate them and the market). Here I'm drawing an analogy to other jobs that HN readers may be less sympathetic to, e.g. cab drivers or fishermen. They got disrupted. There's no reason why technical creatives are immune to disruption. Second, there's a black-hat / white-hat argument. Humans shipped with mental bugs. Many of these are exploitable. The gambling and game monetization industries basically identify, study, and exploit these bugs. Individuals have a choice to make -- do I work for the black-hats, or do I work for the white-hats? What about studying these mental bugs and inoculating users against being exploited? I know there are some resources for this out there, but this post is long enough and I'm getting too lazy to link.