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This is nothing but lip service. The problem with loot boxes isn't that there are unfair odds - most companies use consistent odds for their loot boxes. There a

This is nothing but lip service. The problem with loot boxes isn't that there are unfair odds - most companies use consistent odds for their loot boxes. There are some shady practices where the odds change on a per-player basis, but that's really beside the point. Apple is willing to "fix" this because it has zero effect on their bottom line. The real problem is that players are getting tricked into installing a "free" game but later sucked into gambling once they're invested and addicted. Showing the odds somewhere in the app doesn't change this deceptive and unethical practice. What they should really do is force apps to disclose the maximum amount a player can spend, front-and-center in the app store. And then also display other statistics - like the ARPU and ARPPU (average revenue per user, and average revenue per paying user). And then allow us to filter apps based on that criteria. If it were visible enough, and filterable enough, we'd see the developer landscape change to make games that are better for players.

arthulia 9y ago
I suspect most people would not consider buying a $5 loot box if there was a 95% chance of only getting duplicate items, or a 0.0002% chance of getting the item they're hoping for. Developers will probably increase the drop rates for things so that people will continue to buy their crates. I agree it's still gambling but this is a step.
- fossuser 9y ago
  People are pretty bad at intuitively understanding probability - it’d have to be stated in a way they’d understand. “You’d probably have to buy this one thousand times to get what you’re looking for” People still buy lottery tickets though because “there’s still a chance”. Not sure how you fix that.
  - godelski 9y ago
    I can't seem to find the video, but I remember Sid Meier talking about how he had to manipulate the battle odds to what people thought was fair combat. For example, they thought that if they had a 2/3 chance of winning, they should win practically every time and thought it was unfair when they lost. Even though they won 2 out of every 3 matches, on average. The average person doesn't understand expected outcome, that it means ON AVERAGE it will take this many times to obtain the thing. Lottery tickets are a bad example because the expected outcome is still really high, though most people still understand this.
    - hermitdev 9y ago
      Pretty sure this was after Civ 1, when you'd lose a battleship to a spearman surprisingly often. Been a while since I've played Civ 2, don't think there was the concept of cumulative damage, yet, but there was by Civ 3. Definitely seems "fairer". Sure a spearman can possibly damage a battleship, but unlikely to destroy one. Also, it's Sid Meier.
      - godelski 9y ago
        I can't remember which Civ it was, but I remember he was talking about an early one. I'd love to find that video again. (Also, fixed my post. Thanks)
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      This is a huuuuuge issue in the world of informed consent too. When you tell someone the odds regarding a procedure, do they really understand those odds?
    - canadian_voter 9y ago
      For example, they thought that if they had a 2/3 chance of winning, they should win practically every time and thought it was unfair when they lost Like that time I lost my entire squad in X-Com because they all kept missing their 80% to 95% chances to hit. There was much rage that day.
      - godelski 9y ago
        I always hear this with X-Com, and have experienced it myself. Though it is really possible to miss 90%s several times in a row. It shouldn't happen often, but our monkey brains hate it and it feels unfair. It is a hard balancing problem.
        tzakrajs 9y ago
        Why not have a system that is able to average out the rolls to happen in a way that good/bad rolls don't clump together and are spaced more evenly? Couldn't you generate the rolls and then sort them in favorable way or reroll whenever a roll is too far outside of some predicted thresholds?
- TheDong 9y ago
  The probability of loot boxes for most games has been reverse engineered and is available online. Making it available in the app is no different; the user would have to be rational and look for it. A user that would be stopped by this can already go online and find the probability.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    It’s a terrible trap for a smart person, to assume that x,y, or z is “something which is known to each and every schoolboy,” you know? Everyone isn’t like you.
    - TheDong 9y ago
      The point is that the apps will display it where they display Open-Source license notices: off in some deep menu no one but a suitably dedicated hunter would find. The same sort of person that would google it.
      - QAPereo 9y ago
        Right, but most people wouldn’t even consider that. Most people don’t even know what “open source” means! It’s hard, but most people live in a combined state of technical ignorance, and a kind of aggression toward learning new things in that field. The result is that the average person thinks it’s all techie noise, so what you consider incredibly basic concepts are really overlaid on a framework of existing knowledge, intelligence, and most of all, interest.
        TheDong 9y ago
        I think we're talking past each other and agree that people won't look for the probability or, even if they see it, won't care. I am not assuming people look it up. I'm just pointing out this isn't really changing anything because people who would look at it or care, already could look at it often... but most people won't, so the change of requiring apps to show it in the app matters basically not at all.
- brianwawok 9y ago
  How many people buy state lotto tickets? What is the EV on those? Some it's something like .5 or less. HORRIBLE odds. If you want to gamble, go play $1000 hands of blackjack or something, you can get something like a .97 EV.
  - bryanlarsen 9y ago
    The EV on Canadian lottery odds sometimes exceeds 1. They're required to pay out 50% of intake, but if the jackpot isn't won a bunch of times in a row (with payout under 10%), the payout for a single draw sometimes exceeds the intake for that draw. It's not profitable to buy all the tickets, though: that changes the odds enough that it becomes unprofitable.
    - brianwawok 9y ago
      I don't think the EV often goes over 1 though, because of the multiple winner situation. I.e. even if the jackpot is 150 million with 1:100 million odds to win... there is a chance there is 2 or more winners who SPLIT the jackpot. There have been cases of people buying out all the numbers.. and there are times when it is worth the risk.. but not really relevant to my store. Millions of people buy lotto tickets every day, with an EV of .5.
  - wl 9y ago
    The point of state lotto tickets is that a win is life changing and the price is negligible.
- ThrowawayR2 9y ago
  Since you mention odds, it's interesting to look at the stats of the companies that provide official information about their odds. For Blizzard's Hearthstone, for example, their stated odds of getting their highest category of cards (legendary) is 1:100 and given that that 1% chance is spread across several different cards across multiple sets, getting a specific legendary card is only a fraction of that 1%. For Nintendo's Fire Emblem Heroes, the chance of getting their highest category of characters (5 stars), is a relatively generous 6%. However, that's split across 2 batches of 3%, one of which is split across 3 specific characters (i.e. 1% specific card) and the other which has about 100 cards (0.03% to get a specific character). As each character is one who appeared in the long-running Fire Emblem series of games, there's significant incentive to try and get specific characters. And these are games from companies that behave relatively ethically in this space. I can think of Asian games that are much worse. [0] https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Card_pack_statistics https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Card_pack_statistics [1] https://feheroes.gamepedia.com/Summon_Heroes https://feheroes.gamepedia.com/Summon_Heroes
  - minimaxir 9y ago
    It should be noted that Hearthstone's odds are not stated (in the US): they were only found out by user research, and as a result of Apple's new rule, would likely need to be explicitly disclosed. In contrast, Fire Emblem Heroes has always been upfront about the odds, and you can see the odds whenever you want. (although in my personal experience the 5 star odds are less than 6%, hmrph)
    - ThrowawayR2 9y ago
      As the link notes, Blizzard complied with Chinese law regarding posting odds and posted a page on their Chinese Hearthstone site (http://hs.blizzard.cn/articles/20/9546 http://hs.blizzard.cn/articles/20/9546) stating that, on average, 1 legendary card could be expected for every 20 packs (of 5 cards). It is possible that Blizzard uses different odds by region but that seems unlikely.
      - minimaxir 9y ago
- glenstein 9y ago
  I think that in addition to the problem of boosting interest by concealing probabilities, you have the added problem that probabilities are difficult to intuitively grasp, even if they're straight up given to you. The same way that a person can have a correct (at least within a few orders of magnitude) understanding of their numerical odds of winning the lottery, yet still go on purchasing tickets. Our intuitive grasp of the idea of one in a million, billion, trillion, etc is such that those odds all "feel" the same. But those differences might make all the difference in whether purchasing a lottery ticket is rational.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
criddell 9y ago
It isn't a loot box, but Candy Crush had (and maybe still has) a wheel you can spin once a day to win some bonus item. I spun that thing hundreds of times over a few years and never won the big prize on the wheel. I've always wondered what the logic behind that was. Why not have a fair wheel?
- gamesdealer 9y ago
  I made a wheel like this in a popular free to play game. Each section was equal in size but not in weight. We wanted to give the feeling that they could win big but not give so much currency that people would not spend on the currency. It worked so we kept the wheel weighted. Anon because making free to play games is admittedly kinda evil. I'd love to see the grand parents' suggested made active. Hunting whales isn't about making fun games. It's about exploiting addictive behavior with a tiny set of people. It's not fun to make and it's not fun to play.
  - myroon5 9y ago
    Why not make them unequal in size to make this more transparent?
    - gamesdealer 9y ago
      We wanted people to feel like they had a higher likelihood of winning than they actually did. It's the same reason slot machines always "almost" hit the jackpot. It's more addictive that way.
      - nielsbot 9y ago
        Relevant HN topic from Nov 6: "How slot machines are designed to be addictive" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15632058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15632058
  - dvdhnt 9y ago
    > Anon because making free to play games is admittedly kinda evil. Don't be cowardly. If you're ashamed, then don't participate. Otherwise, own it.
wef23f 9y ago
It's basically drug dealing, where the drug is a dopamine hit. It's OK in this case, because the "free market" supports it. Nevermind teams of psychologists helped those users develop their "support". They're freely buying in!
ThrowawayR2 9y ago
> The real problem is that players are getting tricked into installing a "free" game but later sucked into gambling once they're invested and addicted. Not to say these gambling mechanics aren't reprehensible but you're focusing on the wrong thing. There is no "tricking" involved; games with in-app purchases are clearly labelled and gambling-like mechanisms are so standard now that it would be more surprising to find a popular game with IAP that _didn't_ use a gambling-like mechanism than one that did.
- Illniyar 9y ago
  I think the tricking he is referring to is the fact that as games progress they turn from skill-based to money-based games, which is how all of these games get people hooked. Setting a "max payed" will most definitely warn you of a game that will eventually become money-based.
- sorahn 9y ago
  There is “trickery” in the sense of dark UI patterns involved though. There is no easy way to distinguish between the IAP for Mario Run ($10 once, to buy the full game) and $10 in coins for spins for lives for Candy Crush (or however it works now). The result is that people don’t want to spend ANY money on mobile because so much of it is scamming garbage, that the rest of It might as well be too.
  - caf 9y ago
    Probably would be good to at least distinguish between "has once-off IAP" and "has indefinitely repeatable IAP" in the store UI.
dilap 9y ago
It's obvious if a game has IAP (says there right on the app store page, along with a list of the top purchases). It's not reasonable to say people are being tricked. This is just one example of a huge philosophical question -- how much should we, as a collective, try to set things up to save people from themselves? I tend to come down on the favoring individual autonomy side. Give me my drugs, my alcohol, and my F2P. Caveat emptor! (But I do like requiring odds to be disclosed, and purities of alcohol and drugs enforced. Those are hard things to do as an individual, so bringing collective strength to bear makes sense. But partaking or not is something I can do alone; please don't force me to do what you think is good for me, society.)
- rcthompson 9y ago
  I think there's a meaningful distinction to be made between in-app purchases of add-on functionality and other such one time upgrades on the one hand, and things you can keep buying indefinitely, like loot boxes.
  - evilduck 9y ago
    I've also seen the "add-on functionality" go sideways. Look at some of the Lego Whatever games vs. their console counterparts. They make the install free but then make every. single. level. a separate IAP. It's literally not a complete game unless you buy all of them. Instead of just labeling the game the true $49 it's bucketed under "free" instead.
    - ThrowawayR2 9y ago
      > They make the install free but then make every. single. level. a separate IAP. That's just the shareware model though; there's no gambling involved. Granted, it could be labeled better.
    - gav 9y ago
      > It's literally not a complete game unless you buy all of them I like this model as it removes the risk of you not liking the game and being out $49. If you get bored after the first few levels you're not out the full amount–I'd be willing to try out more games this way.
gthtjtkt 9y ago
It's still a step in the right direction because it will let people calculate the true cost of loot box items, which will help expose the absurdity of the pricing model. A good recent example is Battlefront 2, where it would cost $2,100 to unlock everything (or 4,500+ hours of playing without spending any extra money).
ozmbie 9y ago
>The real problem is that players are getting tricked into installing a "free" game but later sucked into gambling once they're invested and addicted. The real problem is that hardly anyone wants to pay for anything upfront. Developers much prefer to make traditional games with no tricks in them to hook free customers. But take those systems out and charge $1 upfront on the App Store and watch your number of installs fall by orders of magnitude. The market spoke, and freemium games is what they got.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  That explains shareware, demos, and perhaps DLCs. We're talking about non-transparent costs via RNG and loot(boxes). Its not that people don't wanna pay; its that it works better to give them some free cocaine to get them hooked. Nothing new; in the physical world we call that "sampling"
IncRnd 9y ago
Players aren't being tricked. They are given the opportunity to play first, see if they like it, and if so they can engage in micro-transactions.
methodover 9y ago
> What they should really do is force apps to disclose the maximum amount a player can spend, front-and-center in the app store. And then also display other statistics - like the ARPU and ARPPU (average revenue per user, and average revenue per paying user). And then allow us to filter apps based on that criteria. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I recently quit Hearthstone once I realized that the game was slowly sucking me into paying more. It's a great game. But they obfuscate the true cost of playing. In that digital card game, players want specific cards to build a specific deck. But the manner in which you acquire specific cards is expensive, and the expense is heavily obfuscated. I doubt that most players understand the real cost of playing. To get a card, you need to buy a card pack. Card packs have 5 random cards (with a rather complex algorithm behind what cards are in a pack). These cards can be duplicates, which you could transform into "dust" (a kind of currency) to buy the card you actually want. The true cost of buying a specific card that you might want depends on a bunch of factors, such as how many duplicates you already have. In Hearthstone and other "free to play" games, the true cost of playing is nebulous. The game acquires players partly by advertising that playing is free. However, in reality they are likely among the most expensive games you could play. The cost of acquiring a complete set of all cards in a Hearthstone expansion is around $400 [1]. Which is insane. In order to play competitively, you probably need half that -- which is still around $200. If the costs were clearly and honestly labeled, players wouldn't play. So they aren't. I hope the industry self-regulates, like they did with the ESRB and censorship. I hate the direction the industry has taken here. 1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/04/14/it-costs-400-for-a-full-ungoro-expansion-card-set-in-hearthstone/#47580e0644fe https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/04/14/it-costs-...
- hfourm 9y ago
  To be fair, Hearthstone is one of the better value games! It is still a "collectible" card game, from a very reputable company, with a lot of expected longevity -- based on a huge universe. You get to use your cards against other players, etc They also give you fairly consistent means of getting free cards. There are so many Gacha style games that are WAY more of a rip off than that. They get you sucked into the game, then the only way to progress is to become a whale. It is awful
scarface74 9y ago
How are they being "tricked"? No one is secretly siphoning money from them. They are for the most part consenting adults who have free will.
- methodover 9y ago
  The true cost of playing is hidden. It's obfuscated behind a very complex set of systems. It's optimized to hide the true cost from the player as much as possible. It's problematic. It makes players feel bad, in retrospect, when they realize that they've spent more than they would have wanted to spend at the outset. I would hate for the loot box model to move beyond video games. Can you imagine going to the store and having to buy a mystery box filled with groceries, which you may or may not need or want? Gosh that would be horrible. Not that it would happen but, still. I feel like we should encourage a society with clear prices on specific, concrete products. I give you $10, you promise me specific thing X. If I don't actually get X I can ask for a refund, or I can sue you even if it turns out you're acting in bad faith, etc. Loot box systems don't seem to transact in good faith.
  - scarface74 9y ago
    What's "complex" about a very clear prompt "Do you want to buy 1000 gold coins for $10" and then you have to enter your credentials? The lottery is legal and government run in many (most?) states. We already live in a society where people willingly give their money to get something.
    - methodover 9y ago
      Well, many people have a problem with the lottery too. Also the X gold coins for $X is less of a problem. The old League of Legends style of a "free to play" game was great. They were one of the first to do it. You paid money for a currency, and then the currency purchased items. All items had an alternative cost as well for a currency you could only earn in game. It was explicit about what you were buying. Loot box systems on the other hand are not explicit. Blizzard's Hearthstone for example, as I talked about in this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983166
dragonwriter 9y ago
Perhaps better, just have tools to filter ratings (both for top lists and individual review displays) by total or per-month IAP spend of the reviewer, defaulting to a limit of zero until and unless modified by the user. I don't care if a free game makes lots of money from paying users, I care if I'm likely to find it satisfying without becoming a heavy payer. Actually, if a company does that and gets people willing to recurringly spend lots of money on the game to subsidize it, that's a plus, as far as I'm concerned.
EdgarVerona 9y ago
I agree with your assessment. I also personally feel like this needs to be regulated by governments. I don't think that companies can be trusted to govern themselves, and I think that what we're seeing not just in f2p mobile games but also in AAA games proves that fact out: the "fiduciary duty" to shareholders is proving to win out the battle against competing ethical duties, primarily because the former is mandated and the latter is merely a suggestion (if that). This is where regulations need to step in, and force businesses to have a duty beyond the shareholder fiduciary duty and require them to provide transparency and avoid exploitation of addiction.

arthulia 9y ago

I suspect most people would not consider buying a $5 loot box if there was a 95% chance of only getting duplicate items, or a 0.0002% chance of getting the item they're hoping for. Developers will probably increase the drop rates for things so that people will continue to buy their crates. I agree it's still gambling but this is a step.

fossuser 9y ago
People are pretty bad at intuitively understanding probability - it’d have to be stated in a way they’d understand. “You’d probably have to buy this one thousand times to get what you’re looking for” People still buy lottery tickets though because “there’s still a chance”. Not sure how you fix that.
- godelski 9y ago
  I can't seem to find the video, but I remember Sid Meier talking about how he had to manipulate the battle odds to what people thought was fair combat. For example, they thought that if they had a 2/3 chance of winning, they should win practically every time and thought it was unfair when they lost. Even though they won 2 out of every 3 matches, on average. The average person doesn't understand expected outcome, that it means ON AVERAGE it will take this many times to obtain the thing. Lottery tickets are a bad example because the expected outcome is still really high, though most people still understand this.
  - hermitdev 9y ago
    Pretty sure this was after Civ 1, when you'd lose a battleship to a spearman surprisingly often. Been a while since I've played Civ 2, don't think there was the concept of cumulative damage, yet, but there was by Civ 3. Definitely seems "fairer". Sure a spearman can possibly damage a battleship, but unlikely to destroy one. Also, it's Sid Meier.
    - godelski 9y ago
      I can't remember which Civ it was, but I remember he was talking about an early one. I'd love to find that video again. (Also, fixed my post. Thanks)
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    This is a huuuuuge issue in the world of informed consent too. When you tell someone the odds regarding a procedure, do they really understand those odds?
  - canadian_voter 9y ago
    For example, they thought that if they had a 2/3 chance of winning, they should win practically every time and thought it was unfair when they lost Like that time I lost my entire squad in X-Com because they all kept missing their 80% to 95% chances to hit. There was much rage that day.
    - godelski 9y ago
      I always hear this with X-Com, and have experienced it myself. Though it is really possible to miss 90%s several times in a row. It shouldn't happen often, but our monkey brains hate it and it feels unfair. It is a hard balancing problem.
      - tzakrajs 9y ago
        Why not have a system that is able to average out the rolls to happen in a way that good/bad rolls don't clump together and are spaced more evenly? Couldn't you generate the rolls and then sort them in favorable way or reroll whenever a roll is too far outside of some predicted thresholds?
TheDong 9y ago
The probability of loot boxes for most games has been reverse engineered and is available online. Making it available in the app is no different; the user would have to be rational and look for it. A user that would be stopped by this can already go online and find the probability.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  It’s a terrible trap for a smart person, to assume that x,y, or z is “something which is known to each and every schoolboy,” you know? Everyone isn’t like you.
  - TheDong 9y ago
    The point is that the apps will display it where they display Open-Source license notices: off in some deep menu no one but a suitably dedicated hunter would find. The same sort of person that would google it.
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      Right, but most people wouldn’t even consider that. Most people don’t even know what “open source” means! It’s hard, but most people live in a combined state of technical ignorance, and a kind of aggression toward learning new things in that field. The result is that the average person thinks it’s all techie noise, so what you consider incredibly basic concepts are really overlaid on a framework of existing knowledge, intelligence, and most of all, interest.
      - TheDong 9y ago
        I think we're talking past each other and agree that people won't look for the probability or, even if they see it, won't care. I am not assuming people look it up. I'm just pointing out this isn't really changing anything because people who would look at it or care, already could look at it often... but most people won't, so the change of requiring apps to show it in the app matters basically not at all.
brianwawok 9y ago
How many people buy state lotto tickets? What is the EV on those? Some it's something like .5 or less. HORRIBLE odds. If you want to gamble, go play $1000 hands of blackjack or something, you can get something like a .97 EV.
- bryanlarsen 9y ago
  The EV on Canadian lottery odds sometimes exceeds 1. They're required to pay out 50% of intake, but if the jackpot isn't won a bunch of times in a row (with payout under 10%), the payout for a single draw sometimes exceeds the intake for that draw. It's not profitable to buy all the tickets, though: that changes the odds enough that it becomes unprofitable.
  - brianwawok 9y ago
    I don't think the EV often goes over 1 though, because of the multiple winner situation. I.e. even if the jackpot is 150 million with 1:100 million odds to win... there is a chance there is 2 or more winners who SPLIT the jackpot. There have been cases of people buying out all the numbers.. and there are times when it is worth the risk.. but not really relevant to my store. Millions of people buy lotto tickets every day, with an EV of .5.
- wl 9y ago
  The point of state lotto tickets is that a win is life changing and the price is negligible.
ThrowawayR2 9y ago
Since you mention odds, it's interesting to look at the stats of the companies that provide official information about their odds. For Blizzard's Hearthstone, for example, their stated odds of getting their highest category of cards (legendary) is 1:100 and given that that 1% chance is spread across several different cards across multiple sets, getting a specific legendary card is only a fraction of that 1%. For Nintendo's Fire Emblem Heroes, the chance of getting their highest category of characters (5 stars), is a relatively generous 6%. However, that's split across 2 batches of 3%, one of which is split across 3 specific characters (i.e. 1% specific card) and the other which has about 100 cards (0.03% to get a specific character). As each character is one who appeared in the long-running Fire Emblem series of games, there's significant incentive to try and get specific characters. And these are games from companies that behave relatively ethically in this space. I can think of Asian games that are much worse. [0] https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Card_pack_statistics https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Card_pack_statistics [1] https://feheroes.gamepedia.com/Summon_Heroes https://feheroes.gamepedia.com/Summon_Heroes
- minimaxir 9y ago
  It should be noted that Hearthstone's odds are not stated (in the US): they were only found out by user research, and as a result of Apple's new rule, would likely need to be explicitly disclosed. In contrast, Fire Emblem Heroes has always been upfront about the odds, and you can see the odds whenever you want. (although in my personal experience the 5 star odds are less than 6%, hmrph)
  - ThrowawayR2 9y ago
    As the link notes, Blizzard complied with Chinese law regarding posting odds and posted a page on their Chinese Hearthstone site (http://hs.blizzard.cn/articles/20/9546 http://hs.blizzard.cn/articles/20/9546) stating that, on average, 1 legendary card could be expected for every 20 packs (of 5 cards). It is possible that Blizzard uses different odds by region but that seems unlikely.
    - minimaxir 9y ago
glenstein 9y ago
I think that in addition to the problem of boosting interest by concealing probabilities, you have the added problem that probabilities are difficult to intuitively grasp, even if they're straight up given to you. The same way that a person can have a correct (at least within a few orders of magnitude) understanding of their numerical odds of winning the lottery, yet still go on purchasing tickets. Our intuitive grasp of the idea of one in a million, billion, trillion, etc is such that those odds all "feel" the same. But those differences might make all the difference in whether purchasing a lottery ticket is rational.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

criddell 9y ago

It isn't a loot box, but Candy Crush had (and maybe still has) a wheel you can spin once a day to win some bonus item. I spun that thing hundreds of times over a few years and never won the big prize on the wheel. I've always wondered what the logic behind that was. Why not have a fair wheel?

gamesdealer 9y ago
I made a wheel like this in a popular free to play game. Each section was equal in size but not in weight. We wanted to give the feeling that they could win big but not give so much currency that people would not spend on the currency. It worked so we kept the wheel weighted. Anon because making free to play games is admittedly kinda evil. I'd love to see the grand parents' suggested made active. Hunting whales isn't about making fun games. It's about exploiting addictive behavior with a tiny set of people. It's not fun to make and it's not fun to play.
- myroon5 9y ago
  Why not make them unequal in size to make this more transparent?
  - gamesdealer 9y ago
    We wanted people to feel like they had a higher likelihood of winning than they actually did. It's the same reason slot machines always "almost" hit the jackpot. It's more addictive that way.
    - nielsbot 9y ago
      Relevant HN topic from Nov 6: "How slot machines are designed to be addictive" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15632058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15632058
- dvdhnt 9y ago
  > Anon because making free to play games is admittedly kinda evil. Don't be cowardly. If you're ashamed, then don't participate. Otherwise, own it.

wef23f 9y ago

It's basically drug dealing, where the drug is a dopamine hit. It's OK in this case, because the "free market" supports it. Nevermind teams of psychologists helped those users develop their "support". They're freely buying in!

ThrowawayR2 9y ago

> The real problem is that players are getting tricked into installing a "free" game but later sucked into gambling once they're invested and addicted. Not to say these gambling mechanics aren't reprehensible but you're focusing on the wrong thing. There is no "tricking" involved; games with in-app purchases are clearly labelled and gambling-like mechanisms are so standard now that it would be more surprising to find a popular game with IAP that _didn't_ use a gambling-like mechanism than one that did.

Illniyar 9y ago
I think the tricking he is referring to is the fact that as games progress they turn from skill-based to money-based games, which is how all of these games get people hooked. Setting a "max payed" will most definitely warn you of a game that will eventually become money-based.
sorahn 9y ago
There is “trickery” in the sense of dark UI patterns involved though. There is no easy way to distinguish between the IAP for Mario Run ($10 once, to buy the full game) and $10 in coins for spins for lives for Candy Crush (or however it works now). The result is that people don’t want to spend ANY money on mobile because so much of it is scamming garbage, that the rest of It might as well be too.
- caf 9y ago
  Probably would be good to at least distinguish between "has once-off IAP" and "has indefinitely repeatable IAP" in the store UI.

dilap 9y ago

It's obvious if a game has IAP (says there right on the app store page, along with a list of the top purchases). It's not reasonable to say people are being tricked. This is just one example of a huge philosophical question -- how much should we, as a collective, try to set things up to save people from themselves? I tend to come down on the favoring individual autonomy side. Give me my drugs, my alcohol, and my F2P. Caveat emptor! (But I do like requiring odds to be disclosed, and purities of alcohol and drugs enforced. Those are hard things to do as an individual, so bringing collective strength to bear makes sense. But partaking or not is something I can do alone; please don't force me to do what you think is good for me, society.)

rcthompson 9y ago
I think there's a meaningful distinction to be made between in-app purchases of add-on functionality and other such one time upgrades on the one hand, and things you can keep buying indefinitely, like loot boxes.
- evilduck 9y ago
  I've also seen the "add-on functionality" go sideways. Look at some of the Lego Whatever games vs. their console counterparts. They make the install free but then make every. single. level. a separate IAP. It's literally not a complete game unless you buy all of them. Instead of just labeling the game the true $49 it's bucketed under "free" instead.
  - ThrowawayR2 9y ago
    > They make the install free but then make every. single. level. a separate IAP. That's just the shareware model though; there's no gambling involved. Granted, it could be labeled better.
  - gav 9y ago
    > It's literally not a complete game unless you buy all of them I like this model as it removes the risk of you not liking the game and being out $49. If you get bored after the first few levels you're not out the full amount–I'd be willing to try out more games this way.

gthtjtkt 9y ago

It's still a step in the right direction because it will let people calculate the true cost of loot box items, which will help expose the absurdity of the pricing model. A good recent example is Battlefront 2, where it would cost $2,100 to unlock everything (or 4,500+ hours of playing without spending any extra money).

ozmbie 9y ago

>The real problem is that players are getting tricked into installing a "free" game but later sucked into gambling once they're invested and addicted. The real problem is that hardly anyone wants to pay for anything upfront. Developers much prefer to make traditional games with no tricks in them to hook free customers. But take those systems out and charge $1 upfront on the App Store and watch your number of installs fall by orders of magnitude. The market spoke, and freemium games is what they got.

Fnoord 9y ago
That explains shareware, demos, and perhaps DLCs. We're talking about non-transparent costs via RNG and loot(boxes). Its not that people don't wanna pay; its that it works better to give them some free cocaine to get them hooked. Nothing new; in the physical world we call that "sampling"

IncRnd 9y ago

Players aren't being tricked. They are given the opportunity to play first, see if they like it, and if so they can engage in micro-transactions.

methodover 9y ago

> What they should really do is force apps to disclose the maximum amount a player can spend, front-and-center in the app store. And then also display other statistics - like the ARPU and ARPPU (average revenue per user, and average revenue per paying user). And then allow us to filter apps based on that criteria. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I recently quit Hearthstone once I realized that the game was slowly sucking me into paying more. It's a great game. But they obfuscate the true cost of playing. In that digital card game, players want specific cards to build a specific deck. But the manner in which you acquire specific cards is expensive, and the expense is heavily obfuscated. I doubt that most players understand the real cost of playing. To get a card, you need to buy a card pack. Card packs have 5 random cards (with a rather complex algorithm behind what cards are in a pack). These cards can be duplicates, which you could transform into "dust" (a kind of currency) to buy the card you actually want. The true cost of buying a specific card that you might want depends on a bunch of factors, such as how many duplicates you already have. In Hearthstone and other "free to play" games, the true cost of playing is nebulous. The game acquires players partly by advertising that playing is free. However, in reality they are likely among the most expensive games you could play. The cost of acquiring a complete set of all cards in a Hearthstone expansion is around $400 [1]. Which is insane. In order to play competitively, you probably need half that -- which is still around $200. If the costs were clearly and honestly labeled, players wouldn't play. So they aren't. I hope the industry self-regulates, like they did with the ESRB and censorship. I hate the direction the industry has taken here. 1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/04/14/it-costs-400-for-a-full-ungoro-expansion-card-set-in-hearthstone/#47580e0644fe https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/04/14/it-costs-...

hfourm 9y ago
To be fair, Hearthstone is one of the better value games! It is still a "collectible" card game, from a very reputable company, with a lot of expected longevity -- based on a huge universe. You get to use your cards against other players, etc They also give you fairly consistent means of getting free cards. There are so many Gacha style games that are WAY more of a rip off than that. They get you sucked into the game, then the only way to progress is to become a whale. It is awful

scarface74 9y ago

How are they being "tricked"? No one is secretly siphoning money from them. They are for the most part consenting adults who have free will.

methodover 9y ago
The true cost of playing is hidden. It's obfuscated behind a very complex set of systems. It's optimized to hide the true cost from the player as much as possible. It's problematic. It makes players feel bad, in retrospect, when they realize that they've spent more than they would have wanted to spend at the outset. I would hate for the loot box model to move beyond video games. Can you imagine going to the store and having to buy a mystery box filled with groceries, which you may or may not need or want? Gosh that would be horrible. Not that it would happen but, still. I feel like we should encourage a society with clear prices on specific, concrete products. I give you $10, you promise me specific thing X. If I don't actually get X I can ask for a refund, or I can sue you even if it turns out you're acting in bad faith, etc. Loot box systems don't seem to transact in good faith.
- scarface74 9y ago
  What's "complex" about a very clear prompt "Do you want to buy 1000 gold coins for $10" and then you have to enter your credentials? The lottery is legal and government run in many (most?) states. We already live in a society where people willingly give their money to get something.
  - methodover 9y ago
    Well, many people have a problem with the lottery too. Also the X gold coins for $X is less of a problem. The old League of Legends style of a "free to play" game was great. They were one of the first to do it. You paid money for a currency, and then the currency purchased items. All items had an alternative cost as well for a currency you could only earn in game. It was explicit about what you were buying. Loot box systems on the other hand are not explicit. Blizzard's Hearthstone for example, as I talked about in this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983166

dragonwriter 9y ago

Perhaps better, just have tools to filter ratings (both for top lists and individual review displays) by total or per-month IAP spend of the reviewer, defaulting to a limit of zero until and unless modified by the user. I don't care if a free game makes lots of money from paying users, I care if I'm likely to find it satisfying without becoming a heavy payer. Actually, if a company does that and gets people willing to recurringly spend lots of money on the game to subsidize it, that's a plus, as far as I'm concerned.

EdgarVerona 9y ago

I agree with your assessment. I also personally feel like this needs to be regulated by governments. I don't think that companies can be trusted to govern themselves, and I think that what we're seeing not just in f2p mobile games but also in AAA games proves that fact out: the "fiduciary duty" to shareholders is proving to win out the battle against competing ethical duties, primarily because the former is mandated and the latter is merely a suggestion (if that). This is where regulations need to step in, and force businesses to have a duty beyond the shareholder fiduciary duty and require them to provide transparency and avoid exploitation of addiction.