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I'm actually really dreading the Apple Arcade business model. The game developers are compensated by time spent in their game. This means that, similar to the c

I'm actually really dreading the Apple Arcade business model. The game developers are compensated by time spent in their game. This means that, similar to the current craze for open world games, shorter, more experimental games will simply earn less. Thus, meaningful content will be stretched even thinner to fill up more of the user's time. It's another nail in the coffin of single player narrative experiences. Streaming services, like Google's recently announced Stadia will probably have similar compensation models.

munificent 7y ago
A number of businesses have moved towards models where compensation is directly tied to time spent consuming: Kindle pays authors by the page, YouTube monetizes based on watch time. I really think it harms the world by incentivizing creators to pad and fluff. Dickens is great, but you can really tell which of his works were published serially, because it affected how he wrote. At the same time, paying a flat amount for each created work incentivizes creators to pump out a huge pile of small works. It's all singles and no albums, which I also think is bad. The programmer part of my brain wonders if you could solve this by simply picking a function somewhere between O(n) (pay linearly by quantity consumed) and O(1) (pay a fixed price for the whole thing). The obvious middle point is O(log(n)). I wonder how well it would work if creators were paid by time spent consuming but with a function that offerred diminishing returns the larger the quantity was?
- cotelletta 7y ago
  In that case you incentivize sybil attacks, because publishing content across multiple identities is more lucrative than a single one.
- calvertdw 7y ago
  Games like Rocket League are my favorite payment model. ~$20 to get in, with semi optional small transactions over time. $5 here and there. I've spent over $100 in my hundreds of hours in game. I guess that's close to your "O(log(n))".

munificent 7y ago

A number of businesses have moved towards models where compensation is directly tied to time spent consuming: Kindle pays authors by the page, YouTube monetizes based on watch time. I really think it harms the world by incentivizing creators to pad and fluff. Dickens is great, but you can really tell which of his works were published serially, because it affected how he wrote. At the same time, paying a flat amount for each created work incentivizes creators to pump out a huge pile of small works. It's all singles and no albums, which I also think is bad. The programmer part of my brain wonders if you could solve this by simply picking a function somewhere between O(n) (pay linearly by quantity consumed) and O(1) (pay a fixed price for the whole thing). The obvious middle point is O(log(n)). I wonder how well it would work if creators were paid by time spent consuming but with a function that offerred diminishing returns the larger the quantity was?

cotelletta 7y ago
In that case you incentivize sybil attacks, because publishing content across multiple identities is more lucrative than a single one.
calvertdw 7y ago
Games like Rocket League are my favorite payment model. ~$20 to get in, with semi optional small transactions over time. $5 here and there. I've spent over $100 in my hundreds of hours in game. I guess that's close to your "O(log(n))".