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Many years ago I worked for a company that offers a very popular in-browser game. The company branched and expanded and had more than 10 games with various leve

Many years ago I worked for a company that offers a very popular in-browser game. The company branched and expanded and had more than 10 games with various levels of profitability, but this game, which was bringing in about 30 millions EURO per month, was the only thing keeping the company alive. Then they decided they want to try to sell the company to a fund and wanted to increase the revenue this golden goose was bringing, so they implemented a wheel of fortune. You could spin the wheel for free once per day and get some sort of in-game resource, but you had unlimited spins if you paid coins, which, you guessed it, costed real moneyz. There was a huge uproar from the community stating that the game was now pay-to-win and virtually unplayable otherwise and they had to reverse the change. The company didn’t get sold in the end, but they’re doing fine still

fbdab103 3y ago
>...which was bringing in about 30 millions EURO per month, was the only thing keeping the company alive. I am curious what were the expenses. Few things are as simple as they appear, but from the mobile games I have seen, they look like they could be put together by tiny development teams: simplistic (+recyclable) art and rules. Once the foundational app is created, feels like the further development could happen on a shoe string budget: artist to make new cosmetics and/or someone to develop additional puzzles. Presumably minimal server load from the whales to handle converting dollars into tokens. I suppose the trick is in getting lucky with the one app that happens to hit it big due to some unknowable pattern of the universe. How many $0 flops preceded the blockbuster hit?
- fer 3y ago
  I know for a fact that there's at least one company (that I can't name) that offers what I would call "Addiction as a Service". Their system allows to create n-dimensional currency systems (coins, diamonds, etc), currency conversion rules, collectible management, in-game stores with their schedules, crafting/merging logic, probability distributions (including "dark distributions" like OP's link) and even prices (for profitability hints/warnings). Basically everything a fleecing game needs. They even offer templates inspired in famous games to get you started and tune as you go. They charge quite a bit, but the "foundational app" upfront cost is much lower: it's limited to UI and a relatively thin business logic that targets their API endpoint (mostly mapping API ids to in-game assets and use or server-side logic).
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > I know for a fact that there's at least one company (that I can't name) that offers what I would call "Addiction as a Service". Ouch. Of course they do. I don't even know why reading this surprised me at first. With the explosion of mobile games following pretty much the same addiction mechanics but with different skins, it was only a matter of time for someone to package mechanics and offer them in form of a backend service.
- meheleventyone 3y ago
  The problem is competition to get to the top and competition to stay there. Mobile games companies are machines in optimising user retention, user acquisition and market analysis.
- ezconnect 3y ago
  Most spend is on advertisement. The churn rate of users is very very high because it's a time waste game play.
- kioleanu 3y ago
  I am assuming they had pretty high costs, more than 120 employees working on more than 10 different games, none of which was profitable. Offices in a high-rent European city for all these people and so on. Then comes marketing The blockbuster hit was actually the first game, with success never to be replicated
sznio 3y ago
>in-browser game >euro InnoGames/Gameforge?
- kioleanu 3y ago
  I can't, of course, name the company, but no, none of the two
10000truths 3y ago
The Squeal of Fortune was one of the stupidest things that Jagex added to RuneScape.

fbdab103 3y ago

>...which was bringing in about 30 millions EURO per month, was the only thing keeping the company alive. I am curious what were the expenses. Few things are as simple as they appear, but from the mobile games I have seen, they look like they could be put together by tiny development teams: simplistic (+recyclable) art and rules. Once the foundational app is created, feels like the further development could happen on a shoe string budget: artist to make new cosmetics and/or someone to develop additional puzzles. Presumably minimal server load from the whales to handle converting dollars into tokens. I suppose the trick is in getting lucky with the one app that happens to hit it big due to some unknowable pattern of the universe. How many $0 flops preceded the blockbuster hit?

fer 3y ago
I know for a fact that there's at least one company (that I can't name) that offers what I would call "Addiction as a Service". Their system allows to create n-dimensional currency systems (coins, diamonds, etc), currency conversion rules, collectible management, in-game stores with their schedules, crafting/merging logic, probability distributions (including "dark distributions" like OP's link) and even prices (for profitability hints/warnings). Basically everything a fleecing game needs. They even offer templates inspired in famous games to get you started and tune as you go. They charge quite a bit, but the "foundational app" upfront cost is much lower: it's limited to UI and a relatively thin business logic that targets their API endpoint (mostly mapping API ids to in-game assets and use or server-side logic).
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > I know for a fact that there's at least one company (that I can't name) that offers what I would call "Addiction as a Service". Ouch. Of course they do. I don't even know why reading this surprised me at first. With the explosion of mobile games following pretty much the same addiction mechanics but with different skins, it was only a matter of time for someone to package mechanics and offer them in form of a backend service.
meheleventyone 3y ago
The problem is competition to get to the top and competition to stay there. Mobile games companies are machines in optimising user retention, user acquisition and market analysis.
ezconnect 3y ago
Most spend is on advertisement. The churn rate of users is very very high because it's a time waste game play.
kioleanu 3y ago
I am assuming they had pretty high costs, more than 120 employees working on more than 10 different games, none of which was profitable. Offices in a high-rent European city for all these people and so on. Then comes marketing The blockbuster hit was actually the first game, with success never to be replicated

sznio 3y ago

>in-browser game >euro InnoGames/Gameforge?

kioleanu 3y ago
I can't, of course, name the company, but no, none of the two

10000truths 3y ago

The Squeal of Fortune was one of the stupidest things that Jagex added to RuneScape.