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How in-app purchases have destroyed the game industry

• th0br0 13y ago
  Isn't the reason actually that people have been "trained" to favour the quick hit instead of actually savouring experiences? If that is a given, then the game industry is just trying to sate this new/modern taste of esp. the younger generation. The "guilty" here isn't really the game industry then. Who is? No idea... and most assuredly not one single industry or person.
• programminggeek 13y ago
  This is sort of like when MMORPG's were all the rage and they said that they were destroying traditional RPG's, but fast forward a decade or so and guess what, we still have great traditional RPG's. We have great MMORPG's. There's a lot of enjoyable gaming to be had. So there's in app purchase, okay. That's another way some games are going, but it's not the only way and it probably won't be. You can't make a AAA title like Halo or Call of Duty as a F2P with IAP. that's not going to happen anytime soon. However, some devs might try and nickel and dime players more because they can, but maybe just maybe this means that game developers will have a more sustainable business and won't be going bankrupt every few years as many seem to.
  • Qworg 13y ago
    Maybe I spend too much time look at MMOs, but what recent RPGs are there? As for AAA with IAP, look at Planetside 2. Free to play, IAP, AAA by any measure. In many ways, we're training a new generation of gamers to have the following beliefs: - Games are not meant to challenge you, but to steadily progress you, no matter how good you are. - Anything difficult can be "spent" out of. While both are working theses, I feel that there are far too many games that will fall away if this becomes permanent.
    • Fargren 13y ago
      Top of my head: Dark Souls franchise, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, The Witcher. Just in AAA, american style RPGs. J-RPG and indies are coming as strong as ever. EDIT: as pointed out below, Dark Souls is a JRPG.
      • deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        • jamesaguilar 13y ago
          Not in the meaningful sense (static multi member battles with combat menus and a focus on story telling over gameplay).
          • Fargren 13y ago
            The character progression and the general pacing are closer to those of JRPGs. It reminds me a bit of Vagrant's Story in terms of gameplay, for instance.
      • crapshoot101 13y ago
        To be clear, I hope we aren't talking about Dragon Age II, which was awful, awful gameplay on what was an intruiging premise. I enjoyed the original, but it clearly had some IAP (I don't mind, but I can see how someone else might).
    • Mithaldu 13y ago
      Have a few links of the past year: http://playism-games.com/games/onewayheroics/ http://playism-games.com/games/onewayheroics/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_Bounty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_Bounty http://stoicstudio.com/game-overview/ http://stoicstudio.com/game-overview/ http://bluebottlegames.com/main/node/21 http://bluebottlegames.com/main/node/21 http://roguelegacy.com/ http://roguelegacy.com/ http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/avadon2/ http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/avadon2/ http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-vita/soul-sacrifice http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-vita/soul-sacrifi... http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-vita/toukiden-the-age-of-demons http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-vita/toukiden-the... While the mobile market is flooded with manipulative crap, both the PC and console markets have plenty of good RPGs available, even and especially when you look outside of big studio stuff like Mass Effect.
      • username223 13y ago
        Jeff Vogel probably isn't rich, but he seems to make a good and honest living running Spiderweb, charging $10 for the tablet versions of his games with no F2P nonsense. You can make a living doing something less evil than Zynga.
      • Qworg 13y ago
        I'm glad there are small publishers making RPGs. It just seems that MMOs have sucked all the air out of the room for PC AAA RPG titles. I can only name a few in the past 5 years (listed further down in the thread by someone else).
        • krzyk 13y ago
          Skyrim was releases something like 2 years ago, and you have Fallout series based on the same/similar engine from Oblivion (AFAIR Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas).
        • programminggeek 13y ago
          Mass Effect is a huge new RPG game series, also Dragon Age did pretty well. Both launched well after WoW went huge and everybody was chasing that market.
    • maxerickson 13y ago
      Is it really training the gamers? I would say it is taking advantage of the similarity between a difficulty progression and time/spend ladders. Other than some amount of real world benefit from improved hand eye coordination they are just different ways of providing a reward stimulus that is relatively empty of extended value. (I don't mean that as an invective against fun, I just mean that the rewards from fun are mostly fleeting)
    • kmfrk 13y ago
      RPGs are basically coming out of Kickstarter today, aside from the fairly boring AAA games like Elder Scrolls and Witcher.
    • corysama 13y ago
      >In many ways, we're training a new generation of gamers to have the following beliefs: - Games are not meant to challenge you, but to steadily progress you, no matter how good you are. Working in f2p games, I've thought about this quite a bit. From my observation, you have causality reversed. There's a new audience that is demanding progress-based games and that new market is pushing a lot of game designs away from skill-based challenges. Going back to the pac-man era, games had to be extremely challenging because they couldn't have enough content to stay interesting otherwise. That selected for gamers who enjoyed overcoming great challenges and pretty much defined "what games are" for 30+ years. Meanwhile, there has always been an unserved audience that does not like overcoming great challenges and preferes steady progression based on effort rather than mastery. That huge, newly discovered audience pushes back /hard/ when the games they play swing towards rewarding mastery. They just want to show up, know exactly what routine needs to be performed and know that if they do it, they will progress. For them, it's not about winning the gold at the Olympics. It's about tending a garden/getting fit/going on a hike. Imagine going on a hike and some weird old man stops you to say "No. That guy hiked better than you. You must go back down the mountain and start over from the beginning until you hike better than someone else." You'd never come back. Meanwhile, the classic, challenge-oriented audience is still there and games are still being made for them. But, a lot of them are discovering that sometimes they just want a nice hike as well. Thus more and more products are responding to that new demand. Gaming is a bigger world now. After 30+ years, the focus has shifted from being laser-locked on catering to hardcore gamers like you and me. Now there are not just different genres of fun challenges, there are different genres of fun.
      • moron4hire 13y ago
        > Meanwhile, there has always been an unserved audience that does not like overcoming great challenges and preferes steady progression based on effort rather than mastery. > They just want to show up, know exactly what routine needs to be performed and know that if they do it, they will progress. That rather handily explains degree inflation, too.
      • Qworg 13y ago
        Sure! Gaming is definitely a bigger world. I suppose games that are being made for "steady progressionists" also are those with "and here's a cash money way of ensuring the steady progression, so you don't have to work too hard". That seems to short circuit the reward for playing. Example: Angry Birds is has their Eagle that beats a map for you. Beating a map unlocks another map. Assuming a steady progression, being able to buy your way past a map removes any requirement that the game designer creates a steadily ramping progression, and instead encourages them to put up as many "little roadblocks" as possible.
    • saraid216 13y ago
      I'd lump the entire Assassin's Creed franchise into the RPG category.
    • ANTSANTS 13y ago
      There's a small irony here: The enormous success of the Dragon Quest series (currently approaching its 30th anniversary) in Japan was, in no small part, due to the fact that it was designed so that anyone could complete it if they put in enough effort. There is little real strategy or challenge to the main paths of the games (the secret dungeons are another story), you just keep "grinding" for money and EXP until you eventually get strong enough to venture into the next area and move the story along. Even if you die, you don't lose your progress, you just restart at the last town with half the gold you were carrying. It might sound a bit dull when I put it that way, but the series is enormously popular in Japan amongst all kinds of people that you wouldn't ever consider to be interested in video games. Each game is far lengthier an experience than you would expect out of a "casual" game, but the fact that you can make a little progress every time you play, no matter how frequently you do so or how bad you are at video games, really appeals to people. I obviously see the difference between that style of play, and paying for progress, but I just wanted to throw out there that games that are more about progress than skill or strategy have existed almost since the beginning, and they're not necessarily a bad idea.
      • aidenn0 13y ago
        DQ III to this day is my favorite console RPG. I'm also somewhat surprised the battery hasn't died on it yet. I will lose probably 60 hours of progress for my current save when that happens.
  • sentenza 13y ago
    It is true though, that an MMORPG is very likely to destroy an RPG franchise. Anybody still waiting for Warcraft 4. How about a new Elder Scrolls game?
    • ama729 13y ago
      > Anybody still waiting for Warcraft 4 That's because Blizzard is a very slow developer, which is not unheard in the industry. People were(are) also waiting for HL3, Prey 1 and 2 or Duke Nukem: Forever. > How about a new Elder Scrolls game? Skyrim came out in 2011, it's unlikely there'll be another one before 2015-2016, Morrowind came out in 2002 and Oblivion in 2006.
      • sentenza 13y ago
        Fair enough. My sense of time is gone since having kids. Though I'm fairly confident with my prediction about Warcraft 4. There are probably a lot of people at Blizzard, right now, thinking about how to make "the next WOW" work. A Warcraft strategy title just feels like small fry compared to that. Also, there might actually be brand dilution, since it is quite likely that many WOW players don't know about the old RTS games.
        • plorkyeran 13y ago
          Working on two RTS games at the same time would be a very odd decision, and Blizzard's been working on Starcraft 2 since 2007 and the third part is still at least a year out. Even if WoW never existed and Starcraft 2 was started earlier, Warcraft 4 would probably not be out yet.
        • saraid216 13y ago
          It's not just that it's "small fry". It's that the Warcraft lore is irreparably broken at this point. A Warcraft 4 would need to be a reboot, after WoW faded.
    • philosophus 13y ago
      Not sure if you're joking there -- Elder Scrolls Online comes out in June. There is some controversy because you can pay ~$10 extra for the "imperial edition" that is the only way to play the imperial race ...
  • pnathan 13y ago
    Maybe I've been out of it, but I can't remember a really A-class MMO that came out in the last 4-5 years. Which is the period of time that F2P & pay to win started making heavy inroads on the MMO market. I was rummaging around looking for a modern (post 2010? 2012?) AAA MMO the other night and couldn't find it.
    • epmatsw 13y ago
      Star Wars, Guild Wars 2, and the upcoming Elder Scrolls MMO are the ones that come to mind.
      • minimaxir 13y ago
        Star Wars TOR went F2P and apparently, it was extremely successful for them and made the game profitable. Guild Wars 2 has an initial purchase fee (usually on sale for $30), but no monthly fee. New content is subsidized through both functional and cosmetic IAP, although neither is game-breaking. Elder Scrolls Online, however, is $60 + $15/mo, with no IAP. Everyone is expecting it to die a horrible death.
        • epmatsw 13y ago
          True. Though I think all 3 would fit the AAA MMO description (especially considering that all of them have a relatively high upfront cost), even if they have IAP.
        • pnathan 13y ago
          > Elder Scrolls Online, however, is $60 + $15/mo, with no IAP. Everyone is expecting it to die a horrible death. Because it's $15/mo with no IAP...?
          • minimaxir 13y ago
            It's hard to justify both $60 and $15/mo for a game that isn't super good. (apparently, reports from beta users indicate that the game is average)
  • Smegger 13y ago
    well have traditional RPGs destroyed? Compare planescape torment dialogue options to say skyrim. this is an example of planescape http://www.gameranx.com/img/13-Apr/ravel-planescape-torment-choice.png http://www.gameranx.com/img/13-Apr/ravel-planescape-torment-... Can you honestly say that RPGs have gotten better or even stayed the same level?
  • rwallace 13y ago
    Great MMORPGs? A friend sent me a video of MMORPG 'gameplay' a while ago. I don't play these things, she does and is aware of my opinion of them and chose this as the best sample she could possibly find as a way to try to change my mind about them. It was a major boss battle, something that should've been the highlight of what the game had to offer. There was no gameplay. The boss monster was rendered as a hundred foot tall demon, but it didn't fight in any meaningful sense of the word. It stepped back and forth over and over again, executing some canned move the same way every time. The two dozen players did the same thing, wasting half an hour of their lives mindlessly pressing the same buttons over and over again until the boss monster 'died' (scare quotes because obviously it popped up again later for the next batch of victims). MMORPGs aren't games. They're Skinner boxes, exploits for security flaws in the human motivation system. The real challenge is at the meta-game level: the developers win if they successfully exploit you, and you win if you successfully prevent yourself being exploited. And the way to achieve the latter is to stop playing.
    • mattmanser 13y ago
      You simply just didn't understand the gameplay. Raids are great fun and challenging. The repetitive bit is a totally different part of the game that you actually don't have to partake in. I hate platformers, but don't randomly declare them not to be games because I don't understand them. With mmorpgs they have to have these time sinks simply to have content for the hours people actually want to put in.
• danielweber 13y ago
  Maybe I'm an old fogey but those 1990's graphics look awesome to me.
  • Mithaldu 13y ago
    That's because, while being low-res, they spent a lot of effort on the animations and the details. Most "modern" mobile games have about as much animation as final fantasy on the gameboy.
• mcphage 13y ago
  Dungeon Keeper costs $6 because it's 15 years old... When it was new it cost $50.
  • kalleboo 13y ago
    Which is still less than that £69.99 In App Purchase that lets you dig out 56 blocks.
    • mcphage 13y ago
      Sure, but when he says things like: "So this is the old days: Full game price + expansion packs included: $5.99 [...] Just remember that." That's a complete and utter lie.
      • kubiiii 13y ago
        A used or budget version of DK was easy to find for a few bucks back in maybe 98 or 99 thats still the old days.
  • danielweber 13y ago
    Still cheaper than spending 70 pounds on gems.
    • mcphage 13y ago
      It is, but doesn't make what he's saying about "the old days" any more true.
• feelstupid 13y ago
  Shouldn't the comparison of prices be for the original cost of the game, rather than how much it costs nowadays? Surely in 14 years time the iPad version would be indeed be cheaper if still existent?
• kawsper 13y ago
  I also saw the Dungeon Keeper on the iOS App Store, and my first thought was: "DKs gameplay would be fantastic for mobile!". Then I saw their IAP strategy and dropped the game. I would happily have payed $19.99 (the price of XCOM for iOS) for a decent DK on my iPhone. On the other hand I see myself paying for cosmetic items in DotA 2. They don't change gameplay, but my characters look cool. It sounds stupid, and it probably is, but Valve have really designed it well.
  • stefan_kendall 13y ago
    You are unique in this. They would get almost no sales and destroyed in reviews if they charged the real price of the game ($20). Instead, they use IAP. Some users buy nothing, some buy the $69.99 game, and on average everyone pays $20.
    • bjterry 13y ago
      Actually, the effect is much more exaggerated than you are suggesting. According to Tim Rogers, the mythical average player pays $1.70, but it's really made of 95% of people who spend $0, and a power-law-esque distribution of people who spend >$0 to hundreds or thousands of dollars.[1] Most of the money is made off of "whales." Technically he's talking about social games and not mobile games, but it would be surprising if the economics were significantly different given that the mechanic (pay to make things go faster) is identical. 1: http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost-story/chapter/2/ http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-g...
    • bitmage 13y ago
      He's not alone. I played both DK games when they were originally released, and eagerly downloaded this new one. It looked great, and the narrator's "So...you've finally returned" was a perfect beginning. Then I played through the tutorial, and saw it would take four hours to dig through a single block of dirt. I went to the store screen and would happily have paid $20 for a full unlock. Instead I was faced with multiple gem purchase options, including a "BEST VALUE - $100!". You have got to be kidding. And while I could make smaller purchases, I have no way of knowing how fast they would be depleted. As the article notes, the game is clearly focused on scamming the money out of you as fast as possible. So I've uninstalled it without spending anything and am left with further disgust for EA. There's got to be a happier medium ($10 game with cosmetic unlocks?) than this pay-for-every-move methodology. Valve certainly seems to be making it work.
• waterlesscloud 13y ago
  When I read a user review stating a game has In App Purchases, I don't buy it. Period. No matter how good it looks otherwise. I'm probably just old, I guess.
  • neals 13y ago
    So if a game is free to download, but you have to buy the last 10 levels after playing 5 already. Would you consider that an in-app purchase? Is this a deal breaker for you?
    • Touche 13y ago
      You should be able to play the game, and beat the game, without any in-app purchases. It can beg you for add-ons all it wants, but gameplay shouldn't be affected.
      • msh 13y ago
        I think IAP's to upgrade trails are ok. IE play two levels for free, buy the rest.
      • benched 13y ago
        That's just one model. Personally, I'd much rather pay for levels than pay for resources that make the game less tedious.
    • fossuser 13y ago
      That's not bad - that's more like a free trial. My issue with in app payments is that they create game breaking incentives and it's hard to know if that's what they're going to be when you see 'in app purchases' on the main screen. Most that I've seen seem to require purchases to unbreak the game or make it so that progress isn't artificially restricted by time. I think this effects some people more than others (WoW, farmville, clash of clans players who pour thousands of hours/dollars into the game).
      • Nav_Panel 13y ago
• deleted 13y ago
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• Mithaldu 13y ago
  Posted on HN a long while ago, here's an article that describes in-depth just how some F2P games manipulate the consumer to spend the maximum amount of money they can: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/194933/ http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/1949...
• jlongster 13y ago
  There are a few dynamics going on. In one sense, in-app "gem" systems have enabled companies to create highly social online games without a per-month fee. I've been playing Clash of Clans and it's really fun. Everything is run on their servers and you attack other people's villages. This sort of game would normally require something like $5/month. But with the in-app gems, I can play at a slower pace for free. If I wanted to play faster, I could spend $5 on gems and do pretty good for about a month. So in some ways it's a pay-per-usage system. The problem is that it can be easily abused and the dungeon game he describes sounds much more socially engineered. The handicap applied in the dungeon game sounds a lot worse than it is in Clash of Clans. This could also all be a result of the downfall of LAN-centered games. Clash of Clans could have taken the decentralized host-your-own-server route and it would still be just as good, if not more interesting. That actually would be ideal setup because I do find myself wishing I could just play the game underneath the gem-fishing strategy. I think Minecraft should remind us that it's the host-your-own-server strategy is a really good one, and I hope that doesn't die. It probably doesn't make as much money, so we need to figure out a way to balance the economic force which will eventually extinguish it.
• bane 13y ago
  I'm really into emulation and retrogaming. One thing that concerns me is how these works of art will become unplayable and "die" once their life expectancy is over. The body of work of video games is pretty large now, but I'm worried the body of games we can continue to enjoy 20-30-40-50 years from now will grow at a very slow rate from now on out. This is very different from the movie industry, where films from 60-70 years ago are still very enjoyable.
  • coldtea 13y ago
    >This is very different from the movie industry, where films from 60-70 years ago are still very enjoyable. They are to us, but the average movie goer would need restraints to sit and watch them. With the BS emphasis we had for over 2 decades on special effects, fast editing, CGI, and teenage-fantasy kind of material, the adult oriented movies of yesteryear are only left for cinephilles. For the average 15-25 year old today, they'd be unbearable to watch, whereas back in the day they watched them just fine.
    • nitrogen 13y ago
      So? Who cares if the average 15-25 year old does something? The average 15-25 y/o may not visit a museum, attend an orchestra, or have a tenured professorship, but all those things still exist. Plus, 20 years from now, those kids will be adults who might want to play the games of their youth.
      • coldtea 13y ago
        >So? Who cares if the average 15-25 year old does something? Well, since we were talking about old movies, people who value them, and who would have liked to see them being watched by newer generations and surviving into the future, do. >The average 15-25 y/o may not visit a museum, attend an orchestra, or have a tenured professorship, but all those things still exist. Just barely.
    • lstamour 13y ago
      I dunno. I fail to see how the Marx Bros are any less entertaining today. Or the 60+ year old Nineteen Eighty Four, is that unbearable to read (well, yes, but that's beside the point). Old doesn't mean unwatchable, it means different. Hopefully future games and content won't entirely be rentals, as some things are worth keeping and replaying for free...
• lazyjones 13y ago
  Don't pay so much attention to app store reviews. There are plenty of agencies out there offering fake reviews for pretty much anything. I don't see how bad games full of microtransactions and fake reviews would be able to destroy the industry. They will not prevent the next Minecraft.
• cityzen 13y ago
  I find it ironic that this blog post is filled with ads from top to bottom. Talk about destroying industries.
  • deleted 13y ago
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  • smsm42 13y ago
    I don't see how ads sitting on the separate column and bothering nobody destroy anything. I personally didn't notice them at all before you said there are lots of ads. So I guess we can say about destroying ads industry since most of the target audience does not see them, but I'd say that's their problem to find a way to be more useful.
• jiggy2011 13y ago
  I read a lot of complaints like this "OMG , all games are becoming F2P IAP" but I don't really see it outside of a niche of mobile games which seem to be modern day one armed bandit machine. If you at the current crop of Steam games or console games there are a ton of popular games that have no IAP or IAP which are for only for cosmetic items or expanding game content.
• DominikR 13y ago
  There are still plenty of games that don't use in app purchase at all or at least in a conservative way (like expansion packs) on consoles and PC, so I wouldn't draw such conclusions. I think the reason for this push of freemium games (in particular mobile games) is that people (who aren't usually gamers) tend to play them for very short periods as a way of passing the time. (while waiting, or while they are sitting on the toilet) And since most game companies were unable to sell full priced games to this demographic they adopted this business model to make money. Would you pay $30 for a game on a mobile phone with all its limitations? (touchscreen controls, small screen, crappy audio, battery drain) If I'm paying that kind of money (or more) for a game I expect at least solid 15 hours of immersive gameplay. (which is impossible for me on a phone - I have my consoles&PC for that)
• wsc981 13y ago
  Jonathan Blow -creator of Braid and working on The Witness- also has a very nice critique on the problems with games that are designed around micro-payments. The whole talk is interesting, but he starts discussing the issues around the 20 minute mark: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxFzf6yIfcc#t=1214 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxFzf6yIfcc#t=1214
  • jere 13y ago
    I love that talk. I've had some friends complain that he takes too long to get to the point, but I would argue the comparison to TV is pretty important. I wouldn't skip it.
  • DanielRibeiro 13y ago
    Jonathan sometimes comments on Hacker News as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jblow https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jblow His comments on game industry, I find, are usually very on point. One of his last ones: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6803844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6803844
• chasing 13y ago
  I suspect many game developers find themselves in an awkward spot: 1) People seem to balk at paying >$5 for a mobile or tablet game. (With some notable exceptions.) 2) The $0.99 or $1.99 price point is not financially viable for most games. 3) People do seem willing to purchase coins or lives or more daily playtime via in-app purchases. Some spend tens or hundreds of dollars on a single game. If you're building a game for a large company like EA, you're probably forced to take the most lucrative path. EA's not an atelier for starving artists. And if you're a small, struggling game studio, you probably can't afford to leave money on the table. So what's the solution? If people are unwilling to pay reasonable prices up-front for games, how besides in-app purchases does a game company profit from their work? This is an honest question, because I also generally hate how IAP is integrated into most games. I'd much rather pay up-front.
  • bo1024 13y ago
    Well, not developing for mobile is one option.
  • aaronetz 13y ago
    I (naively) hope that eventually people who prefer microtransacions will realize what a waste of money it is, and start paying upfront. But seriously, maybe a good solution would be to design the in-app purchases in a game so that instead of endlessly paying for consumable items, one would pay for actual game features. That way, you can play the basic game for free, and then start "constructing" the full game piece-by-piece by purchasing individual features. For example, an RPG where you can play the warrior for free but then pay $X each for additional characters. Or a "dungeon-keeper"-style game where you can pay to unlock more types of monsters and tools.
    • coldtea 13y ago
      >I (naively) hope that eventually people who prefer microtransacions will realize what a waste of money it is, and start paying upfront. You mean like getting a NYT subscription for $200 dollars, instead of paying for the 10-20 articles I want to read all year for like $1 or $.5 a piece?
    • 13y ago
• ronaldx 13y ago
  I mostly agree with the premise here, but I want to play devil's advocate: * The game isn't actually reviewed. Maybe you can play the game perfectly well without paying for gems. Maybe the game is actually more interesting to play for the fact that you have to manage your resources according to the time cost/gem count. Maybe there's a genuine reason why thousands of people have given five stars. * There's no reason to believe that we are supposed to pay for the £70 bundle. Maybe the £70 bundle is just for the IAP 'whales' who are paying for everyone else to play. When I go to a coffee shop, I don't have to buy a triple-cream, triple-chocolate mocha latte for £8, but I also don't need to get annoyed that this is on the menu.
  • kazagistar 13y ago
    The reason people play these games is habituation. By placing delays on things, they encourage you to take the content in small doses, and thus build a habit of playing, rather then burning through the (relatively small) amount of content quickly. Once people have a habit, they will rationalize it... "I am playing this, so it must be fun". Even once the content and new game play runs out and it is reduced to a rote grind, people will continue to play because of the sunk costs creating an unwillingness to abandon all the weeks or months of grinding they put into the game. It is a model pioneered by the MMO industry, but taken to an even greater extreme, where some of the worst psychological traps that people get stuck in are used against their customers to extend their profits.
  • skymt 13y ago
    Regarding the high number of five-star ratings, there's a common pattern in this style of mobile game to optimize for ratings. After the tutorial introduces the mechanics, and after a bit of time spent in the main game, it prompts the user to go to the app store and give a rating. Shortly after this prompt is when the game starts hitting the player hard for IAPs. I haven't played this new Dungeon Keeper, but EA's Plants vs Zombies 2 followed this model to a T at release, popping the rating prompt near the end of the first world, but before letting the player know that they would need to replay the entire world repeatedly in order to pass the paywall for free.
  • resu_nimda 13y ago
• kmfrk 13y ago
  I’ve been really disappointed with Apple’s laissez-faire approach to policing this trend in their App Store, especially since their philosophy is founded on making big, sweeping decisions in favour of their users. Honestly, I don't know why they haven't, because this is one of the biggest dark user patterns that exist outside of outright illegalities. We - and I - are used to giving companies like Facebook and LinkedIn shit for similar things, so why are Apple tacitly supporting this abomination. They don't even make that much from games anyway. What would the coverage be like, if the FCC fined either of those two $35.5M, as they recently did Apple[1][2]? If we believe that the App Store is a Big Deal, we should care that this is the new normal in handheld videogames. [1]: http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2014/01/apple-inc-will-provide-full-consumer-refunds-least-325-million http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2014/01/apple-... [2]: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/technology/government-and-apple-settle-childrens-app-purchase-inquiry.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/technology/government-and-...
• jerf 13y ago
  Another interesting video review of the another incarnation of this problem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_AgjWkNGew http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_AgjWkNGew Angry Joe on the iOS app Star Trek: Trexels. It does not amaze me that this level of depravity was tried; I always considered it a forgone conclusion that the companies would do anything that worked. It does sort of amaze me that this is working. Though I suspect rather than being the long-term future of gaming that this is the equivalent of slash&burn development. Yes, there's a huge bunch of people right now who haven't quite cottened to how nasty this can be, but they're learning fast, and while another one is born every minute, it's never quite the same as the first time the new scam goes raging through an unprepared population.
• cdmoyer 13y ago
  Calling these games "the game industry" does a disservice to all the other games that aren't like this.
• Silhouette 13y ago
  Sadly, the gaming public has brought this fate upon itself, because so many people don't respect game developers and routinely pirate the results of their hard work. I remember having this discussion on forums like Slashdot a few years ago. I argued that although pirating games was easy in the Internet age, if people kept doing it then the only surviving game developers would be those who adapted to models that prevented it. The usual response was mumbled with the eloquence of a five year old, and said something about copyright infringement not being the same as theft and whatever the developers did someone would just crack it so why should anyone pay for games? Fast forward a few years, and almost all the AAA games are heavily linked with some on-line element and the most successful games tend to be either multiplayer subscription models or rely heavily on in-app purchases and DLC. If you actually wanted to make a good standalone, single-player, one-time-purchase game today, I wonder how hard it would be to make real money on it. It seems like the only winning options along that path are to make a relatively low-budget game like a puzzler and sell it for an order of magnitude less so it's attractive to a long tail of customers and/or to be hit-it-out-of-the-park successful. Of course, for every Minecraft or Angry Birds there are probably thousands more titles that never quite made it. I have some hope that crowd-funding models will help to end this kind of stand-off, because they tap into a genuine desire many gamers have for good and original titles to play but they also bridge that reality gap and illustrate in concrete terms why money is needed to make them. I've seen several very promising games get funded far beyond their original goals on Kickstarter, including RPG, RTS and even space combat titles. Whether any of them will actually be able to pull off what they promised with slimmed down teams remains to be seen, as I don't think any of the really big ones have actually launched yet, but this is a field where I'm optimistic about an alternative model to the old copyright vs. piracy conflict.
  • wpietri 13y ago
    I am suspicious of your explanation. Who pirates iPad and iPhone games? Approximately nobody. But the problem describe in the article is acute for game publishers regardless of platform. The public has brought this upon themselves, sure, but more by being cheapskates. And I think Apple has contributed to this as well; their app store design isn't helping.
• deleted 13y ago
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• paxunix 13y ago
  A reddit user has started a tumblr to catalog ad-less, up-front-purchase, single in-app-purchase Android games: http://honestandroidgames.com/ http://honestandroidgames.com/
• socrates1998 13y ago
  Here is the main problem. I don't know if I will like a game when I buy it. I would gladly spend $5.00 on a mobile game if I really like it. But, too many times I have spent money on a game and then not really liked it. The reason in-app or in-game purchases work is because you don't mind spending money on something you really like. If Apple or Google Play allowed for a testing period of a few hours, then this might solve the problem. If I have a money back time limit of say 2 hours, then I can get my money back anytime before I spend a total of 2 hours playing the game. This would allow me to only spend money on games I really like without the fear of spending money on games I don't like.
  • DanBC 13y ago
    I recently mentioned the Doom model[1] of offering a few levels for free and the rest are paid. A few people said they had tried that and people really hated it. I've been playing Scurvy Scallywags recently. I really like it. They deserve more money than the small amount I paid for the game. There is a tiny IAP, which I've bought, but I wish there was a way to give them more money. It doesn't have to give me any advantage in the game either.
  • Zigurd 13y ago
    Long trial periods don't work. Lot's of potential customers will whip through a few plays of many types of games in a couple hours and "return" the game. Even strategy games with 30 turns per game can be played multiple times on different maps in 2 hours. What to do? Make better videos? If you have a good answer I'm sure Apple and Google want to know.
  • piyush_soni 13y ago
    At least Google play store has a 15 minutes of refund period after you buy.
  • navs 13y ago
    Maybe provide a free download and allow users to play through tutorials or the first 2 levels then opt for a single in-app purchase to unlock the full game. One single in-app purchase that would have been the cost of the game anyway. No different than all those free demos we got to play on PC.
• deleted 13y ago
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• sunir 13y ago
  I remember arcade games that were designed to eat quarters. They did very well. People loved them. Seems that people love these games. I don't know why either but I still burn through quarters playing Area 51 whenever I find it. Go figure.
  • judk 13y ago
    I played Smash TV on someone's free MAME system recently. I finished it in about 20minutes without starting over, just pumping credits. (In STV, you lose 0 progress when you continue with a new credit after falling. In fact, you get a brief invincibility bonus.) It was surrreal. For one, a lot of the drama and challenged vanished. For two, it made me wonder how I sent god knows how many quarters as a kid. Now I am playing Crystal Castles, where falling causes a partial start over (there are some warp/checkpoints later) and it is addicting me again, still fun.
• benched 13y ago
  I work at a well-known and [formerly?] successful casual game company. Recently, the company ventured into the 'freemium' with in-app purchases model. It hasn't gone so well - garnered a lot of hate, and not nearly as much money as hoped. The execs have responded by doubling down and going all in on freemium. So now there's this uncomfortable tension in the air, where lots of employees think it's a potentially company-destroying mistake, while the execs are pushing it as the type of propaganda that you either shut up and get behind, or 'perhaps this is no longer the right company for you.' And if it fails, it'll be because those employees didn't believe in the vision, not because freemium fucking sucks and core customers hate it. Why are they doing this? Basically because of the success of Candy Crush and Puzzles and Dragons. The execs want so badly to be them. They want that money. It's revenue envy. Never mind that the company has always been wildly successful doing its own thing, these other companies are printing money doing this other thing. We gotta get that money. We gotta do whatever they're doing over there. I just think money inside games distorts the game and is distasteful, like money in politics, or money in your esophagus.
  • swombat 13y ago
    That sounds awfully like Popcap games, with Plants vs Zombies... PvZ 2 was a total waste on me. I hesitated a long time before downloading it, and only did so because the reviews said you could play through the whole thing without buying anything. I played it until I got bored, and spent nothing. Throughout, I retained a vague sense of annoyance at the purchasable upgrades. I would happily have shelled out £10, maybe £15 to play it (and my wife and my mom would both have done so too), and would have played it through without any sense of annoyance. Result? Popcap game annoyed me despite all the effort they put into building a great game, and left £45 on the table. If their conclusion from that is to double down on IAPs, then quite simply they are saying they don't want users like me and my family, but want, as the second "Dungeon Keeper" iPad review from TFA, "fuckwits". Sorry, I don't buy games for fuckwits. I look forward, with little hope, to a PvZ 3 with no IAPs but a good upfront price.
    • Silhouette 13y ago
      I really hope it's not Popcap. They are a favourite in my household too, again because they make entertaining, well polished, and not excessively priced casual games that several of us enjoy. If even companies like that are succumbing to the allure of ongoing charging, they'll lose us as well.
• bsamuels 13y ago
  There needs to be a distinction drawn between mobile games and console/pc. These are two completely separate industries that are only married by name. They have different target audiences, mechanics, and business models. Mobile games are played to piss some time away, and are almost never played for hours like console/pc games are. One of the big reasons the Ouya failed was because its creators didn't realize that the console and mobile markets were separated so much - they don't compete with each other on any level. This is why I think it's silly to compare older games to mobile games. With the mobile market, you can do all sorts of disgusting slimy things and the consumer won't give a damn because they spend at max - 20 minutes on your game at a time. As long as people view mobile games as a way to blow some time rather than an interactive experience, I doubt nearly enough people will become involved with them enough to even care about in-app purchases.
• ig1 13y ago
  When thinking about gaming business models it's important to think about the context in the history of gaming. Since in the 1980s in addition to retail and digital sales the business models we've seen have included: * Pay-to-play arcade games * Premium hint lines * Add-on content sales * In-game sponsorship (Zool, sports games) * Shareware * Advertorial games (McDonalds Land) * Subscription fees * Peripheral sales * Real money betting * UGC Rev shares * Membership clubs * Game rental * In game ads * IAP * Virtual items IAP is likely here to stay, but just like the many many business models that have existed before, it'll likely become one of many in use.
  • ajayjain 13y ago
    Many apps use several of these business models at the same time - buy in game currency with money or watch in game sponsorships to earn it, then use that currency to buy virtual items.
• gmu3 13y ago
  I don't mean to defend in-app purchases, but this isn't the first time the game industry has tried to nickel and dime you. How is it that different from the 90s when the game industry put out incredibly difficult games and charged players tokens every couple minutes to keep playing? I know I've personally spent a hell of a lot more money in the arcade than on in-app purchases. This isn't a mobile example, but I think Riot (maker of League of Legends) is a company that really gets it right with in-app purchases in a tasteful way.
  • al2o3cr 13y ago
    As far as I can tell, the objection to IAPs vs the old arcade model is the difference between "pay to win" and "pay to play".
    • gmu3 13y ago
      With enough quarters a monkey could beat Area 51 so I think that is arguably "pay to win" as well.
• kilon 13y ago
  Well I can only speak about myself and say that I have spent at least twice as much for in game purchases than I have for buying games. In my case the culprit is Heroes of Newerth , a game I am completely addicted to. Its a MOBA game , also known as DOTA clone. And I did try Dota 2 and LoL and non made me switch. I am waiting for Heroes of the Storm. In the case of Heroes of Newerth all you can buy is Alternative Avatars of your Heroes , or reset your stats, or some other accessories. None of the things you buy actually affects the gaming experience. The game is 100% free and if you dont want to spend a euro on it so be it it will be as playable to you as it is for the guy that spends thousands of euros. I really like this and this is why I decided to spent my money. They dont force me to spend , I spend because I want to support them and keep this game improving. I see DOTA 2 also follows a similar path.
• niklasber 13y ago
  Don't people see that this is just a rant? The post is nothing but someone letting off some steam.
• merloen 13y ago
  I must have missed part I and II, namely "The game industry has been destroyed", and "It was in-app purchases that destroyed the game industry." Any links to those?
• NigelTufnel 13y ago
  I think that "destroyed" is not the right word. Yes, free to play games with in app purchases dominate the mobile market. For now. The mobile gaming is just 6 years old. We're in the 'Space Invaders' era. The quality of the top-grossing games is, how I shall put it, not great. I think eventually the quality will grow to a level where paying up front for a mobile game will not be the stupidest thing on the face of the Earth.
  • slantyyz 13y ago
    >> The mobile gaming is just 6 years old. We're in the 'Space Invaders' era. Game developers have access to over thirty years of video gaming knowledge when designing a game. People have access to multi-platform SDKs, etc. Today, anyone with a computer can produce and publish a game. When Space Invaders was around, this was not even remotely the case. The expectations for quality on a 6 year old platform today should be much higher than it was in the 80s.
• protomyth 13y ago
  The world's sure changes since I was shoving quarters into a coin-op. On the technical side, wasn't there something in giving a game away and in-app charging that made it harder to pirate on iOS / Mac App Store?
• pms 13y ago
  Simply brilliant video. I think that people who pay for these guys are miserable. It's up to them to choose what's "fun" for them. If playing this kind of game is "fun" for them, then it's fine for me. I'll play a different game. As long as there will be people like me, there will be indie games and a lot of fun for us.
• cpks 13y ago
  Virtually all games I've bought recently have had this inane obnoxiousness. One of my favorite games was 'Choice of Romance: Affairs of the Court.' You play it. You want to go on to level 2? Pay. Level 3? Pay. Not have to wait 20 minutes to start a new game? Pay. No ads? Pay. Start from level 2 or 3 with accomplishments you achieved? Well, it claimed to be free, but restore-from-save doesn't work, so you pay. Play it on your iPhone, Kindle, Android, and Chrome? Pay four times. It was a great game, and I would have gladly bought the rest of the games, but it's both not fun to know I can either waste hours or get blackmailed into paying, and terrifying to see where they'll try to skin me next time... I moved on, but I haven't found any really good games that don't do this.
• venomsnake 13y ago
  Is hex editing your savegame files to get more coins, stars etc then piracy? After all I am licensed to use software and the savegame is my creation and its IP belongs to me.
  • mcphage 13y ago
    Or that guy who had one of his servers pretend to be the Candy Crush server, so that he could "beat" all of the levels instantly?
• ChuckMcM 13y ago
  It would be an interesting experiment to offer a version of Dungeon Keeper (the focus of this article) in the App store for $39.95 and without the IAP accelerators. Then compare sales with that one and the cheap one. Clearly EA just works out their life time value per customer either way. I did hear a game developer mention that IAP is really a form of copy protection, in the sense that if you made a copy of a game that can only effectively be played by buying additional tokens, then it is more difficult to pirate. I agree with the author that it has made for a very different sort of industry. But given the income these companies are making I don't think the industry is being "destroyed" any more than the extortionate seat prices the NFL charges to see a game in person are "destroying" football.
  • ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
    Plague Inc. allows you to unlock the game for a few bucks as an IAP, but it's a one-off purchase. That seems to work for copy protection. Needling the shit out of your customers like Dungeon Keeper is doing is killing the system. Unless a game ends up on the Humble Bundle, I almost refuse to get it because I'm worried about IAPs.
    • GhotiFish 13y ago
      some games that end up on the humble bundle have in app purchases. I don't know if they've changed their policy about it. I remember one game in particular that was pretty aggressive with it's DLC nag.
  • im3w1l 13y ago
    Some other commentators on this article noted 95% of people pay nothing in IAP games, and some pay a huge amount, which pays for everyone. I think this would mean that your proposal of two versions would cannibalize each other in a very bad way. The large majority would play the free game and pay nothing, while the "whales" would only pay $40 instead of the huge amounts they would otherwise. So you'd lose both the "tail" and the the "head".
• rcthompson 13y ago
  I'll point to Blizzard's Hearthstone (still in open beta) as a counterexample. It's a collectible card game, and it's perfectly fun to play from day one with little more than the starter cards. You can earn more cards slowly by playing a lot, or you can just buy them. But while buying better cards can make you more competitive, it doesn't necessarily make the game more fun, since in any case it generally matches you up against an equally-matched opponent.
• networked 13y ago
  This reminds me of an insider's-view feature written by Tim Rogers back in 2011 titled Who killed videogames? (a ghost story) [1]. Some find his writing style objectionable but it's worth a read even if you do. Page 4 of the article in particular, which somewhat confusing leads you to "chapter three: engagement wheels and compulsion traps", can serve as a pretty good introduction to F2P mechanics and their dark patterns. The following quote more or less summarizes the piece: >[...] “The players will come for the cute characters, and stay for the cruel mathematics.” There is also an accompanying review of The Sims Social [2]. [1] http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost-story/ http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-g... [2] http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=1076 http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=1076.
  • bostik 13y ago
    Thank you for linking that insertcredit article - you saved me the trouble. Sure, it's long, it's quite repetitive, and it's cynical as anything. But it's also spot on for this discussion. (I'm also very happy the domain is no longer on google's shitlist for serving malware. Not long after that article was published, the site startede to trigger a big fat warning if your browser used safesurfing.)
• axx 13y ago
  * the mobile games industry.
• WWKong 13y ago
  You want everything included for $5.99. Studios want more lifetime value out of the customers. Consumers want to sample the game for free and incrementally pay if they are hooked on. Studios have come up with a model that makes them a lot of money and keeps consumed happy. This is evident by the fact that studios have moved to this model. In a nutshell the market has decided the best model.
  • djur 13y ago
    Markets can't "decide" anything. They're not intelligent. Investors have selected what they believe to be the optimal strategy for looting the games market. Time will tell whether the approach remains profitable or whether they're going to run their companies into the ground in the long term.
• 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
  From the second video (warning for language): http://youtu.be/GpdoBwezFVA?t=5m6s http://youtu.be/GpdoBwezFVA?t=5m6s 1. Few things in life are more enjoyable than an angry British guy having a good rant. 2. Coincidentally I just yesterday (re)read the part of Hackers talking about the founding of EA. Times have changed.
• ww520 13y ago
  The author made a disingenuous comparison. Dungeon Keeper didn't cost $5 when it was released many years ago. It costed $39.95. And there was not trial play ahead of time. Is he willing to pay for $49.95 (adjusted for inflation) for the iPad version before even playing it? The in-app purchase got to this way because of gamer purchase behaviors. If the majority of the gamers are willing to pay upfront, you won't see in-app purchase. This is just like most people (at least in US) unwilling to pay the full price to buy the phone upfront but rather to pay for it with smaller monthly charges via the long term contract. Gamers change their purchase behaviors and in-app purchases will go away.
  • niklasber 13y ago
    The writer is ignorant and the article is nothing but a silly rant. No reasonable arguing. Makes me sad that this kind of articles can make it to #1 on HN.
  • djur 13y ago
    The price of AAA games has gone down in real dollars, so adjusting for inflation isn't accurate. Also, when you paid $40 for a game in 1998, you ended up with a game you could resell when you were done with it. The video game market was built around that expectation. And the price of used games was much lower than retail -- $5-10 was common for games that sold at $40 a year or two earlier. In this case, I think it's notable that the mobile Dungeon Keeper is both less playable and more expensive than its predecessor.
• erikb 13y ago
  Well, I am also very disappointed by nearly every mobile game I have ever seen, but on the computer and PS3/4 I still see good things done right. So don't really see the point here. The platform is obviously for little children with too much pocket money and people make lots of money serving them such kind of games. Looks to me like nearly everybody could be happy.
• joesmo 13y ago
  The strategy of releasing part of a game for free and charging for the full product is tried and true. This frees the game from in app purchases and allows the developer to make money. Sounds like a good, workable solution to me.
  • Goladus 13y ago
    That's not really the problem, though. Free demos have been around for ages. The issue is integrating cash payments into the core gameplay. This necessarily undermines the integrity of any game that uses it, unless it's really a game designed around real money like poker or blackjack.
  • djur 13y ago
    Studies show that free demos aren't the optimal way to squeeze money out of the market. IAPs are. So the vipers in suits demand IAPs. Killing the goose that lays the golden eggs probably also seemed like the optimal strategy at the time, too.
• _pmf_ 13y ago
  Crappy mobile games are not "the game industry"; it's a perverted travesty, just like the rest of the disgusting app culture.
• notastartup 13y ago
  I think that having to purchase item is a huge problem because without it you are at some disadvantage even when you enjoy the game. It completely turns me off from even trying out the game if I find out it has in game items. On a side note that Dungeons Keeper game is simply, mind blowingly ahead of it's time. It looks insanely fun. Thought it was just another RTS but wow, you can play as any of the minions in FPS mode. It was on DOS too. Why can't games be like this more? Focus on fun instead of graphics and wallet grabbing?
• lumpysnake 13y ago
  In-app purchases are not the problem, people paying for them are.
• denrober 13y ago
  Anybody notice the bottom of the article: Subscribe for $9/month Baekdal PLUS: Premium content that helps you make the right decisions, take the right actions, and focus on what really matters. Really?
• chaostheory 13y ago
  I don't like IAPs but this blog post's argument misses a really big key point. To do a fair comparison between a real game such as Dungeon Keeper and its IAP version, you can't quote the GOG price for the real game. That's the price that arrived years after the game was fresh with healthy sales and years after the game already recouped all of its costs. The price they should have quoted for the original Dungeon Keeper game is $49.99.
• Dartanion7 13y ago
  I recently wrote a book about Freemium, in part, because I think it is vilified unfairly within the context of gaming. Before moving to gaming, I worked at Skype. No one ever accused Skype of exploiting people, or of facilitating addiction, or of polluting the purity of telephony. Skype made money by, essentially, up-selling people to paid phone calls. Those phone calls might have been to people's sick parents in foreign countries, or their kids. Imagine that! By charging for phone calls, Skype might have been prevented someone from speaking to their sick mother! Freemium is a business model; it's not a moral framework or an ethos. Some people make terrible games with the freemium model; they likely would have made terrible games had they gone with an upfront payment model. The difference between the terrible freemium game and the terrible paid game is that people got to choose whether or not they contributed money to the terrible freemium version after playing it. They got more information before making a purchase, kind of like a test drive. Isn't that a good thing -- more information?
  • chilldream 13y ago
    Gaming is actually the most evil possible context for freemium. It encourages bad design at literally every level, in ways that generally do not transfer to other types of software. If freemium were generally just a demo for a better game, you would be right that there's nothing wrong with it, but optimizing a game for freemium means a worse game. Watch the second video in the article; the "best value" gem cart is in the ballpark of just straight up buying a game. Except you don't get the entire game.
    • Dartanion7 13y ago
      > If freemium were generally just a demo for a better game It's not, and no one ever said it was. The demo analogy isn't valid; a free-to-play game is a fully functional game. IAPs may unlock additional functionality, or help bypass time gates, or whatever, but the "core loop" of a game shouldn't (under the guise of freemium, anyway) be restricted by payments. This isn't to say that it doesn't happen -- not every developer really understands freemium, and some bastardize it. But can you really argue with consumer preference for freemium? If consumers hated freemium, it wouldn't dominate the app store.
• golergka 13y ago
  Sadly, I didn't have time to play the iOS Dungeon Keeper myself, so I started to watch the video review in the article — and in one minute, the reviewer showed that he doesn't know anything not only about free2play, but about modern games in general. DK is clearly a Clash of Clans clone. Apart from being a clone, this means that it's supposed to be primarily multiplayer. Persistent-state, massive multiplayer. And a day of real time in this games IS NOT a lot of time. Similarly to Eve Online (which I draw as an example as the "nerdiest" game to have this kind of mechanics), this kind of games have a LOT of stuff that take hours, days and sometime even months of real time to unlock or produce. This mechanics first started as a variation from traditional PBEM on BBSes; their primary purpose was not to draw money from players, but so that regular playing would yearn a greater, or at least similar reward, to hours of grinding, that only a tiny fraction of players can afford.
• elwell 13y ago
  ruined quizup
• vinceguidry 13y ago
  The gaming market has ALWAYS been choked with shit. I don't understand how people can forget Sturgeon's Law so quickly and proclaim the death of the gaming industry. If anything, there are more great games now than there ever have been, if only because the barrier to entry is low. You know all those old games that are so great that you wish they'd make now? They're still there! You can still play them! Go grab Dungeon Keeper and relive those days. So many amazing games to play, so many new technologies to make new ones with. Quit complaining and be a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem.
• jamdavswim 13y ago
  It's not just games using these strategies now, it's everything..
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• leandot 13y ago
  It seems many think the same way - check out this Reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidGaming/comments/1vu3gy/sick_of_every_new_game_being_ruined_by_inapp/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidGaming/comments/1vu3gy/sick_o...
• kartikkumar 13y ago
  I don't really understand in-app game purchases, but that's maybe because I've never made any. I don't know anybody that has either, so I'm a bit baffled that it's disrupting the industry this much. Might be cultural difference too, being in Europe. I also don't understand the sense of in-app purchases in some games. For instance, in Candy Crush I believe you can make in-app purchases to skip ahead, not have to play quests to clear levels etc. Reason I don't get it is because the whole point of playing the game is surely to play the levels and not skip them! It leads me to believe that the only reason in-app purchases happen is because they pray on the weak: people who genuinely get addicted. I may be wrong about it since I don't have data to back up my claims, but I'm assuming that instead of a lot of people making up the industry, that the whole concept is powered by a few people making massive payments in the form of tonnes of purchases; people who I can only imagine get addicted in the sense that anyone can get addicted to drinking, smoking, gambling etc. Perhaps someone can shed light on the nature of the in-app payment industry for gaming and perhaps explain to me what I'm missing. Disclaimer: I'm not a big gamer, so that might explain all of the above. PS: I find it somewhat amusing that the author's blog site offers a premium content purchase link: in-blog purchase?
• nbuggia 13y ago
  I wonder if the problem isn't the AppStore itself. It is so difficult to find good content, and the 'Top 10 Lists' are the primary place people go to find games. This has led to rampant spamming and other dirty tactics to get on these lists, and now there is no market for higher quality content. I think another problem is scarcity - there isn't any anymore, making it hard for me as a customer to focus on a few higher quality products. Now there are just too many apps.
• habosa 13y ago
  I do think IAP has made games less fun, but as a non-game app developer I think IAP is amazing. The old model (for devs who don't like ads) normally went like this: * Free Version: Limited Feature Set * Paid Version: $0.99 or $1.99, full features There were a lot of problems with this model, such as: 1) People didn't know the paid version exist, leave bad ratings on the free version for lack of features. 2) It was hard to gain traction since your downloads were split over multiple apps, meaning each would rank lower individually. 3) When people made the free-to-paid conversion, you had to worry about data migration including all preferences, etc. 4) Some apps just don't have a meaningful feature set for a free version. 5) Maintaining separate code. IAP fixes this and allows be to be a more "lean" operation. Now I publish a free app with a minimum viable feature set. I watch what features people ask for in reviews, and if one seems like a non-bug feature that people really want I'll introduce it as a $0.99 IAP. In the meantime, my free app can keep gaining users which means putting the opportunity to buy my product in front of more people and not splitting my popularity across two app store listings. I also make sure to add features for free to keep moving up the charts and make most users happy. Also, people are much more likely to want to pay for a feature after they've used the rest of the app than pay up front.
• throwwit 13y ago
  I'm surprised it hasn't been nicknamed something like the 'entertainment singularity'. It's like a philosophy of maximum productivity has encroached entertainment and now you're either working or paying. Not playing.
• KVFinn 13y ago
  I find that even in games which are generous and you could play them just fine without paying, if I can buy consumables that effect the game it severely reduces the enjoyment. Ben Kuchera said it like this: https://web.archive.org/web/20131211185745/http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/reviewing-certain-free-to-play-games-is-turning-me-into-a-nervous-wreck https://web.archive.org/web/20131211185745/http://penny-arca... >I’m finding it increasingly difficult to enjoy free-to-play games, even those that are designed well. >Hitting a difficulty spike can make you unsure of whether the game has simply gotten more difficult and you must try harder to succeed, or if this is where you’re supposed to be putting coins into the slot in order to move forward. It’s hard to focus on the story of the puppet show when you’re straining to see the strings, and that’s how many of us feel when we play these titles. >Playing free-to-play games is often a matter of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Until it does, it's hard to relax. I don't want to have to figure out where the stress of the purchasing decision will be, and having to be faced with that stress on an ongoing basis is a major turn off. Thank god for PC gaming. So far it has remained immune from so much of this. The top 2 selling games on Steam for the last 2 months, even over the Steam Sale, are Rust and DayZ, which couldn't be farther from this model. The closest you get are F2P games like LoL which are not nearly as bad as this, and Dota 2 a competitor doesn't let you purchase a single thing that has an effect on gameplay.
  • BinaryBrainz 13y ago
    >The closest you get are F2P games like LoL which are not nearly as bad as this Just to put this in perspective, LoL has more (by 400,000 users) concurrent players than the entire Steam platform.[1][2] I would also put forth the argument that you do gain an advantage by paying for stuff like new heroes which are almost always OP. I think the only element of PC gaming that is keeping more major studios out of the F2P models are dedicated server and p2p gaming where it doesn't make sense and is probably hard to accomplish in any meaningful way. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Legends http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Legends (para. 1) [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(software) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(software) (para. 3)
• kubiiii 13y ago
  What is incredible is that they don't even throw in the fully unlocked game to a user who would pay £70 which is > the price of a next gen AAA game.
• unclebucknasty 13y ago
  Obviously, this is a byproduct of our "everything should be free" online culture. What's really funny is that the author's blog itself follows the same freemium model as the games he's decrying. Free to read, but $9/month to subscribe per the end of the article: "Baekdal PLUS: Premium content that helps you make the right decisions, take the right actions, and focus on what really matters." How is it possible that he's overlooking this irony? It's the culture.
• jon_black 13y ago
  > So what's the solution? If people are unwilling to pay > reasonable prices up-front for games, how besides in-app > purchases does a game company profit from their work? If morality is valued higher than profitability, game studios wouldn't enter into the market. That's the choice they have.
• vacri 13y ago
  It's quite funny how the author calls the game industry destroyed by in-app-purchases, when most of the games industry isn't mobile gaming and doesn't have that. PC or console, there isn't a lot of IAP (no real mechanism for it). The irony is that people who identify themselves as gamers generally see the mobile gaming space as a cesspool of discardable lightweight games.
• scotty79 13y ago
  This can be fixed with better content discovery tools. There's currently no decent way to discover, if a game will be any fun for me.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• ii 13y ago
  There still is a sane solution: make a game free with a small number of free levels and sell unlimited levels for a fee as a one-time in-app purchase.
• Ethan_Mick 13y ago
  As a mobile developer venturing into building my own games, I disagree and agree. First off, I hate, hate, the practice of slowing down the game or crippling it, and then allowing the user to use an IAP to get the game back to a normal pace. I vow never to do that. However, a some users (and anecdotally, quite a few of my friends) won't download my app if it costs $1. The barrier to entry is too high, and they don't know if they are going to get a good experience. They can't pick up my app and hold it, feel it, rub their hands over it's quality. They have 5 screenshots (and any reviews online) to go by. Okay, so I'll make it free to lower that barrier. But now how do I make money? I think the best thing to do is to simply have users pay for content that they have already proved they love. Let them play through 50 levels, or the first "area" of the game. Let them buy more levels or unlock more content. This way they can play the game and decide if they like it, and if so, buy more. I think the two rules of thumb about this sort of IAP is: 1: Don't be a asshole. Give the user a lot of completely unaltered content up front, and really let them dive into the game. Ensure they know that buying the rest of the game later will cost some money, but don't take away features because they haven't bought the game yet. Let them fall in love with it. 2: Price it fairly. Let users buy "All Levels Forever" for $5, or each level pack for $2. Allow them to unlock all the content at once. If they bought 2 levels packs, and want to buy all the rest later, give them a discount. Make a game you'd want to play.
• etler 13y ago
  I want to know how much overlap there is between mobile gaming consumers and console/pc gaming consumers. Has mobile gaming stolen away any of the spending of the console/pc gaming demographic? Or has it instead created an entirely new market that doesn't do console/pc gaming at all? I can only go by personal experience as I cannot find any consumer surveys, but I've spent about a grand total of 5 dollars on mobile games, all for expanded content, not consumables, but I've spent hundreds on my 3DS alone. I strongly suspect the audiences for in game purchases and the audience for deeper games hardly overlap at all. Are kids just not going to know that real gaming exists? I'm simply not convinced that the existence of mobile non-games means that the discoverability of real games is hampered. Console gaming isn't exactly a niche market that few people know exists and never end up experiencing.
• vectorjohn 13y ago
  This just in: The game industry is destroyed.
• lokidoki 13y ago
  pfft. IAP? Dude's talkin about the 90's like it was the genesis of gaming. Arcade games did IAP back when we were feeding those big machines quarters in the 80's. "Oops. You got this far and died. Want to continue? That'll be one more quarter please. 20.. 19.. 18.." The gaming world didn't end.
  • chilldream 13y ago
    You could beat the good arcade games on one credit, and if you were skilled enough to do so it was the best possible experience. Some people still consider it the only "legitimate" way to play those games.
• mattmaroon 13y ago
  This is a silly argument. 1. Game developers aren't shooting themselves in the foot. They're catering to customers. IAP works because customers want to get a game for free, and the people who really love a game are willing to spend thousands (sometimes even tens or hundreds thereof) on it. 2. The old-school game model was struggling anyway. Console game sales haven't been doing well for a long time. 3. You can't rent an app, and you mostly don't play it on someone else's device. Both of these were ways of testing out a new franchise on consoles that no longer exist. It makes sense that something filled the void. 4. The platforms now (mobile devices) have a vested interest in you playing as many games as possible, moreso than you paying for them. Apple/Samsung etc. make their money by your buying a new $650+ phone every two years, and if you get a bunch of apps you love on one, you're more likely to get another from the same OEM later. Why try to sell you a few $10 games off of which they make $3 (minus carrier fees) when they can give you a ton of free games and hope you love a few enough of them to plunk down another $650 a year from now? Until content is no longer gated by app stores that have incentives very different from those of game devs, this business model is a natural fit. Don't get me wrong, I don't love it either, and I make the damn things for a living. I don't think all IAP-monetized games suck. But I do think that plenty of them do, and the misaligned incentives make it hard to make a game that is both profitable and genuinely fun that way. I just don't think the fault lies with game developers.
• patio11 13y ago
  Gamers have voted with their wallets for this outcome. (Dungeon Keeper retailed for $60, not $6, at launch. I couldn't afford it so I checked back weekly, and then found the best deal of my life six months later: $9.99 with a $20 manufacturers rebate.) Minus the rebate thing this is the traditional curve for IP price discrimination: you pay more to get faster access. Gamers thought both $60 or waiting one day, to say nothing of 6 months, were monstrously unfair, so they pirated the games. So the industry did a rethink, and figured out a way to give them what they want. Enter Free To Play.
  • gyom 13y ago
    I prefer the narrative in which sales on Steam are the popular response to high pricing (and DRM), and where Free To Play is something that bad guys do to exploit people's psychology (tapping into the same mecanics as casino do). You are framing it in a way that makes Free To Play the only valid response to piracy.
  • benched 13y ago
    Because of the nature of IAP-based game design, I don't believe this is really about the revealed preferences of gamers. There's widespread hate for IAP among gamers. Zynga or whoever was first discovered a way to exploit players. There's a level of deliberate manipulation in the design of these games that just can't be paralleled with charging up front. Companies even update the game in response to the telemetry they're collecting, trying to find ways get players to spend more. The dynamics can't really be compared to the honest exchange of a product for money. I think that's why it engenders such hate. I realize people weren't too happy with $60 games, but as far as I could see, great games always did very well.
    • alexqgb 13y ago
      What people hate is paying money. Full stop. Oh sure, there's always the "I'd pay for that if..." or the "I don't mind supporting stuff I like" (as though this were charity), but this is talk and talk - like bullshit - is cheap. In reality, the vast majority of people won't pay unless they absolutely have to, with "absolutely have to" meaning "you'll go to jail on criminal charges if you don't." So assuming you're in a situation where people really must pay, the question becomes "How seamlessly can you integrate payment extraction into your providence of value?" In the case of airline tickets, groceries, and auto repairs, the answer is "Pretty easily, actually". As a result, payment extraction is a solved problem. With the non-negotiable inevitability of payment accepted, and the means to pay made as frictionless as possible, people don't think twice about handing over their credit cards the moment a demand is made. When people expect to pay, producers can expect to get paid. It's just that simple. Businesses compete for the custom of those who accept the system and it call the cops on the tiny minority who don't. The problem with IP is that the legal system that protects every other viable business has imploded. And it's not about "just inventing another business model" since the unsolved problem of human nature means having to produce a new law enforcement structure to back that model up. Devolving to private enforcement (e.g. the Mafia) is an obviously unacceptable outcome, so instead of telling IP producers that it's up to them to "just invent new models" it's really time for people to recognize that law and law enforcement are the responsibility of citizens, not corporations. If you want a smooth and efficient market then come up with the laws and enforcement mechanisms that (a) this kind of market requires and (b) you can live with as a society. In the meantime, expect suboptimal solutions from producers who have been left to squeeze whatever cash they can from the teeming hordes of assholes who think payment is debatable.
• zmmmmm 13y ago
  I think Apple has a big part of the blame to take. Somehow - I don't know how - they engineered a situation where the original apps were priced dirt cheap for the iPhone. 99c was the initial expectation, and companies were so keen to get in on the early app store action that they didn't care. Starting from there the industry has struggled to ever raise prices for apps to a reasonable level. No matter how much content there is in a game, no matter what the quality, the perception in the consumer mind is that a good app costs $1 - $2 and an exceptional app might charge $5, but nobody ever in their right mind would pay $20 for an app. We're now at the point where mobile games contain graphics at the same level of consoles from a year or two ago, and yet prices aren't moving. Entire office suites that might have been $50 - $100 struggle to fetch $10. It's not sustainable, has never been sustainable. The only question is how we're going to get out of the mess, and it looks like we're having to go through an IAP hell before consumers will start to be prepared to pay a premimium price to get an IAP-free experience.
• LeicaLatte 13y ago
  Destroyed? Sounds whiny and old. Changed.
• navs 13y ago
  I'll admit, sometimes I don't want to spend more than $10 on a game especially without knowing what it's like. But that's why there's in-app purchases or rather, a single purchase. Like the golden era of PC games where you got a free demo with your PC Magazine. Play it, love it, wait a few months, buy it.
• tlear 13y ago
  The only games that are worth playing is stuff released years ago. i have never payed a single $ to play these app store scams and never will. I however dumped close to $200 on a KS game I wanted made.. scum is scum and I will never assoicitate with them(shared office in with one of these before.. felt dirty at the end of the day)
  • KVFinn 13y ago
    >The only games that are worth playing is stuff released years ago. Wow. I absolutely detest the kind of games talked about in this article but I believe more great games are being made now than anytime in history. The whole gaming space has grown so much that every single niche is better served now. Not in the AAA space but indy game quality is so high now, they can easily best games from 15 year ago. Look at the Steam top 10, it's not bad at all. DayZ and Rust are both extremely interesting game designs that like of which had only been seen in MUDs before.
• bpm140 13y ago
  My hunch is the "freemium is bad" argument is primarily an oversimplification of the underlying concern -- the erosion of trust and how that manifests during gameplay. When I play a traditional "pay" game, I trust that the developer want me to finish the entire game. After all, the team slaved away creating all that content and the player should damn well appreciate their effort. As a result, when I get stuck at some point in a game (Dead Space 2 being a recent example), I trust that there's a way forward and with a little more effort or practice, or perhaps if I retrace my steps, I'll become unstuck and move along the path toward completion. Because the developer and I are working with a common goal in mind -- get Eric to the end of the game -- I am confident that at any point in the game I will be capable of completing the challenges set forth (no matter how stingy the Dead Space guys are with ammo). With freemium games, that trust is obliterated. When I can't progress, I am forced to ask a fun-sucking question -- is the developer trying to extort money from me in order to continue? Am I unable to continue because I just haven't mastered some in-game skill or is this simply the point at which I'm supposed to hand over my tithe? Candy Crush is an obvious (if extreme) example. When you can't complete a level after the 20th try, the player begins to feel that the developer is expressly barring their passage. And at that point, the game ceases to be fun, at least for the generations of gamers who saved the princess. Then again, my kids (eight and six) just assume that buying gems is how one progresses in a game. It's not unlike when I was eight and pumping quarters into Gauntlet in order to reach the next level -- Blue Warrior's health dropped whether or not you were taking damage. Everything old is new again.
  • Too 13y ago
    > With freemium games, that trust is obliterated. When I can't progress, I am forced to ask a fun-sucking question -- is the developer trying to extort money from me in order to continue? Am I unable to continue because I just haven't mastered some in-game skill or is this simply the point at which I'm supposed to hand over my tithe? Absolutely. I hate the feeling of not knowing whether I'm not good enough yet or if this level is just designed to have no feasible way of completing without buying a power up. There is also no way to benchmark and compare with your friends since someone might have completed a level using a power up. Games for me is like sports, everyone should play on equal terms, even for single player games. Imagine playing/watching football where one team can buy an extra player to have on the field. I'd much rather have the paywall be honest like buying levels like the oldschool shareware method or subscriptions like mmorpgs. I'm actually surprised there are so few subscription based games, this should be ideal for both parties. The user don't have to pay the up front $60 for an unknown game and the vendor gets a constant revenue stream.
• weixiyen 13y ago
  Games are making more money than ever, destroyed is not the right word. There will always be a demand for games, and if users do get sick of IAPs then the strategy from every game company will change.
• scotty79 13y ago
  Freemium is not a bad thing. Dungeon Keeper for iPad is just a bad game. But why it sholdn't be? Who remebers the disaster Master of Orion 3 was? It wasn't freemium. It supposed to be good because it was master of orion, but it wasn't. There are a lot of horrible games that are basically pay to play at any fun pace. They have one of two or three very stupid mechanics that proved to be most efficient extortion schemes dressed in some graphics and story. Good thing is you can just install them, play ten minutes, recognize what kind of beast you are dealing with, uninstall and forget. Bad thing is, thers no one place where you can go to check if the game is pay or wait scheme. Gamers basically get nohelp from noone when they try to decide what to play next. Good freemium is when you pay for game to be easier. Pay or wait is insane but pay or play some more on the current level before advancing is reasonable enough if it's balanced so that you can advance faster if you are more skilled.
  • SquareWheel 13y ago
    The problem I see with your proposed model is that game developers will then make games harder to encourage you to pay. Or the game will be grindier, so you have to farm for XP or items or whatever to advance. But for only 99 cents... IAP hurt game design and result is less-fun games. The only use I can swallow is in cosmetic-only IAP, and even then I'm iffy.
    • scotty79 13y ago
      Forcing player to farm things already happens even without IAP. It happens because average player wants this. I have no idea why. I suspect it's US cultural thing. Getting better just by putting more hours into crappy job. Cosmetic only IAP are holy grail but I can accept well balanced IAP that makes the game easier. I don't mind that my game is hard. What I don't want is waiting or doing easy thing over and over again. If a game makes me do one of those two things or pay I abandon it. I don't even mind that such games exist. But I do mind that I can't know if a game is like that before I try it out myself.
• dsirijus 13y ago
  The inception of in-app purchases on mobile games is not to be blamed on game developers - it's the markets. Specifically, AppStore discovery and refund policies. There you were circa 2009, a mobile game player, presented with games you need to pay for, upfront, with no demo or trial, needing a credit card. You don't like what you bought? That's a shame. On the other hand, there was Free category, install it, play it, see few ads, or options for in-app purchases, and for the the most part, it matched the quality of premium up-front-charged games. But even if it didn't, who cares. It's free. My point here is that in-apps were reasonable evolution of money-hungry marketplaces, not developers. Developers just sort of got shoved on that path. Your point of argument might be - "Well, aren't developers money-hungry too?" Let me explain to you why game developers are paid way below the average compared to their IT fellows in spite of doing arguably much more complex work (you say web site - i say 3d world, you say RoR backend - i say real-time MMO-powering beast, you say web design - i say asset-friggin'-pipeline) and why game market is so cutthroat... It's because we love what we do and will take shit in order to do it. We're very oppinionated about it, and for the most of us, it's not a job - it's life, a quest, a mission. And even if this doesn't resonate with you, how about - there's nothing wrong with in-apps? Go to any international/interstate retailer. Check the shelving, check the products, the design, the smell. The sheer amount of science to get you to purchase that particular box of razor blades, removing any rationality you might have for your purchase, is towering over anything you might encounter in mobile game in-apps infrastructure.
  • xerophtye 13y ago
    No one is saying that the very essence of in-app purchases is wrong. In fact we all agree that games are the most under-valued pieces of software. We honestly support monetization of games (hence everyone saying i would happily pay $X for full unlock). Of course most people would NOT pay that upfront and need to be... "convinced" to pay that amount. What we ARE decrying is the negative affect on the GAME itself for this monetization. The gameplay element should remain unaffected from this. So IAP that gives you extra levels, extra maps, extra skins, are the perfect way to monetize on it. In contrast charging per turn (or for speeding up turns), or for lives, or even things that make your game "pay-to-win" are not only unethical but ruin the GAME. SO doesn't that ruin your " it's life, a quest, a mission" philosophy. PS: My most hated line on play store or appstore is "greedy devs charging me money for content"
• rXoX 13y ago
  Ahhhhhh. The widdle baby doesn't wike being pwiced outta da market. Boo hoo. Have a widdle cry cry, widdle baby. I remember when people couldn't afford to live certain neighbourhoods anymore and everybody was crying over that too. Either buck up with the cash or hit the road. That's life, son. That's how the world works. If you can't afford to eat, you go hungry. Suck it up crybaby.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• dschiptsov 13y ago
  I don't remember exact term for the idea that too efficient virus (a parasite) eventually eliminates the whole population of potential hosts and therefore destroys itself. Too many cheaters destroys a market. Too many thiefs destroys a country.
• c0ur7n3y 13y ago
  In the last 18 months I've entirely stopped buying mobile games because of this trend. I know that any game I buy is probably going to become less fun if I'm not willing to buy virtual cranberries. This is not sustainable as an industry practice. People will eventually get wise.
• subb 13y ago
  To me, this model is closer to gambling than gaming. In fact, some gamedev studio actually build some slot machine games, where you put in real money through in app purchase and you get game money in return. It's disturbingly successful.
• nnx 13y ago
  (originally posted in the similar post "Optimizing Your Industry to the Point of Suicide", I thought _this_ post title had been edited [same subject, same domain] - apologies if that's against HN etiquette) As much as I also dislike how some IAP game developers base all their gameplay mechanisms purely on maximizing the user likeliness to keep spending without even noticing, I recognize that they get the very basics of video game design very right. Because they have to. The goal for any game developer who treats its creation not only as an artistic piece but also has a product, is to design software that offers a positive feedback loop to the user in order to keep her engaged. Consider how Nintendo, for instance, considers the Mario platformer franchise as an instrument (see Ask Iwata interviews). During development, designers are focused on getting the timing (rhythm) right between challenge (say ennemies or holes) and corresponding rewards (powerups or secret exits). This ultimately plays/tricks how our brains are wired (effort needs reward) in order to engage users and ultimately enjoy the game... and pay again (and again) for the sequels/updates when they need their fix. Imho IAP is an interesting return to the origins of video gaming (and coin-based arcades) and refocuses the industry on getting the core ingredient right, the feedback loop, rather than betting it all on graphics, story, feature-creep... and marketing. Marketing is disproportionally important when you need to convince your game is worth paying upfront, even in a seemingly minimal amount, as mobile gaming is a very "dispensable" expense in the general public. There is no ROI in marketing an IAP game that does not engage enough of its users (enough). On the other hand, marketing heavily an upfront-cost game can draw sales, sometimes thanks to the franchise name as well, despite providing no to little entertainent to most of its users as the feedback loop is just not good enough to engage them. For good or bad, I think IAP is accelerating adoption of data-driven practices for video game design. As an engineer/scientist, this is very interesting. Last but not least, IAP probably helps expand the (mobile) gaming audience to people who would have otherwise either not played game(s) at all or would have downloaded illegally. In the long term, I believe this can only be good for the industry. The bad apples of IAP will be regulated by better consumer protections for the worst "abuses" and more naturally over time by the users themselves as they get more familiar with the model and more "meaningful" IAP titles become available.
• kzrdude 13y ago
  The consumer would only invest $40 in a game purchase if it represented durable value, but that is incompatible with the platform which is itself a consumable product -- get a new phone every two years!
• micah63 13y ago
  The only way to break the in-app purchase model is to have try before you buy. I'm not going to pay full price to try a game before knowing if it's good or not. So yes, I'm potentially ignoring lots of great games that charge full price up front, but how do I know if they are good or not? I don't understand why Apple hasn't pushed for this from day 1. If I got to play even two levels of Super Mario 3, I would buy the game in a heartbeat. Also, we rented the full game for a weekend from Blockbuster before buying.
• blueskin_ 13y ago
  In app purchases have ruined so many games for me. I don't even mind their existing so much if they are a simple 'cheat' (and the game isn't impossibly slow to progress without them), but what bothers me is when they are the only way to get or do something (especially if the 'thing' is to progress any further in the game). I have quit games at this point when they no longer became fun for me, and I don't just mean fb/mobile games, but even proper (read: PC) games that used to be fun before that element came into them (e.g. Star Trek Online).
• Digit-Al 13y ago
  Is this really different from arcade games, where when you lose all your lives you can stick some more money in before the timer runs out and continue where you were killed? Having said that, I do think this concept ruins games. Personally I never play 'free to play'. I prefer ad supported ones, where if you like the game you can then pay a one off price to get rid of the adverts, or ones where you can pay to get more levels (and remove adverts).
  • GhotiFish 13y ago
    Funny you should mention those old arcade cabinets. Their "pay to try again" model created the perverse incentive to kill the player off quickly in unpredictable ways to give the impression that it wasn't really their fault. Coin eating machines. They're great examples of how business models color the nature of a game deeply.
• underlines 13y ago
  Good that we can spoof in app purchases with in-appstore.com. I'm willing to pay good money for good games (full), but I'm not willing to pay 20 bucks to play and still have limitations to opponents who pay 50 bucks in multiplayer games.
• IE5point5 13y ago
  More like destroyed the iOS/Android market. The game industry is doing just fine. Only the lowest common denominator has suffered
• exodust 13y ago
  I purchased an iOS table tennis game, Virtual Table Tennis by SenseDevil Games after playing the free version. I "upgraded" with a $1.99 in app purchase. Shocked to discover I still had to buy bats if I wanted to advance in the game, the bats for sale offered more spin to compete in harder levels. I'm not even sure what my $1.99 bought me. If I spend money on a game, I don't want to find things "locked" such as table tennis bats in a bloody table tennis game. I left a 1 star review for that. Will avoid SenseDevil Games in future. All their "buy coins" crap "visit the store" crap in the game. Who do they think they are? A bloody table tennis virtual economy? Obnoxious game developers, that's what it is.
• deleted 13y ago
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• gokulfh 13y ago
  yes you are right.
• alandarev 13y ago
  Just sell the damn Hats instead!