8 ms·

EA certainly isn't making it easy to give Dungeon Keeper a low rating on Android

130 points by endianswap 13y ago

endianswap 13y ago
Is the reason EA aren't doing this on iOS because it's against an App Store policy or they're afraid of being removed/rejected?
- zabraxias 13y ago
  Very good question. Quite interested in this too and I get the sense Apple would nuke the app even if they didn't specifically write a rule against this.
- andyjohnson0 13y ago
  It arguably contravenes the Google Play Store policies too. "Developers must not attempt to change the placement of any Product in the Store, or manipulate any product ratings or reviews by unauthorized means such as fraudulent installs, paid or fake reviews or ratings, or by offering incentives to rate products." [1] [1] http://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html http://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html
  - MAGZine 13y ago
    What they're doing violates none of the aforementioned clauses.
    - illumen 13y ago
      They clearly "manipulate any product ratings" by dishonestly filtering their users which would rate the game well, and those that wouldn't. This manipulates the product ratings by only letting 5 star ratings go through.
      - eli 13y ago
        It's not like they're preventing you from rating the app however you like from the app store -- same as any other app. They just aren't actively pushing unhappy users there. It's dishonest manipulation to ask happy users to rate you and unhappy users to email you?
        arrrg 13y ago
        Of course it is. What else could it be? It’s dishonest, highly immoral manipulation.
        eli 13y ago
        I guess we just disagree. If someone came up to you in person and said they loved your app, would you not perhaps ask them to rate it? And if they say it sucks and crashed, would you not ask them to provide more detail so you can try to fix it?
        MAGZine 13y ago
        I don't think that asking for feedback is highly immoral, but that's just imo.
        arrrg 13y ago
        Asking for feedback? Oh, that’s a terribly nice way of framing it. This is a dishonest filtering mechanism that is deliberately set up to manipulate people. To refer to this as merely asking for feedback is highly disingenuous. You are missing the point. Asking for feedback is ok. It might be annoying for users to be disturbed by a dialog, but morally there is nothing wrong with it. I don’t think anyone was arguing that. But this dialog is not merely asking for feedback. It does manipulative filtering.
        DanBC 13y ago
        People A/B test the colour of a button to try to improve conversion rates. With the Dungeon Keeper example we have one button leading directly to the play store rating system, and another button that adds several steps to that process. Which button do you think results in more ratings at the play store? It is a deliberately chosen ploy to manipulate the ratings. It is scummy. Email feedback from uses can be achieved in some different way. "We'd love it if you would rate this game [go to playstore] And we really want to hear from you if you're having problems or have ideas for improvement[send us email]"
    - rhizome 13y ago
      They are providing an incentive.
  - timje1 13y ago
    I don't see them contravening any of those specific things here. Possibly the iOS app store has (better worded / better enforced) guidelines.
  - eponeponepon 13y ago
    This seems more like a disincentive to rate the product, which, as others have said, doesn't contravene the letter of the law - one would hope that Google would amend their terms to close the loophole though.
  - oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
    Until/unless google specifies what the authorised ways of manipulating product ratings are, all this policy does is prevent three specific behaviours. Unless you define 'incentive' quite strangely, I'm pretty sure EA aren't (unfortunately) in violation.
- uptown 13y ago
  Apple has put EA up on stage to demo their games at many of their keynotes. I really doubt they'd ever get removed without a discussion taking-place beforehand.
rahimnathwani 13y ago
This is not unique to EA. It's a well-known pattern: http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2012/05/21/manipulating-app-store-reviews-with-dark-patterns/ http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2012/05/21/manipulating...
- ivanca 13y ago
  Doesn't matter; it should start being punish, and because it is EA it would be one exemplifying move.
  - davidu 13y ago
    It makes sense to me. Support your highest ratings, get feedback from those who are unhappy.
    - ivanca 13y ago
      Are you serious? Not linking to the app store is an extremely dishonest move. Like if EA could restrict that only the people who are satisfied with Battlefield 4 should be able to rate Battlefield 4 amazon after buying it; otherwise "fill an email please".
      - eli 13y ago
        EA isn't restricting you from reviewing the app in the store, they just aren't linking you from inside their app. Also, it's incredibly frustrating for app developers to get support requests via poor app store reviews. It's a real problem.
        ivanca 13y ago
        What do you think a re-view is? A review is what the user experienced; doesn't matter if the developer is going to get the bug fixed the next day or if is going to stay there for the rest of the eternity; the same thing with the user experience and expectations. If one of the users is uncommonly dumb and doesn't understand your simple user interface that's why the app store uses an average and not the opinion of one single user when it displays the app. Plus your users can always change their ratings later on if you answer (or fix) their concerns.
matthuggins 13y ago
I know it's "cool" to hate on EA, but assuming this isn't against any Google Play terms of service, I actually think it's a great idea for any developer. With that said, it's obviously not in the end user's best interest in terms of seeing a true rating prior to download an app. It merely helps the developer to achieve higher ratings, more users as a result, and if they actually care about the feedback, then improving their product as well.
- simias 13y ago
  It's a clever "hack" but it's completely black hat IMO. I would definitely not encourage other devs to do the same, rather I think Google should crack down on those behaviours for the good of the users.
  - ihaveajob 13y ago
    There is a number of frameworks to encourage ratings, and they range from honest requests "you've been using this app for a while, would you like to rate it now?" which Appirater does, to a number of shadier ones like the one in this post.
    - simias 13y ago
      I think it's interesting that, besides selecting who gets to vote, they ask for the rating very early in the game. I assume at this point you don't need to pay anything to progress correctly in the game, so they want you to rate it before you get to see the pay2win aspects.
  - e28eta 13y ago
    My product does a similar, but not identical thing. We ask the user for feedback (not modally), and if they decide to, we ask whether they like it, neutral, or negative. This is tracked with analytics, so we have an idea what people answer. When first built, the next step was to ask everyone to send us an email with any feedback they had. After about a year and a lot of positive emails, we decided we'd ask the positive users to rate us instead. It doesn't feel black hat to me, but maybe just because we evolved to this point. I certainly do feel uncomfortable with the cynical interpretation: that we're purposefully segmenting our users to avoid bad ratings. I think what EA is doing is different from us because they're using stars, which are linked to App Store ratings for users, because it's 5 stars or nothing, and it looks more likely that they truly are trying to avoid sending detractors to rate the app. But if you squint a little, they are basically the same thing. And it isn't a pattern I want to see takeoff. So, I'm conflicted.
knappador 13y ago
Was kind of surprised after reading an article complaining about how ridiculously overpriced the upgrades were, agreeing, and then seeing it at the top of the play store chart for some category. Play store has an incentive to make as much money as possible too... Oh well. Looking for quality human engagements in the games section wasn't exactly the best first decision in the tree.
ThomPete 13y ago
Off topic but kind of related: Although this is certainly not without some moral issues I do think we need a better rating system for raters too. I.e. it would be great if reviewers themselves were rated across their ratings so you can see how critical in general they are. I.e just like you see what how a product have been rated on average it would be nice to see how the specific reviewer rates on average.
- oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
  I'd love to see something similar, but far less complicated and open to gaming - trusted reviewers such as friends and known industry names; the latter being akin to how reviews used to work before crowd-sourcing broke them. Imagine how much better apps and games could be if there was some form of accountabilty for quality.
rqebmm 13y ago
I think where they cross the line is not making it an option to still leave a 1-4 star review via the app. It makes perfect sense to steer those users towards giving you direct feedback, but you should still provide a path to the app store for a review regardless. If you _are_ actually listening to feedback and iterating on the game, the new version will bury the old reviews anyway.
jader201 13y ago
Get rid of ratings altogether. Period. I want to see usage statistics: - How many users are continually coming back to the app? - How many times a day/week/month, on average, is the app opened? - How long is the average "session"? - How many days is the app used after it's initial use? - How long does an app stay on the device before it's deleted? These stats are more objective and less manipulable -- and therefore, more valuable -- than user reviews/ratings. And I realize that the value of these will vary app to app -- i.e. the stats of a productivity app can't be compared to the stats of a casual game -- but it gives me a much better idea of how an app is being used, and therefore how I might use it vs. reviews/ratings.
- eli 13y ago
  Uber would do poorly by this metric because I rarely need to take a black car anywhere, so even though the app is great I rarely open it. The app that shows me when my bus is coming is pretty crappy, but I use it multiple times a day. The deleting part is interesting, but I'm not sure how many people bother deleting apps they don't use.
  - jader201 13y ago
    > Uber would do poorly by this metric because I rarely need to take a black car anywhere, so even though the app is great I rarely open it. Would prospective purchasers realize this, though, by the nature of the app? In other words, would I also realize that I would rarely use it (on a daily basis), but see that you do continue to come back to the app and haven't deleted it over a long period of time? > The app that shows me when my bus is coming is pretty crappy, but I use it multiple times a day. If you use it multiple times a day, then you apparently are finding it useful enough to continue coming back to it. And in my mind, that's all I care about. I know this isn't perfect, but again compared to user reviews, this would be way better in a large majority of the cases. Especially in a genre where it's getting abused, like games.
    - eli 13y ago
      Well, what do the stars actually mean? Is it a measure of whether or not the app is useful? Or some subjective measure of how "good" it is? I shudder when I think of the ways you could game a system like this. If longer time-in-app is a positive signal, I could easily make my app slower.
ritonlajoie 13y ago
Ah, people are still discussing EA's good practices.
jankins 13y ago
If I was building that rating dialog I'd want to still give the user the immediate ability to rate the app on the second '1-4 stars' popup, so that's the only thing that makes it devious. Otherwise, this is actually a pretty good idea, speaking as a developer who has received low ratings for things I could have easily explained to the user if they had used the 'feedback' feature. Something like this would be a good way to remind the user they can actually interact with me and I will respond, at a point where they might need it.
brokenparser 13y ago
I find this story quite sad because the original Dungeon Keeper predated app stores, shady rating techniques and was really awesome. (This: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Keeper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Keeper )
optimiz3 13y ago
Devil's advocate - most rating behavior tends to be "interrupt driven". I.e. if stuff is working correctly, the user just carries on, but if stuff is broken, the user gets frustrated and leaves a negative review (what else can they do?). The net result is your reviews will be negatively biased...unless you do something about it like this.
bradleyjg 13y ago
There's a similar phenomenon I noticed when dealing with employees of companies that use follow-up customer surveys to gather feedback on their employees. When you are finished with your tech support call, or car rental, or whatever they will ask you something like 'were you completely satisfied with my service today'? Completely satisfied is then the label for the highest rating on the follow up survey. The benefit to the company is that it gives you an opportunity to express any unhappiness and get it fixed, and the benefit to the employee is that you are more likely to put down completely satisfied if you've already said you were (because of priming). However, this case is a bit more shady because the probability of the follow up survey is being effected by how you respond.
- oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
  Presumably, that only has repurcusions within that individual company - e.g. some employees get rewarded for deception. Whilst that's still bad, and the company is obviously harming themselves in the long run, it's a lot less immoral than rewarding deception across an industry, between different companies.
zurn 13y ago
It's a similar self-selection filter as dyslexic Nigerian scams utilize, you have to be a certain type of person to go for this. To actually submit a rating, a G+ using certain type of person...
SimHacker 13y ago
I fucking love Dungeon Keeper. Why would anyone want to rate it anything but 5 stars? I have to side with EA on this one. ;) [Well, Bullfrog actually.] Oh of course I'm joking. If the mobile app doesn't live up to the original PC game, then fuck it.
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  You haven't seen the videos describing the new mobile version of the game? If you like the old game, you'll LOVE the videos of the new one! http://youtu.be/GpdoBwezFVA http://youtu.be/GpdoBwezFVA
josephlord 13y ago
Filtering by rating definitely feels shady, would it be less shady if the question was "Do you like this app? Yes/No" and then the suggestion to contact the developer or the "Would you like to rate this app question?"? I haven't yet added "a please rate this app" pop up to my app [0] but the rate of organic reviews has fallen, none in the last few months so I think I need to actively drive reviews. [0] Fast Lists - https://itunes.apple.com/app/fast-lists-checklists-for/id481282554 https://itunes.apple.com/app/fast-lists-checklists-for/id481...
davidbarker 13y ago
There's a (somewhat) similar technique used in Ember for iOS (http://www.tuaw.com/2013/12/06/apps-clever-feedback-system-helps-happy-users-tweet-while-angr/ http://www.tuaw.com/2013/12/06/apps-clever-feedback-system-h...). I don't think I have a problem with it, though, at least while the current App Store review process is as it is (unable to reply to reviews, etc.).
dpeck 13y ago
Timeline of my last 30 seconds: Elation that there was a new Dungeon Keeper, one of my favorite games from the 90s. Vague remembrance that EA bought Bullfrog. Thoughts of it probably being terrible in the same freemium/iap way that the Simpsons is. Validation of fears and dissapointment.

130 points by endianswap 13y ago

Is the reason EA aren't doing this on iOS because it's against an App Store policy or they're afraid of being removed/rejected?

zabraxias 13y ago
Very good question. Quite interested in this too and I get the sense Apple would nuke the app even if they didn't specifically write a rule against this.
andyjohnson0 13y ago
It arguably contravenes the Google Play Store policies too. "Developers must not attempt to change the placement of any Product in the Store, or manipulate any product ratings or reviews by unauthorized means such as fraudulent installs, paid or fake reviews or ratings, or by offering incentives to rate products." [1] [1] http://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html http://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html
- MAGZine 13y ago
  What they're doing violates none of the aforementioned clauses.
  - illumen 13y ago
    They clearly "manipulate any product ratings" by dishonestly filtering their users which would rate the game well, and those that wouldn't. This manipulates the product ratings by only letting 5 star ratings go through.
    - eli 13y ago
      It's not like they're preventing you from rating the app however you like from the app store -- same as any other app. They just aren't actively pushing unhappy users there. It's dishonest manipulation to ask happy users to rate you and unhappy users to email you?
      - arrrg 13y ago
        Of course it is. What else could it be? It’s dishonest, highly immoral manipulation.
        eli 13y ago
        I guess we just disagree. If someone came up to you in person and said they loved your app, would you not perhaps ask them to rate it? And if they say it sucks and crashed, would you not ask them to provide more detail so you can try to fix it?
        MAGZine 13y ago
        I don't think that asking for feedback is highly immoral, but that's just imo.
        arrrg 13y ago
        Asking for feedback? Oh, that’s a terribly nice way of framing it. This is a dishonest filtering mechanism that is deliberately set up to manipulate people. To refer to this as merely asking for feedback is highly disingenuous. You are missing the point. Asking for feedback is ok. It might be annoying for users to be disturbed by a dialog, but morally there is nothing wrong with it. I don’t think anyone was arguing that. But this dialog is not merely asking for feedback. It does manipulative filtering.
      - DanBC 13y ago
        People A/B test the colour of a button to try to improve conversion rates. With the Dungeon Keeper example we have one button leading directly to the play store rating system, and another button that adds several steps to that process. Which button do you think results in more ratings at the play store? It is a deliberately chosen ploy to manipulate the ratings. It is scummy. Email feedback from uses can be achieved in some different way. "We'd love it if you would rate this game [go to playstore] And we really want to hear from you if you're having problems or have ideas for improvement[send us email]"
  - rhizome 13y ago
    They are providing an incentive.
- timje1 13y ago
  I don't see them contravening any of those specific things here. Possibly the iOS app store has (better worded / better enforced) guidelines.
- eponeponepon 13y ago
  This seems more like a disincentive to rate the product, which, as others have said, doesn't contravene the letter of the law - one would hope that Google would amend their terms to close the loophole though.
- oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
  Until/unless google specifies what the authorised ways of manipulating product ratings are, all this policy does is prevent three specific behaviours. Unless you define 'incentive' quite strangely, I'm pretty sure EA aren't (unfortunately) in violation.
uptown 13y ago
Apple has put EA up on stage to demo their games at many of their keynotes. I really doubt they'd ever get removed without a discussion taking-place beforehand.

rahimnathwani 13y ago

This is not unique to EA. It's a well-known pattern: http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2012/05/21/manipulating-app-store-reviews-with-dark-patterns/ http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2012/05/21/manipulating...

ivanca 13y ago
Doesn't matter; it should start being punish, and because it is EA it would be one exemplifying move.
- davidu 13y ago
  It makes sense to me. Support your highest ratings, get feedback from those who are unhappy.
  - ivanca 13y ago
    Are you serious? Not linking to the app store is an extremely dishonest move. Like if EA could restrict that only the people who are satisfied with Battlefield 4 should be able to rate Battlefield 4 amazon after buying it; otherwise "fill an email please".
    - eli 13y ago
      EA isn't restricting you from reviewing the app in the store, they just aren't linking you from inside their app. Also, it's incredibly frustrating for app developers to get support requests via poor app store reviews. It's a real problem.
      - ivanca 13y ago
        What do you think a re-view is? A review is what the user experienced; doesn't matter if the developer is going to get the bug fixed the next day or if is going to stay there for the rest of the eternity; the same thing with the user experience and expectations. If one of the users is uncommonly dumb and doesn't understand your simple user interface that's why the app store uses an average and not the opinion of one single user when it displays the app. Plus your users can always change their ratings later on if you answer (or fix) their concerns.

matthuggins 13y ago

I know it's "cool" to hate on EA, but assuming this isn't against any Google Play terms of service, I actually think it's a great idea for any developer. With that said, it's obviously not in the end user's best interest in terms of seeing a true rating prior to download an app. It merely helps the developer to achieve higher ratings, more users as a result, and if they actually care about the feedback, then improving their product as well.

simias 13y ago
It's a clever "hack" but it's completely black hat IMO. I would definitely not encourage other devs to do the same, rather I think Google should crack down on those behaviours for the good of the users.
- ihaveajob 13y ago
  There is a number of frameworks to encourage ratings, and they range from honest requests "you've been using this app for a while, would you like to rate it now?" which Appirater does, to a number of shadier ones like the one in this post.
  - simias 13y ago
    I think it's interesting that, besides selecting who gets to vote, they ask for the rating very early in the game. I assume at this point you don't need to pay anything to progress correctly in the game, so they want you to rate it before you get to see the pay2win aspects.
- e28eta 13y ago
  My product does a similar, but not identical thing. We ask the user for feedback (not modally), and if they decide to, we ask whether they like it, neutral, or negative. This is tracked with analytics, so we have an idea what people answer. When first built, the next step was to ask everyone to send us an email with any feedback they had. After about a year and a lot of positive emails, we decided we'd ask the positive users to rate us instead. It doesn't feel black hat to me, but maybe just because we evolved to this point. I certainly do feel uncomfortable with the cynical interpretation: that we're purposefully segmenting our users to avoid bad ratings. I think what EA is doing is different from us because they're using stars, which are linked to App Store ratings for users, because it's 5 stars or nothing, and it looks more likely that they truly are trying to avoid sending detractors to rate the app. But if you squint a little, they are basically the same thing. And it isn't a pattern I want to see takeoff. So, I'm conflicted.

knappador 13y ago

Was kind of surprised after reading an article complaining about how ridiculously overpriced the upgrades were, agreeing, and then seeing it at the top of the play store chart for some category. Play store has an incentive to make as much money as possible too... Oh well. Looking for quality human engagements in the games section wasn't exactly the best first decision in the tree.

ThomPete 13y ago

Off topic but kind of related: Although this is certainly not without some moral issues I do think we need a better rating system for raters too. I.e. it would be great if reviewers themselves were rated across their ratings so you can see how critical in general they are. I.e just like you see what how a product have been rated on average it would be nice to see how the specific reviewer rates on average.

oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
I'd love to see something similar, but far less complicated and open to gaming - trusted reviewers such as friends and known industry names; the latter being akin to how reviews used to work before crowd-sourcing broke them. Imagine how much better apps and games could be if there was some form of accountabilty for quality.

rqebmm 13y ago

I think where they cross the line is not making it an option to still leave a 1-4 star review via the app. It makes perfect sense to steer those users towards giving you direct feedback, but you should still provide a path to the app store for a review regardless. If you _are_ actually listening to feedback and iterating on the game, the new version will bury the old reviews anyway.

jader201 13y ago

Get rid of ratings altogether. Period. I want to see usage statistics: - How many users are continually coming back to the app? - How many times a day/week/month, on average, is the app opened? - How long is the average "session"? - How many days is the app used after it's initial use? - How long does an app stay on the device before it's deleted? These stats are more objective and less manipulable -- and therefore, more valuable -- than user reviews/ratings. And I realize that the value of these will vary app to app -- i.e. the stats of a productivity app can't be compared to the stats of a casual game -- but it gives me a much better idea of how an app is being used, and therefore how I might use it vs. reviews/ratings.

eli 13y ago
Uber would do poorly by this metric because I rarely need to take a black car anywhere, so even though the app is great I rarely open it. The app that shows me when my bus is coming is pretty crappy, but I use it multiple times a day. The deleting part is interesting, but I'm not sure how many people bother deleting apps they don't use.
- jader201 13y ago
  > Uber would do poorly by this metric because I rarely need to take a black car anywhere, so even though the app is great I rarely open it. Would prospective purchasers realize this, though, by the nature of the app? In other words, would I also realize that I would rarely use it (on a daily basis), but see that you do continue to come back to the app and haven't deleted it over a long period of time? > The app that shows me when my bus is coming is pretty crappy, but I use it multiple times a day. If you use it multiple times a day, then you apparently are finding it useful enough to continue coming back to it. And in my mind, that's all I care about. I know this isn't perfect, but again compared to user reviews, this would be way better in a large majority of the cases. Especially in a genre where it's getting abused, like games.
  - eli 13y ago
    Well, what do the stars actually mean? Is it a measure of whether or not the app is useful? Or some subjective measure of how "good" it is? I shudder when I think of the ways you could game a system like this. If longer time-in-app is a positive signal, I could easily make my app slower.

ritonlajoie 13y ago

Ah, people are still discussing EA's good practices.

jankins 13y ago

If I was building that rating dialog I'd want to still give the user the immediate ability to rate the app on the second '1-4 stars' popup, so that's the only thing that makes it devious. Otherwise, this is actually a pretty good idea, speaking as a developer who has received low ratings for things I could have easily explained to the user if they had used the 'feedback' feature. Something like this would be a good way to remind the user they can actually interact with me and I will respond, at a point where they might need it.

brokenparser 13y ago

I find this story quite sad because the original Dungeon Keeper predated app stores, shady rating techniques and was really awesome. (This: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Keeper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Keeper )

optimiz3 13y ago

Devil's advocate - most rating behavior tends to be "interrupt driven". I.e. if stuff is working correctly, the user just carries on, but if stuff is broken, the user gets frustrated and leaves a negative review (what else can they do?). The net result is your reviews will be negatively biased...unless you do something about it like this.

bradleyjg 13y ago

There's a similar phenomenon I noticed when dealing with employees of companies that use follow-up customer surveys to gather feedback on their employees. When you are finished with your tech support call, or car rental, or whatever they will ask you something like 'were you completely satisfied with my service today'? Completely satisfied is then the label for the highest rating on the follow up survey. The benefit to the company is that it gives you an opportunity to express any unhappiness and get it fixed, and the benefit to the employee is that you are more likely to put down completely satisfied if you've already said you were (because of priming). However, this case is a bit more shady because the probability of the follow up survey is being effected by how you respond.

oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
Presumably, that only has repurcusions within that individual company - e.g. some employees get rewarded for deception. Whilst that's still bad, and the company is obviously harming themselves in the long run, it's a lot less immoral than rewarding deception across an industry, between different companies.

zurn 13y ago

It's a similar self-selection filter as dyslexic Nigerian scams utilize, you have to be a certain type of person to go for this. To actually submit a rating, a G+ using certain type of person...

SimHacker 13y ago

I fucking love Dungeon Keeper. Why would anyone want to rate it anything but 5 stars? I have to side with EA on this one. ;) [Well, Bullfrog actually.] Oh of course I'm joking. If the mobile app doesn't live up to the original PC game, then fuck it.

alexeisadeski3 13y ago
You haven't seen the videos describing the new mobile version of the game? If you like the old game, you'll LOVE the videos of the new one! http://youtu.be/GpdoBwezFVA http://youtu.be/GpdoBwezFVA

josephlord 13y ago

Filtering by rating definitely feels shady, would it be less shady if the question was "Do you like this app? Yes/No" and then the suggestion to contact the developer or the "Would you like to rate this app question?"? I haven't yet added "a please rate this app" pop up to my app [0] but the rate of organic reviews has fallen, none in the last few months so I think I need to actively drive reviews. [0] Fast Lists - https://itunes.apple.com/app/fast-lists-checklists-for/id481282554 https://itunes.apple.com/app/fast-lists-checklists-for/id481...

davidbarker 13y ago

There's a (somewhat) similar technique used in Ember for iOS (http://www.tuaw.com/2013/12/06/apps-clever-feedback-system-helps-happy-users-tweet-while-angr/ http://www.tuaw.com/2013/12/06/apps-clever-feedback-system-h...). I don't think I have a problem with it, though, at least while the current App Store review process is as it is (unable to reply to reviews, etc.).

dpeck 13y ago

Timeline of my last 30 seconds: Elation that there was a new Dungeon Keeper, one of my favorite games from the 90s. Vague remembrance that EA bought Bullfrog. Thoughts of it probably being terrible in the same freemium/iap way that the Simpsons is. Validation of fears and dissapointment.