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The author touches on being embarrassed. As a game developer making games that many players would call evil (IAPs, IAPs everywhere.), I tend to prefix my "what
by stickydink 13y ago
The author touches on being embarrassed.
As a game developer making games that many players would call evil (IAPs, IAPs everywhere.), I tend to prefix my "what do you do?" with "Oh uh, it's not something I'd actually play, but it's called ...". Shame, really.
- wreegab 13y agoWhat is "IAP"?
- bennyg 13y agoIn-App Purchase
- splitbrain 13y agoIn-App-Purchase
- welly 13y agoIn-App Purchase aka "the thing that ruined the gaming industry".
- minikomi 13y agoSpend 100 karma to view this reply? [yes] [no] [purchase]
- benihana 13y agoThe latest in a string of things people who don't handle change well are saying is killing the game industry.
- ahoy 13y agoI'm a web developer. Occasionally I'll get a client who can't be talked out of video/audio that autoplays. I think I understand that feeling.
- tfgg 13y agoThere was a great comment recently about "social" game developers being like heroin dealers who don't use their own product and look down on their customers, and "traditional" game developers being like cannabis dealers who are happy to smoke it with the customer.
- stickydink 13y agoWe don't look down on our customers at all. But certainly, those in-charge of design don't care where the line is. If the change is a net profit increase (almost exclusively, we go on insider's reports from other studios on how their changes worked out) we do it. As a developer I put up as much resistance as possible when it feels absolutely ridiculous - when design becomes more about tricking people into accidentally doing things they didn't want to do. At one point we made the flow for connecting to Facebook pretty ambiguous, where "Skip" meant yes and "Continue" meant no. Eventually that got voted out... I do often feel a bit conflicted, but to be honest, I don't think we're the worst within our competition (Dungeon Keeper takes that crown, now). I've been playing on our production server since launch with no cheating, and no spending, and I'm doing just fine, and get enough minutes of play time for free to keep me satisfied. The flip side from the rage we see on things like Reddit, we do receive far more messages and comments about how much people enjoy our game than those who don't. And if people are spending money, they must actually like it, right?
- Benvie 13y agoAt one point we made the flow for connecting to Facebook pretty ambiguous, where "Skip" meant yes and "Continue" meant no. Wow wow wow. That is beyond ambiguous into downright misleading. I've always stayed away from these games because I largely don't find them fun, but now I have the additional reason that they are trying to fuck me from the moment they are installed. I didn't realize it was quite that bad.
- stickydink 13y agoThis one was proposed because a competitor was doing the exact same thing, and we knew from someone inside that it boosted registration by ~25%. Seems quite a lot of people don't really think, "Why did Facebook appear?". Fortunately we argued this one down before it ended up in production.
- lifeformed 13y agoAs a game developer, I make games that I want to play; I make them for myself. It's nice that sometimes other people want to play them too.