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I fail to understand why the prices would rise to sustainable levels if there was the free market you envisage. Where would this "rating and qualiy mechanism" c

I fail to understand why the prices would rise to sustainable levels if there was the free market you envisage. Where would this "rating and qualiy mechanism" come from?

lifeisstillgood 12y ago
Ok - it would hit a market clearing level. That would either be sustainable or people would stop making games tha cost more than they made in profit. I however despair - film studios and game studios regularly go bankrupt yet there is no shortage of subsidy for the next Quality mechanisms are a viable function of markets - whatever checks apple does could be done by any other body that can be paid for it. A label of "safe to download" is valuable. A simple central registry and hashes would be one way to do it. Overall I think In app purchases are shit, in the way paying people in company money to spend in company store was shit. In some cases an in app purchase is convenient but in the vast majority of cases (read games) half the game time is geared towards "buy more". It poisons the game, the trust between gamer and game writer and adds no value to the world. This is not the manufacturing base we can build a prosperous new society on.
- josephlord 12y ago
  But with a virtual good the marginal cost of production is zero so most traditional economic theory breaks down. I think the current market shows that plenty of people make games despite the fact that most are unlikely to make a profit. The fact that there are some mega-hits especially superficially simple games like Flappy Bird tempts people in with hope that in most cases isn't fulfilled. Who do you picture paying for the quality checking body? Consumers won't normally pay and if the developers pay then the incentives are all wrong. I agree consumable in-app purchases in games are usually shit. I can live with charging for more levels although it might be good if there could be reviews of the particular purchases. Also the only way to currently offer a trial is to use in-app purchases. To declare an interest I do have a non-game app with in-app purchases. In-app purchases are currently the only way to offer a try before you buy experience. I offer an "Everything" purchase and some separate features intended to justify the everything price and to steer people to that purchase.
  - lifeisstillgood 12y ago
    I don't think marginal cost of production is a factor here. Apps today feel like wheat production in mid west in the late nineteenth century - soooo much of it that Chicago became rich while farmers simply sold for less than the cost of transport. Eventually prices became more same but it hurt - a lot. Quality checking bodies are an interesting problem. Consumer magazines (Which? in UK) are always struggling, but do their best. But in the end we regulate what we care about - making heart pacemakers. Guess what it's not a free market. Making cars or houses or kettles. Standards bodies and regulations and so on. Maybe apps aren't important enough to regulate. For consumer games, I would probably agree, but that's not what I think the future of mobile is. I remember Sinclairs and Commodores and they were all about games. Maybe Microsoft is right and frankly Apple is going to die in the consumer space again while all the money is in business mobiles. I'm not convinced but I am convinced that mobile computing matters more than just games.
    - josephlord 12y ago
      You talked about market clearing and I'm not sure the concept makes any sense in the absence of a marginal cost of production. Wouldn't wheat be the perfect example of a free market? There might be reasons to dislike the lack of choice of app stores but I think it is completely orthogonal to the oversupply and the pricing issues you talk about. In the UK all sales to consumers are regulated to some extent (trading standards, Unfair Commercial Practices Directive). In terms of something like Which? It takes a lot of time and staff to do well, if you think that you can make a serious go of app reviews on that scale good luck to you but I don't think the market will support it (it may not even support the level of checking that Apple does).
      - lifeisstillgood 12y ago
        > You talked about market clearing and I'm not sure the concept makes any sense in the absence of a marginal cost of production. I would respectfully disagree. Market clearing is I think technically the price for the next unit of production, but even in a world of zero marginal cost (not quite true) then the capital cost still needs to be paid back (laptop, time spent coding flappy up and flappy down). So perhaps the clearing price is the expected number if sales divided by capex? As for setting up which?, no thank you :-) But Apples main justification for App Store is to provide a safe user experience. And I think that has value even if I fail against it. I think I is much more viable to label or test all apps than all websites and people at least pay attention to googles "this web site is not safe" I have sadly kind of forgotten where this thread started as my HN times are about 12 hours apart, and yet I have been surprised that wondering around saying "free market good" has been taken quite badly. I am in favour of regulation btw (far more than I think we are over regulated at least)

I fail to understand why the prices would rise to sustainable levels if there was the free market you envisage. Where would this "rating and qualiy mechanism" come from?

lifeisstillgood 12y ago

Ok - it would hit a market clearing level. That would either be sustainable or people would stop making games tha cost more than they made in profit. I however despair - film studios and game studios regularly go bankrupt yet there is no shortage of subsidy for the next Quality mechanisms are a viable function of markets - whatever checks apple does could be done by any other body that can be paid for it. A label of "safe to download" is valuable. A simple central registry and hashes would be one way to do it. Overall I think In app purchases are shit, in the way paying people in company money to spend in company store was shit. In some cases an in app purchase is convenient but in the vast majority of cases (read games) half the game time is geared towards "buy more". It poisons the game, the trust between gamer and game writer and adds no value to the world. This is not the manufacturing base we can build a prosperous new society on.

josephlord 12y ago
But with a virtual good the marginal cost of production is zero so most traditional economic theory breaks down. I think the current market shows that plenty of people make games despite the fact that most are unlikely to make a profit. The fact that there are some mega-hits especially superficially simple games like Flappy Bird tempts people in with hope that in most cases isn't fulfilled. Who do you picture paying for the quality checking body? Consumers won't normally pay and if the developers pay then the incentives are all wrong. I agree consumable in-app purchases in games are usually shit. I can live with charging for more levels although it might be good if there could be reviews of the particular purchases. Also the only way to currently offer a trial is to use in-app purchases. To declare an interest I do have a non-game app with in-app purchases. In-app purchases are currently the only way to offer a try before you buy experience. I offer an "Everything" purchase and some separate features intended to justify the everything price and to steer people to that purchase.
- lifeisstillgood 12y ago
  I don't think marginal cost of production is a factor here. Apps today feel like wheat production in mid west in the late nineteenth century - soooo much of it that Chicago became rich while farmers simply sold for less than the cost of transport. Eventually prices became more same but it hurt - a lot. Quality checking bodies are an interesting problem. Consumer magazines (Which? in UK) are always struggling, but do their best. But in the end we regulate what we care about - making heart pacemakers. Guess what it's not a free market. Making cars or houses or kettles. Standards bodies and regulations and so on. Maybe apps aren't important enough to regulate. For consumer games, I would probably agree, but that's not what I think the future of mobile is. I remember Sinclairs and Commodores and they were all about games. Maybe Microsoft is right and frankly Apple is going to die in the consumer space again while all the money is in business mobiles. I'm not convinced but I am convinced that mobile computing matters more than just games.
  - josephlord 12y ago
    You talked about market clearing and I'm not sure the concept makes any sense in the absence of a marginal cost of production. Wouldn't wheat be the perfect example of a free market? There might be reasons to dislike the lack of choice of app stores but I think it is completely orthogonal to the oversupply and the pricing issues you talk about. In the UK all sales to consumers are regulated to some extent (trading standards, Unfair Commercial Practices Directive). In terms of something like Which? It takes a lot of time and staff to do well, if you think that you can make a serious go of app reviews on that scale good luck to you but I don't think the market will support it (it may not even support the level of checking that Apple does).
    - lifeisstillgood 12y ago
      > You talked about market clearing and I'm not sure the concept makes any sense in the absence of a marginal cost of production. I would respectfully disagree. Market clearing is I think technically the price for the next unit of production, but even in a world of zero marginal cost (not quite true) then the capital cost still needs to be paid back (laptop, time spent coding flappy up and flappy down). So perhaps the clearing price is the expected number if sales divided by capex? As for setting up which?, no thank you :-) But Apples main justification for App Store is to provide a safe user experience. And I think that has value even if I fail against it. I think I is much more viable to label or test all apps than all websites and people at least pay attention to googles "this web site is not safe" I have sadly kind of forgotten where this thread started as my HN times are about 12 hours apart, and yet I have been surprised that wondering around saying "free market good" has been taken quite badly. I am in favour of regulation btw (far more than I think we are over regulated at least)