5 ms·

There's a huge sense of entitlement with respect to iOS and Android apps. People want the world for free, and $1 means they OWN you. The race to the bottom wit

There's a huge sense of entitlement with respect to iOS and Android apps. People want the world for free, and $1 means they OWN you. The race to the bottom with free being the default has spawned this attitude. And the economics work out so that an indie developer can't really break even on free; you need 10s of millions of users to produce a reasonable income from ads. You can be a critically acclaimed indie game and only have a few million users. Sure you can create a "fremium" game that sucks either time or money from users (where you basically charge people so that they can play the game less; addiction is a terrible thing). But if you don't want to be making freemium games (there's a formula you typically need to follow for them to be successful), you're stuck charging. Here's the worst part: If you decide to make a "demo" for your game so that people can try before they buy, then when they reach the end of the demo, MANY people will end up leaving a 1-star review "SUX costs money!!!!!". Ratings are life in the app store: If someone sees an app with less than 3 stars, they're far less likely to grab it. So because of poor user behavior, now you're stuck NOT offering a demo for people to play -- or you have to release your game as "fremium" even if it's not designed to suck people's wallets dry, which (as I've experienced firsthand) is a recipe for failure. At least my game has 4+ stars; not that it helps.

brownbat 12y ago
> There's a huge sense of entitlement with respect to iOS and Android apps. People want the world for free... Available substitutes affect the price of goods, and the internet has brought us endless hours of free distraction. (Also, prices can trend towards the marginal cost of production over time.) Supply and demand determine pricing, not the amount of labor that goes into production. The labor theory of value is tempting, but flawed. Suppose I pedal a bicycle all day to generate electricity. Then say I demand you buy my day's single kilowatt at a price that provides me a living wage. Keep in mind that I live in California, a mecca for startup bicyclists, and support a family of four. So I'll be asking $177 per kilowatt. You decline, noting that you can usually buy a kilowatt for around 16 cents. Is it fair for me to call you "entitled" because you expect energy at market prices? If game developers demand that consumers pretend other ways to spend time don't exist, or claim immunity to fundamental laws of economics, then they're the ones acting entitled, not their users. [1] http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/bicyclepower.html http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/bicyclepower.html [2] http://livingwage.mit.edu/states/06 http://livingwage.mit.edu/states/06 [3] https://www.pacificpower.net/about/rr/rpc.html https://www.pacificpower.net/about/rr/rpc.html
- SomeCallMeTim 12y ago
  You're putting up a strawman; I'm not claiming I'm "owed" their money, nor am I asking for users to spend money on something that they don't consider to be worth it. What I'm saying is that people should rate an app based on its quality, and not give 1 star as a result of their anger that they aren't getting tons more for free. Ratings should be about the quality of the game or app, not the price. If they hated the app, then fine, slam it in the ratings. But if they LOVED it and are just pissed they can't play more? Then they're jerks if they put a 1 star review up out of spite. Just as the person asking $177 per kilowatt is delusional, so is the person who is demanding that I create games for them for free. I'm not acting entitled, I'm just trying to make games that people like enough to spend enough money on them that I can keep making games that they like. I'm perfectly fine with the fundamental laws of economics, and I'm not asking for a special exemption. There were thousands of people who were willing to spend the $2 on my game before I switched to a "fremium" model (where the ratings ended up higher, but the income lower). Aside: I'm not going to create another game like the one I mentioned above. Not enough demand and it didn't distinguish itself. I have no illusions there. People DID like it (I still, years after release, get fan mail), but I was paid a pittance for working on it. I do have an idea for a game with a better supply and demand equation, and I have thoughts on how to monetize it, which involves payment for the game instead of ad support. And I would love to offer that game to users to test for free before they buy. But because of the quantity of jerks who feel entitled to get everything for free, and who will wreck the ratings of my game, I may not even offer a demo. [1] Which may itself kill the game. Time will tell. [1] Just to be clear: Until you've installed a game you can't rate it. So if it's a free-but-limited demo they can rate it after they download it, but if it's a paid app they have to buy it to rate it.
- tragic 12y ago
  Pedantry Corner: The labour theory of value[0] does not claim anything of the sort. It is not about the amount of labour time actually invested, in reality, in creating a commodity ("concrete labour") but the amount of labour necessary to expend, given the level of technical development in the given society, to create that commodity ("socially necessary labour time", "abstract labour"). Price, of course, is a different thing from value, but that's another matter entirely with a vast literature, pro- and anti-LTV. The LTV is a reasonably good predictor of the behaviour of markets in commodity goods, with some exceptions (the rent-economy around oil is a good example). My feeling is that with indie games, niche music and so on, there's a problem in that some people will make them for the sheer joy of it, which means wider movement in these small sub-economies do not track things so closely. [0] Using Marx's version here, not so well read on Smith, Ricardo and so forth.

brownbat 12y ago

> There's a huge sense of entitlement with respect to iOS and Android apps. People want the world for free... Available substitutes affect the price of goods, and the internet has brought us endless hours of free distraction. (Also, prices can trend towards the marginal cost of production over time.) Supply and demand determine pricing, not the amount of labor that goes into production. The labor theory of value is tempting, but flawed. Suppose I pedal a bicycle all day to generate electricity. Then say I demand you buy my day's single kilowatt at a price that provides me a living wage. Keep in mind that I live in California, a mecca for startup bicyclists, and support a family of four. So I'll be asking $177 per kilowatt. You decline, noting that you can usually buy a kilowatt for around 16 cents. Is it fair for me to call you "entitled" because you expect energy at market prices? If game developers demand that consumers pretend other ways to spend time don't exist, or claim immunity to fundamental laws of economics, then they're the ones acting entitled, not their users. [1] http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/bicyclepower.html http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/bicyclepower.html [2] http://livingwage.mit.edu/states/06 http://livingwage.mit.edu/states/06 [3] https://www.pacificpower.net/about/rr/rpc.html https://www.pacificpower.net/about/rr/rpc.html

SomeCallMeTim 12y ago
You're putting up a strawman; I'm not claiming I'm "owed" their money, nor am I asking for users to spend money on something that they don't consider to be worth it. What I'm saying is that people should rate an app based on its quality, and not give 1 star as a result of their anger that they aren't getting tons more for free. Ratings should be about the quality of the game or app, not the price. If they hated the app, then fine, slam it in the ratings. But if they LOVED it and are just pissed they can't play more? Then they're jerks if they put a 1 star review up out of spite. Just as the person asking $177 per kilowatt is delusional, so is the person who is demanding that I create games for them for free. I'm not acting entitled, I'm just trying to make games that people like enough to spend enough money on them that I can keep making games that they like. I'm perfectly fine with the fundamental laws of economics, and I'm not asking for a special exemption. There were thousands of people who were willing to spend the $2 on my game before I switched to a "fremium" model (where the ratings ended up higher, but the income lower). Aside: I'm not going to create another game like the one I mentioned above. Not enough demand and it didn't distinguish itself. I have no illusions there. People DID like it (I still, years after release, get fan mail), but I was paid a pittance for working on it. I do have an idea for a game with a better supply and demand equation, and I have thoughts on how to monetize it, which involves payment for the game instead of ad support. And I would love to offer that game to users to test for free before they buy. But because of the quantity of jerks who feel entitled to get everything for free, and who will wreck the ratings of my game, I may not even offer a demo. [1] Which may itself kill the game. Time will tell. [1] Just to be clear: Until you've installed a game you can't rate it. So if it's a free-but-limited demo they can rate it after they download it, but if it's a paid app they have to buy it to rate it.
tragic 12y ago
Pedantry Corner: The labour theory of value[0] does not claim anything of the sort. It is not about the amount of labour time actually invested, in reality, in creating a commodity ("concrete labour") but the amount of labour necessary to expend, given the level of technical development in the given society, to create that commodity ("socially necessary labour time", "abstract labour"). Price, of course, is a different thing from value, but that's another matter entirely with a vast literature, pro- and anti-LTV. The LTV is a reasonably good predictor of the behaviour of markets in commodity goods, with some exceptions (the rent-economy around oil is a good example). My feeling is that with indie games, niche music and so on, there's a problem in that some people will make them for the sheer joy of it, which means wider movement in these small sub-economies do not track things so closely. [0] Using Marx's version here, not so well read on Smith, Ricardo and so forth.