Thanks to the help of my parents and my friends, I realized that the only way to get over this without feeling like I had missed an opportunity would be to embrace it and produce an app. I wouldn’t be doing it for profit, though. In fact, that is not what matters to me.
I'm slightly confused, because he repeatedly states that profit is not a motivator, but then that menu screenshot of the app shows a "Remove Ads" button, which presumably means there is some monetization in there.
I don't have anything against the OP monetizing the app, but if he had the altruistic intentions that he claims, wouldn't the app be 100% free?
edit: seeing that I'm getting down-voted - it's an honest question. I don't mean it to be accusatory. I personally think the OP should monetize his creation. It's what I would do if in his shoes. I would just be honest with myself about it.
Yep. I'm not here to talk trash about the idea of ad-supported apps in general. But I thought I read a post about the metal struggle over releasing a port of a game clone, not a monetized version.
The last thing I expected was ads in light of: "It took me a few days, but what eventually led me to accept this was knowing that my change of heart would not be motivated by greed. I chose to do it to save myself from feeling like I missed my chance for the rest of my life."
Oh, I get it. Missed a chance for money. Not greed. No, wait, nevermind, I don't get it at all. Why are the ads in there?
I know it's easy to fall into the advertizement rationalization trap: It costs money to put things into the world. It doesn't take anything away from the user. Everyone else does it. Nobody will blame me for it.
"I said that I wouldn’t try to profit from the game for ethical reasons. I thought that if I changed my mind, I’d be seen as a hypocrite, and I really didn’t want to be that kind of guy."
He is a hypocrite, and it does betray expectations of him (because he set them).
12 years ago, I built a site I had absolutely zero intentions of making money from. I had an interest in an upcoming video game, and thought it would make a perfect mate for an online community. So I reached out and found a talented guy online that was also interested in the game and also had the skills that I didn't (web design), and in a couple months, we launched.
After about a year or two, money became a necessity: the popularity outgrew the free bandwidth, and I was forced to find paid hosting. So I started accepting donations. But that wasn't quite enough to cover the costs, so I added ads to help supplement the donations.
But surprise, as the popularity grew, the revenue generated from the ads and the donations coming in started to largely outweigh the costs, and now I'm making a pretty decent passive income from it.
I could easily scale back to just donations now, but since the ads are there and pulling in quite a bit (for a site mostly on auto-pilot), I have no intentions of scaling back.
(I will say, though, that I don't go to the extremes that most do to monetize their site. The ads are only in the forum area of the site, and are only in two to three locations. No interstitials, no videos, no popups/unders, etc. And they're located at the top, bottom, and right vs. right in the middle of the content. Pretty much anything that would annoy me (banners don't annoy me) I keep off the site.)
I'm not saying the OP is making money out of necessity, but just that I understand going into something with the intentions of it just being a fun side project, and then later realizing the potential of making money from it.
Yes, that's it. Unfortunately, not quite enough to rely on full time. I would love for it to be, and I've thought about building a broader community to gain a larger audience and potentially cover my income. But I just don't have enough time to dedicate to side projects now, having a young family and all.
The original game had a donate button on it. Maybe the more "altruistic" way would have been to make a "donate" in app purchase, but is that actually allowed by app store rules? I could see Apple at least blocking it on the grounds that then anybody could put in a cleverly worded in app purchase that actually did nothing.
What exactly is your ethical basis for the expectation of altruism? I'm just not seeing it. The original post never mentioned the word, he simply said he never expected to make money off of it and felt ambivalent about the possibility after he saw the reaction of the Threes creators. Indeed, given the stated motivation that he originally posted it hoping for feedback on the design, I can't see how altruism ever figured into Cirulli's motivation.
The article has an entire section (Changing my mind) dedicated to the topic whereby the OP admits that for the most part he has been espousing that he is not motivated by $ and does not want to "profit" from 2048. If he was really ONLY motivated by getting his mobile version out there, as the original author of the game, why not just release a free version?
Again, I am not against him monetizing his app. Go for it, I say. What I commented on is that he's seemingly not being entirely honest with himself about his motivations.
I already quoted the key phrase, but here it is again:
Thanks to the help of my parents and my friends, I realized that the only way to get over this without feeling like I had missed an opportunity would be to embrace it and produce an app. I wouldn’t be doing it for profit, though. In fact, that is not what matters to me. All that matters is knowing that I didn’t waste a chance, no matter if I’m going to succeed or fail.
This is the paragraph in the Changing my mind section where he reveals the reasoning to release an app that includes monetization. Yet, in the same breath, he says he's not motivated by profit. Hence the confusion.
because he repeatedly states that profit is not a motivator, but then that menu screenshot of the app shows a "Remove Ads" button
Profit may not have been a motivator, and may still not be. But if he can make some on the side with very little effort and without detracting from the other motivators (presumably the challenge/fun of creation and improvement which is what I think most of us in software will cite as our main reason for keeping at it) or offending his other values (some developers won't have adverts near their output if they can help it, even if it is the only way to make something out of it and making money is a an active desire) then why not (either through ad-sponsored methods or directly paid)?
The conclusion was that he changed his mind and profit is on the table for him. I guess altruism lost to profit. But considering money is the only way to develop good, interesting games in the long-term, it's the most "altruistic" thing he could do.
He still has to pay a developer license to get it on the iPhone, that seems fair that he tries covering third party costs.
Putting non-obstructive ads with a paid option to get rid of them is very mild: more like putting google ads on a side column of your blog and a button at the bottom to tip the author.
You can get rich that way, but that is as close to a proper monetization strategy as lottery is to investment.
note: I'm not sure what type of ads the author is displaying, just speaking generally.
I could see making something without a profit motive and providing it for free. However, after someone else stole it and commercialized it heavily, many of the benefits of providing something for free are gone (maybe a cool community could have grown around the game? Someone coming to the creator and propose building another game?)
Now that money is being made, he'd probably rather see the money coming to him.
I'm slightly confused, because he repeatedly states that profit is not a motivator, but then that menu screenshot of the app shows a "Remove Ads" button, which presumably means there is some monetization in there.
I don't have anything against the OP monetizing the app, but if he had the altruistic intentions that he claims, wouldn't the app be 100% free?
edit: seeing that I'm getting down-voted - it's an honest question. I don't mean it to be accusatory. I personally think the OP should monetize his creation. It's what I would do if in his shoes. I would just be honest with myself about it.