
“We Own You” – Confessions of an Anonymous Free to Play Producer - mintplant
http://toucharcade.com/2015/09/16/we-own-you-confessions-of-a-free-to-play-producer/
======
oneJob
This is disgusting. I've turned down job opportunities based solely on the
feeling that it would compromise my values / principals. So whether you just
need to pay the mortgage, your school loans, or for the booze and clothes
you're going to wow all your friends with tonight, if you're one of the many
people building these sort of companies and normalizing these type of
practices, I say to you, this is wrong. And if you choose to keep on keepin'
on, don't expect me to associate with you; expect me to do what I can to roll
back the mess and harm you're producing. If you do this kind of work and, god
bless you, you stop, then I say to you, thank you and please share your
experiences / stories with us. This sort of stuff doesn't just mean I feel my
privacy bubble is popped. This is the stuff that changes the way we live and
who we become. We have more productive capacity now than in all of human
history, let's do something beautiful and good with it.

~~~
doctorpangloss
I worked in mobile gaming and left it, so I'm hoping to give a nuanced
response here.

Obviously virtual slot machines aren't good for players, for the gaming
ecosystem or the software ecosystem. Virtual slot machines are proof positive
that they exploit people psychologically, since there's absolutely no rational
reason to play a zero-payout gambling game. More importantly, these apps make
up 1/11th of the top 200 grossing on the App Store, sucking money and talent
out of riskier and more rewarding pursuits.

It's unfair though to look at what the producer describes and say free to play
gaming is this huge existential crisis of conscious. Anything near the end
(i.e., end user) of the value chain is going to be dealing with people's
demographics, their wants and needs, etc. Of course game developers are
interested in their player's features, no more differently than stores use
loyalty cards, magazines survey their readership, etc.

There's a consequence to what you're saying: The only honest work doesn't deal
with the end user. Maybe if you're building database testing tools you're
doing a total social positive. Well, we can't all work for infrastructure
companies messing around with Haskell libraries all day.

Who do you think is using all those elegant hierarchies, those pickaxes in the
app goldrush? The producer says they integrate forty SDKs! That's forty
different tech startups, some of them with billion dollar valuations.

What created AWS? The intensive, pathological tracking of people's preferences
in book buying. What created all of Google's server infrastructure? The
intensive tracking of people's searches. I'm not saying forfeit your values or
principals. But the alternatives to free to play gaming are just less
obviously exploitative.

~~~
blub
I see you've found a way to rationalize everything.

Honest work is software which doesn't violate the customer's rights and
privacy. There's no bonus points for merely not breaking the law and I can
guarantee you that this producer is breaking the law big time in the EU.
There's always the choice of selling software for money, but you and many
other producers have given up your morals a long time ago in exchange for IAP
and ad dollars, so you're blind when it comes to recognizing them.

There are many companies in this world, some will succeed, a lot won't. If the
alternative is having human beings treated like rats in a maze, it would be
better for society that those startups creating SDKs would simply die.

~~~
tripzilch
Yup. That's why this "final thought" doesn't add up:

> You want to put a stop to this? Stop playing free games. Buy a game for 4.99
> or 9.99.

No. The only solution is to stop playing games that exploit people's privacy
in such a way. No matter what you pay for them.

What about people who can't tell how bad they're being exploited? Well, for
starters, paying 4.99 is not going to suddenly make them able to tell. Surely
paying may make them _believe_ the game is more honourable, but that's really
the same spiel all over again, is it not?

No it's much simpler. Just get your games from a company in a jurisdiction
where this shit is illegal. Like in the EU.

Just like people are sometimes wary of certain foreign brand electronics
having cheaper chips or whatnot in them, now you know what US-based game
companies are legally allowed to do to their users. And the lengths they will
go to do it.

> We don’t want to be making games like this, and we don’t want another
> meeting about retention, cohorts or churn.

And please. "Look at what you _made_ us do!", have some personal
responsibility.

------
rubidium
" I remember we had a whale in one game that loved American Football despite
living in Saudi Arabia. We built several custom virtual items in both his
favorite team colors and their opponents, just to sell to this one guy. You
better believe he bought them. "

That answers one question I had. How to target the whales. I remember one
free-to-play pay-to-win game I played where they had a promotion to get a
random chance of getting a new OP character. On the first day, one player had
9 maxed out. The forums calculated the player likely spent somewhere between
$30-50K to get them. I then realized how big a deal "whales" are in games. A
big enough whale can employ a dev for a year.

~~~
eric_h
"Whales" are critical to the revenue of many industries. gambling, alcohol,
gaming, fashion, etc. all make a large chunk of their revenue from a
small(ish) number of whales. Obviously the percentages vary by industry, but
there's a reason when you go to Vegas and drop 10k at the craps table that you
can get a "free" luxury suite from the hotel.

------
walterbell
In 2014, Ben Thompson at Stratechery explained how F2P "whale" targeting
helped Facebook's valuation, [https://stratechery.com/2014/dependent-digital-
whales/](https://stratechery.com/2014/dependent-digital-whales/)

 _" Facebook is going gangbusters because of ads for free-to-play games,
developers are excited about the chance to cash in via Facebook ads, Google
and Twitter are trying to mimic Facebook’s success, and Google and especially
Apple are hanging their app store hats on the amount of revenue generated by
in-app purchases.

In other words, billions of dollars in cold hard cash, and 20x that in
valuations are ultimately dependent on a relatively small number of people who
just can’t stop playing Candy Crush Saga."_

------
aethertron
>It is almost certain you have or are playing a game I have produced or worked
on in a major capacity.

Maybe for a few minutes. I like to think I'm good at analysing game mechanics,
as a long time gamer and sometimes amateur game designer. So I mostly avoid
F2P games. The tactics are repulsive to my tastes, and I can smell them from a
mile away. When there's a choice between struggling to meet a challenge by
improving my skill, or paying my way though, my inclination is to take a 3rd
choice: stop playing this and do something else. So I much prefer paying up
front for a game. I'm old-school that way.

Maybe this option is viable, as a 'serious' gaming hobbyist, only temporarily.
But right now, the best games (in my genres of choice) are sold on the
traditional purchase model. They are PC and console games.

Generally, I don't like 'endless' games; I prefer a game to have an ending: I
play it, experience it 'fully', finish it, then move on to something else.

(But... just to undermine everything I've stated above, I am playing Pac Man
256. It has good gamefeel. I'll play it until I get all the powerups, perhaps.
No interest in high-scores...)

tl;dr: IMO F2P games are inferior instances of the artform. Be cool like me
and play superior PC and console games.

Also, Jonathan Blow has some interesting points to make on how the payment
form of games (and entertainment in general) affects their structure/quality.
This is the one where he talks about addictive mobile Skinner box games [x]

[x]: [https://youtu.be/AxFzf6yIfcc](https://youtu.be/AxFzf6yIfcc)

~~~
saturdaysaint
As someone that's into the classic AAA $60 games, I'm _happy_ that F2P is
sucking all of the casual gamers out of the market - I think the overflow of
smart, challenging, deep games coming out owes a lot to the fact that the
market is efficiently segmented.

There may be benefits for AAA gamers to these games that collect/analyze
massive amounts of data - I wouldn't be surprised if some of this analysis
leads studios to stumble across really engaging/fun patterns that are
applicable to AAA games. As an example, I've heard discussion of how analytics
has raised game "shininess" (basically making every screen tap/game
interaction viscerally satisfying) to the level of an artform - I'm assuming
that this has led to knowhow that EA/Blizzard/Rockstar have gone on to apply
to some degree in $60 box games.

~~~
fapjacks
Huh. This is an interesting consideration, that by pulling casual gamers out
of the AAA market, your dollar/vote has more weight wherever you put it, which
means a much more selective and competitive market for those titles.

------
abannin
Having worked in mobile games for a few years, it's frightening how confident
he is in his data. Demographic data is notoriously hard to acquire and
validate within mobile apps. Yes, you collect everything you can (like every
other company) but you absolutely do not own anyone. You beg and plead and
issue content updates to keep them in the game.

~~~
drdaeman
I guess it's the same story as with "targetted" advertisement. I'm still to
see any advert that'd offer me something I'd like. Don't remember one, ever.

In all those years - none. Not even close. Best notifications from Google Now
is occasional weather reminders (because, duh, after an year they noticed I
check them almost daily), which is very far from being useful. Steam - the
platform that should know my gaming habits - had almost never offered me games
that I was interested in (although "item from your wishlist is on sale now"
surely worked). Music stores don't have a single clue of what I like and what
I don't and all they do is some awfully rough genre matching which is nearly
disappointing.

So, companies - gaming or else - surely have tons of data but I somewhat doubt
they can use it any meaningfully, at least from consumer perspective (but hey,
If they don't make me open the wallet and don't advertise them - it doesn't
work for them too, right?) Wonder if the companies are somewhat hyping
themselves on importance of this data and how it helps them, than it really
does.

~~~
kasey_junk
Or maybe they know precisely that you aren't worth the effort?

~~~
Draiken
Exactly.

We are not the targets. I would doubt someone here ever spent $10k-$50k on a
free to play game. And I believe they know it.

------
reverend_gonzo
Every single industry that can will do this, especially those that make most
of its money from a small number of its users.

The interesting part of the article was where they specifically targeted one
of their whales. They found out which American football teams he liked and
introduced in app items that matched those colors so he would buy them.

Casinos are well known to get as much information about their players as
possible, and to get their high rollers to keep coming back.

Retail stores have done the same. (See How target figured out a girl was
pregnant [1]).

With technology providing more and more information and indirect insight into
our lives, it's only a matter of time until everybody does the same. The only
way to prevent it (as best as possible) is simply to not play/not link to
facebook/etc.

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-
targe...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-
figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/)

~~~
profinger
I've often theorized that casinos could have highly accurate scales in the
chairs to keep track of people.

Hypothetically (but I've seen it in action): I don't necessarily sign up for
the players club yet, I walk in and walk up to 3 machines and put a dollar in.
Lose -> lose -> minor win. Then I say "oooo I'm going to keep playing with
this money!" then I end up losing more than I originally had on hand.

I guess it could be as simple as they're watching you but it's got to be
fairly easy to automate. "Hmm this guy weighed 215.3lbs when he came in,
that's guy id 1528." then just have a small window. I'm sure there are other
215lb people there but it's not that vital... lol Anyone have any insight as
to whether or not I'm just insane?

~~~
auto
Honestly, it's far simpler than that. Most casinos these days have player
cards that every machine accepts that from the players perspective can store
money on, but is really just giving them the ability to keep perfect tabs on
player habits. Combined with fully networked machines, it's seems futile to
move between machines just to try and throw the odds around, as they're most
likely tracked and adjusted in real time.

~~~
feld
They log every single button press you do, but they don't change odds on the
machines in real time; that's illegal. When you setup a slot machine you have
guards and cameras watching your every move. Software is validated with
checksums before it is put into service. The exact settings you put in are in
some states pre-approved by the local jursdiction for that machine for a
certain time period (X years).

Changing the odds of the machine is a ton of work.

~~~
tripzilch
> they don't change odds on the machines in real time; that's illegal.

Oh, _that_ 's illegal :-)

------
toothbrush
I'm probably not well enough informed, but this struck me as weird:

“ _And if you are a whale, we take Facebook stalking to a whole new level. You
spend enough money, we will friend you. Not officially, but with a fake
account. Maybe it’s a hot girl who shows too much cleavage?_ ”

Why would people friend random accounts of people they don't know?

~~~
pluma
Doesn't matter as long as enough people do it.

------
squozzer
I doubt only F2P games hoover up the data. Ever read a EULA, end-to-end, and
understood everything? Neither have I. But I will offer as a hypothesis that
the phrase "we collect user data to enhance the gameplay experience" has a
level of semantic elasticity unrivaled outside of politics.

------
aethertron
This sort of behaviour suggests to me that it would be desirable to have
tracker-blocking software for phones/tablets. A user-configurable firewall.

We have browser ad-blockers; I want something that works system-wide.

~~~
skizm
I think on Android this is like an ad-blocker for mobile:

[https://disconnect.me](https://disconnect.me)

I think it routes traffic through their servers, so you have to trust them
with your traffic.

~~~
soylentcola
I think generally you're better off using AdAway which is more like a
"traditional" hosts-file-based adblocker. I'd be more concerned with using
some third party proxy for all data than some sleazy marketers trying to
figure out how to sell me virtual gold or whatever.

------
anu_gupta
I don't really understand the 'whale' strategy.

I'm assuming the reference is to literally targeting a single person, but how
much money can they make selling the 'whale' these additional IAP items,
compared to the effort involved in having to research him and create them?

~~~
lotharbot
My wife and I spent $10,000 on a video game once. It wasn't F2P; it was a
kickstarter prequel of our favorite vintage game [0], which we've been playing
for 20 years. But the same principle applies.

There are people out there who have a lot more money than us, and are willing
to spend it to be entertained. For a lot of games, their idea of a "whale" is
someone who spends a couple hundred bucks a month on swag; at that level it's
not worth trying to target individual buyers. For some games, though, it's
someone who they can get to spend $50,000 on a set of vanity items. If someone
is already dropping thousands of dollars on your game, that suggests it might
be profitable to have someone gather info on them and see if they have a
passion you can target. And often, you can create a whole class of "premium"
items for very little work, just slapping a custom skin and a +5% bonus on top
of a pre-existing game object.

[0] Descent.
[http://descentchampions.org/new_player.php](http://descentchampions.org/new_player.php)
to set up the originals;
[http://descendentstudios.com/](http://descendentstudios.com/) for the
upcoming prequel

------
Kallikrates
Is "Producer" the right word for his job title? Or is psychopath closer to
reality?

Talking about other humans in such a disassociated way. At least one armed
bandits in vegas don't create fake facebook profiles for some scheme to
extract more money from you.

~~~
amyjess
I've always preferred "heroin dealer".

(A few years ago, someone said that social game developers are like heroin
dealers and regular game developers are like weed dealers. It's a very apt
comparison)

