
The mobile games industry is kept afloat by less than 1% of users - cpeterso
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/03/23/free-to-play-games-are-not-the-way-forward-for-mobile-gaming/
======
rrowland
This article and the comments here saying "This is common knowledge in the
industry" and "I'm getting tired of people saying this is a bad thing" are a
beautiful illustration of why mobile games suck and freemium is destroying the
industry.

There are plenty of good games out there. The problem is nobody plays them.
Then the devs of those games say "Fuck this, I'm out" and go on to start
making pay to win games because that's how to get paid making games. It's
gotten to the point where the games we play aren't even fun; we just find an
easy game that lets us shoot up a shot of dopamine once in a while and settle
for that. Or maybe we pick up clash of clans, play "free" for a month, then
once we're hooked we pay way more than we'd ever pay for a real game every
month just to be competitive. And we still lose, because someone else has more
money.

The majority of popular mobile games are a costly addiction, not a hobby.

~~~
padobson
Seems like the problem is mobile games discovery.

I play 10-20 hours of games a week, all of them on consoles or handhelds that
are >10 yrs old.

Do I want to be playing only old games? No, but it's easier to find a Game Boy
game that I love than having to poke through a hundred awful mobile games on
the various app stores first.

It seems to me that there's a good market for an App that simply curates
excellent games and sells them to you.

Anyone know of anything like that? I'd be all over it.

~~~
maraloiu
I just came across your post while I'm working on a possible solution for your
problem.

A friend & I are trying to build a Netflix for mobile games. The app is called
GameGif and we believe that mobile game discovery should be about video
content.

That's why the unique part on GameGif is that you swipe though short game
videos rather than looking at screenshots or reading boring descriptions.

If you have an Android phone, you can check out our Beta here:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.betterworl...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.betterworld.gamegif)

If you have an iPhone, you can check out our trailer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGX8CzbgvbA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGX8CzbgvbA)

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

------
iaw
This is pretty common knowledge within the industry. In fact, more than 4
years ago, they were already calling these users "Whales" (as a fishing
metaphor) and actively catering to their interests.

There are people who will spend well over $10,000 a year to fulfill their
compulsion for their "chosen" game. The advice in the article is actually
rather asinine unfortunately:

>"Game creators should begin to look at pushing more sales after install.
Swrve suggests this should be done one month after the game has been
downloaded. Another way to keep keen players coming back would be to reduce
the privileges given in purchases so they will need to buy more to play more."

It's implying that game creators haven't been carefully playing the analytics
game since before freemium was a word. Any of these proposed changes will
typically have catastrophic effects on the casual user base which could reduce
game popularity and then tank the whale usage (depending on how much the game
depended on network affects). Freemium games face the problem that TV networks
do, there's too much alternative content out there.

>"Although, perhaps restructuring or ditching the freemium model might be the
safest bet."

This is the right answer if you want to make good games. Freemium is an
excellent model to optimization profit but it typically is directly counter to
what can be considered a "good" gaming experience. The freemium games that
have been largely successful (Clash of Clans, Hearthstone, Candy Crush, etc.)
were all successful because they were easy to play for free, this garnered
more popularity, which brought in more "whales" to support their creators.

I see mobile gaming as a race to the bottom, the margins are razor thin for
the company, the pay is mediocre for the employees (as well as growth
opportunities). Occasionally King comes along and wins it for a year but there
are hundreds of these companies out there and the odds aren't good for them.

~~~
anexprogrammer
> There are people who will spend well over $10,000 a year to fulfill their
> compulsion for their "chosen" game

Undoubtedly the free marketeers will downvote, but to my mind it's simply not
ethical to make money feeding off someone's addiction in that manner. At least
drinking, gambling and other compulsions have heavy (but inadequate)
regulation. Freemium needs some regulation too.

Buying a monthly sub, at $15 to compare with WoW, or buying the game outright
is at least a fair trade. You still get addicted but your business no longer
depends on bleeding people dry.

~~~
zanny
Abusing mental illness is not taking advantage of voluntary exchange, so any
reasonable free market / libertarian advocate would also not say "tough luck
you have mental disease compelling you to behave irrationally".

It really is no different than how transactions done under compulsion are not
fair or voluntary. If you are mentally compelled to participate through
psychological manipulation, that is no different than someone pointing a gun
at your head and telling you to give them your money, or using socioeconomic
influential factors and market capture to force participation in unfair
transactions (ie, monopolies).

~~~
nommm-nommm
So what about alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, weed, sugar, or fat? And isn't
the goal of all ads psychological manipulation?

~~~
zanny
There is a difference between allowing the temptation, and exploiting
psychological conditioning.

I'd definitely consider arguments that western culture has in many ways
developed the advertising industry as a means of systemic psychological
manipulation. There are a _lot_ of people who make irrational purchasing
decisions based on what is on the TV, and there is some degree of exploitation
in that behavior.

Practically speaking we want to think that anyone over the age of 18 is a
competent rational capable human adult with acceptable brain chemistry, but in
practice I'd imagine very few people are perfectly healthy mentally, it is
just the degree to which mental illness is apparent. Look at how common
depression is, or how diagnostic rates for Autism and ADHD have risen
dramatically in the last three decades. That is not to say we have more
mentally ill people today, we are just paying more attention to individual
psychological profile to deduce that there is much more nuance to mental
health than just being insane or not.

------
newobj
Let's pretend video games on console/PC are music albums. Let's pretend board
games are live music. Let's pretend mobile games are ringtones.

They're all "music", but they're all very different products.

Ringtones are cheap, disposable, mostly looked down upon, but still popular at
the same time somehow.

Live music is seen as requiring a greater level of commitment; perhaps a
little more exerting or rough around the edges, strangely pricey, but
generally worth the above-and-beyond effort you have to make.

Music albums are ubiquitous, real effort went into many of them and they are
not really disposable. There are a lot of sad "me too" attempts to capitalize
on other trends created by first-movers. Most people have at least a couple
they are into, and connoisseurs can dive into a pile of esoterica to unearth
unappreciated artistic gems. Every once in a while, a major production turns
out to actually be artistically important too, and people freak out.

What's my point? The "game" in "mobile game" seems pretty weighty, implying a
closer kinship with other kinds of games, but, really they're as distant in
kinship as ringtones are from "music". They're another product altogether. And
ephemeral. And dangerous to tie your long-term longevity to as a content
producer.

[edit: typos]

~~~
rrowland
There's really no reason it needs to be this way. Obviously, some games
require controllers with their complex controls and aren't a fit for mobile
gaming. But there are so many great games to be made with minimal interfaces
that can run on these amazing little computers in our pockets we call
"phones".

Phones don't just have ring tones anymore. I can listen to just about any song
ever published on my cell phone with spotify or pandora or slacker. There's no
reason we should only be writing garbage "ringtone" games for mobile.

~~~
zanny
> we should only be writing garbage "ringtone" games for mobile.

Nobody is buying non-ringtone games, predominantly because the ubiquitous
exploitation of users through ringtone games has driven away any significant
gaming crowd.

Nvidia has interestingly been pushing for Android gaming for years, making
handhelds and consoles for it, but I'd really wonder how their success is
doing. It is a really fascinating behavior that consumers will buy Nintendo
games on their handheld for incredibly high relative prices, but balk at
spending a quarter as much on the Tegra Store for a more expensive to produce
product.

~~~
fl0wenol
The Shield portable is a goofy looking PoS that you can't easily put into a
pocket. For $200 the Nintendo or Sony options are a lot nicer.

The barrier to entry for Android gaming is lower, but no one is going to
develop for the form factor if the unit isn't going to be in a lot of people's
hands.

So instead we get games designed for touch that can optionally controlled with
a traditional controller. Maybe.

The games brought to Sony Vita and Nintendo xDS have higher budgets and teams
targeting the features of the console, so they sell even though the cost is
high.

And touch is a pretty shitty input modality for anything beyond puzzle games.

------
CM30
This is what happens when the race to the bottom goes too far. People start
realising this sort of tactic makes more money than traditional sales, so
people start expecting all mobile games to be free with microtransactions and
eventually you have an industry which is pretty much unsustainable in the long
run.

Still, it's not as bad as it could be, at least not in the US or Europe. If
you think it's bad that people are encouraged to pay money for things in
mobile games here, well, the 'kompu gacha' type stuff is another level of
scary:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOWFvlBPnk4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOWFvlBPnk4)

It's basically literal gambling in some areas. You don't pay for items or even
advantages in game mechanics, you pay for the 'possibility' of getting
characters and items. It's between 1 and 5 dollars for a roll of the dice, and
the probability of getting a rare character can be less than 0.1%. There are
stories of people spending thousands of dollars in a few hours playing these
games in a livestream on Twitch or the likes...

Fortunately, this isn't as common in most games on the US app store just yet.

~~~
Yhippa
I am worried that this is sustainable in the long run and that we will be
saddled with these types of microtransactions forever. They have figured out
the perfect topamine release methodology and people will pay for that.

~~~
CM30
Well, the Japanese legal system actually put laws in place to stop some of the
worst excesses. That's probably going to happen to the mobile market in the
rest of the world too. The 'freemium' games with microtransactions go too far,
so the legal system puts out laws banning various practices and the industry
crashes hard.

------
zongitsrinzler
Personally I feel that both Play and App stores are partially to blame for
this.

The stores really reward clickbait games and make it nearly impossible to
discover good/serious games.

~~~
davorb
I agree with you. But the fact is that those clickbait games exist for one
reason and one reason alone -- to make money. Unfortunately, this aligns well
with the interests of the app stores; their interest is to make money, and not
to make it easier for consumers to find good content.

~~~
legitster
Everything we buy exists to make money; everyone is interested in making
money. But some stores actually do a better job stocking theirs shelves with
things I will actually enjoy.

------
akjetma
> "... the report looked at over 40 free-to-play games through February 2016,
> analyzing the uses of more than 20 million players."

If they're looking at 40 games with 20 million players during one month,
they're looking at a specific class of mobile games, not mobile games at
large.

Also,

> "A new report is highlighting that risk, showing that almost half of all the
> revenue generated in mobile gaming comes from just 0.19 percent of users.
> That means the other 99.81 percent of users aren’t worth anything money-wise
> to the creators."

Uh, aren't they worth 'half'?

edit: anecdotally, I've probably spent about $100 in the past year on random
puzzle games that probably don't end up on the top of lists. Not sure how
weird/errant I am though.

------
Zikes
0.19% of mobile users have "more money than sense".

99.81% of users don't see the point in buying the $5 "valu-pack" of [insert
contrived currency here] to unlock an extra few hours of playtime every day.

Mobile developers get angry and post rants about people being averse to
spending as much as a cup of coffee on their abusively designed time sinks.

And other gaming industries are starting to follow suit. There are AAA
console/PC titles with microtransactions now, it's ridiculous.

~~~
Analog24
You have a point but it's also ridiculous that mobile game consumers expect
every game to be free. Game studios often spend tens of thousands of hours
developing a mobile game, why should that be free? The freemium model is just
an unfortunate consequence of this cultural shift towards expecting all mobile
apps to be free.

~~~
jonnathanson
Exactly. Freemium is an attempt to maximize revenue given the following
parameters: 1) 99% of the population won't pay more than $0.99 for a game,
regardless of its quality; 2) 1% of the population will pay a fuckton.

So what do you do within those parameters? You try to make a game that relies
on #2 to subsidize #1. The alternatives? Release totally free games (where's
the business model?). Release ad-supported games (everyone hates ads!).
Release games on a flat subscription model. Or accept that the whales are your
actual paying customer base, and make games explicitly for them.

By and large, the mobile gaming industry has concluded that the latter
approach is the optimal way to run a profitable business. The result is the
shitty, manipulative, cookie-cutter approach to game design that has become so
dominant today. But unless and until some of the 99% of us decide that games
are worth paying for upfront, this seems to be the world we're stuck in.

~~~
odinduty
>Release ad-supported games (everyone hates ads!).

Do people hate ad-supported games more than they hate games that nag you to
spend money on them constantly?

~~~
fasteddie
Not sure it matters. Only a small handful of people can turn a profit on a
solely ad-backed games. The Flappy birds of the world, which immediately
inspire a wash of cheap copy-cats. Games like subway surfers and sonic dash
still need some IAP money -- a high production value game costs about $3m to
make these days so no major studio would trust a solely ads backed game.

------
waterlesscloud
I wonder if the same applies to say... Google. That they're kept afloat by
less than 1% of their users.

------
devit
Note that this is mostly caused by the fact that mobile game developers are
courting such a distribution by making "pay-to-win" games where you can pay
more to get advantages without limits.

While such a structure means that a game developer can earn 10k or more from a
single player, it also makes the game worse for those who aren't willing to
spend unlimited amounts of money and thus drives some of them away or causes
them to decide to not spend any money at all.

If this is not desired, the simple solution is to have an "unlimited pass"
that gets you access to all current and future IAP/DLC content that gives a
game advantage for either a fixed one-time fee or a fixed subscription fee.

This is probably not often done because the game developers believe that it
would be less profitable overall.

------
protonfish
I am getting tired of people complaining that this is a bad thing. Freemium
monetization works: developers get paid and consumers get a lot of great
content for free.

I disagree with the recommendations of this article to basically put the
screws to the customers until they pay up

> Another way to keep keen players coming back would be to reduce the
> privileges given in purchases so they will need to buy more to play more.

Keeping happy users that recommend your game/app is the driving force of
freemium. Pissing them off just kills the golden goose. All you need is to
make certain that if a customer WANTS you to take their money, there is always
something to purchase at high and low price points.

~~~
maerF0x0
I dislike the model for this reason:

1\. Game devs have an incentive to make the game crappy unless you pay 2\.
When it comes time for you to pay, you have to support all the freeloaders.

I would venture a guess that most games could have higher median "fun" and
still only charge $2-$5 . Instead of charging one person $10k and 5k ppl
nothing.

just my thoughts though, no science/data to back it.

~~~
zanny
> When it comes time for you to pay, you have to support all the freeloaders.

Digital information has never, and will never, work like that. The price of
movies is not influenced by pirates. The price of music is not influenced by
how much radio stations charge to wholesale play it. There is absolutely no
limit on supply of said information, the only scarcity is the revenue to
produce it.

If you make a game for 100k, it does not matter if you have 10k buyers at $10
each, or 1 million players where 1 in 1000 spend $100, you recoup your costs
either way. The only difference is that your 10k player game is seen as "dead"
or "unsuccessful" if its competition has 1 million players, and on mobile
stores that prioritize install base, the former will always lose in market
growth.

But money made and money lost on a game have nothing to do with one another.
You lose money when you cannot recoup the developer hours to make it, and you
can only _gain_ or break even on money that users spend on it after release.
The closest you can get to "losing" money is bullshit MAFIAA propaganda about
how all the pirates / freeloaders would have bought the game if it cost money,
when we can demonstrably see here, and in almost every other instance, that if
you paywall things people want for free they will _very_ often just go for
other things rather than stick around paying for yours, and that the
conversation rate of pirates / freeloads - especially in mobile gaming -
almost certainly does not offset the increased userbase and word of mouth you
get from them to attract whale customers.

~~~
r00fus
Freemium players who don't pay aren't "Pirates". Also they take up server
resources (and complain even louder than paying ones when the occasional
defect happens).

~~~
zanny
I never equated freemium players with pirates, just that the surrogate
equivalents for other digital assets is piracy, because the rights holders of
those other products want money per copy.

------
_ph_
The big problem of the freemium model is, that it seems to push developers to
make bad games. The model is based on making people repeatedly spend money on
the game - and that is too often done by blocking the game until more money is
spent, which of course creates a bad gaming experience. With a fully paid
game, the incentive is to entertain the user to a point that he is happy with
the purchase and spreads the word.

Around the time the mobile world got dominated by freemium games, I bought
myself a Nintendo 3DS and I have not regretted it. The games are much more
expensive up front, but they do offer very elaborate gameplay and long time
fun.

------
fpgaminer
The game industry was born in arcades. You know, those arcades filled with
people slumped over bright, flashing machines, pulling levers and plopping in
quarter after quarter. No, no, not the casino. The arcade! The one where all
the games were specifically designed to make the player lose, forcing them to
insert more quarters to keep playing and get another chance at winning. Yes,
I'm sure I'm talking about an arcade, and not a casino...

Then came consoles, and everyone pretty much ditched arcades and stayed at
home. We went from spending buckets of quarters drawn out over the course of
an evening, to spending buckets or quartuers all at once every month or two,
and taking out a loan to afford the next $400+ console. The arcade model died,
because consoles were better in every regard. People wanted to stay home, the
games were better and more engaging, the platform and context allowed for
games with more depth and value than could ever be achieved in an arcade, and
you didn't have to worry about the console eating your quarters. And no more
collecting 10 million tickets only to realize that the best item you can
redeem them for is a plastic transformers ring.

Then came PCs, and PCs and consoles lived happily together alongside one
another for the next decade or two. So how does the story end? Well, arcades
are back baby, but in the form of pay-to-win freemium mobile games. They've
evolved; now you don't have to go to some sticky floored dungeon to play Time
Cop 15. You can do that from the comfort of your own phone. Just plop in $1
every now and then to keep playing. Best of all, game devs found out a way to
price discriminate. Poor? Here's some ads and patience. Rich? Push a button
and Apple will take care of the rest.

But the games haven't changed. Mobile games are just as shallow as arcade
games ever were. But weren't arcades great? Of course they were; those games
were a blast. They're a different kind of fun. A kind of fun you can pick up,
enjoy, and then leave without another thought. These aren't grand masterpieces
like The Witcher 3, or thought bending games like The Stanley Parable. But
they were still fun, exciting, and a great way to relax or kill time.

So, my question is, why is everyone so caustic towards mobile gaming? Because
it's exploitative? Sure, I can understand that, but so were arcades. If I had
to guess, it's perhaps the pervassiveness of the games and the manner in which
they present themselves that people find so offensive. See, arcades were at
the arcades. You had to drive there, and physically be there for awhile.
Mobile games are constantly with you, just one finger swipe away. And they
take advantage of that, with notifications and constant come-hither looks to
get you to play and spend. Also, arcade machines were upfront about their
pricing model. The quarter slot is right there on the front of the machine,
and the screen is flashing "Insert Coin". Mobile games advertise themselves as
free, and even let you play a little bit before revealing their true payment
model. That's deceptive in ways arcades were not.

No real point other than to remind everyone of history. It's clear that mobile
gaming shares a heritage with arcades. And it's perhaps clear that they've
evolved the model, but perhaps that evolution is not what everyone was hoping
for. I'm more curious what the next "console" evolution will be.

~~~
ItsDeathball
The critical distinction between the arcade and mobile freemium models is that
arcade pricing was skill-based. It's entirely possible to complete Raiden or
Street Fighter on a single credit, and indeed the 1-credit-challenge is a
convention that keeps a lot of people playing emulated arcade games.

If you tried to "1cc" most mobile games, it would take a fixed amount of time
while you wait for your gems or energy or whatever to recharge, and you'd
spend most of your time refraining from playing. The two models are certainly
on the same evolutionary line, but mobile freemium games are a more blatant
and direct psychological hack. The "challenge" is from overcoming your inbuilt
desires and delaying gratification - exactly the sort of boring, responsible,
real-life stuff people play games to avoid.

------
zf00002
I'm wondering when we might see regulation, at least in the US, regarding
certain gambling-like activities some games have (not just mobile). What I
mean is some games have you build a team of characters. They'll have an in-
game shop where you buy "card packs", with chances of getting legendary or
what have you versions of cards. Yet nowhere are the chances of getting those
type of cards listed and even if there were, there's no regulatory body
ensuring that those chances are correct.

From what I understand, Vegas voluntarily has rules in place that test this to
keep from being regulated?

------
Shivetya
Isn't the freemium games on other platforms more of the same? I play a few and
there never seems to be a game without those few who buy up every perceived
advantage they can. If not advantages then every special item or unit.

I remember Mechwarrior Online coming out with GOLD colored mechs for some
obscene price and seeing them in game. I want to say they were like five
hundred bucks. Wargaming also follows a similar model but I haven't see
individual tanks or ships cresting a hundred bucks but there are enough that
are in the fifty range and they are plentiful in matches

------
onion2k
If I download a game that's made by a company who make a loss then it's their
backers/founders/previous successes who have subsidised my gaming, not the 1%
of people who buy things in Candy Crush. Candy Crush players have nothing to
do with what I'm playing. Consequently the premise that the 1% of the players
who buy in-app things keep the industry afloat is wrong - the industry is kept
afloat by the money people risk speculating on investing or producing games in
the hope of becoming the next Candy Crush.

------
saddestcatever
Can anyone recommend me a _good_ Android game? Good is subjective, but I find
that Android games pale in terms of gameplay and replayability. I'd much
prefer to play a GBA emulator on my phone.

I'm more than willing to pay for mobile games, but I've been continually
disappointed and how shallow the mobile games industry is.

Mobile games currently have much more in common with Flash games (remember
when those were all the rage), than the gaming industry. Cheap, and quantity >
quality.

------
z3t4
Humans are flock animals. Witch app would you choose, the one who has 1000
stars and 100 contributors on Github, or the one who has 1 star and 1
contributor? Do you read the top news on HN, or the _new_ ? It doesn't help
that the app store & play store are setup to favor popular apps, rather then
quality apps. By giving away your app for free you can save a lot of marketing
costs. A game budget usually is 79% marketing 1% production, 20% profit.

------
JabavuAdams
The bigger problem is the consolidation in the industry. 4-5 years ago, there
were lots of relatively small studios making good money off of this 1-2%
freemium model, while also releasing high quality games.

However now, that money has dried up. Formerly successful studios that used to
make a lot of money are having a hard time making ends meet on their own IP.
The cost of user acquisition has gone up way too high, because the biggest
players have effectively infinite ad spend.

------
jessaustin
I haven't worked in this space, and I don't play this type of game, but ads
for these freemium mobile games seem to show up everywhere. Are the ones with
the giant ad spend the only ones making money? Are they not making money
either? At first it seems that more discoverable app stores or even some other
"curation" services could help lower the required ad level, but then it occurs
to me that perhaps whales really only respond to flashy expensive ads on
popular media properties?

~~~
fasteddie
Like most businesses, most mobile games run on a customer acquisition cost vs.
LTV model. Buy customers for $5 a pop, with LTVs of $7, which you can scale
till you've used up all the profit. If you can drive that CAC down via better
social (Words with Friends), better 1st party featuring (Clash Royale right
now), IP (Star Wars: GoH), then more power to you.

~~~
jessaustin
Thanks, that makes sense, except I have no idea what "1st party featuring" is.
It's not a term that seems amenable to googling, either.

~~~
fasteddie
Sorry, that'd be Google Play and App Store featuring (in their featured apps
section). Quality editors choice or "best new games" featuring can mean
hundreds of thousands of free installs, and a ton of momentum to drive word of
mouth/virality.

~~~
jessaustin
Ah, that makes sense: "1st party" as opposed to "3rd party". This doesn't seem
like an option for "indie" dev shops.

------
dave2000
"Although, perhaps restructuring or ditching the freemium model might be the
safest bet"

Sadly there wasn't room in the article to elaborate on what form this might
take.

~~~
lnanek2
That's OK, because that's a pretty ignorant comment by the author anyway. We
had a time when we didn't have in app payments in Android, and Google
frequently showed slides showing a 20x increase in revenue for companies that
switched from paid apps to in app purchases. Freemium definitely makes you
more money.

The biggest problem with apps nowadays is that you write it and no one ever
hears about it or finds out about it, let alone downloads it, not how to get
money out of your users once you have them. That's a much easier problem. The
author probably just has no clue.

------
vlunkr
> is so reliant on a few hardcore users for revenue

I might replace 'hardcore users' with 'children who don't know what real games
are'

~~~
odinduty
I doubt anybody is relying on children for revenue...

~~~
vlunkr
In my experience, they are the ones buying the IAP.

------
tdkl
I'd ask another question : are in the mobile world of instant gratification
with social networks, image crafting and everything reachable at a click
mobile games even "fun" enough to compete with all that ? If I get more
gratification from other instant things, why even bother with a game ? Hell,
why pay for it ?

------
jonmc12
Tapjoy posted an infographic recently as well:
[http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/infographic-whales-
account...](http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/infographic-whales-account-
for-70-of-in-app-purchase-revenue/635073)

------
someguyfromwi
Am I the only one who sees that this is eerily similar to the US federal tax
model, the 1%, etc?

~~~
hellbanner
It's called the 80/20 rule -- 80% of a result caused by 20% of its
participants:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle)

------
55555
I would love to see similar statistics for gambling and taxation.

------
programminggeek
It just means that there is a small number of customers that pay A LOT to play
those games. So the real price of those games might be $150 or $500+ for those
customers.

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shkkmo
Why is this article getting up-voted on HN? It is poorly written, contains
very little information and completely mangles it's interpretation of the
statistics.

~~~
rezashirazian
Because I think many people here have developed a game or app for the App
Store with little to no traction and are upvoting out of frustration.

Here is mine
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/5-differences-2/id816500190?...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/5-differences-2/id816500190?ls=1&mt=8)

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increment_i
Its truly an amazement - I can't think of another field with such advanced,
accessible tools yet such a shitty market to enter than the games industry.

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DrNuke
The most successful game I made was my first and simplest but it was Nov 2011.
By mid 2014 I was outmarketed as an indie dev.

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rocky1138
There is a potential market for an App Store which refuses to offer any free
to play titles.

~~~
st3v3r
I don't think there is, sadly. It isn't possible on the iOS side (although
Apple has started to feature games that don't have pay-to-win or freemium
mechanics), and while possible on the Android side, 99% of people are going to
get their stuff from Google Play anyway, so even if such a store were to start
up, anyone offering their wares on that store would be offering them on Play
anyway.

~~~
fasteddie
The majority of premium titles on Android are pirated, especially for the most
popular games. If someone wants to go to a 3rd party app store, it will be to
pirate a premium game, not better curation to pay for one.

~~~
rocky1138
Most people, before GOG.com, would have said many of the same things about an
ardently anti-DRM marketplace, whose main selling point is the same titles but
without DRM.

I've heard from a lot of gamers that would love to purchase a given version of
a game outright for ~$15 than to be sapped with free-to-play mechanics. For
example, take a look at the feedback on the Torchlight Mobile facebook page
from 2015-06-25:

[https://www.facebook.com/torchlightmobile/photos/a.885045108...](https://www.facebook.com/torchlightmobile/photos/a.885045108228499.1073741828.876227465776930/890591147673895/?type=3&theater)

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sharkjacobs
There's a semi famous aphorism about advertising:

If you're not paying for it, you're the product.

People who pay for consumable in-game resources aren't interested in the same
kind of games that I'm interested in. Reading this article made me realize:

If you're not paying for it, it's not designed for you.

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ksk
People defending the freemium model are detestable IMHO. I don't agree with
the notion that companies are justified in doing "anything" if it is going to
make them money. Unethical practices should be publicly shamed as much as, and
as often as possible.

~~~
forgetsusername
> _People defending the freemium model are detestable IMHO._

You sound like a grade "A" human being.

~~~
ksk
You are free to support unethical behavior. Don't expect people to like you.

