One problems I've found with these style of apps are the elderly community.
My wife works at "In-Home healthcare" for the elderly community, specializing in hospice care. Because of this, she sees a lot of family members who get their parents tablets. It can be an iPad, or Android tablet. And it's used to facilitate cheap/free communication. (Don't worry, anything with app stores + in app payments are at fault, not $your_ecosystem.)
The dark side, is when they start venturing around looking for "games". Now, think of what a game was 20 and 30 years ago. We're talking arcade, Nintendo, Atari.. That sort of thing. The psychological skinner-box wasn't really created as of yet (it was, but only in arcades, and even the bad ones people stayed away from).
And then you have the "Freemium Apps". AKA money-bilking skinner boxes. Now, what makes these insidious, is the fact they ask for your credit card once, and keep it on file. Now, buying "virtual trash" is as easy as click click done. And conveniently drains your card.
And it's done so well that you think you're doing with fake play money - when it's really your real account.
My wife's already had a few clients got bit by this. It was a few thousand dollars, but enough to cause serious problems with someone who is on a fixed budget. Fortunately, the bank reversed much of it as fraudulent billing. Some of it was outside of dispute period, and was lost.
I have an elderly family member with this exact problem. Even with constant reminding, it is an uphill battle. I suspect it is a combination of addiction but also "dark patterns" that essentially trick folks into spending money.
While not perfect, it does root out the obvious scammers and does make it much easier to push back and cancel those reccuring subscriptions that "some how" keep getting activated.
I have no affiliation with True Link, but posting it in hopes it can help someone with a similar problem.
Edit: Just now realized True Link has a YC affiliation, so maybe this is more on topic than I thought.
Why not just remove the payment card from their account? You don't need to have a card on file to install free apps and if you have no intention of buying anything, there's no reason to have one on file at all.
> I believe this is the situation on android but that on ios you need a card either way to download from the app store?
> Or at least this used to be the situation.
Nope and I've never had one attached so it's definitely not a new thing either.
They do have a bit of a dark pattern to trick you into adding one when you first set up an Apple ID. IIRC, when you pick your credit card type (AmEx, VISA, etc) you can pick "No Credit Card" to skip it.
Yeah. I work in tech, and this has tripped me up many a time.
Apple is extremely negligent about demanding a credit card, when I only want "free applications". Worse yet, with their app-storification of OSX, it's absolutely horrendous. And of course, only "richies" use OSX and Apple (enter here various websites that charge more for Mac users based upon browser ident strings).
On iOS there is a supported, official, but completely non-obvious way to create a card-less account.
(While logged out, buy a free app, when told you need an account, click to create one from this dialogue. This allows for the option for a card-less account)
One partial solution might be to simply turn off IAP on the device. I know Apple devices can do this, and I guess Android ones can too. This way they can download and play games, but won't get suckered into spending thousands of real life dollars on e-potatoes because some shitty app has deceptive IAP.
Why is this even a problem in this day and age ? Why add a credit card to the android tablet in first place? If you have to please buy a prepaid store credit card.
Heck, I have not given my credit card to my Android phone. I use SudoPay.
# Free startup idea: HN style site that combines karma based gamification with in-app purchases!
Imagine if you could "buy" your way to the top post, thus ensuring you get more eyeballs, and hopefully more upvotes!
Worried about downvotes against your pointless comment? Buy a "Downvote Shield (TM)" (Note: the shield only lasts for 45 minutes so you'll have to buy another one if the post stays popular!).
What about going on offense you say? Well downvotes are a limited resource (one free per day, max reserve of 3, takes 24-hours to recharge your downvote) but no worries, but you can buy a 10-pack of fresh downvotes for only 20 karma crystals[1]!
[1]: Karma crystals are the in game currency. You can buy them in blocks of prime numbers for whole numbers of actual currency.
>> HN style site that combines karma based gamification with in-app purchases! Imagine if you could "buy" your way to the top post, thus ensuring you get more eyeballs, and hopefully more upvotes! Worried about downvotes against your pointless comment? Buy a "Downvote Shield (TM)"
This actually describes Reddit and it's advertising system pretty closely.
Oh, give it a few years or so and I bet we'll see a site just like that one. There's definitely some sort of audience that would want a Reddit where cold hard cash is the main ranking factor and those who spend can flaunt the 'rules' of the system.
Slightly off topic, but it was only recently that I found out that the video game roulette and black-jack etc. machines (known as fixed odds betting terminals) are the reason there are so many bloody betting shops in the UK.
The government restricted these machines to only 4 per shop. Apparently they print enough money that a betting shop will have 2 or 3 branches within walking distance to get around the limit.
This is along with all the other chains doing exactly the same thing. It's madness.
Most of the core revenue making mechanics are imported from Japanese games, that had a game boom earlier than the west due to abundance of feature phones that were very close to modern smartphones... as well as people bored in trains.
One of the core elements is the concept of "gacha" or probabilistic purchase, where instead of selling an item for a price, they sell a low probability of getting what you actually want for a lower price... but in the end people try over and over again and easily lose track of their purchases and end up spending more.
Some forms of gacha are no longer legal (e.g: kompu gacha), due to their exceptional ability to make people spend... last time I checked the thing was "box gacha".
Another way of making revenue is through "events", which are competitions, but their outcome is heavily influenced by how much you spend. They're basically auctions.
The thing is... in the end people don't really win. To win an event in a top grossing game you might need probably a thousand dollars. It's not worth it.
Not sure how much detail you want. As a quick summary:
* "Gacha" is basically a mystery prize. Pay 1 token, get 1 random thing from a pool of options. Generally no published odds.
* "Kompu Gacha" is a system where you have to collect a set of specific prizes from the pool, which you can then turn in to obtain a very desirable item. Again, odds not published. And as you might expect, 1-2 of the items will be extremely rare, meaning that most people end up with an almost complete set, and a strong compulsion to open just one more prize to see if it'll complete it, but with no guarantee you'll ever complete it.
* "Box gacha" has a fixed, depleting pool of prizes with a known distribution; they come out in a nominally random order, but you can buy every prize in the pool and guarantee that you'll get the reward.
Once you start to look around, you'll see the mechanic and variations on it everywhere. McDonald's runs a popular Monopoly game that's a pretty classic kompu gacha. Tons of modern computer/console games have some form of loot crate which works like that. One I've been seeing a lot is multiple currency tiers, where an easy/free currency can purchase draws from a low value prize pool, and a harder/cash currency can purchase draws from a high value prize pool. Another trick is to have an armour set that works really well together, where most pieces can be obtained (with effort) for free, but one piece can basically only be obtained as a rare prize that costs cash per draw. You grind out getting most of the armour, then realise it's mostly useless without the helm of power (or whatever), and so you buy just one prize draw to see if you get lucky and complete the set so all your work wasn't for nothing. And then one more draw. Good way of drawing in "gamers" who might resist a cruder form.
Even Overwatch has it: During their periodic holidays, there's a new loot crate which you can earn via playing games (very slowly) or purchase for cash. The new loot crates have a chance of containing new cosmetic items (costumes, emotes) that are only available during the holiday. And that's the only way to get the items, and the holiday only comes up once a year. So if you really, really want the new Mercy costume, you'll end up buying packs of crates and opening them in the hope that this batch will have the costume. Or this one. Or the next one. Anecdotally, most people end up paying way more for the items they want than they would have if they were just listed in a store for dollars. (There's zero play to win in Overwatch; it's just cosmetic. But it's still a bit sleezy.)
You can go all the way back to things like sticker albums from the 80's (probably earlier than that too) for similar systems, where the only "reward" was to complete the albums, but the stickers were only sold in random packs and of course some characters tended to be rare.
Panini claim they didn't have rare stickers, and that all stickers were randomly distributed.
People buying the sticker packs have no way to work out the probability of getting the sticker they want, nor of working out how many packs they should expect to buy to complete the collection.
Things like The Coupon Collector's Problem are out of reach mathematically for most people.
The way Lego sells minifigs is really unpleasant. For 16 different figures you expect to buy 55 different packs.
However, in gacha, cards do have weighted probabilities. Some cards are much rarer than others... probabilities of 0.001% or less for top items is not unheard.
These are exactly the mechanics that drove me away from TeamLava/Storm8 games ( {.*} Story), the McDonalds Monopoly game, you name it.
As soon as I see "grind or PAY for this one rare object to complete the set", I'm outta there. Holiday / time limited specials are just as damning.
I understand companies' need for revenue, just never that way with me. Happy to pay for an app or even a low monthly subscription for something I REALLY like and doesn't charge extra.
Would trading card games work under a similar type of logic? Because games like Magic the Gathering, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh tend to work on a system where the player buys a random pack of cards, with the better ones being extremely rare/hard to find and the weaker ones being more common.
And they often come with people spending hundreds of dollars on rare cards or buying whole boxes on the assumption there's at least one ultra rare one per box.
There's certainly a lot of overlap with the general gacha concept, but I think at least in the case of Magic the very robust secondary market leads to very different dynamics than kompu gacha systems.
For me, at least, back when I played Magic, I never ever opened a pack in the hope of getting a card; what I would do is open a pack in the hopes of getting stuff to trade for the card.
In addition, the distribution of value from a pack of Magic cards was pretty even. If you opened 3-4 packs, you would be very unlikely to get the rare card you wanted, but you'd be quite likely to get cards you could trade. There's also published data on rarity and distributions.
Ultimately, I think the kompu gacha systems work by exploiting the sunk cost fallacy. You've already spent $X on prizes, but it's worthless because you don't have the one ultra-rare one you need. But if you spend another $Y, you have a chance of making the earlier investment valuable.
With Magic, typically, after you spend $X on cards you have less than $X worth of cards, but not a lot less. If you don't get the one ultra-rare one, you still have, worst case, a bunch of junk rares and some decent uncommons you could trade or, worst case, sell to a dealer. And, crucially, the previous investment doesn't become more valuable if you finally do get the ultra-rare.
...that being said, a huge, huge part of the money the companies behind them earn is because of the random nature of the packs. So...I guess I'd grade it as mildly exploitive, perhaps, but only mildly. :)
While there is some similarity with trading card game packs, part of the predatory design of these online games is that you aren't permitted to trade what you've bought to other players at all. This prevents the player from trading away unwanted or duplicate rare items for ones that are wanted in order to pressure the player to continue spending.
However sometimes you can get an estimation of an odd, usually represented through "rarity". e.g: "Super Rare" cards and such translate into an specific probability range.
I'm a huge proponent of platform owners getting out of the way when it comes to restrictions (at odds with my use of iOS, but it's a balance of priorities).
When will regulations catch up with this sort of thing? Do Apple/Google have a moral responsibility here? Apple expressly forbids gambling apps, but this is essentially a slot machine with a different mechanic. Apple (not as familiar with Google) have done a great job on iOS giving parents the options to restrict their children making unauthorised purchases, but the settings aren't hugely discoverable.
In this day and age, do we need to consider a digital restraining order that allows a spouse or close family member to block or limit digital addicts? Do Apple or Google have a duty of care here or does it rest with law makers? The concerning part is that these purchases are invisible. If I buy a $1 million boat, others will see that and can intervene. But digital purchases can rack up silently and cause massive damage without anyone realising.
I'm really not sure where I stand on the issue. One side of me says that "it's his money, he can do what he wants" whereas the other side says that society should protect it's weakest, and this man clearly has a gambling problem.
Actually, gambling apps are allowed in stores for territories where gambling is legal.
In the UK every bookmaker will have an app, and there are plenty of real-money casino and bingo apps available.
Of course, the difference here, is that the UK's gambling companies operate in a highly regulated environment. You can put in place deposit limits instantly that then take a week or more to lift, you can self-exclude (ban yourself from the bookmaker), and these are the measures the firms have put in themselves, the regulator is there to basically make sure they're following consistent rules and treating players fairly.
Money laundering regulations, appropriate licensing, etc. also all add up. The general view is that people should be free to gamble, but also have a regulatory framework to remove criminal elements and ensure players are treated fairly. It helps that the government gets to tax proceeds as well - an issue causing real headaches as they've become as addicted to the in-store FOBTs income as much as bookmaker shareholders have.
I've thought for a while that there was going to come a time when spending caps were likely going to be needed for in-game assets. But then, where do you draw the line? You could easily argue that webcam sites are potentially as addictive, exploitative and potentially have the same game behaviour that is so dangerous here.
TIL about the gambling restriction being region-specific.
I guess my question boils down to this: betting on horses and playing a casino slot machine are recognised as gambling and regulated as such. How, when and should apps like Game of War be considered in the same category?
I guess a (somewhat perverse) argument could be made that the defining characteristic of gambling is that you might (just maybe) get back more money than you put in. In Game of War you are absolutely 100% guaranteed to get back exactly 0% of your money every single time, and thus there is no gambling involved.
And to me it's a slippery slope because what separates stuff like Game of War and Farmville from your average AAA game with purchases for packs of things like skins.
Usually people don't group those because you're paying money for the former up front, but the mechanics are the same.
There's no slippery slope. The difference is easy to distinguish.
Is real money a substitute for skill at whatever decisions the game asks you to make? If so, you're being scammed.
Content expansions in AAA games are obviously not substitutes for skill.
Nor are cosmetic customization options like skins or accessories.
Cards in virtual card games like Hearthstone get a bit more interesting to analyze. There are better and worse decks, and it takes the right cards to build better decks. Spending money is a much faster way to get the right cards than doing daily quests. But there are two factors that keep Hearthstone out of scam territory. First, someone can get any card they want without spending money, and if they're really good in drafts, they can even do it relatively quickly. So, the more skill you have, the less spending money helps you. Second, there's a maximum that spending money can help you. Once you have the decks you want, whether you win or not comes down to skill (and some luck) in the exact same way as everyone else. You get no advantages over someone who built the deck they want without spending money.
So yeah, there's a simple framework to apply to make these decisions. Where's the slippery slope?
I wasn't referring to Content expansions, I was referring to games like Halo or Fifa where you can buy (or earn) a "pack" of "cards" that unlock (non-cosmetic) items that are in the base game that you use in actual gameplay.
In these mobile IAP-fests you can unlock anything with "enough play" and beat most challenges with "enough skill" but the idea is "enough play" is supposed to be so much that if you committed to it, you'd have better luck working a job to just pay for the items you unlock. And there's no difference between items earned and bought, just a difference in expected quantity one has access to. So those games pass both tests you mention.
You end up needing to add more and more constraints to have a framework that works on multiple genres and eventually you'll find you're making exclusions that aren't really fair.
what separates stuff like Game of War and Farmville from your average AAA game with purchases for packs of things like skins
Personally I see two potential criteria of separation.
1) to what extent does paying money increase my chance of 'winning'
2) To what extent does not paying money make the game less fun.
As long as I can have fun with just the base game and have a reasonable chance of 'winning' then I'm not too bothered. But once they start to make the base game more boring or unreasonably hard to 'force' people to upgrade then it starts to become an issue.
That's an interesting point, but here (and in a couple of other comments) I see mentions of gambling addicts.
I'm not sure it's gambling, even if the same receptors are being tickled. It definitely is an addiction, but I think it affects people who are 'collectors'. Maybe 20 years ago they would have got their fix of completeness by stamp collecting, or beanie babies. And I'm sure even then there were people who would happily pay through the nose just to complete a collection.
I see part of the problem originating from iOS users themselves. For some reason, a large number of people seemed to think it shocking that somebody would charge a few bucks for a game, even if it was clearly something you could have paid ten times the price for on a console a couple of years earlier.
So the games companies had to release free-to-play games, and realised to make money they had to target completists, and now we find ourselves with games that are essentially crippled after the first few levels; impossible to win through skill/practise, and only by buying new items can you hope to get any further.
> I'm really not sure where I stand on the issue. One side of me says that "it's his money, he can do what he wants" whereas the other side says that society should protect it's weakest, and this man clearly has a gambling problem.
A point of clarification:
It wasn't his money, it was his employer's money which he was already stealing. While the game certainly rewards spenders and that sort of business model raises some ethical questions, to say this guy has a problem seems off the mark just because he didn't spend 1 million of his own, hard-earned dollars, he spent 1 million stolen dollars that he likely would've stolen anyway and spent on something else equally unfulfilling. He didn't have a value attachment to the money because it wasn't his, so spending it on something dumb like this game wasn't difficult.
I feel like it's similar to one time when I got $100 in game credits for Origin and blew it all on Mass Effect 3 weapons packs. Normally I wouldn't spend that money but it was a gift and I didn't want anything else Origin offered at the time. No value connection beyond the sentimental, so spending it in a silly way didn't feel strange to me.
Now if we come across some minor CEO who gets bankrupted by one of these games...that's something more in line with what you're talking about.
Then one user buys up a big army and navy and hits a 'gambler addiction threshold' so Apple restricts the account. As a result the user has no air cover and his army gets wiped out. Litigation time!
China is set to introduce a law that will force these sort of games to reveal their drop rates. It will be interesting to see if it will have any effect but my gut is telling their wont be any significant changes.
Thinking about it I wonder how they expect games to report this information when it is most likely have 2 or 3 different data sets in the wild with different drop rates. A company could mis-lead customers by displaying the percentages for one data set with favourable odds when in reality they are in a bucket with much worse odds.
Sometimes the game UX presents probabilities in a misleading way... such showing the card being taken from a deck. However if it was probabilistically accurate, the deck shown in the UX would have probably 10000 cards in it.
My girlfriend works as data analyst for a mobile gaming company and she found a user that spends between 4000 to 6000 USD every month on items. Who are these people?
If you are wealthy, and you enjoy playing a game, why wouldn't you spend 4-6k a month on items? It is no better or worse than spending hundreds of thousands on cars, yachts, prostitutes, and whatnot.
Obviously ripping off your employer to the extent of $4.8m is a bad idea, but if you've earned the money, why not?
This is a profoundly alien mindset to me. Which is not to say that it's wrong, or bad, just very different from how I think. Before spending money, in addition to "Can I afford this?" I also ask myself, "Is this worth it?"
I could afford to spend, say, $2k/yr on my skiing hobby. It wouldn't be that hard to do: modern equipment, frequent trips to expensive mountains, things of that nature add up in a hurry. I'd probably enjoy it more that way, and I'd certainly get to do it more often.
Instead, I use a decade-old pair of skis that I received as a gift, with a third-hand pair of boots that's literally from the 1980s, and warm outerwear that probably cost a total of $300 in various outlet stores over the past eight years. I go 2-3 weekends a year, to relatively inexpensive mountains, and my amortized annual expenditure comes in at under $500 (including a reasonable price estimate and amortization schedule for the skis). Why? The marginal benefit just isn't worth it.
Now, obviously, "worth it" is subjective. Buying a new pair of ski boots for the coming season won't directly impact my retirement or anything like that. Indeed, there isn't a single concrete thing that it would trade off against. When I break it down, though, I decide the work I did for that money is worth more than my benefit from the new boots. In that case, better to hold onto the money in case a better opportunity comes along.
When your income off investments is 100k a month, the threshold for making something 'worth' 6k is very low. So they might have the exact same mindset you have, just a different frame of reference.
I'm not wealthy but I'm better off than I was 10 years ago - I certainly spend on things I'd find laughable to spend on back then. Yet my financial thinking hasn't changed, just the marginal utility. I don't know how old you are, but if you're in your 20's and in the same field most of us here are, I suspect you will go through the same process.
Similar mindset here, although my cycling habit is much more expensive (but that gear also gets used much more frequently than a low number of weekends per year).
My (not) buying decisions can be roughly grouped into two categories: "will the goods be more valuable to me than the freedom to spend that money on something different?" and "can I afford to spend that money not only once, but can I afford to make a habit out of that kind of spending?". Cutting down on a luxury is much harder than never starting.
I've acquired some wealth, and can easily spend a (few) grand or more on clothes (and regularly do so). The more your investments throw off, the easier it gets to spend (or waste) significant money. What is more money in the bank worth, past a certain point? If you're worth $5M, and you make 10% a year on that, what do you do with $500k per year? Second, I agree on the 2 points you brought up; 1) can I afford it?, and 2) do I want to spend money on this? But the more you have, the less it matters.
Forget retirement. If you enjoy skiing, why wouldn't you buy a pair of excellent ski boots? Luxury items can be awesome.
Exactly. I, personally, find many things people pay huge amounts of money for plain stupid, but it's their money and their life, just let them do it as long as they don't harm others. How is spending thousands of $ on computer games any worse than buying golden iPhones, diamonds, luxury cars, lottery tickets, rare post stamps or coins etc? The only exceptions when intervention is necessary I can think of: a) a person is underage b) a person is mentally ill (by that I mean serious illness, not "gaming addiction"). We shouldn't be moral police and tell adult people how to live their lives and spend their money.
One possible counterargument in this particular case: if the game is balanced such that it's effectively pay-to-win (and pay a lot), one person who can afford this level of spending could easily encourage less well-heeled players to spend similar amounts, which in turn could easily harm those players' families.
This touches on several related questions, none of which have clear right answers. Who is at "fault" in addiction: the addict, the dealer, or both? If both, in what proportion? Is "gaming addiction" as dangerous / harmful as substance addiction? What constitutes harm to others, and how much harm needs to occur to deserve intervention? (For instance: some argue that the purchase of luxury diamonds causes harm halfway around the world where they're mined, to take one of the "harmless" examples listed above.)
In other words: I'd say it's very difficult to make categorical statements about the "rightness" of complete economic freedom to do what you want with your money. We prohibit all kinds of purchases, services, etc. based on prevailing answers to questions like those above, and those prevailing answers inevitably change over time. (They also vary wildly between countries, states, or even cities.)
"one person who can afford this level of spending could easily encourage less well-heeled players to spend similar amounts, which in turn could easily harm those players' families."
Not everyone can afford gym, golf course membership, owning race horse etc., but more affluent people still do that, does that encourage other people to spend more as well? Maybe, but a sane man chooses his hobbies according to amount of money he has to spare.
"This touches on several related questions, none of which have clear right answers. Who is at "fault" in addiction: the addict, the dealer, or both?"
In my opinion, it's the addict. Addiction, first of all, is inability to control ones impulses, urges and overall lack of will to make rational decisions. We should have learned from "war on drugs" that controlling availability of addictives is not a solution and, arguably, makes problem even worse.
"What constitutes harm to others, and how much harm needs to occur to deserve intervention?"
We have criminal laws to deal with harming others: stealing, robbing, blackmailing etc. and spending legally earned money doesn't fall under any of these.
"For instance: some argue that the purchase of luxury diamonds causes harm halfway around the world where they're mined, to take one of the "harmless" examples listed above."
This is very specific, out of context problem, but it should be dealt at its roots (the country they are mined) and/or forbidding trading of such goods internationally by treaties (like ivory). Buying diamond itself doesn't hurt anyone directly.
To sum up, we shouldn't ban something, just because there's a small group of people that abuse it. We should treat these rare cases when addiction reaches out of control levels just like any other disorder, because such people will find a way into problem anyway.
I think that if you hide how much they are actually spending it is very unethical. But if there is a clear price on what you do, then by all means.
Back when I used to play LOL alot (3-4 games/day), I spend probably 200-300$ on skins. Not because it made the game better or that I derived that value from the skin, but because I valued the game and wanted to support it.
> There are quite a few people making ungodly amounts of money. Many of these games market specifically to get those whales.
I remember reading somewhere (maybe even here on HN!) that a lot of the big spenders actually cannot afford it and aren't wealthy. I think it was in a recent article about the shady tactics the developers of these pseudo-games employ. Note: the same can be said about good old-fashioned gambling indeed.
Gambling is a pretty highly regulated industry in most jurisdictions because it exploits psychological flaws in humans. We're not perfectly logical decision making machines.
With some exceptions, right? Friends and family? Neighbors?
I would certainly intervene if my loved ones became addicts. I'd also interven if it indirectly affected me (e.g. higher crime, more homelessness, loss of property value, etc).
It's just downright crazy gambling is regulated yet ingame purchases with infinitely well crafted adiction mechanisms data driven and personalized is not.
I've seen comments here on HN before from game developers who claimed that had player who they characterized (unclear how correctly) as "Saudi Oil rich-kids" who'd spend tens of thousands on in-game costumes to out-peacock their friends.
"As I understand it, "whales" tend to be less "poor gullible fools maxing out their credit cards" and more "extraordinarily wealthy people that enjoy wasting amounts that seem ridiculous to us but are truly nothing but a drop in the bucket to them." The term "oil prince" is trotted out sometimes, and people like that really do exist: I don't remember his name, but there is a very real "oil prince" who likes to go on twitch.tv and shower random (mostly female) streamers with thousands of dollars."
When I worked at Expression College I use to talk and interact quite a bit with Gabe the founder.Suffice to say if you heard the way he spoke in private about "these people" (the game audience world) it would make you cringe even more. This was before he "made it", but was still in the game industry. Regardless, he's very smart in the most Machiavellian sense of the word. Some of his online talks are actually really enlightening.
I'm grateful I'm not in that world. It reminds me of Donald Trump. Relentless hypocrisy, no shame, and the entire thing coupled with the grand illusion of success.
And stop calling these "games" they're not! They're real-money auctions to have your name at the top of some silly todo list.
I'd be interested to see some journalism around IAPs in apps aimed at Children.
Talking Tom's Gold Run is a fun little endless runner. It's well made. My kid enjoys it. There's an IAP to turn off most ads, and because we play the app a lot I bought that, and some other bits and bobs. But I was looking at the IAPs and I have no idea how much I'd have to spend if I wanted to unlock everything - all the courses, all the characters, everything. The most expensive IAP is £79, and that wouldn't come close to unlocking everything.
I don't think you have to buy anything, I think you could just grind the game to complete it with play not pay.
I take it you haven't played GoW. It has every slot machine casino-like mechanic you can name. There's literally something intrusive and eye catching on the screen at all times trying to entice you to spend, spend, spend! And there are a lot of game mechanics that encourage gambling to pull resources. The crafting mechanism requires 256 low level items to combine into a single high level one, and almost every one of those items represents a purchase on someone's behalf. The balance are rewards for showing up day after day. This thing is a Skinner box personified.
I played it briefly and was lucky enough to stumble across a clan of people who were spending money left and right. I never did so it took me a while to figure out each "gift" I was getting was tied to someone spending up to $100. At one point I received twenty rapid fire gifts in a row as someone spent $2,000 and then lamented "my wife is going to kill me" in chat.
Slot machines bore me so once it was clear any advancement would require months of waiting or spending money I quit rather than be a drag on the clan of people who were happily spending $250-$500 month on the game.
But is there a limit on how much people can spend on games that are not considered as belonging to the same category as Game of War, such as Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering? Granted, the addictive mechanics are not as overt, but potentially you could spend a lot there as well.
It’s a question of intent by the business as well.
Blizzard and Wizards of the Sword coast, despite getting into similar mechanics as F2P games, are still companies that largely extract value from customers as a byproduct of providing them with fun experiences. Companies like that in the article are different, usually extracting value by producing thinly-veiled gambling experiences that prey on the fallacies in our internal reward systems.
Both kinds of companies have access to the same tools and tricks to manipulate our reward systems. But how we play depends on the intention.
afaik pro players either borrow their cards from stores, or are running stores in order to have access to the cards.
Almost none of them would be able to play the game at their level while also paying for their working tools. But, somehow, they are shown as examples to players without these connections...
If I can give an advice to anyone willing to play somewhat competitive magic without mortgaging their house, play block pauper magic.
The difference is in GoW battles between armies destroy the armies. Nobody would play M:TG if every time you lost a land it went into a shredder. Now imagine your Power 7 are set on fire before you eyes when you lose instead. GoW is designed to consume resources which can only be replaced by unrealistic wait times (days, weeks) or purchased for cash.
At least for the ycombinator crowd, the lesson learned should be how to design such a game assuming your morals allow it. I briefly considered writing a parody that openly abused you for spending money in game. BROADCAST: "Hey everyone, this idiot just spent $10 on some bits on a server in California!" But yeah I would feel bad even making money from that game, and it seemed like a lot of work for something that would probably net $35.
Much more than a decade, I'd wager! Ante stopped being standard quite a long time ago. Personally I stopped playing in 1997 and ante had already ceased to be a common practice in my area several years before that, from what I remember.
Just googled it and the last card to even have an ante-impacting ability was printed in 1996. Seems it stuck around as an optional rule but wasn't common in my experience, probably because tournaments always skipped it.
That is only true for constructed (I've known people who made a living out of playing 8-4 drafts on mtgo). And even for constructed, it is only pay to win up to a point where everyone has access to all the cards (by either buying or borrowing), which is where most competitive constructed players are.
Last I checked, pro gaming was always a mix of constructed and draft/sealed, which meant you couldn't reach top level without practicing both extensively.
A full edition set costing in the thousands, and there being 3-4 sets per year, the price to compete is fairly high.
If you don't aspire to be a pro player and just want to have fun, you can compete in limited only. I have friends who do that. I myself chose phantom sealed deck tournaments on mtgo, which, provided you don't suck, are basically free.
Only in constructed formats (where you build a deck out of your entire collection). In limited formats (which are hugely popular), you and people you play against build decks out of a common pool of cards. There is an entry fee and there are awards for finishing in top spots. So, in the long run, if your win rate is high enough, you can play for free or even make money, but if you suck, you're going to spend a lot.
In order to get to the cash prizes, you have to train a lot, and the price of training is high enough that you have got to resell cards to profit (although online versions made it easier to acquire draft/sealed xp).
Following this news among others, I tried to start an Ask HN thread on recommended readings regarding freemium mobile games' strategies, but it didn't draw any attention so far. Here is the link if you would like to contribute: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13157836
This is sad. Can't help but think about a speech in the recent Westworld finale:
> Since I was a child, I've always loved a good story.
> I believed that stories helped us to ennoble ourselves,
> to fix what was broken in us and to help us become the
> people we dreamed of being. Lies that told a deeper truth.
> I always thought I could play some small part in that
> grand tradition.
It's funny how people from the same background, class and culture are capable of both creating a beautiful, if slightly pessimistic, story and a ruthless exploitation machine. In both cases they do it for money, both are profitable, and yet the effect is very different.
My wife works at "In-Home healthcare" for the elderly community, specializing in hospice care. Because of this, she sees a lot of family members who get their parents tablets. It can be an iPad, or Android tablet. And it's used to facilitate cheap/free communication. (Don't worry, anything with app stores + in app payments are at fault, not $your_ecosystem.)
The dark side, is when they start venturing around looking for "games". Now, think of what a game was 20 and 30 years ago. We're talking arcade, Nintendo, Atari.. That sort of thing. The psychological skinner-box wasn't really created as of yet (it was, but only in arcades, and even the bad ones people stayed away from).
And then you have the "Freemium Apps". AKA money-bilking skinner boxes. Now, what makes these insidious, is the fact they ask for your credit card once, and keep it on file. Now, buying "virtual trash" is as easy as click click done. And conveniently drains your card.
And it's done so well that you think you're doing with fake play money - when it's really your real account.
My wife's already had a few clients got bit by this. It was a few thousand dollars, but enough to cause serious problems with someone who is on a fixed budget. Fortunately, the bank reversed much of it as fraudulent billing. Some of it was outside of dispute period, and was lost.