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How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

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Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#31

Post by fwip »

ragona wrote: post #14
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #8

What scares me about modern "casual" games like this one is their ability to extract money from people in a methodical, merciless way. There's no proper defense for most people. I fear our society will end up in a worse place because of businesses like this one.

I wonder about this often. I contend that we are getting better at extracting money from people. Is there some sort of line we will cross at which point the majority of people are psychologically unprepared to resist spending their money in a way that causes them financial harm? We understand that friction causes consumers to consider their purchase more carefully, so we've worked hard to lower friction, and this has…

> the bulk of the economy is simply driven by overriding our better instincts

Not to take away from your point, but you could probably argue that advertising pushed us past that point decades ago.

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#32

Post by dna_polymerase »

ordinaryradical wrote: post #12
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #8

What scares me about modern "casual" games like this one is their ability to extract money from people in a methodical, merciless way. There's no proper defense for most people. I fear our society will end up in a worse place because of businesses like this one.

I think if we could wrap our minds around what is happening psychologically in these games, most of them would be off-limits to children. What's interesting is that we've decided to define gambling according the rules of the game—in reality, "gambling" is probably more akin to a psychological state that can be induced by many different rulesets and experiences. Mobile games today are largely thinly-veiled attempts to…

Underrated comment IMHO. Those "casual"-games look like a gateway drug to gambling addiction to me. They borrow mechanics from games usually found in casinos and it is frightening to see how we let our kids play these games without much thought.

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#33

Post by Semaphor »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #22
mdorazio wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you on this and I think the problem really got started when Zynga began actively optimizing to monetize underlying addiction in its core users years ago. The real solution here is that we need legislation for "casual" games that puts addictive games into the same bucket as gambling, but doing that is going to be really difficult (how do you even legally define bad addicting gameplay?).

A really simple solution would be to cap the amount of money a user can spend on a single game in a certain time period after the initial buy-in (so games could still charge hundreds of dollars for Premium/GOTY/etc editions). Even something like $50/mo would stop whales

$50/mo would stop CCGs in their tracks. I know enough grown-ups with enough money who drop a few hundreds when a new set releases in MtG: Arena or Hearthstone (and those amounts don't count as whales)

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#34

Post by hu3 »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #15

It's interesting to see the same people who lambast Farmville get addicted to a game like this. It's like how Fortnite figured out how to get boys interested in dressing up their virtual Barbies so much that players use "noskin" in a derogatory manner.

People belittling others in a game for not having spent money on a bunch of pixels is depressing.

This behavior is perpetrated even by streamers which are followed by many, including children, as role models.

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#35

Post by ralusek »

musicale wrote: post #25

"There are more stat checks in the game and to get better in those stats you need to engage with the metasystems and monetize because the grind is so painful." A game that's optimized for monetization over fun is not the kind of game I want to play.

Then please join the rest of us in not playing it. You are an independent agent and I have full faith in your ability to resist.

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#36

Post by mattnewport »

tarr11 wrote: post #18
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #8

What scares me about modern "casual" games like this one is their ability to extract money from people in a methodical, merciless way. There's no proper defense for most people. I fear our society will end up in a worse place because of businesses like this one.

I think comments like this are too dismissive of how important and valuable games are in many people's lives. Personally, I fear the opposite, that over-regulation of rapidly changing industries based on fear and anecdata will make people's lives worse.

I think it's reasonable to draw distinctions among different types of games. Having spent much of my near 20 year career in the games industry, I'm saddened and disgusted by much of what has happened with the monetization strategies pioneered by mobile and free to play games. Maybe there's some grumpy old man syndrome at work but I also have a degree in psychology and the way these games are transparently optimized to exploit human psychology worries me quite a bit.

I left the industry in part because of these trends and I won't be letting my own kids play these types of games. I don't know that regulation is the answer (and I'm generally anti regulation) but I do think there's a real problem here.

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#37

Post by [deleted] »

ordinaryradical wrote: post #12
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #8

What scares me about modern "casual" games like this one is their ability to extract money from people in a methodical, merciless way. There's no proper defense for most people. I fear our society will end up in a worse place because of businesses like this one.

I think if we could wrap our minds around what is happening psychologically in these games, most of them would be off-limits to children. What's interesting is that we've decided to define gambling according the rules of the game—in reality, "gambling" is probably more akin to a psychological state that can be induced by many different rulesets and experiences. Mobile games today are largely thinly-veiled attempts to…

[deleted]

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#38

Post by kemayo »

oppressedgf wrote: post #5
kemayo wrote: post #4

I haven't played this one... but saturation-level advertising in ad-supported games might have played into the loop here. I play Endless Frontier, which is another related game that has (optional) "view an ad for a reward" mechanics, and said ad is almost always for Idle Heroes. Insofar as Endless Frontier is pretty good about not forcing you to spend money, I've resisted trying another game which looks far more like…

I've also been playing Endless Frontier.. It's one of the least pay to win games I've ever played.. You get rewards of in game currency every day and other super rare stuff for free, it makes no sense to buy anything imo

It does makes a lot of sense to spend one dollar, because that gets you the VIP status that doubles a lot of those rewards. Makes the whole thing even more crazily-generous.

I actually went and bought one of the packs (with a permanent spirit-highlands upgrade, so not one-off currency) recently, just because I figured I'd been playing for basically-free for so long that I might as well contribute a bit more.

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#39

Post by icebraining »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #32
ordinaryradical wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if we could wrap our minds around what is happening psychologically in these games, most of them would be off-limits to children. What's interesting is that we've decided to define gambling according the rules of the game—in reality, "gambling" is probably more akin to a psychological state that can be induced by many different rulesets and experiences. Mobile games today are largely thinly-veiled attempts to…

Underrated comment IMHO. Those "casual"-games look like a gateway drug to gambling addiction to me. They borrow mechanics from games usually found in casinos and it is frightening to see how we let our kids play these games without much thought.

Countries have already started banning some games with such mechanics, like loot boxes; e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43906306

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#40

Post by jdreyfuss »

ordinaryradical wrote: post #12
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #8

What scares me about modern "casual" games like this one is their ability to extract money from people in a methodical, merciless way. There's no proper defense for most people. I fear our society will end up in a worse place because of businesses like this one.

I think if we could wrap our minds around what is happening psychologically in these games, most of them would be off-limits to children. What's interesting is that we've decided to define gambling according the rules of the game—in reality, "gambling" is probably more akin to a psychological state that can be induced by many different rulesets and experiences. Mobile games today are largely thinly-veiled attempts to…

I think this is an important point. The fact that some countries have started to impose regulation against some of the tactics these gaming companies use (like Belgium banning loot boxes[0]) suggests that this is starting to be recognized.

I'm a big fan of video games, but games that are essentially thinly-veiled attempts to get people addicted and extract money make me queasy.

[0]https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43906306

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