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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

#111

Post by el_dev_hell »

njarboe wrote: post #89
zimbatm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the beauty of it, they don't even have to hand money back to the user. The trick is to make the user perceive value in whatever digital artifact their are providing. In the eye of the user it then becomes the same as money. Make the user invest their time into the game. Time is money right? Create fake rewards for arbitrary actions. Then when they are properly hooked, ramp up the difficulty level to a limit wh…

This is sort of like what advertising does to people in real life.

No really.

An ad convincing me to try X energy drink at least results in me getting an energy drink.

Games like this are selling you on a worthless digital item.

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

#112

Post by the_af »

TheOperator wrote: post #104
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…

I feel these games are less dangerous than gambling is. It seems to me gambling has a greater ability to suck money out of peoples pockets. It's also the case these games are doing nothing magic the gathering hasn't been doing for decades. There is zero reason these games should not have 13+ restrictions however. Under 13 and you're too young to play these games. Don't care if this means there's a bit of a double sta…

I don't know. Magic the Gathering, while flawed, is a real game that can be played with skill. These online "games" have barely any game in them at all; it's very telling that in many of them you essentially spend money to bypass the tedious parts, which is actually all there is (as well as buying trinkets, skins, etc).

If there's anything to compare these kind of "games" with, maybe it's precisely with online gambling. They are thinly disguised online gambling, which makes them worse in my book.

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

#113

Post by sjg007 »

askafriend wrote: post #95
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'm guessing this is why Apple decided to release their Apple Arcade subscription product [0]. Parents could buy the subscription and know that their kids would have access to quality games that don't employ these dirty mechanics and work off-line, with no ads. I think the subscription will do well for this one reason alone. [0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/03/apple-introduces-appl...

Thank god.. also gets rid of the ads. Those are merciless.

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

#114

Post by tetha »

ahoy wrote: post #23
tarr11 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"games" is a broad category. Chess or Doom or Undertale never nickle-and-dimed anyone for $500. I can't help but think you're purposefully trying to obscure that point.

No, I think that's exactly the point.

I have spent some money on doom, counterstrike, quake, unreal or even chess. Or none on games like tremulous. I've spent a lot of time in these games, I've found friends in this games that I by now know for more than a decade.

A lot of that is gone with modern match making, and modern match making is made worse with transactions. Because you need to funnel more people into the matchmaking grinder.

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

#115

Post by tetha »

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.

Idk, in quake and other games, you had servers forcing no skins. Damn no-skin no-model, rail gun jousting boxes were utterly frustrating but darned fun to play on.

This is a really weird change. I guess monetarily expected. Eh.

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

#116

Post by dragonwriter »

j-c-hewitt wrote: post #67
the_af wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, in the early/mid days of coin-up games, a skilled player could win a game with a single coin while having fun in the process and using their skills instead of simply waiting for stuff to happen.

Fighting games and head-to-head puzzle games like Bubble Bobble in a popular arcade were pretty cool like this in that people would line up to go up against the reigning champion who could go hours on a single quarter. Sort of weird how most "social" games are both a( trash and b( almost entirely single player with a tacked on multiplayer 'tournament' mode in which you play single player against some other player's t…

> Sort of weird how most "social" games are both a( trash and b( almost entirely single player with a tacked on multiplayer 'tournament' mode in which you play single player against some other player's template.

Most “social games” are like that because if a game isn't like that, even if it has social elements, it's not considered a “social game”, even if on top of the social elements it has either gameplay-affecting (e.g., any of the wargaming.net games) or cosmetic (e.g., PUBG Mobile) lootboxes.

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

#117

Post by TheGRS »

ricardobeat wrote: post #77

I had no idea what 'autobattle', 'heroes charge', 'idle game' meant, and wonder what exactly gets people interested in games of this kind. It doesn't even look like a game in the traditional sense at all - for enjoyment / fulfillment / fun. More like a colorful spreadsheet, with cheap visuals and not even mechanical skill. 'Gameplay' videos on youtube show people flipping cards and clicking through a dozen inventory…

Eh...a lot of things that seem like they should be relatively stupid on the surface are loved and revered, maybe even enjoyable. I still don't get why people pour so much over baseball statistics, but clearly its an enjoyable pastime for many.

Some other sources of fun to mull over: Tamogatchis, fantasy football, pulling a lever on a slot machine.

I spent more time playing Adventure Capitalist than I'm really willing to admit to, but despite being an idle game I have to admit it has a fun core game loop that rewards you for checking in on it occasionally. I don't really recommend that game, since its ultimately a huge waste of time, but I'll just admit that it was fun while it lasted.

When I played Universal Paperclip I realized that the whole idle game genre has a lot of untapped potential. That game has neat shifts in gameplay as well as a story arc that ends in a pretty satisfying way. http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/

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

#118

Post by njarboe »

el_dev_hell wrote: post #111
njarboe wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sort of like what advertising does to people in real life.

No really. An ad convincing me to try X energy drink at least results in me getting an energy drink. Games like this are selling you on a worthless digital item.

The idea is that advertising often gets people to buy things that are bad for them (like maybe an energy drink?) that takes up resources to produce. Maybe people buying virtual digital items is better for society than buying a brand new Corvette.

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

#119

Post by mattnewport »

shados wrote: post #102
mattnewport wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel happy with your purchases still? Is there any buyer's remorse? I'm interested to know how many people who weren't obviously exploited and could afford to spend hundreds or thousands on these games feel honestly satisfied with their purchases and wouldn't in retrospect have preferred to use that money for something else.

I have gone too far once or twice (out of hundreds....) where I felt bad about it. I've felt the same way about a major renovation once too though. It happens. The key is in your last sentence: "wouldn't in retrospect have preferred to use that money for something else." Unless I went and blew 50k on the game (which I fortunately never did and likely never will!), that's not even a question. Whatever money I'll spend…

> Whatever money I'll spend on these, I -still- have to spend on something else. I only spend a tiny fraction of my disposable income.

This seems like a strange measure to me. No judgment on how you choose to spend your money - I've certainly spent money on things I later regret, and I've also spent large sums on relatively frivolous things which I don't particularly regret. There's always an opportunity cost though - I could have spent the money on something else, I could have saved more, I could have given more to charity. Over time I try not to repeat the expenditures I regret and focus more on the ones that I don't.

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

#120

Post by otikik »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #106
otikik wrote: post #101

That sounds like a slot machine, not a game.

Many successful games can be reduced to a slot machine, even games that have a lot of solid gameplay or even outlets for creativity. The central mechanism of Minecraft is mining. Mining is repeatedly punching through rocks hoping that you'll get something cool behind the next rock.

All human processes can be reduced to slot machines if you go abstract enough. By extension that includes all games.

My criticism was that what this make the exchange so blatantly abusive. All those psychological mechanisms to "ensure engagement" and "pursue the whales" (or whatever soft term they come up for them) ... makes me sick.

I actually think I prefer a slot machine to this. It is less dishonest.

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