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The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

jeff-vogel.blogspot.com

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Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#31

Post by Spedeman1 »

seventhtiger wrote: post #26

I've thought about this a lot. Every way to monetize a game will be interpreted with hostility. If you sell games for $60 upfront then your marketing will be perceived as a scam in the face of any failures or shortcomings in your game. You're trying to hype people up and sell them something bad. If you sell attempts, or lives, like an arcade or candy crush, then when players lose a level they think you're extorting t…

> Every way to monetize a game will be interpreted with hostility.

I would say that in almost any business there is always small amount of people who intrepret the pricing and/or the business model of the business with hostility. I think it is quite natural - people would rather not pay for things. However the majority of people are not the ones bitching loudly about it, they pay for services happily and are somewhat content & quiet. The small minority bitches about it and that minority is often quite vocal.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#32

Post by sudhirj »

seventhtiger wrote: post #26

I've thought about this a lot. Every way to monetize a game will be interpreted with hostility. If you sell games for $60 upfront then your marketing will be perceived as a scam in the face of any failures or shortcomings in your game. You're trying to hype people up and sell them something bad. If you sell attempts, or lives, like an arcade or candy crush, then when players lose a level they think you're extorting t…

The Netflix or Apple Music model might work. Fixed price per month for a catalog of games, with revenue shares happening based on play time. This a basically a solved problem for video and audio content, games don’t need to be different.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#33

Post by seventhtiger »

sudhirj wrote: post #32
seventhtiger wrote: post #26

I've thought about this a lot. Every way to monetize a game will be interpreted with hostility. If you sell games for $60 upfront then your marketing will be perceived as a scam in the face of any failures or shortcomings in your game. You're trying to hype people up and sell them something bad. If you sell attempts, or lives, like an arcade or candy crush, then when players lose a level they think you're extorting t…

The Netflix or Apple Music model might work. Fixed price per month for a catalog of games, with revenue shares happening based on play time. This a basically a solved problem for video and audio content, games don’t need to be different.

Video and audio content are not interactive. You never feel active manipulation from static media.

Games in that model will be accused of manipulating players into having as much play time as possible even sacrificing quality. The same addictive mechanics can be used for time instead of money.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#34

Post by karlp »

sudhirj wrote: post #32
seventhtiger wrote: post #26

I've thought about this a lot. Every way to monetize a game will be interpreted with hostility. If you sell games for $60 upfront then your marketing will be perceived as a scam in the face of any failures or shortcomings in your game. You're trying to hype people up and sell them something bad. If you sell attempts, or lives, like an arcade or candy crush, then when players lose a level they think you're extorting t…

The Netflix or Apple Music model might work. Fixed price per month for a catalog of games, with revenue shares happening based on play time. This a basically a solved problem for video and audio content, games don’t need to be different.

Then you could get games that are long for no reason

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#35

Post by seventhtiger »

Spedeman1 wrote: post #31
seventhtiger wrote: post #26

I've thought about this a lot. Every way to monetize a game will be interpreted with hostility. If you sell games for $60 upfront then your marketing will be perceived as a scam in the face of any failures or shortcomings in your game. You're trying to hype people up and sell them something bad. If you sell attempts, or lives, like an arcade or candy crush, then when players lose a level they think you're extorting t…

> Every way to monetize a game will be interpreted with hostility. I would say that in almost any business there is always small amount of people who intrepret the pricing and/or the business model of the business with hostility. I think it is quite natural - people would rather not pay for things. However the majority of people are not the ones bitching loudly about it, they pay for services happily and are somewhat…

This is the dominant tone of discussion in video game communities. I certainly haven't seen that in other places. No one accused Disney of using cliff hangers to scam them.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#36

Post by karlp »

socialist_coder wrote: post #16
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #14

Suppose the people who hate free to play games win the argument and get rid of microtransactions. Suppose they change the laws so you have to get your looter shooter Destiny/Anthem/Division dopamine drip for one fair fixed price. So you're grinding hundreds of hours to get better armor, but you aren't spending more money. Just time. If it’s a single fixed price, what is incentivizing the developer to make the game mo…

If your game only has 10 hours of gameplay, people will complain that it's too short. Then your game gets bad reviews and you don't eat. So you need to have more gameplay, and that's either through cleverly addictive game mechanics or a ton of expensive to produce content.

Plenty of games have less than 10h of gameplay, and an even bigger amount of games have less than 10h of non grind gameplay. Portal is a good example

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#37

Post by glenngillen »

seventhtiger wrote: post #35
Spedeman1 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every way to monetize a game will be interpreted with hostility. I would say that in almost any business there is always small amount of people who intrepret the pricing and/or the business model of the business with hostility. I think it is quite natural - people would rather not pay for things. However the majority of people are not the ones bitching loudly about it, they pay for services happily and are somewhat…

This is the dominant tone of discussion in video game communities. I certainly haven't seen that in other places. No one accused Disney of using cliff hangers to scam them.

Given the previous claim was that some number of people will treat the business model and monetization approach with hostility I think it still holds true with Disney. They have been much derided for retelling public domain stories, then claiming ownership/trademarks/copyright (event going so far as pushing for changes to copyright law) to give themselves exclusive rights to market. And a lot of criticism of their whole “Disney Vault” approach to selling old VHS and DVD titles where only certain titles from the back catalogue would be available for sale in a given year, so you better buy them up quickly or miss out for potentially another 7 years.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#38

Post by ffwacom »

seventhtiger wrote: post #26

I've thought about this a lot. Every way to monetize a game will be interpreted with hostility. If you sell games for $60 upfront then your marketing will be perceived as a scam in the face of any failures or shortcomings in your game. You're trying to hype people up and sell them something bad. If you sell attempts, or lives, like an arcade or candy crush, then when players lose a level they think you're extorting t…

People still complain about free games.

Re: The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction

#39

Post by DanBC »

seventhtiger wrote: post #26

I've thought about this a lot. Every way to monetize a game will be interpreted with hostility. If you sell games for $60 upfront then your marketing will be perceived as a scam in the face of any failures or shortcomings in your game. You're trying to hype people up and sell them something bad. If you sell attempts, or lives, like an arcade or candy crush, then when players lose a level they think you're extorting t…

I feel like you're mixing justified complaints ("this game has addictive gambling elements and you're targetting it at children") with less justified complaints ("this completely optional skin which has no effect on gameplay looks cooler than the default but costs money").
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