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Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

nobsgames.stavros.io

21–30 of 269 posts

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#21

Great idea. I really enjoyed Angry Birds when it first came out and when my children asked about to install it on their devices I said this was fine. I couldn't find the original Angry Birds so installed Angry Birds 2. What an awful convoluted mess it was. Instead of a simple, fun physics-based game it's full of lives, spells, bad level design and in-app purchases.

And it flat out refuses to run without an internet connection to fetch ads!

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#22
post #6

Top idea. Really really nice. I recently loaded up a blank Android phone with dozens and dozens of games, pretty much anything I could find for a 12h flight, only to realize most of them were an absolute horror show of IAPs and requiring internet connectivity for no apparent reason. So after you've grown this list (and it already looks amazing, excellent work!) maybe worthwhile considering to add an additional "works…

This is a great idea that lots of people have requested, and it's easy to add technically, the problem is in the messaging. The only way I get feedback now is through the "add new game" form, and in that you can tell me the reason for adding the game. However, "works offline" is a nice bit of info rather than a reason to add the game, so I don't exactly know where to ask for that...

Maybe just include a checkbox where people submit the info?

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#23

Do you have a way to filter duplicates? I just took a look at the iOS list and there are a few games that are on all 3 of the first 3 pages. I love the idea, and will use this to help find games for our family iPad.

Hmm, there should be no duplicates, something is iffy. Do you know which games?

I see The Room series of games multiple times.

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#24

Great idea. I really enjoyed Angry Birds when it first came out and when my children asked about to install it on their devices I said this was fine. I couldn't find the original Angry Birds so installed Angry Birds 2. What an awful convoluted mess it was. Instead of a simple, fun physics-based game it's full of lives, spells, bad level design and in-app purchases.

I played the original to death "back in the day" so I'm really sad to hear that they went down this route. Probably also explains why nobody talks about Angry Birds anymore.

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#25

I recently changed my relation with video games. I used to play a lot of FIFA (or Football Manager), which are games who are just here to entertain yourself, but there is no backstory at all. Now I see video games as reading a book, or watching a great movie: focus on the story, the art design, the sound design, and the experience in general. I still play a bit of FIFA, but I reserve it to my social time (even though…

I'm in a similar place. A corollary to this is: I'm pickier about how the stories are told. Games are neither books nor films, and I'll pay a premium for games that find a way to tell their stories in ways that are distinct from those mediums.

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#26
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, there should be no duplicates, something is iffy. Do you know which games?

I see The Room series of games multiple times.

Oops, that seems to be a pagination problem (they're only in the database once, as you can see here: https://nobsgames.stavros.io/ios/?name=room). I will investigate, thank you.

EDIT: iOS games have a rating that's quantized 0.5 apart, so all the 5-star games were sorting unstably. Sorting by "-rating, -reviews" seems to have fixed that (and is more useful), thanks.

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#27
post #2

A bit of ui advice — you can tell what phone I’m browsing on from user agent screen. You should default to showing me the right games right on the landing page.

Parsing the user agent to determine something is, most of the time, a massive mistake. It isn't reliable, and it will frustrate users the moment you get it wrong.

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#28
post #9

Any reason why the Genre filter field is a text input rather than a dropdown? I went to look at the Genres available to see which ones I might like but the only way I can see to do this is by scrolling through the pages to look at the available options.

Yes, Apple games can belong in multiple genres and it was easier to do it this way, but I'm probably going to make it a dropdown since it's more usable.

A multi-select box for this would be nice. Select2 should be easy enough to implement, as you're already using jquery.

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#29
Clever idea. I'm curious why you decided to allow games with DLC though. That's technically an In-App Purchase. I get it's not a Consumable IAP, but it's still IAP.

Also you can probably add just about any modern (i.e. non-Hasbro) board game conversion to this list. Almost all of them charge a fee up front and won't have anything more than some DLC for their expansions. Like Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Through the Ages, etc.

I'm actually working on a mobile game in my spare time right now, and while I normally like to charge money for them I thought I'd try the IAP route this time, but I wasn't planning on making it anywhere near as obnoxious as most IAP games.

Ads you can pay a few bucks to remove, then a couple of consumables that are optional and you can earn during a game anyway if you're lucky, but can buy more if you want (it's a push your luck game, so luck is part of the design), that's about it.

I'm not looking to make all of the money in the world like these big companies are, just hopefully enough to make some side income and maybe eventually switch to making games full time.

I tried playing a Jeopardy game recently, and it just bombards you with screens of crap constantly. Here's a screen where you can pay to add an item for a round! Use your items to help you answer a question slightly easier! Oh you won! Let's update your win streak! (or Oh no! you lost, you're about to go to 0 on your win streak, but if you pay, you can keep it up, and you'll get a reward if you keep it going enough!), then here's some special event that earns you some random nonsense for getting a question right! here's a level up screen! here's a screen that pesters you about something else (I don't know, I lost track after awhile). Just on and on, and in your face. I can't believe people will spend money for these stupid win streaks and whatnot.

So yeah, I'm hoping mine doesn't come across as obnoxious (obviously it wouldn't qualify for the No-Bullshit list, though). And if it doesn't do well, at least it helped me get back in the swing of making mobile games again (it's been like 6 years).

Good luck with your website, it looks nice! If you can add a few extra filters to it, you might have better discoverability than the Apple App Store, which has been too "Winner-Take-All because we refuse to highlight more than a handful of games or give proper filtering options" for forever.

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