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

nobsgames.stavros.io

141–150 of 269 posts

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

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's where I kind of start to consider the game "bullshit", I want to play and enjoy myself, not have constant FOMO of what could be if only I'd spent some more money. It probably won't be too much of a FOMO thing really. The game is mainly just a "see how far you get" game, kind of like a Flappy Bird or Temple Run type game, but choice based, not dexterity based. If you choose poorly you can lose pretty quickly,…

> If you choose poorly you can lose pretty quickly, but then you can just start the game over again if you want. But if you're like "wow, this is the furthest I've been, let's go for it this time!" or whatever, and you burned through the items that you earned during the course of the game, well you could just see if you get lucky and get farther, or you can spend money to get a bundle of items help ensure you survive…

Yeah, that sucks. Plants vs Zombies should have never gone IAP.

It's fine that you don't trust that it won't change. That's probably a good thing overall to have that skepticism.

This is my first real experiment with designing a free game that isn't just a free flash game with zero monetization that I just put out there and let millions of people play without getting any income for it (what I used to do 15+ years ago...basically just gave a lot of free money to flash game websites that did have ads).

I've worked on a F2P game before at a video game company and it did all those terrible tricks and I didn't feel to happy working on it, was always hoping we'd get a new client for more interesting and fun games, but it never ended up happening before they had to do major layoffs.

I'm not claiming I won't ever do something that you personally won't like, this is mainly just what I'm thinking now. But I'm hoping that being less obnoxious will earn me some more good will than trying to squeeze every last dime out of players like big companies do. I'm just one guy making games outside of my day job, here.

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

#143
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean?

I've taken a look at their launch list and it's 90% casual stuff with very simple mechanics that I'm not interested in. My main entertainment has been video games for more than 30 years so I either need a story, complex systems i can mess with or maybe a reflex challenge. Edit: Say, where can I find a complete list of the games they offer? I just checked their page and they seem very secretive about it. Another sign…

Most kids would have a hard time playing Card of Darkness (for example), which is a fairly tough card-roguelike thing. Grindstone is also really good. There are a ton of great games on Apple Arcade. I will completely agree that Apple is bad about promoting it though, they don't really seem to understand how to talk about games at all.

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

#144
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just charge money for games? Seems like a reasonable way for them to make money...

Because the app economy doesn't reward that kind of behaviour. A free game will get more downloads than a paid game. Kids are the biggest consumers of mobile games and they can't download it if it's paid and they don't have a credit card set on their account. Obscure games with low sales will fall off the rankings pretty quickly. And that's before you consider that there are only a few successful game types (Clash of…

Why I'm a big fan of such games that also offer a remove-ad's one of fee option. Simple and elegant way to handle many area's - try before buy is covered and allows people the choice.

Not all games/apps work with that approach, but many do and I'm all for fair choice.

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

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just charge money for games? Seems like a reasonable way for them to make money...

Then you create a soft ceiling and miss out on the whales that will spend $1K a month to have a shinier hat.

Yes many of those games litterly throw their freemium players as cannon fodder to those whales.

Few get the balance right and many will always tip one way on the odd patch, pandering to the whales - who after all - spend money.

Though the games that just offer hats and other cosmetics, well, you have to love those and certainly a solution that appeases all and rich fools are not to be scoffed at in such games as they are paying for it to carry on.

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

#146
post #86

I built a site that’s adjacent to this idea (www.darkpattern.games). It catalogs the dark patterns found in mobile games. Premium currency and ads are two of them but there are many more. The idea is that you could educate yourself so the dark patterns have less power over you and also you can browse the site to find good games that don’t have dark patterns.

Thank you for making this. I've used this site before while trying to explain to my friend how Mobile Legends gets kids hooked on gambling and is basically digital crack. That game might as well have used your site as a manual. It is fun though, but damn, the constant and never ending Skinner boxes, gambling, and dark patterns to suck out money and time are over the top. I think that game covers just about every single point on your site.

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

#147
Its awesome to see kitten game[0] on here! I had no idea it was released as an app. For stuff like this, I'll buy it even if I never plan to play it on the device, to support the creator for the time I've spent on the free version.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nuclearuni...

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

#148
post #109

I would like to build an app that's a series of games, that are all related. I want to use the freemium model, with a one-time payment. No ads, no subscriptions; once you pay, you own the entire game. What's a better model for this? A single app with a one-time IAP; or two apps, where one is free with no ads or IAPs, but there's a link to a separate paid app with no IAPs? It seems there's no way to distinguish easily…

I hate the one-time premium IAP option, because I lost it in some app after reinstall, and it's not compatible with Android's family library.

I'll ignore anything that is shown to have any IAP.

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

#149
post #129
post #56

Here is my contribution (a webapp, a.k.a. a website) http://lalo.li/lsd/ coded it years ago mostly drunk on an island in Thailand, I now like to play it again on my iPad with iPencil. Github: https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/lsd (Warning: a single, dependency less CoffeeScript source file)

That's really great and simple. I intend to steal it, but then I'm too lazy to do anything ...

Totally take it & make stuff. Think the concept now with iPencil adoption has a lot of untapped potential.

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

#150
post #109

I would like to build an app that's a series of games, that are all related. I want to use the freemium model, with a one-time payment. No ads, no subscriptions; once you pay, you own the entire game. What's a better model for this? A single app with a one-time IAP; or two apps, where one is free with no ads or IAPs, but there's a link to a separate paid app with no IAPs? It seems there's no way to distinguish easily…

Thats actually just old school selling a game. For cash, once, no DLCs, no running costs.

Which is actually awesome.

My first games were Quake, and Quake2. I enjoyed shilling out the cash just once. Bought expansions as budget allowed and was always excited to.

More power to you honestly.

Edit: duck ads.

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