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

nobsgames.stavros.io

181–190 of 269 posts

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

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are in the list, marked with "One-time purchase".

Can you put that one time purchase price in the price column? So it's not just listed as "free"

I don't always know it, unfortunately.

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

#183
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, never heard of this game (unsurprising as it came out a decade before I was born). I was able to play it here [0]. Arrows to move, spacebar to be able to leave the edge. Very cool! [0] https://playclassic.games/games/action-dos-games-online/play...

That link is to an emulation of an MS-DOS port of the original arcade. You can play the emulated original stand-up arcade game here: https://archive.org/details/arcade_qix Press F3 to choose language, then use 5 to insert coins, 1 to start 1 player game. Use cursor keys to move along existing lines, use Ctrl+cursor keys to draw fast, use Alt+cursor keys to draw slowly.

Good catch! Thank you for posting this. It's really crazy to be playing games I played when I was a kid (Not this game but other MS-DOS or Arcade games) in the freaking browser...

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

#184
I would request you to consider web apps as well. I tried submitting http://arcadejack.com but no luck. Here is what I had entered as comment: "Consider this no-bullshit math game to help kids practice math. Free, no iap, no login. Everything is stored locally."

Edit: Still super early in dev and pin for "grown up" tab is 1222

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

#185

No IAP and no ads? How does a game studio should earn money then? Knowing the fact that business model of games are moving to free to play and than players are now reluctant more than ever to pay a decent price for a game but prefer spend 5x more little by little? Do you intend to reverse the trend? Real question, no trolling. How a game studio can make money with a F2P game? Or how can we make money from a free 2 pl…

maybe don't compete with the simplistic games that don't require ads or in-app purchases? or produce a quality product that people are willing to pay for. if you need your hand held to come to these conclusions perhaps you're in the wrong business.

I don't compete with that kind of games but IAP/ads is the business model of 99% of games which makes money, which is obviously a goal. Producing a product of quality is a top priority but it's not enough, you need marketing too in order to have market adoption. There is many games of quality that people don't want to buy. Making a paying game in 2020 on mobile is definitely a wrong strategy choice for most of the games.

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

#186
post #144
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple Arcade is awesome. $5/month for top tier titles, all of which have no IAP or ads. There are some seriously great games there with voice acting and beautiful artwork etc. You can't beat the price and they add new stuff constantly.

Just a few that I have installed right now, but there are a ton more:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pilgrims/id1296855328

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/jenny-leclue-detectivu/id88256...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tangle-tower/id1437742603

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sayonara-wild-hearts/id1441675...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dead-end-job/id1461747354

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

#188
I really, really like this idea 'StavrosK, so thanks for making this site.

I contributed the iOS version of Seedship: I played it a few weeks ago, and it had no IAP or in-game currency to speak of [0]. I only have an iPhone, so I cannot test the Android version [1]. I strongly suspect that the answer is no given that the two web versions do not have those things [2][3].

This project did give me follow on idea though that others here mentioned and/or alluded to in this this thread: content blockers for the App Store/Play Store. Apple and Google only check for a number of things when reviewing app submissions: malware checks, conformance with local laws, major performance issues, certain security issues etc. What if a user could download content blockers to block apps that they don’t want to see? Apple and Google get to free themselves of having to break ties between content curation and being a censor. Users who want use apps that are vetted by a third-party of their choosing to achieve some purpose would be able to do so e.g. apps for children. I’m not sure exactly what Apple or Google would have to accomplish this, but I think they could some of their organization app policy logic combined with a few other things e.g. forbidding side-loading, or adding additional content-blocker specific app signatures that an app could optionally have. There is a good chance that this would hurt advertising, so there would be the appropriate and proportional pushback. However, I consider that to be an expression of what the market wants.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/seedship/id1340497640

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.johnayliff...

[2] https://johnayliff.itch.io/seedship

[3] https://philome.la/johnayliff/seedship/play/index.html

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

#189
Really nice idea! I added a few.

But one that I added didn't make it to the list and I don't know why: Spaceteam https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sleepingbe...

It has no ads. The IAP it has seems to fit your definition of acceptable: it's only cosmetic and goes to support the developer.

So my suggestion would be this: include another list of rejected games, which some reason why they didn't meet the criteria for the No-BS list.

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

#190
Are my games eligible? I own a game company named Kidoteca, our target market is small kids so we never put ads or IAP.

The closest thing to ads is a section to see our other apps, but it is hidden (requires reading, to figure out how to get to it, while we expect most of our users are kids that can't read).

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