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

nobsgames.stavros.io

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

#261

Post by rchaud »

wtetzner wrote: post #255
hombre_fatal wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting that you could rent games from Blockbuster before you bought them back then and some consoles had demo disks. You can't rent mobile games to try them before you buy them. Freemium is the modern/mobile game demo. If you have kids, try Apple Arcade.

Not sure why they can't just bring back shareware without needing ads. Allow users to download the game for free, but if they want to play more than the first level/area/whatever, they have to buy the game.

Because there are too many games out there competing for your attention. Word of mouth today doesn't work in the way it did back when Doom I legitimized the shareware model. Today, if someone told you about a cool indie studio game and you looked it up online, you'd likely see ads for competing games appear in search results before the actual page.

It should go without saying that Doom was also an incredibly unique game for its time, and the blood-and-guts controversy likely helped spread word about it just as much as the distribution model did.

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

#262

Post by redisman »

toper-centage wrote: post #250
redisman wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many other video games from 2009 are people talking about today? It's just the nature of the beast.

Minecraft :)

Good point. I guess it's the exception though. Interesting that it probably had similar user numbers for the first few years as Angry Birds but just had a lot deeper and more "creator"-type gameplay.

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

#263

Post by GuB-42 »

I see many games on the list are free with "One-time purchase".

I find these to be pretty annoying, at least on the Android Play Store. The concept is good: free demo, you pay for the full game. The problem is that it hides the actual price of the game.

Maybe an "actual price" field could be added to the site.

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

#264

Post by wtetzner »

rchaud wrote: post #261
wtetzner wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why they can't just bring back shareware without needing ads. Allow users to download the game for free, but if they want to play more than the first level/area/whatever, they have to buy the game.

Because there are too many games out there competing for your attention. Word of mouth today doesn't work in the way it did back when Doom I legitimized the shareware model. Today, if someone told you about a cool indie studio game and you looked it up online, you'd likely see ads for competing games appear in search results before the actual page. It should go without saying that Doom was also an incredibly unique g…

But it's still free to download the demo...

How does including ads in your app make it more likely to be found in the search results?

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

#265

Post by HenryBemis »

JNRowe wrote: post #233
HenryBemis wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Brexitcast doesn't have ads. The Infinite Monkey Cage has a 10-15seconds clip in the end where they promote other science-y podcasts (which I always fast-forward anyway). I also listen to the weekly "SecurityNow", in which out of the 2h there should be at least 10-15mins where Leo reads out his ads. Leo also tries to push SpinRite, but since SR has saved many disks in my lifetime, I gladly listen to that bit (fin…

I don't know. Katya pimps nail polish, and Adam pushes pastries disguised as tales of street meetings with prominent leaders. Either that or I'm getting the wrong message from brexitcast. In all seriousness though. You've described excellent examples of what I was trying to get at: it isn't always obvious where to draw the line; useful promotions, acceptable [to the listener] ads, and the point where it becomes just…

Even on SecurityNow, majority of ads are irrelevant to me. But thanks to SN add I found out about CrashPlan, Lastpass, and some other useful services. I cannot remember the razor as that Leo used to have every-week-for-months (the one that was acquired by Gillette some months ago)(Harry's or something) it was boring and irrelevant for a cybersecurity audience, I guess they were aiming for the "males with money" attributes of the audience.

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

#267

Post by exikyut »

stavros wrote: post #68
exikyut wrote: post #37

This is awesome, but I'm going to forget it exists, so: please take my email address and feed me notifications about when new games get added. (I might want to be notified immediately, weekly, or every N months.) Besides that, some minor nitpicks: - Infinite scrolling would be very nice to have - The ability to sort the columns by clicking the headers (eg, reviews) might be useful - I have some, uh, really old device…

Thank you! > please take my email address and feed me notifications about when new games get added Hmm, that might be a bit spammy, do you have an RSS reader? Maybe I could add a feed. > Infinite scrolling would be very nice to have I had something similar before but people complained that they lost their place when clicking on apps to go to the store. Maybe that's fine now that they open in a new tab, I'll rethink t…

I never ended up using RSS, but it seems a lot of others do, so perhaps this is a good idea. As for email, considering the general "success" (???) of signup boxes on websites, I get the impression (not having added such a box anywhere yet) that maybe this is the lowest common denominator solution for notifications in non- to semi-technical situations. Maybe a free email solution could be used to test the waters here, with the send rate options limited to every 1-2 months.

And perhaps infinite scrolling could be combined with history.replaceState() (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History/rep...) to keep the URL in sync.

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

#269

Post by LutfuRadu »

sunsetMurk wrote: post #245
redisman wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many other video games from 2009 are people talking about today? It's just the nature of the beast.

counterstrike! ..But it too has now been corrupted by DLC/IAP/etc.

I beg to differ. I am not aware of any DLCs. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is free to play. There are cosmetics like gun skins you can purchase, but nothing gives you competitive advantage in the game.
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