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Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

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Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#211

Post by stereolambda » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

wahnfrieden wrote: post #36

chomp wrote: post #20

Yeah, this is gross. He has a point that when you are selling a game, you're in it for a non-zero amount of profit, so you do have to think about compulsion and keeping people coming back to the game - if people aren't drawn back over multiple sessions then they're going to walk away thinking they spent money for 2 minutes of playtime and they'll be upset. But the context of the question was moving monetization earli…

are you suggesting that game dev labor should be valued by society in other ways than via the market? the market finds that this type of monetization is more profitable. why does HN turn anti-capitalism when it comes to games?

Capitalism is one of the words that are so general and used for so many phenomena it often becomes useless in a conversation. One can think some market behavior is unethical and to be opposed by individual action, but not see an acceptable political way to remedy this. I don't generally subscribe to this type of thinking, but it is a position. People also tend to see production of culture as something that should be different from producing/selling cars or potatoes.

Besides, people seem to call "capitalism" a set of laws and regulations that are good for current large capital holders, and freely extracting money from people if you have superior psycho/marketing and lawyer power. But there is a vast, vast space of possible regulatory conditions that would still be essentially capitalist in how economy functions.

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#212

Post by reb » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

rowanG077 wrote: post #174

crayboff wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen much of what he says in general so I don't know if he has a really antagonistic trend in his he talks. I interpreted what he said to mean "I have respect for devs who approach this for just the art, but if you don't consider monetization into your design from the beginning, you are self sabotaging your chance at business success". He just said that with less politically correct talk, which is easily ta…

There should be no monetization design in a video game. The design should be make your game good so people will buy it. How ridiculous would it be for other forms of art to have "monetization design". A chef that styles their dishes in such a way that there clearly is a gap in the dish which should contain a nice piece of steak or something else. When you are eating the dish the waiter comes with that piece in hand a…

Hard agree. "Monetization design" is almost universally a euphemism for casino-style addiction mechanics whose sole purpose is to habituate users to continue feeding quarters into the slot so the good feelings don't stop.

I pulled my (meager) rev contribution out of their subscription service following the IronSource acquisition and this makes me confident that was the right call. All due to respect to the fine folks working on the platform, but it's not something I'm interested in using anymore.

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#213

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

crayboff wrote: post #159

OskarS wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the full context does him any favors. The way he talks of gamedevs that are not engaging in predatory behaviour ("beautiful and pure, brilliant people") is incredibly condescending. Like, "yes children, once you grow up you'll realize how foolish your idealism has been and you'll stuff your game full of gems you can overpay for!". These are his customers he's talking about. And later talking about "comp…

I haven't seen much of what he says in general so I don't know if he has a really antagonistic trend in his he talks. I interpreted what he said to mean "I have respect for devs who approach this for just the art, but if you don't consider monetization into your design from the beginning, you are self sabotaging your chance at business success". He just said that with less politically correct talk, which is easily ta…

It's hard to see what else it could mean in this context. I've seen a lot of cosmetic-based monetization strategies I really have no issue with, and in general they seem like a great way to let people who really like the game choose to pay more for it. But if you're considering monetization from the beginning, doesn't that mean your core design is making a tradeoff between fun and transactability?

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#214

Post by cmelbye » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

actinium226 wrote: post #35

wyldfire wrote: post #19

> “I’ve seen great games fail because they tuned their compulsion loop to two minutes when it should have been an hour. A 'compulsion loop' sounds bad to me, I'd never heard the term before. Although if I try to take a step back I suppose this term could be used to describe any game and not just one of the lootbox-mania or idle games. However, the wikipedia article [1] states: > A core or compulsion loop is any repet…

Compulsion loop does sound rather dystopian and "attention-hacking" but it's interesting that he says "two minutes when it should have been an hour," instead of the other way around. An hour long compulsion loop sounds like it could be an immersive experience. That said, I'm not hearing nice things about IronSource and it sounds like maybe there's better ways to get user feedback than the particular implementations t…

From what I've seen of mobile games, in practice it means that it starts off fun and well balanced. Then after [x] minutes it starts to get a bit frustrating, and suddenly you're unable to make progress without sitting and waiting or banging your head against the wall. This presents a choice to the player. They can choose to put the game down until they unlock some power up that helps them pass the level. Or, they can pay money to receive the instant dopamine hit of getting back to the beginning of the "compulsion loop".

The real dystopia is that I'm 99% sure these games dynamically adjust durations, prices, and incentives based on the user's past behavior to extract as much money per hour of play as possible. Essentially a machine that identifies and preys on a person's weaknesses.

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#215

Post by pugworthy » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

kthartic wrote: post #114

yoyohello13 wrote: post #26

"Idiot" in this case means anybody who prioritizes anything over money.

That's not how I understood his words, like at all. He means that monetisation should be considered as part of the creative process. Many indie devs could've been sitting on gold mines, but that those rewards (which could've lead to the creation/evolution of more games) weren't reaped because they didn't consider it. Now of course some of those devs wouldn't care about that at all, but I bet there's also some whose j…

> ...monetisation should be considered as part of the creative process

That mindset is the antithesis of open source.

And believe it or not, not every game dev is into it to make money. There was some classic interaction between Nimblebit and Zynga back when where Zynga offered to buy Nimblebit, who politely turned down the offer. It could have made a huge amount of money for the founders, but they preferred making their money by creating great games.

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#216

Post by ulber » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #185

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he used to be pretty high up in EA. He also worked at a PE firm that especialized in media, although I think better of PE firms than most people. Point being is that I am not surprised at his revenue driven perspective.

He's the Larry Ellison of games. Less a functioning human and more like a mid-sized neural net trained only on making game company short-term stock evaluations increase. He's the game dev equivalent of Nick Bostrom's paperclip maximizer thought experiment.

As an aside, Universal Paperclips is the best clicker game I've played and has zero monetization.

https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#217

Post by hgs3 » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

No one should be surprised by these remarks. Companies always market themselves like their a force for good, "democratizing game development" in Unity's case. In actuality, all that matters is making the Benjamins.

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#218

Post by dylan604 » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #180

structural wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And most of them were tuned for profit too, so it's not like this is a new concept. It does feel like a lot of the mobile and F2P monetization folks are the same ones that enjoyed profiting from arcade games and see them as being similar to slot machines (except better, because they only pay out in neurochemicals, not money!). There's been a quiet war for decades between people who want to design games as art, and pe…

Comparing arcade machines to gambling is a sore spot, especially for pinball. Ostensibly arcade machines are skill based. They are not random. You may be able to win an award or prize but that will be based on some objective measure of performance with little to no randomization. This is important because arcades operate where gambling is illegal, so suggesting they are anything like gambling threatens the security o…

>Ostensibly arcade machines are skill based.

That's also a slippery slope of an argument. Poker players claim that they are not gambling. Early stage addicts claim they are not addicts and can stop any time. Gaming, whether the player is earning money or points, all keys in on the same addictive traits of their players. Some game devs go all in on that because it is fish in a barrel stakes for making money.

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#219

Post by einpoklum » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

hmmazoids wrote: post #136

OskarS wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the full context does him any favors. The way he talks of gamedevs that are not engaging in predatory behaviour ("beautiful and pure, brilliant people") is incredibly condescending. Like, "yes children, once you grow up you'll realize how foolish your idealism has been and you'll stuff your game full of gems you can overpay for!". These are his customers he's talking about. And later talking about "comp…

> "yes children, once you grow up you'll realize how foolish your idealism has been and you'll stuff your game full of gems you can overpay for!" As someone who has worked at a start up that really took off, didn't truly think out monetization and prayed at some point the free users would be willing to play assuming we gave the right features and benefits, I would say you're incredibly naïve. So in retrospect, this i…

> As someone who has worked at a start up that really took off ... I would say you're incredibly naive

You don't really have the standing to preach here.

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#220

Post by dang » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

Url changed from https://mobilegamer.biz/devs-not-baking-monetisation-into-th..., which points to this.

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