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2048: The Nihilistic Face Of Free To Play

mobilemavericks.eu

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Re: 2048: The Nihilistic Face Of Free To Play

#31

Post by nzp »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #30
brownbat wrote: post #19

> What isn’t alright by me is a game that releases for free and makes no attempt to make money, This article is a good candidate for Poe's Law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law For the Onion version, I recommend the headline: "The very idea that someone would put out any content for free is appalling," writes blogger.

I really hope you're right. Still, I don't think anything about it is blatant enough to read as even an attempt at humor. It seems to me that he's either sincere or an uncommonly subtle troll.

It seems he's promoting himself in a professional capacity with the site, for example: http://mobilemavericks.eu/work-with-us/ It would be really... courageous if he did it with an Onion style site. I too hope OP is right, though.

Re: 2048: The Nihilistic Face Of Free To Play

#32

Post by megablast »

> It’s like a Beatles cover band in 1965 somehow becoming globally famous and deciding that, not only are they going to screw over John, Paul Ringo and George, they’re not fussed about making money and playing to whole stadiums for me.

So, it would be better to be a Beatles cover band, and charge. The real offensive act is giving it away for free.

Never mind that 2048 is clearly different enough to three to be considered different.

Re: 2048: The Nihilistic Face Of Free To Play

#33

Post by caspianm »

If the author had a reason for why they didn't like non-monetised free clones, it wasn't clear to me, so I'm going to make up some possible reasons, so there's something substantive to discuss.

Monetised free clones still support the market for game developers (i.e. they can have and pay employees).

Monetised free clones provide a model other for-profit developers to copy, whereas non-monetised clones can destroy a business model without suggesting an alternative one.

Monetised free clones have a motive that he can relate to more, and developers supporting themselves is more worthwhile than whatever motivates developers of non-monetised games.

Monetised free clones can have more resources and incentive for creating good games.

Monetised free clones do not devalue the game as much as non-monetised free clones, as there's still a cost, if not so direct.

Competition from free clones in general harms the original developers, but for-profit clone makers are likely to be harder to persuade to stop, let alone by using moral arguments, so its only worth arguing against people who do it for admiration or because it makes them happy, both of which can be reduced by criticising them publicly.

That's pretty cynical and I've probably got some strawman arguments there, so I don't want to attribute them all directly to the author.

Re: 2048: The Nihilistic Face Of Free To Play

#34

Post by sitkack »

wvenable wrote: post #9

I feel this is the slippery slope of intellectual property. People, such as this author, are beginning to believe that carving off different intellectual ideas into individual monopolies is a moral imperative. Copyright is insufficient. The mere idea of tile-moving number game must be protected so the "original" creator gets paid. Regardless of whether the idea is so trivially simple that a programmer can reproduce i…

This is true with movie plots.

Re: 2048: The Nihilistic Face Of Free To Play

#35

Post by peterhajas »

> But it’s also, unfortunately, a low quality knock off of a mobile game called Threes.

I recall an HN thread where the author of 2048 claimed to have never heard of Threes until 2048 got popular. His was a clone of [1024](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1024!/id823499224?mt=8).

Re: 2048: The Nihilistic Face Of Free To Play

#37

Post by sitkack »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #30
brownbat wrote: post #19

> What isn’t alright by me is a game that releases for free and makes no attempt to make money, This article is a good candidate for Poe's Law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law For the Onion version, I recommend the headline: "The very idea that someone would put out any content for free is appalling," writes blogger.

I really hope you're right. Still, I don't think anything about it is blatant enough to read as even an attempt at humor. It seems to me that he's either sincere or an uncommonly subtle troll.

Bill Gates would have rants about open source that were almost identical. To paraphrase, "How DARE they release megabytes of code for FREE, and code I CANNOT USE, SITTING RIGHT THERE but out of reach!!!!"

I believe it is genuine poeslaw, after having witnessed the Flappy Guy bow out (and of the riches) and seeing a viral phenomenon sweep his daily news scene while having no products with comparable traction sent the poor fellow over the edge.

Re: 2048: The Nihilistic Face Of Free To Play

#38

Post by TophWells »

neotek wrote: post #16

Ultimately, why should anyone care whether 2048 hurts Threes' sales? Should developers (or anyone for that matter) have any obligation to consider the impact of their work on someone else's product's commercial viability?

Yes, if you're selling your stuff on the free market you shouldn't expect that your competitors will go easy on you. If they do, somebody somewhere is probably violating an antitrust law.
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