Ask HN: how do you commercialize something like 2048?

#1

Post by malteseunderdog » Wed, Mar 26, 2014, 2:51 PM UTC

Today I went for a talk, and before it started I saw two people with their laptops playing 2048. Also a tonne of twists on the game have sprung on HN.

I was wondering how would the author make money out of this sudden popularity? Perhaps charge for the mobile platform version?

Re: Ask HN: how do you commercialize something like 2048?

#2

Post by fuj » Wed, Mar 26, 2014, 3:12 PM UTC

Well, he could put ads on the page but most of the target audience would be using some sort of adblocker. Which brings another question... aren't people overly sensitive to the display of ads? They want good quality content, but don't want to pay for that same content and at the same time block the author's alternative of not charging for it (by using ads) I would understand if we were still in the 90's and there were pop-ups everywhere, but nowadays I find most of the ads non-obtrusive.

Sorry I went off-topic. Another way to monetize would be to make an app out of it for the mobile devices.

Re: Ask HN: how do you commercialize something like 2048?

#3

Post by codemonkeymike » Wed, Mar 26, 2014, 4:05 PM UTC

Have each number tile replaced with a product, EX: Trident pays $X to have its product be the 2 tile or each tile is a different Trident product.

Re: Ask HN: how do you commercialize something like 2048?

#4

Post by idigit » Wed, Mar 26, 2014, 9:33 PM UTC

2048 was based off of Threes, which is already commercialized: http://asherv.com/threes/

Re: Ask HN: how do you commercialize something like 2048?

#5

Post by csense » Wed, Mar 26, 2014, 10:03 PM UTC

fuj wrote: post #2

Well, he could put ads on the page but most of the target audience would be using some sort of adblocker. Which brings another question... aren't people overly sensitive to the display of ads? They want good quality content, but don't want to pay for that same content and at the same time block the author's alternative of not charging for it (by using ads) I would understand if we were still in the 90's and there wer…

A lot of sites have flash ads with sound or video. And don't always have mute controls, or for that matter any way to tell which tab it's coming from. I stopped going to That Other Tech News Site [1] after this happened to me with one of their ads.

In addition, poorly designed ads (or, for that matter, JavaScript) can leak memory and peg CPU to 100%.

Sometimes your bandwidth is limited, e.g. I'm writing this from a public wifi connection. And if you're on 3G / 4G connection and paying by the megabyte, do you really want video ads? I think not...

[1] http://slashdot.org