Kongregate: the science behind the massive profits of F2P games • Hacker News Board

Re: Kongregate: the science behind the massive profits of F2P games

#21

Post by cactusface » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 4:55 AM UTC

freditup wrote: post #19

patio11 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. In particular, if demographically whales are (as subtextually claimed on slide 12) functioning upper-middle-class professionals like business owners, engineers, doctors, and CPAs, then there doesn't seem to be any meaningful harm in it. My unease about F2P monetization is that my sense of the demographics is that it tilts more towards "people with undiagnosed depression" or "the Vegas slots demographic."

Slide 12 isn't a convincing argument that these people are okay, but of course it doesn't indicate the latter either. But even if these people are upper-middle-class professionals, there's still a chance that their action stem from things like depression/addiction. My hunch would be that the cause of the big spending leans more towards addiction than well-reasoned spending on a health hobby, but without data or evide…

I think in the absence of data, people see what they want to see such that it agrees with their worldview. Nobody likes to endure cognitive dissonance. Even in the presence of data people see what they want to see. Me? Well, some of the time the people spending money are sorely addicted; some of the time they have a mental illness like depression / mania / psychosis / schizophrenia / OCD / whatever; some of the time it's credit card fraud; some of the time it's kids spending their parents' money; some of the time it's just some person with access to a lot of cash that decides to throw money at the problem of becoming good at the game. It would be really neat to see some numbers.

Re: Kongregate: the science behind the massive profits of F2P games

#22

Post by tjradcliffe » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 5:12 AM UTC

interesting_att wrote: post #20

patio11 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. In particular, if demographically whales are (as subtextually claimed on slide 12) functioning upper-middle-class professionals like business owners, engineers, doctors, and CPAs, then there doesn't seem to be any meaningful harm in it. My unease about F2P monetization is that my sense of the demographics is that it tilts more towards "people with undiagnosed depression" or "the Vegas slots demographic."

Actual F2P developer here. I've spent countless hours interviewing payers. Vast majority of people are normal, hardworking people who just genuinely enjoy games. You're focused on a problem that doesn't affect 99.964% of people playing the game (Math: Avg 3% of people are payers, 4% of those payers are whales, and a small fraction of those big payers could be recognized as people with issues). Moreover, even if this…

Other products don't aren't optimized by their creators to extract the maximum revenue from the 0.046% of their market that the creators have determined are vulnerable to remarkably effective psychological manipulation techiniques, and upon whom the creators are dependent for the majority of their revenue.

Next question?

And the next question really shouldn't be "Oh but aren't they really? Other products use advertising too!" If it is, please refer to the answer above, and add reading comprehension.

Re: Kongregate: the science behind the massive profits of F2P games

#23

Post by T-hawk » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 5:48 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #13

fsk wrote: post #2

Eventually, the pendulum will swing the other way. People will get sick of freemium games, and go back to games where you pay $1-$10 once. Some people made a lot of money with freemium, so everyone is copying them. I can't stand wait timers, energy systems, and all the other tricks they use to balance freemium games. Many freemium games require an Internet connection to play, which is bad for me because my prime gami…

It's possible to make freemium without wait timers. See Hearthstone, League of Legends. I don't see freemium disappearing anytime soon.

Those both essentially do run on wait timers. You can earn the components needed to play at a high level gradually with a limited number of plays per day, or pay to accelerate that process.

This model isn't as harsh as actually locking out from the game if you don't pay, but it sure does move along the same axis of paying to alleviate a time-based restriction.

Re: Kongregate: the science behind the massive profits of F2P games

#24

Post by grrowl » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 5:51 AM UTC

cat9 wrote: post #12

patio11 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DRM is largely about protecting the new-release window where a supermajority of AAA game/video sales happen. It doesn't have to be effective for all time -- if it delays the first crack until release plus two weeks then it's still worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in marginal sales.

It's less effective at even that much than it could be, e.g. any game released on Steam can be cracked in a largely homogeneous fashion. (Which is exactly the value point I'd be working to improve if I was working at Steam and trying to convince more titles to release there.)

Steam has cultivated a culture of paying for games, because it's easier than pirating, which is easier than buying physical copies. Given their success, I don't think they need to change anything, especially if it makes anything harder for the end-user; plus its bedrock is smaller, more indie titles who can't afford to implement DRM anyway — so the platform treats them very well.

* http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1j4lj3/how_doesdid_st...

Re: Kongregate: the science behind the massive profits of F2P games

#25

Post by welly » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 6:11 AM UTC

themartorana wrote: post #10

fsk wrote: post #2

Eventually, the pendulum will swing the other way. People will get sick of freemium games, and go back to games where you pay $1-$10 once. Some people made a lot of money with freemium, so everyone is copying them. I can't stand wait timers, energy systems, and all the other tricks they use to balance freemium games. Many freemium games require an Internet connection to play, which is bad for me because my prime gami…

I make my living off of mobile freemium games. We don't do anything with replay timers or the like - we advertise, mostly, and have fun in-app purchases. For a couple years we offered two versions of our apps - paid and free, free being ad supported. In a bid to simplify things and encourage more conversions, we switched to in-app purchase to get rid of ads. (Also, app stores had been optimized to push down app resul…

I'm not what I would ever describe as a gamer. Well, I was massively when I was much younger in the arcade, 8 and 16 bit days but now, not so much/at all.

The problem I have with many freemium games is for me they have absolutely no lasting appeal. I would estimate that 75% of freemium games I've installed, I may have played a sum total of half an hour and then got annoyed/fed up/bored and removed it. Adverts, replay timers etc. are certainly to blame but what mostly is a turn off for games of these types is there is no soul in a lot of these games.

Take Triple Jump, Don't Step On The White Tile, Avoid The Blocks etc. for example(s). They're like Christmas cracker toys. You play them once or twice, discover how lame they are and throw them away.

While I realise those games aren't meant to be much more than that (and an SEO exercise), there are so many like these on the various app stores and few games that have any kind of depth to them. I would more than happily, and have happily, paid $1, $2 or more for a game that held my interest for longer than half an hour. The biggest problem I have is these throw-away games have been so cleverly marketed or SE-optimised that they make up the bulk of "featured", "highlighted" or "best selling" games and any game with a modicum of depth disappear into the ether, undiscovered. It's frustrating for someone who wants to play a fun, entertaining game, not an annoying, repetitive and uninspiring christmas cracker game.

Re: Kongregate: the science behind the massive profits of F2P games

#26

Post by jpatokal » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 6:15 AM UTC

That's a lot of raw data and not a whole lot of specifics. Here's a dissection of how one particular massively popular F2P game (Clash of Clans) gets people to pay up:

http://gyrovague.com/2013/06/05/time-is-money-how-clash-of-c...

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5825158

That's two years old now, but it's interesting to see some of the points in there validated by Kongregate's research: eg. how guilds primarily serve to exert social pressure, and how UAE and Kuwait have ridiculous whales (average spend per playing user $500!).

Re: Kongregate: the science behind the massive profits of F2P games

#27

Post by tlarkworthy » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 6:40 AM UTC

welly wrote: post #25

themartorana wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make my living off of mobile freemium games. We don't do anything with replay timers or the like - we advertise, mostly, and have fun in-app purchases. For a couple years we offered two versions of our apps - paid and free, free being ad supported. In a bid to simplify things and encourage more conversions, we switched to in-app purchase to get rid of ads. (Also, app stores had been optimized to push down app resul…

I'm not what I would ever describe as a gamer. Well, I was massively when I was much younger in the arcade, 8 and 16 bit days but now, not so much/at all. The problem I have with many freemium games is for me they have absolutely no lasting appeal. I would estimate that 75% of freemium games I've installed, I may have played a sum total of half an hour and then got annoyed/fed up/bored and removed it. Adverts, replay…

Try card hunter

Re: Kongregate: the science behind the massive profits of F2P games

#28

Post by toyg » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 6:43 AM UTC

tjradcliffe wrote: post #22

interesting_att wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual F2P developer here. I've spent countless hours interviewing payers. Vast majority of people are normal, hardworking people who just genuinely enjoy games. You're focused on a problem that doesn't affect 99.964% of people playing the game (Math: Avg 3% of people are payers, 4% of those payers are whales, and a small fraction of those big payers could be recognized as people with issues). Moreover, even if this…

Other products don't aren't optimized by their creators to extract the maximum revenue from the 0.046% of their market that the creators have determined are vulnerable to remarkably effective psychological manipulation techiniques, and upon whom the creators are dependent for the majority of their revenue. Next question? And the next question really shouldn't be "Oh but aren't they really? Other products use advertis…

You don't know much about other industries then. Both gambling, food and drink sectors are optimized to build addiction and maintain it over the longest possible period. They call it "fidelity" but it's the same thing.

I personally think f2p is essentially a branch of the gambling industry and will eventually be recognised as such in law. After all, it was the case for coin-ops (at least here in Europe), which had basically the same business model.

Re: Kongregate: the science behind the massive profits of F2P games

#29

Post by GeneralTspoon » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 6:45 AM UTC

welly wrote: post #25

themartorana wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make my living off of mobile freemium games. We don't do anything with replay timers or the like - we advertise, mostly, and have fun in-app purchases. For a couple years we offered two versions of our apps - paid and free, free being ad supported. In a bid to simplify things and encourage more conversions, we switched to in-app purchase to get rid of ads. (Also, app stores had been optimized to push down app resul…

I'm not what I would ever describe as a gamer. Well, I was massively when I was much younger in the arcade, 8 and 16 bit days but now, not so much/at all. The problem I have with many freemium games is for me they have absolutely no lasting appeal. I would estimate that 75% of freemium games I've installed, I may have played a sum total of half an hour and then got annoyed/fed up/bored and removed it. Adverts, replay…

This is exactly the problem I'm trying to solve with Curated[1]. The Play Store is filled with low-think, one-tap junk these days... Finding a good game on the Play Store is almost as hard as finding a science show on the Discovery Channel. It's optimised for the unthinking masses, which makes sense for Google from a monetary perspective, but for anyone interested in a deep game, then either Google's algorithm needs to get waaaay smarter or we have to do it ourselves.

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

Re: Kongregate: the science behind the massive profits of F2P games

#30

Post by sedev » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 6:50 AM UTC

grrowl wrote: post #24

cat9 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less effective at even that much than it could be, e.g. any game released on Steam can be cracked in a largely homogeneous fashion. (Which is exactly the value point I'd be working to improve if I was working at Steam and trying to convince more titles to release there.)

Steam has cultivated a culture of paying for games, because it's easier than pirating, which is easier than buying physical copies. Given their success, I don't think they need to change anything, especially if it makes anything harder for the end-user; plus its bedrock is smaller, more indie titles who can't afford to implement DRM anyway — so the platform treats them very well. * http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comme…

Steam is hugely important in this regard because it shows how catastrophically wrong the old guard in games, video, music, and other media are. By default, people accept that paying for things is right. The challenge is to make paying for things easier than not, and to not actively sabotage the social relationship that makes customers prefer paying for things to pirating them. Steam has actually done a reasonable job at that: by contrast, DRM and MPAA/RIAA-style tactics are, to understate, recent-severe-head-wound-level dumb business decisions; they say to customers "our relationship with you is fundamentally antagonistic." Once that social message has been sent and supremely customer-hostile services like Ultraviolet (and worse earlier systems) established, piracy becomes massively attractive and the MPAA/RIAA-style cartels have cut off the ability to have a reasonable conversation about it.