Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

growth.design

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 247 posts

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#11

Post by mcphage »

mattnewton wrote: post #8
blobbers wrote: post #4

Pay to win on mobile?? This is revolutionary!!! /s

It’s more disappointing because I think people thought Nintendo was holding out on this kind of thing on principle. You had all the EA’s and Activisions of the world trying to replicate the economics of mobile casino apps in their AAA titles, but Nintendo was over in the corner still taking your $60 one time for a finished and complete game. Now its pretty clear that they are happy to sell their AAA brand titles to t…

> maybe soon after showing crazy profits this kind of crap is coming for all of their beloved franchises in mainline titles.

It's possible, but I'd worry more if it starts showing up on their own consoles, instead of mobile titles that exist mostly to get people interested in playing on Nintendo's own hardware.

Which isn't to say that Nintendo doesn't do weird things with DLC elsewhere—there was a 3DS game where you could purchase minigames with real money, but let you haggle with the seller in-game to get a better price.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#12

Post by CM30 »

It's a shame the game is so predatory with its monentisation tactics, since the actual content (tracks, characters, items, etc) is actually rather good. It's just most of it is buried under this pay to win, limited time bullshit.

Still, at least Nintendo does provide a way to get this stuff without being subject to Tour's lootboxes. The Booster Course Pass DLC for 8 Deluxe on Switch offers much of the same content, except it's a simple one time purchase and in a game that isn't trying to exploit you at every turn.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#13

Post by mxkopy »

mattnewton wrote: post #8
blobbers wrote: post #4

Pay to win on mobile?? This is revolutionary!!! /s

It’s more disappointing because I think people thought Nintendo was holding out on this kind of thing on principle. You had all the EA’s and Activisions of the world trying to replicate the economics of mobile casino apps in their AAA titles, but Nintendo was over in the corner still taking your $60 one time for a finished and complete game. Now its pretty clear that they are happy to sell their AAA brand titles to t…

Have you noticed that their old games are barely discounted from the price they were originally at when they released? Super Mario Galaxy is still $60, for example. I wonder if Pandora's box has been opened and everyone wants in on those insane P2W margins, or if the old way of doing things just isn't profitable anymore. And if the second option, why? Why don't they just charge $65?

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#14

Post by nathanwh »

Something about how this article was animated out hurt my brain to look at. It had a lot on page telling me about how much there was too much information on the screen of the phone which was nested inside the page. And then every arrow press would move around the dialog boxes (some of which jiggled to fight for my attention extra hard) and update the little avatar. The content was interesting but it felt kind of ironic that a product psychology website was this mentally taxing to use.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#16

Post by KhalPanda »

I (sadly) don't play any mobile games for this reason. _Every_ game seems to revolve around engineering you to buy to speed up progress.

It's just one step worse (maybe two) than everything being a subscription. I prefer buying games(/software) once and being left to enjoy the game.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#18

Post by andrew-dc »

Because of this kind of practice, I act as a content curator for my kids. I do my best not to shelter (challenging, but doable), but to educate and train them to spot these kind of subtle (and not-so-subtle) schemes. Are you playing the game, or is the game playing you?

It's half an inside joke and half serious in our house, but I quote WOPR in War Games to the kids every so often:

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

The good news is that there are loads of great alternatives to these casino-like experiences, and it's just a matter of avoiding this stuff, and choosing the good.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#19

Post by yamtaddle »

mxkopy wrote: post #13
mattnewton wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more disappointing because I think people thought Nintendo was holding out on this kind of thing on principle. You had all the EA’s and Activisions of the world trying to replicate the economics of mobile casino apps in their AAA titles, but Nintendo was over in the corner still taking your $60 one time for a finished and complete game. Now its pretty clear that they are happy to sell their AAA brand titles to t…

Have you noticed that their old games are barely discounted from the price they were originally at when they released? Super Mario Galaxy is still $60, for example. I wonder if Pandora's box has been opened and everyone wants in on those insane P2W margins, or if the old way of doing things just isn't profitable anymore. And if the second option, why? Why don't they just charge $65?

That's just Nintendo. Old games from other companies are still cheap, especially on platforms other than the Switch. PC in particular.

Nintendo's store also runs less-frequent and worse sales than others. Other stores, a two-year-old game might still be $50 full price, but it'll go on sale half-off multiple times per year. Not so much on Nintendo's store. Doubly so for first-party stuff. 20% off is a steep and rare sale for those, even older titles.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#20

Post by klodolph »

preinheimer wrote: post #10

First, that was an amazing breakdown of what's happening. If you enjoyed reading that you might like Folding Ideas breakdown of Fortnite - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0 Second, I've personally become very wary of any mobile app that introduces multiple currency types. There's gold, and rubies, and power balls, and stardust! At some point pretty early on I decide it's not worth it to figure out how much…

Multiple currency types are a key part of freemium / microtransaction games, but there are other reasons to have multiple currency types, and it’s becoming more and more common across all types of games.

In a sense, games are often about managing resources. Currency is a resource. If you have one currency type, you can come up with a dominant strategy that maximizes production of that particular currency type. If you make multiple currency types, which are difficult / inefficient to exchange for each other, it encourages people to interact with more portions of the game. You can also have certain currency types tied to key parts of the game’s progression.

Take a look at games like Hades or Control. Hades has obol, darkness, gems, chthonic keys, ambrosia, titan’s blood, diamonds, and nectar. That’s 8 different currency types, the way I count it. No microtransactions—you purchase the game and play it until you are satisfied. There are a ton of game design reasons why those different currency types exist, rather than using a single currency type.

The freemium / microtransaction model just needs one more currency type—something that is slow to acquire, but you can buy it with cash, that directly translates into gacha or something similar, and can be easily converted to other currency types. If Hades had microtransactions, it would probably just have 9 currency types instead of 8.

Post reply on HN