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

Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 145 posts

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#101

Post by AniseAbyss »

dylan604 wrote: post #88
p1necone wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I notice the examples you're giving are all lower budget indie games, it's also worth pointing out that there's a /tonne/ of big budget games that also eschew this kind of nonsense. See: FromSoftware, basically anything that was a Sony published PS4 exclusive (Horizon Zero Dawn, Spiderman, Days Gone, Uncharted, etc etc), Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, basically everything Nintendo puts out, many many more (honestly I…

Not being a game dev, I've often wondered how much the mobile platform for games lowered the barier to entry compared to PC/console games. Unity came along and opened up a lot of doors for people, but I'm not sure how much it is used for mobile (should provide an idea of my knowledge--or lack of--in this area). Mobile games seems to just be flooded with copycat/clones with slight variations of the same game play with…

There's a lot of money in gambling.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#103

Post by rrdharan »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #98
russdpale wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studies show the vast majority of the purchases on those apps are whales. Like 90% or more IIRC. If it weren't for whales those games would make no money.

Do you have any of those studies at hand?

https://deltadna.com/blog/how-whales-spend/

https://www.pocketgamer.biz/comment-and-opinion/72369/mobile...

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#104

Post by antifa »

paulmd wrote: post #40
gameswithgo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is largely "casual" gamers and or gamers who can't afford the upfront $50 or $20 for a game and are lured in by the "Free" game and then of course addiction kicks in and they spend $100 or more on it. Sad state of affairs, and something that has only gotten worse with app stores. I don't know if it is causal but they certainly haven't helped stop it.

a skin in some of these games is $10 or more. Even as someone who might conceivably be tempted (I've bought stuff for TF2 before), there's a point where it's just an obviously bad use of your money. 20 bucks is a nice dinner out, I'm not spending that on a skin. Maybe I am just stuck in 2012 but $2-3 is about the limit for me for a skin. "Unusual" hats (particle effects) in TF2 are basically the original NFT, they ar…

> Maybe I am just stuck in 2012 but $2-3 is about the limit for me for a skin.

Even this is way overpriced for me, I've never in my life paid for a DLC of a skin or item.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#105

Post by zer0-c00l »

jmyeet wrote: post #92

Yeah this was obvious 10 years ago with the rise of mobile gaming. The only difference between mobile gaming and other forms is that the payment infrastructure was so easily accessible and seamless integrated. But 10+ years ago we had Farmville and then on mobile we had thing slike Candy Crush, Clash of Clans and so on. These aren't games. They're A/B tested addiction loops optimized to extract as much money from you…

I haven’t played in a while but Clash of Clans is a pretty decent and fun game underneath all of its addictive patterns.

WoW still has some of the best raid encounter design out right now.

I’m not disagreeing about the effect of performance marketing/aggressive growth strategies on the industry but this idea that there are “true” games and then everything else is like playing mindless slot machines doesn’t really make sense to me

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#106

Post by humaniania »

lewispollard wrote: post #4

It's a bit rich, given there are 14 paid DLCs for the latest Civ game, and they all have pretty negative reviews for being too expensive while adding little to the gameplay.

$15 for another week https://www.humblebundle.com/games/sid-meiers-ultimate-colle...

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#107

Post by bobthepanda »

dylan604 wrote: post #88
p1necone wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I notice the examples you're giving are all lower budget indie games, it's also worth pointing out that there's a /tonne/ of big budget games that also eschew this kind of nonsense. See: FromSoftware, basically anything that was a Sony published PS4 exclusive (Horizon Zero Dawn, Spiderman, Days Gone, Uncharted, etc etc), Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, basically everything Nintendo puts out, many many more (honestly I…

Not being a game dev, I've often wondered how much the mobile platform for games lowered the barier to entry compared to PC/console games. Unity came along and opened up a lot of doors for people, but I'm not sure how much it is used for mobile (should provide an idea of my knowledge--or lack of--in this area). Mobile games seems to just be flooded with copycat/clones with slight variations of the same game play with…

I think part of the problem is the games that ended up setting the tone for the platform. Consoles historically did a fair amount of vetting of titles on their platforms. Steam did not have programs like Greenlight or Early Access until later in its lifetime.

Mobile's games that set the tone were ad-supported tchotchkes with microtransactions and the rest is history.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#108

Post by 83457 »

tasha0663 wrote: post #86
Bombthecat wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea of nfts is cool, imagine star citizen where everyone could model ships and sell them as nft and set a counter of how many they sell (are available) the market should then set the value between work put in to design the ship, sell it and how many are available. So juat like right now, you could buy a ship for 5 dollar, cheaply designed and thousands are available (or endless) or get a unique nice and…

> imagine star citizen where everyone could model ships and sell them as nft and set a counter of how many they sell (are available) the market should then set the value between work put in to design the ship, sell it and how many are available. Uh, is that fun or am I back in economics class?

Yes

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#109

Post by dylan604 »

AniseAbyss wrote: post #101
dylan604 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being a game dev, I've often wondered how much the mobile platform for games lowered the barier to entry compared to PC/console games. Unity came along and opened up a lot of doors for people, but I'm not sure how much it is used for mobile (should provide an idea of my knowledge--or lack of--in this area). Mobile games seems to just be flooded with copycat/clones with slight variations of the same game play with…

There's a lot of money in gambling.

Yeah, I've met several people that use cashapp to send money to reload their account in games, and if they do well, they get paid their winnings via cashapp. Totally circumventing the 30% cut, and legality rules too. I'm sure it's a wackamole type of thing with games getting yanked off the stores.

These are targeted directly at addicts (not just gambling) as the game play is rather basic and just entertaining enough to keep that tweaker mindset occupied.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#110

Post by opportune »

RoddaWallPro wrote: post #65
34679 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understood Zuckerberg correctly during his Lex Fridman interview, he's trying to build an entire alternate reality based on this concept of monetizing in game items. He said something along the lines of, "People want to dress nice and look good in person, so why not in a VR meeting?" and then proceeded to talk about charging people for clothes and haircuts in the Metaverse. I have to wonder what sort of scenario…

It's laughable to me that with everything you could possibly do in the human universe as a billionaire (or even a run-of-the-mill-person), he's out here wanting to sell virtual clothes to people :facepalm:

They probably don't even want to sell virtual clothes. They just want to skim 30-80% off all the virtual clothes transactions with a "platform"
Post reply on HN