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Hipmunk Says Goodbye

hipmunk.com

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Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#261

Post by dmix »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #173
majormajor wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand you using consolidation and abuse of power as a reason to dislike regulation. There are plenty of non-regulatory incentives for consolidation. Why not simply regulate consolidation? Target large holding companies and megacorps with aggressive taxation policies on revenue or headcount or market cap or similar? And then enforce the regulation with teeth? There are always going to be creative people c…

I have always used this argument and agree with it. When it becomes obvious that a corporation is large and too powerful bust it up. Don't regulate the industry so much that you price control things (essentially) and add so many regulations that an army of lawyers is necessary to navigate. Industries almost always tend toward monopolies/oligopolies as people tend to try and concentrate power. Our Constitution (as lon…

I have similar views regarding nation state sizes. secessions are extremely rare and all we're left with is legacy states as guiding examples. Apparently federalism and confederation within larger entities has long ago lost it's allure, especially in the US.

I'm convinced the "political divide" that the US has long featured, well before the internet and the 2016 election, was largely to due to its size and expansive heterogeneousness.

Meanwhile the liberals look with envy at the governments of smaller states like Scandinavia, Australia, Canada, and others, with by compartision - a far smaller representative governments and very often less direct gov economic intervention (they prefer to gloss over that part) parthttps://www.wikiwand.com/en/Index_of_Economic_Freedom.

The US used to value its state-driven system with priority, the judiciary branch still seems to which I why I adore them - but the same can't be found in confress and senare, and I think it's long due for them to remembrance state sovereignty.

Each state should be as originally designed - individual experimental grounds for which other states to learn. If California or Oregon wants to be a super-liberal mecca - let them be - with aggressive climate policy and what not. Then they provide the world with a functioning model which to copy assuming it works well for them. Same with Texas or New Hampshire...if they really want to adopt a more

I loathe this trend towards the federal government doing and enforcing everything. It defeats a fundamental founding principles of the founding fathers - liberty via strong state sovereignty.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#262

Post by Jasper_ »

danaris wrote: post #229
Jasper_ wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The industry of mobile apps and games has seen rates go unsustainably low, often to 99c or free, causing them to make up the difference with in-app purchases, ad networks, tracking, and lots and lots of psychological tricks. Nobody can dare simply sell a game on the iOS or Google Play store for $5 or $10 anymore, because there's far more "free" ones out there. This has turned lots of people off of these storefronts.…

> Nobody can dare simply sell a game on the iOS or Google Play store for $5 or $10 anymore Except that's patently false. All you have to do is look briefly on the iOS App Store and you'll find plenty of games for $5+. Sure, there are a lot more that are "free (with in-app purchases)", but the idea that no one can make money in the space is just totally absurd. Furthermore, even if what you said was true, it would not…

> All you have to do is look briefly on the iOS App Store and you'll find plenty of games for $5+.

Yeah. They tend to have low sales numbers. I worked on one. Just because they exist, doesn't mean they make return on investment. When we switched to a free-to-play model for our next game, we made a lot more money in ads and IAPs.

> because people are still making money off those freemium games

Airlines took up of the practice of nickle-and-diming the customer to get the initial sticker shock down, since that's basically all anybody ever competed on. If that price gets any lower, the amount of extra addons and fees will have to go way up to compensate, or service will get cut.

Just because some people are making money, doesn't mean it's a healthy market. I think most experts would agree that the mobile game market is incredibly unhealthy.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#263

Post by acdha »

danaris wrote: post #229
Jasper_ wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The industry of mobile apps and games has seen rates go unsustainably low, often to 99c or free, causing them to make up the difference with in-app purchases, ad networks, tracking, and lots and lots of psychological tricks. Nobody can dare simply sell a game on the iOS or Google Play store for $5 or $10 anymore, because there's far more "free" ones out there. This has turned lots of people off of these storefronts.…

> Nobody can dare simply sell a game on the iOS or Google Play store for $5 or $10 anymore Except that's patently false. All you have to do is look briefly on the iOS App Store and you'll find plenty of games for $5+. Sure, there are a lot more that are "free (with in-app purchases)", but the idea that no one can make money in the space is just totally absurd. Furthermore, even if what you said was true, it would not…

I was curious — right now in the US store, 1/25 most popular (This War of Mine) is not freemium. 1/25 “Essential Picks” (Minecraft) is not freemium.

I think your second point depends on how you divide things: clearly there is money in gaming but it does seem like it’s hard to make a game which doesn’t rely on IAP and slot-machine design — so much so that Apple launched an entire service to change the market dynamics.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#264

Post by Jasper_ »

PeterisP wrote: post #256
wrkronmiller wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much these in-app-purchase tactics would be mitigated by Apple/Google listing the median per-person spend for each app: e.e “Free (with average $5.00 in-app fees)”

The median will likely be 0 for almost all apps; it would be outrageously, extraordnary successful for a freemium app to convert 50% of its users to paying customers. The mean is also uninformative - for many games the majority of revenue is provided by a small number of 'whales', and their behavior is not representative for a normal user. Perhaps a histogram would give an accurate impression, but I'm unsure whether…

The latest numbers I've heard is that if you get 10% of your userbase to pay at least once, you're doing incredibly healthily. Whales tend to be a handful-per-100,000 ratio, but they spend like nothing else. Loot boxes are ridiculously effective because whales will roll for them until they get the rare prize, spending thousands of dollars in the process.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#267

Post by wpietri »

Jasper_ wrote: post #216
wpietri wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if sale below M.A.P. drops the bottom out of a market and kills an industry, the product can disappear from common production and the consumer doesn't benefit in the long run Is there an example of this happening anywhere in recent history? I ask because it seems absurd to me that there is an industry so fragile that retailers taking a bit less profit would lead to sudden, total collapse. (And doubly absurd this mi…

The industry of mobile apps and games has seen rates go unsustainably low, often to 99c or free, causing them to make up the difference with in-app purchases, ad networks, tracking, and lots and lots of psychological tricks. Nobody can dare simply sell a game on the iOS or Google Play store for $5 or $10 anymore, because there's far more "free" ones out there. This has turned lots of people off of these storefronts.…

The claim was "kills an industry". SensorTower puts 2019 mobile games revenue at over $60 billion. [1] That doesn't sound very dead to me.

[1] https://sensortower.com/blog/app-revenue-and-downloads-2019

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#268

Post by wpietri »

Spooky23 wrote: post #232
wpietri wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if sale below M.A.P. drops the bottom out of a market and kills an industry, the product can disappear from common production and the consumer doesn't benefit in the long run Is there an example of this happening anywhere in recent history? I ask because it seems absurd to me that there is an industry so fragile that retailers taking a bit less profit would lead to sudden, total collapse. (And doubly absurd this mi…

Huh? Airlines have a long history of self destruction through price wars. When I was in college, I would fly southwest to catch baseball games in Baltimore, for less than $100.

Sure. That's how competition works. But they claim is "kills an industry". As far as I know, people still fly to Baltimore despite a history of sometimes-low prices.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#269

Post by axus »

danaris wrote: post #229
Jasper_ wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The industry of mobile apps and games has seen rates go unsustainably low, often to 99c or free, causing them to make up the difference with in-app purchases, ad networks, tracking, and lots and lots of psychological tricks. Nobody can dare simply sell a game on the iOS or Google Play store for $5 or $10 anymore, because there's far more "free" ones out there. This has turned lots of people off of these storefronts.…

> Nobody can dare simply sell a game on the iOS or Google Play store for $5 or $10 anymore Except that's patently false. All you have to do is look briefly on the iOS App Store and you'll find plenty of games for $5+. Sure, there are a lot more that are "free (with in-app purchases)", but the idea that no one can make money in the space is just totally absurd. Furthermore, even if what you said was true, it would not…

I just bought Stardew Valley for $5, encouraged by my expiring Google Rewards credits :D
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