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Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

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Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#281

Post by rjf72 »

drngdds wrote: post #244
leggomylibro wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my favorite mobile games (an old Popcap title) used to have a version which cost ~$10 and was just a no-frills port of the original. No ads, no permissions beyond file storage, no issues working offline. But you can't buy that anymore; now the only option is a 'free' version which has ads that you cannot pay away. Fortunately I can still download the old version from the app store; now it is called 'zzSUNSET '…

Your best option by far for mobile gaming (if you're on Android) is to install an emulator for an old console/handheld and download/rip some games. It's unfortunate how bad the state of mobile gaming is, considering how powerful today's phones are.

"> It's unfortunate how bad the state of mobile gaming is, considering how powerful today's phones are."

Pretty simple reason. There's enough games that charge $0 up front that products asking for even $1 up front, get negligible downloads. Consequently, everybody has to charge $0 up front which immediately constrains you to advertising or mostly coercive business models. And this business model then ends up meshing into the game itself. It's not easy to have a game when you have this constraint of having to coerce the user into paying. It invariably lends itself to a sort of addiction + satiation pattern. And oddly what's most addictive is not necessarily the most fun; in many cases it's not really any fun at all.

Arguably it's the same reason console gaming is dying. Increasingly often now a days you're not buying a game for $60, you're buying a starter pack which is then filled out a la carte with DLC and various microtransactions. And once again this model directly impacts the game experience itself. It's stripped down to the bare bones to attempt to coerce purchase of the 'whole' game. But to further 'incentivize' people to buy the 'whole' game, the stripped out content is often not only necessary for a complete experience but also grossly imbalanced in the player's favor. It's a very myopic business model. Fortunately PC gaming is full of independent developers who've yet to grasp the sophisticated business strategy of MBAing yourself to death, and then blaming everything except your own actions for your deteriorating longterm results.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#282

Post by naravara »

TomMarius wrote: post #271
tedajax wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in mobile gaming at one point and the real "beyond the pale" moment was when I came in to work and one of our designers was reading a book titled something along the lines of "The Science of Addiction". Noped out of that and started getting a lot more critical when it comes to where I work with regard to ethics.

There are similar books catered towards social apps. Btw is there an ethical corporation? Not even LOB apps are fully ethical today.

I’d say many corporations are amoral, while the mobile gaming business is totally immoral.

Neither is good, but the latter is worse.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#283

Post by captainbland »

bluGill wrote: post #45
laurent123456 wrote: post #2

That would make sense. Ads are designed to be visible and clicked on, but on the other hand you can't go too far without annoying the users. It's a fine line to walk so it's not surprising you'd lose some users as a result. The unblockable ads they had on Facebook at some point is what finally pushed me to close my account.

Most web ads are designed to be clicked, but I firmly believe this is the wrong model. Ads should be designed not to get you to click/buy now. Ads should be designed to make you think about buying it latter. You see/hear a car ad, and next time you drive you think wouldn't it be nice if my car did X.

I think they do partly still retain that effect, but internet advertisers don't rate it so highly because it's hard to measure the effectiveness of.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#284

Post by Faark »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #280
dragonwriter wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My theory of the awfulness of phone games is that it's more about the fact that phones don't have any input devices. My theory of the awfulness of phone games is that awful, cookie cutter games on phones can make lots of money, so lots of firms are happy to churn them out on an assembly line, knowing that a certain percentage will succeed. There's enough not-awful phone games to establish that the platform doesn't…

> My theory of the awfulness of phone games is that awful, cookie cutter games on phones can make lots of money, so lots of firms are happy to churn them out on an assembly line, knowing that a certain percentage will succeed. They can only do this in the absence of competition from non-awful games. You claim that those games exist, but you don't support that claim in any way. Why do you think they haven't displaced…

You don't seem to follow the PC gaming industry that closely, otherwise you'd see it transforming. It started out with a strong tradition, so changes will take time, but loot-box-gambling, season passes, and similar predatory tactics in AAA games are a recent development and strongly on the rise.

Saying there are no good games on mobile is just ridiculous. Not just because quite a few decent PC games were closely ported to mobile, usually without predatory bullshit. But everything with a price sticker has to compete with "free". Saying the market will sort things out in favor of good games is just as ridiculous. Predatory tactics seem to work quite effectively, seem to make money for the industry and as such wont disappear anytime soon. Maybe if they go overboard and we consequently get some decent regulation.

There are a number of good reasons PC gaming is still a lot different from mobile, like how it started in a widely different position and still has quite different target audiences. But there is no indication it will stay that way, at least in terms of awful business practices.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#285

Post by Asooka »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #69
HenryBemis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not ethical.. but here is a work-around. On Android devices, install the (free-and no ads) 'NoRoot Firewall'. Then it takes some minutes to get used to it, but you ONLY 'Allow' connections that the game needs to operate (e.g. everything that goes to port 443 is an indicator, or everything to/from Akamai, AWS, Azure, Cloudfront), and 'Block' everything that goes to port 80 (which usually is AdJust, doubleclick…

Wouldn't it be simpler, more ethical, and send a stronger message to simply not play the game?

No, on the contrary. By playing the game and blocking ads you're sending the correct message that you like the game but don't want the ads. If you didn't play the game you would be sending the incorrect message that the game isn't popular and the market would work with incorrect information. Indeed, as far as digital goods go, correct word-of-mouth is the most important aspect of market information. Meaning, if you like something but it comes laden with ads, you are not only ethical in taking it and blocking the ads, it would be immoral if you were not to do so. Similarly, if a digital good is only available with draconian DRM or at too high a price, it would be unethical NOT to pirate it.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#286

Post by dragonwriter »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #280
dragonwriter wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My theory of the awfulness of phone games is that it's more about the fact that phones don't have any input devices. My theory of the awfulness of phone games is that awful, cookie cutter games on phones can make lots of money, so lots of firms are happy to churn them out on an assembly line, knowing that a certain percentage will succeed. There's enough not-awful phone games to establish that the platform doesn't…

> My theory of the awfulness of phone games is that awful, cookie cutter games on phones can make lots of money, so lots of firms are happy to churn them out on an assembly line, knowing that a certain percentage will succeed. They can only do this in the absence of competition from non-awful games. You claim that those games exist, but you don't support that claim in any way. Why do you think they haven't displaced…

> They can only do this in the absence of competition from non-awful games.

No, they can only do this because there's actually a solid market for what I (and I assume you) see as awful games for extremely portable handheld devices; essentially, I think they are pretty much digital fidget spinners.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#287

Post by kelnos »

marcosdumay wrote: post #192
kelnos wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My (naive) hope was that after a while they'd give up. Is there a better response, you think, that would possibly decrease the number of ads I see?

The "not relevant" button certainly means "please, show me other kinds of ads".

I've tried "I see this too often" for a period of time without any better results.

And in the end, I don't really see much variety in the ads I see. Decent variety in account/company, but very little variety in product/market type.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#288

Post by novaleaf »

the_gipsy wrote: post #208
braythwayt wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not their target market. Most of these companies make all of their money from "whales," people who play around the clock and spend a significant amount of money per month on in-app purchases and/or subscriptions. They have optimized their experience for finding and landing whales, and at the end of the day, you are probably an irritant to them, walking around complaining about the game while contributing so l…

Whales have nothing to do with ads.

kids are ad whales.

from my own observations (2 pre-teen kids) they are infinently patient in sitting through ad after in order to keep playing.

I used to freely install any highly rated free-to-play educational game. Now I only install paid stuff, as those don't have these pathological ads.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#289

Post by lazyjones »

bduerst wrote: post #154
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would allow websites to essentially pay for higher search results. // Isn't this exactly what Google does? Paid placements put you above organic results in the SERPs, presumably other search sites do that too.

Yes, and they mark them as ads so users know that they're promoted and not organic search results. Allowing websites to buy ads to affect their organic placing would affect the quality of search results.

> Yes, and they mark them as ads so users know that they're promoted and not organic search results.

And over the years they've added more ads on top of the organic results (instead of the sidebar) and made them less distinguishable.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#290

Post by shittyadmin »

shittyadmin wrote: post #233
viraptor wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually like a "skill shareware" (my made up name) model in puzzle games. When you have lots of levels, you split them into groups. You can only advance to the next one if you solve all previous ones perfectly, (3 stars / 100% / some other metric) or pay for full unlock. I've never been on the other side, so I don't know how well that converts. But as a customer, I love the idea. "Euclidea" does this for example:…

As a customer it may be great, but this isn't great for the developer in my opinion. Perhaps it's just the way I play, but I will already refuse to advance until I've got a level fully beaten, so I'll basically keep at that until I get bored of your game or beat it fully and you'll never see a penny from me.

To add to this a bit, it also provides a motivation for developers to make games that are too hard and will force users to pay if they want to enjoy them, but people who play like I do will get bored quickly.

This is why I loved the old Peggle games from PopCap but hate the new mobile one.

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