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Comment by eloff | Hacker News Reader

I see this as hugely superior to the freemium model, both from the perspective of the user and the app developers. App developers no longer need to cripple their apps and sell in-app band-aids to make money. The developers of the more entertaining and engaging apps will make more money. End users no longer spend a bunch of time on a game only to find out they need to pay to advance to the next part, or bypass some artificial restriction that shouldn't be there.

It just seems like a much more civil relationship.

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This model comes with a few problems:

1) High quality games that are meant to be completed quickly will make less money relative to poor quality games that stretch out gameplay.

2) Developers become incentivized to stretch out gameplay to increase revenue.

3) Amazon Underground is covering the costs for now. But if users were asked to pay themselves, I'm sure many would balk at the idea of paying per-minute to play games.

All that aside, this is an interesting idea. I could see episodic games particularly benefiting from this model -- so long as they don't fall into the trap of stretching out gameplay to increase revenue.

How are 1) and 2) different than the status quo? Aren't developers already incentivized to keep users in their app for as long as possible? More touch points -> more IAP buying opportunities -> more money.

> 3) Amazon Underground is covering the costs for now. But if users were asked to pay themselves, I'm sure many would balk at the idea of paying per-minute to play games.

As I understand it, it's not a pay-per-minute sort of deal. You'd pay the same price every month and the revenue would be divied out based on usage (like Netflix).

Point 1 and 2 seem like the same thing, but I agree.

Points (1) and (2) are true for ad-supported games in general. What Underground provides is a way for games developers to be able to provide a low-barrier ad-supported version of their game while being completely unconcerned with ads. It essentially allows the developer to engage in two different business models (pay-for-install and ad-supported) without that dual-model creeping into the implementation of the game. In that respect, this developer-player inter-mediation is more of a threat to Valve's Steam than it is for Google's Play store.

That sounds like baseless FUD. Underground is essentially the TV model. While some TV shows do stretch out longer than they need to in order to milk the audience, there are plenty of high quality ones that don't, and many people who have less time watch those instead, or pay for premium, short-time experiences like movies. Which we all know are just as likely to be of low quality despite their reduced length. Meanwhile, people who just want something on all the time they are at home have plenty of decent content to fill their time with.

The high quality shows that don't stretch out the plot are the "must have" shows that drive cable subscription numbers and are somewhat disjoint from ad revenue.

There are number of differences that mean Underground is not "essentially the TV model" when it comes to economic incentives. But, there are some similarities that can help us seem what some of the behaviours are going to be for content producers.

- Traditional TV has fixed length programming windows. No station is going to pay you more if you turn your 30 minute show into a 35 minute show. - However, you might get more money by turning your (25 minutes of content + 5 minutes of ads) show into a (22 minutes of content + 8 minutes of ads) show.

- And, setting up your show to end on a cliff-hanger and encourage viewers to come back next week is great for audience and therefore revenue. That's not "milking the audience" but it is structuring the system/content to maximise revenue.

- TV Content Producers are not generally paid "per minute" but according to its popularity with target demographics. That leads to trying to get more overall audience, rather than just more time. That will be true for underground as well, and it will certainly be the case that content producers will want as many users as possible to use their app as often as possible. But, the economics are such that for a lot of apps, getting existing users to consume for longer is a cheaper avenue than getting new users.

- That said, TV producers often try to spin-off new shows form old ones in order to get more airtime (& more dollars) for a brand. The TV industry graveyard is full of lessons like "Joanie loves Chachi". We similar stories in the app world, expect more of them.

The parent comment isn't FUD in any sense of the word.

Everything gdeglin said is true - just like in-app purchases have encouraged a whole genre of games where you pay to escape the grind, earn-per-minute games are likely to produce an equivalent genre of "just make that cut-scene run for 15 seconds longer" games.

Follow the money. If content producers are paid per minute consumed, then the owners of many of the game publishers will start making decisions that stretch the same amount of actual game play into a longer interaction.

I submitted my reply before being aware of the advertising model Amazon had for this.

It changes things slightly, but I think the issue remains. As you say, the problem certainly exists on television. Most shows do have lots of filler content in addition to frequent advertisements, and the ones that don't often require a more expensive subscription.

I generally agree, but it seems like it could have some bad side-effects if it becomes a popular business model, though.

There are a handful of interesting paid apps that are very short, unique experiences - which don't try to drag out the game to keep you playing it every day for months.

Its already getting harder and harder to actually sell/buy apps for money upfront, and this seems like it will make it even harder. And while I seem to be in a tiny minority of 'app' consumers, that is still my preferred method of obtaining new applications.

> And while I seem to be in a tiny minority of 'app' consumers, that is still my preferred method of obtaining new applications.

I would be in this minority as well. Generally, the cost for a good app is so negligible it's not even worth the time to try it beforehand. I paid roughly $5 for a full FTP/SFTP client on my phone. The free version offers 90% of the functionality.

I don't understand the appeal of leasing software.

If interstitial ads were superior to the freemium model the market would already reflect that but it doesn't. The freemium model has just become a silly bogeyman in these discussions. Yes it can be abusive, yes it can be implemented horribly, just like any other pricing system. OTOH freemium is often best for both developers (differential pricing maximizes revenue) as well as users (rich whales are happy to pay, others are happy to be subsidized by them).

Except it sounds like amazon is putting their own ads in the games. So basically this is a complete fail.

Maybe ... but it hugely depends on the per minute price Amazon are paying.

The same thing could have been said about streaming music services and yet many artists seem not too happy about the per play $ they get from Spotify & ilk (though they are probably bound to say that regardless to some extent)

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