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Comment by Analog24 | Hacker News Reader

You have a point but it's also ridiculous that mobile game consumers expect every game to be free. Game studios often spend tens of thousands of hours developing a mobile game, why should that be free? The freemium model is just an unfortunate consequence of this cultural shift towards expecting all mobile apps to be free.

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Exactly. Freemium is an attempt to maximize revenue given the following parameters: 1) 99% of the population won't pay more than $0.99 for a game, regardless of its quality; 2) 1% of the population will pay a fuckton.

So what do you do within those parameters? You try to make a game that relies on #2 to subsidize #1. The alternatives? Release totally free games (where's the business model?). Release ad-supported games (everyone hates ads!). Release games on a flat subscription model. Or accept that the whales are your actual paying customer base, and make games explicitly for them.

By and large, the mobile gaming industry has concluded that the latter approach is the optimal way to run a profitable business. The result is the shitty, manipulative, cookie-cutter approach to game design that has become so dominant today. But unless and until some of the 99% of us decide that games are worth paying for upfront, this seems to be the world we're stuck in.

>Release ad-supported games (everyone hates ads!).

Do people hate ad-supported games more than they hate games that nag you to spend money on them constantly?

Not sure it matters. Only a small handful of people can turn a profit on a solely ad-backed games. The Flappy birds of the world, which immediately inspire a wash of cheap copy-cats. Games like subway surfers and sonic dash still need some IAP money -- a high production value game costs about $3m to make these days so no major studio would trust a solely ads backed game.

The mobile freemium model is exactly why I am so averse to spending money on mobile games. If I could spend $5 for a game and know that it is both worthwhile and fully available, I would do so. Instead, I've become cynical enough that I rarely bother unless the game is well-reviewed by sources I trust.

There are examples of games that got the freemium model right and are fairly successful as a result, and the pattern is always the same: start with a game with a fun core gameplay loop, do not gate gameplay content or progression behind paywalls, let players spend money on cosmetic/status symbols, or to more quickly progress in areas that could also be progressed more slowly without spending.

Warframe and Path of Exile do this and are seeing a good amount of success as a result.

One of the problems being ignored here is that, even if you only charge $1 for a game, I still have to trust you enough to give you my credit card info.

And this trust is actually far easier to earn if I am making larger purchases, not smaller ones. I'll spend $100 on something if I think it's a high-quality, one-time payment. But I won't even spend $1 on some seedy, risky experiment.

Distribution platforms mitigate this risk. These days, mobile app stores or services like Steam/Desura/Gog/Itch are what you trust, and they often have nice refund policies.

Well I've never heard of most of those, so why would I trust them? I mean, my phone basically pushes unwanted ads at me, so why would I do anything that would indicate that I'm willing to spend money over the phone?

Desura went bankrupt a few months ago, actually.

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