U.S. adults are spending big on video games, playing mostly on smartphones | Hacker News Reader

U.S. adults are spending big on video games, playing mostly on smartphones

reuters.com

117 pointsVaslo135 comments

Key takeaways here for me:

"The $43.4 billion spent in 2018 was mostly on content, as opposed to hardware and accessories."

"Nearly 65 percent of U.S. adults, or more than 164 million people, play games. The most popular genre is casual games, with 60 percent of players gaming on their smartphones"

The combination of these two items leads me to conclude that microtransactions in casual games are winning in the financial sense, despite the complaints of "hardcore" gamers.

> microtransactions in casual games are winning in the financial sense, despite the complaints of "hardcore" gamers.

I'm not a "hardcore" gamer - I'm incredibly casual. I hate microtransactions because the focus has switched to "addictive" play rather than "rewarding" play. Microtransactions are usually BAD for casuals - You might have 10 minutes to play but can only play for 5 mins without paying up. You might have one night a week to play, but it wants you to log in for a few minutes every couple of hours, etc.

BUT the lack of alternatives means that there will be plenty of money spent on them. So I think this is a matter of "microtransactions out-earn flat cost games despite likely player preferences", not "hardcore vs casual".

Rewarding play is addictive play - the rewards are why its addictive.

There's people who've put 10,000 hours into Diablo 2, for example, a game that is incredibly repetitive at the highest level - they play for the chance of that one great random drop.

Microtransaction games generally trade money or time, and then put barriers up on the time, or increase it vastly. The difference is when it feels like you're being asked for money it turns it exploitive, rather than being asked to spend 100 hours waiting for a yellow item to drop (that being more akin to "skill" and "investment").

Players want their reward fix. Microtransaction games are frequently like a watered-down drug. Just like social media, I don't think that just because people use them means they're a good thing - its junk food for the mind.

> Rewarding play is addictive play - the rewards are why its addictive

true, but addictive gameplay isn't necessarily rewarding. That's the critical difference I was trying to emphasize.

I think it is - you're being rewarded with "progress", even as the game gives you the concept.

That's "a reward". I'm talking about whether at the end of a gaming session you feel good and would like to play again (rewarding) or if you feel unfulfilled and want to play more try and get that fulfillment. Rewarding.

> they play for the chance of that one great random drop

You know, I've always been confused by this: if a game is using random chance to require probabilistic hours/days of effort in order to find some drop, my first response to finding that out is not "grinding for the drop", but rather "hacking the game to give myself that thing." (First thing that comes to mind: the Sword of Kings in Earthbound.)

In such cases, the only thing standing in my way of the goal is mindless—and totally automatable—repetition. I could write a bot to grind a Sword of Kings for me. Heck, I could download someone else's bot they already wrote. So what's the difference between downloading+running such a bot, and just editing the game in a save-game editor to give myself the sword? Same amount of effort. Same reward. Either way I'm not really "playing the game." But either way, I get to skip the part of the game that isn't fun, and get back to doing something that is fun.

The only place where I feel that this approach doesn't apply, is when the game isn't using HWRNG randomness, but rather deterministic seed-based randomness, like Minecraft or many modern roguelikes. If the resources I want are only available down on the 90th floor of the dungeon in this seed—and that's a deterministic fact-of-life of the seed—then that's just the scenario I signed up to play, and I'll accept it. But, of course, with such systems, I get to "choose my luck" by looking for a generous or mean seed someone else discovered during their own playthrough (or using a bot to scan for such seeds.)

> You know, I've always been confused by this: if a game is using random chance to require probabilistic hours/days of effort in order to find some drop, my first response to finding that out is not "grinding for the drop", but rather "hacking the game to give myself that thing." (First thing that comes to mind: the Sword of Kings in Earthbound.)

I don't think I was nearly as smart as you but Maplestory was actually my first introduction to computing.

The game was really grindy and required you to just use your mana (I was a mage), and then sit to recover it, and then go back to killing stuff. It seems like they didn't do server side checks so I actually learned how to use a memory editor and just save the mana field which made it so that it didn't go down.

Of course, the problem with this is that it morally questionable since it gives you an unfair advantage and gets you banned.

People _like_ doing something repetitively and getting random rewards. It triggers reward systems in the brain.

I can understand that when it takes a few minutes at most before—if not the reward you’re looking for—at least some kind of reinforcement stimulus (e.g., with a slot machine, seeing two of the three wheels line up, making you feel like you “almost got it.”) That seems “fun”, if just due to a bug in human brain-hardware that you should probably not want-to-want.

But these games don’t work like this. When you’re trying to find a rare drop, there’s nothing giving you the feeling that you’re getting any “closer” to it. You just have to throw days of blind dice rolls for no reward at the game, before it’ll turn around and give you the reward once. Variable-schedule rewards shouldn’t actually work at that sparse a frequency. People who get easily addicted to things don’t usually find themselves grinding for rare drops.

The people who do do this kind of grinding are people with big reserves of determination. And I don’t really get what they get out of it.

It builds up. Early in the game you get useful drops very quickly, and slowly slowly over time the frequency goes down until you grind for weeks just waiting for that single drop.

One incentive is that you get other more common drops along the way which help beef up your arsenal and help you progress at faster and faster rates.

Good observation about Diablo. Diablo 1 was the last Blizzard game whose art style I liked, but I stopped playing when I realized that I was clicking on enemies until they're dead. The actual core game mechanics are garbage.

I recently finished Titan Quest (with the latest expansion), a Diablo clone. And I found that most of the gameplay wasn't just clicking: it was choosing on which enemy to click (to prioritise the most dangerous enemy first for example), when and where to use my skills/scrolls/potions; then outside of combat, which equipment to use, which skills/stats to upgrade, which upgrade to apply on which piece of equipment. Another important part was also the art style/ambience of the levels, which was an important part of my enjoyment of the game.

On the other hand I spent little time grinding and have little desire to play the game a second time on harder difficulty.

That is exactly the same as Diablo and all true. The metagame is moderately interesting and the artwork / ambiance / style (in Diablo 1, for me) is nice.

Yes, that's why I disagreed with the idea that Diablo = click on enemies until they're dead; it's a little more than that.

I enjoyed Diablo 2 a lot when I was younger but didn't care anywhere near as much for my experience with 3. I think the main issue is that with 2 I mostly played it in the same room as friends I was playing it with, and it was more something to do while we would hang out and talk to each other. I played with friends when I played 3 too, but it wasn't in person and I think that hurt it

I was old enough to play the Diablos, Starcraft and Warcraft when they came out. When I was kid playing Diablo it don’t bother me. When Diablo III came out I played it as an adult and realize it was just clicking. I hated the game. Starcraft is still nice but I don’t play it.

Almost bought Diablo for my Switch this year and recalled how much of it is just clicking.

Or perhaps Diablo III wasn't a very good game?

Would you apply the same reasoning to card games like Hearthstone or Magic Arena?

I was thinking about Hearthstone reading his comment, it's exactly like that -- huge time investment if you want to pay nothing or a little bit, less time investment if you pay.

That said, the amount you have to pay to get a large collection in Hearthstone is staggering, if you drop $80 every few months for the next expansion you still only have a few of the epic and legendary cards.

And those cards become useless in 9 months as they rotate out of standard. Have a great deck you find fun to play one month? Gauranteed it no longer works after another 2. It’s an incredibly efficient scheme to make you want to buy more packs, if you’ve decided you want to be good at the game.

I can talk only for myself, but flat cost games lost me years ago. They either were not making games I liked or did not marketed them where I could find them. Effectively, I was unable to find a game I would enjoy without paying too much for games I did not.

Free to play games with microtransactions I liked were easy to find and whenever I guessed wrong, attempt was for free.

So for all the crumbling, there are people like me who gained on that development.

I could not name a single microtransactions game that offers a similarly deep or atmospheric or satisfying experience as, say, Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3, Final Fantasy X or a round of multiplayer Mario Kart. Can you..?

Virtually all free to play and free online games I know are exploiting human psychological vulnerabilities in some way or another to keep you playing. Those games leave me completely unsatisfied.

> I could not name a single microtransactions game

Ms. Pacman, Arcade Tetris, Street Fighter II Turbo.

The "microtransactions" games of the 80s and 90s were the ORIGINAL video games, the arcade scene. I miss the atmosphere and the ability to physically meet friends, but ultimately, they were microtransaction games nonetheless.

I've sunk more time into honing my skills in Ms. Pacman than most modern RPGs. Multiplayer Competitive Tetris is probably my #2 game (through the game Puyo Puyo Tetris). Arcade-style 3-minute games are far easier to get into, AND easy to stop playing (!!). They are games that respect my time, yet provide a deep, and rewarding skill curve.

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TMNT Arcade, X-men arcade, Final Fight, Simpsons, Time Crisis, Missle Command, Millipede, etc. etc. There were a bunch of other arcade games that took up a lot of my time and are also excellent. I'll give Ms. Pacman the title for probably most influential arcade game though.

I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with the microtransactions model per se. There's a LOT of bad microtransaction games out there, but that's because they're skinner-boxes optimized for addictive gameplay.

The older arcade games were tests of skill, and more than just a skinner box / slot machine loot box crate. You're not spending money at the arcade for the chance of a rare card or rare drop. If someone made an arcade-game skinner box, it'd be quickly forgotten (Ms. Pacman arcades would have been sitting next to it, and no one would seriously play a skinner-box game if Ms. Pacman were so close).

> but ultimately, they were microtransaction games nonetheless.

I would argue that "casual game with microtransactions" is a particular design philosophy, and arcade games don't actually share this philosophy. Sure, both games have you constantly paying small amounts, but consider:

In an arcade game, if you get really good, one quarter can let you play for hours. Arcade games effectively charge bad players more for their time, with time-cost trending toward zero as skill increases. So there's effectively a finite amount of money any given player will ever have to spend on the game (unless they hit a skill ceiling, get stuck not making any progress, but continue to find the game fun nevertheless—which is rare); and skill at many types of games are "portable", such that money you spend learning one arcade game is money you don't then have to spend learning another similar game.

In a modern casual F2P game, skill at the game's mechanics is entirely orthogonal to the thing you're paying for. Sometimes this means that the thing you're paying for doesn't affect the mechanics, e.g. skins. But other times this means that both good and bad players can "pay to win", and that there's no point at which you're so good that it would no longer make sense to give the game money.

Imagine a competitive arcade game with a point-based leaderboard on its attract screen (e.g. most racing games, games like Donkey Kong or Pac-Man, etc.) But imagine that, instead of needing to pay to play and quarters equalling continues, instead, anyone can play for free, but quarters increase your score by 1000 points (with no indication that this was done.) Even the top players would need to take advantage of this to show up on the leaderboard, because if they didn't, they wouldn't rank, since all the other top players had.

All of these may have classics status but are actually very shallow experiences too. As you say they were rewarding skilled players and were not simply offering lottery tickets with dopamine-engineered random patterns to children, but they are still not comparable at all to the ones mentioned. Arcade games were also often notoriously hard and required a lot of invested money to reach the leaderboard. The fact that less dark and more social, but similar money making schemes existed in the 80s in the form of arcades doesn't make them better.

Of course these shallow experiences are reproduced on mobile nowadays. Match-3 games were a staple of all gaming generations and even reached some depth (Puzzle Quest) before they completely moved to mobile in the form of exploitative skinnerware.

> Arcade games were also often notoriously hard and required a lot of invested money to reach the leaderboard.

I don't recall ever getting to the leaderboard on Ms. Pacman in my youth. I get it today, but that's mostly because kids these days suck at the game and the leaderboards are empty.

Case in point: the most OG game was probably Whack-a-mole, in existence in some form since the early 1900s. There's no leaderboard: you play the game because its fun. Sometimes there are prizes, but more often than not, its just an arcade booth sitting by itself with a few quarters and a hammer.

Arcade games of the 80s were similar: Ms. Pacman, Missile Command, etc. etc. were just short burst games to take up time while your parents shopped elsewhere in the mall.

By the 90s, arcade games began to have longer, more cohesive stories. You could theoretically get to the end of "Simpsons" or "TMNT", but more often than not... people put a quarter or two for the first level, died, and moved on with their life. Its there just for fun and pure enjoyment.

You seem to assume that everyone shares your preference for "depth" and distaste for "shallow".

That is just not how it is and that is also my point.

Wither 3 would require me to take holidays or ignore familly duties for weeks. Aaand it is not the kind of game I ever liked anyway (even if I had that time).

I understand that other people like it, but these games are not for me.

It is very similar with other games you mentioned. Not for me at all (maybe Mario kart would be exception for occasional play).

> Wither 3 would require me to take holidays or ignore familly duties for weeks.

This argument comes up often, but I as soemone who also has limited time I can't understand it. Nobody forces you to finish huge games like The Witcher 3 in weeks, months or even years. It just means that the price of such a game buys you a lot and long-lasting entertainment (assuming you like the content). Just take your time, use the free evening that may come up every few weeks and enjoy the game much longer than most people.

Admittedly, 10 minute play sessions won't work in this case, but if you never have more time than that available, I'd say there are other things to consider, but it's not my place to judge.

It is not fun in one evening per few weeks. You won't remember beginning by the time you proceed into like 10% of the game. I really doubt there is anyone who could enjoy the game like that. Three years later when you reached ending, you likely don't care about story anymore. Sounds like chore when played that way - something you do out of duty not out of enjoyment. Plus as I said, I would not liked that game even if I had time.

Second, it is time where you can't be interrupted, so you can't do it while kids don't sleep yet (or you basically expect partner to handle it for you). It is huge chunk of regular time when you also ignore partner and are not learning something for the job are not exercising etc. That is not available three times per week in two hours long minimum chunks.

There are more then one reason why this is not for me and hated mobile games with microtransactions are something I actually enjoy. There is nothing wrong with that. There is no reason to force myself into playing games that are just annoying to me.

> I could not name a single microtransactions game that offers a similarly deep or atmospheric or satisfying experience as, say, Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3, Final Fantasy X or a round of multiplayer Mario Kart. Can you..?

I'm not sure what you consider a "microtransaction game" but LoL and dota 2 are both completely free and have huge hardcore followings. I believe CS: GO is also free to play now.

They're significantly more involved than Mario Kart at the very least.

LoL has the esports aspect and Riot is careful about pay-to-win therefore, and keeps it interesting for competitions. It is indeed probably one of the least exploitative companies in that field. Its competition aspect is extremely addictive and easy to fall for though, and may ultimately leave you unsatisfied from thousands of repetitive gaming hours if you don't become engaged in real life esports / hobbyist communities in parallel. Not sure whether it is engineered to hook players so much though (Fortnite probably is).

With "Mario Kart multiplayer" I mean the experience of 4-player couch multiplayer, not online multiplayer.

I'd say Warframe made a good attempt on the satisfying experience at least.

shattered pixel dungeon is one such example imo.

But Shattered Pixel Dungeons has no microtransactions, it is a roguelike. Btw, this genre makes use of the same psychological vulnerabilities to random rewards, they just use them to make a real (admittedly often well-designed) game and not for exploiting my bank account.

That’s been true since the days of FarmVille, and one of the reasons Zynga was at a time worth more on the market than EA.

Financially the gambling engines have eaten classic gamings lunch.

And that's the unfortunate truth of why they arent going away anytime soon. Personally I believe that microtransactions should be considered a Dark Pattern, and I might consider supporting legislation that targets them, if it's ever brought up.

> I might consider supporting legislation that targets them, if it's ever brought up.

Well then, it's your lucky day: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/05/senator-hawley-announ...

Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) today announced plans to introduce "The Protecting Children from Abusive Games Act," which would target "the exploitation of children through 'pay-to-win' and 'loot box' monetization practices by the video game industry," according to a summary released by Hawley's office.

If you want your bill passed, aren't you meant to make the acronym spell something snappy, and include something no one could be seen to vote against? I'd call it the Protecting American Children from Monetization, Abuse and Narcotics act.

That Hawley, quite a record he got for a novice politician. He is quite zealous, while not seemingly doing that solely for promoting his image.

I will watch his progression with a lot of interest

Oh yea I saw this, the loot boxes arent even an argument to me, they should have been glassed years ago

If you look at buying games, expansions, etc., there seems to be a trend. Ranking them in order of content/$, it goes as follows:

Games > Expansions > DLC > MTX >> MTX that contain temporary boosts only >> Loot boxes.

In my mind, banning MTX's seems to be on the same level as banning DLCs in general. They are a worse value, but they are the same kind of thing. Personally I wouldn't support banning MTX's.

I would definitely support loot boxes being treated as gambling (ban for those under 18, regulation for adults). MTX's containing only temporary boosts is something I've yet to decide upon.

Also, I think that tcg booster packs (like with Magic) should be classified as loot boxes/gambling and treated the same under any loot box law.

The reason why I mention mtx specifically vs things like normal DLCs is because I do feel that they are a dark pattern, one of the reasons they are so successful is because its intentionally easy to forget how much you are spending, and you often dont realize until it's far too late, if you realize at all. And I agree totally on the booster pack point, I've also always felt that way.

> intentionally easy to forget how much you are spending

Which is why a lot of mtx are using some kind of "prenium" currency that's bought with real money, usually in increments different from the prices in the item shop (so that you always have some left-over); then there's the limited revolving selection, to use FOMO (currently used by Fortnite, for example)

If I want to buy a fortnite skin, who are you or the government to tell me I can’t?

If I want to buy radium water, who are you or the government to tell me I can't?

When your jaw falls off in your front yard and my dog eats it and gets cancer it becomes my problem. When the state builds you a special lead coffin and taxpayers foot the bill it becomes a problem for society.

Good question. If I harm no other, and if I am not deceived as to known side effects, why ought I not to be able to do so?

The point of regulation is not to prevent you, the consumer, from making an informed decision to damage yourself. The point is to prevent the producer from exploiting uninformed human vulnerabilities. In the case of quack medicine, we have an easily exploited glitch in our brains that makes us associate exotic substances with medicine. In the case of gambling and microtransactions, we are easily exploited by the "gambler's fallacy." Just one more roll...

Intelligent humans notice things like wasting $16 and 60 minutes on an utterly worthless gaming experience or getting a 3 minute buzz from a cigarette or a crack rock and put together value equations. It's not the government's job to tell people what they can and can't do with regards to harming themselves, it's the government's job to make sure the labels are accurate.

Which is why nobody's addicted to crack and there's no problem! /s

The notion that people are perfectly free and rational entities is a dangerous fallacy. People don't have perfect information, they don't make perfect decisions, and if there's something the government can do that improves the lives of many while inconveniencing few, then it's absolutely the government's job.

There exist substances which will get you addicted instantly. Do these have any place in a free market? Where does the rational "value equation" come in to that?

The problem with crack isn't the cocaine it's the format. Crack is the chemical equivalent of a freemium game, no buy-in and once a user's involved they only pay a few bucks for each subsequent hit. A few dollars quickly adds up to much more than that same person would have spent on an entire 8ball if they were capable of delaying gratification, but they aren't. Console-type games that you pay more for and only pay for once are the digital 8ball to freemium's digital crack rock, addictive but not nearly as destructive.

Perfect Information is what the government needs to guarantee and regulate, not morality. Apps need to be transparent and honest and substances need accurate labeling and purity from contaminants. Heroin is a one-way ticket to pain and degeneracy and everyone in the Western world knows this; it's a terrible value that generally only appeals to someone who's already hooked on opiates.

>The point of regulation is not to prevent you, the consumer, from making an informed decision to damage yourself. The point is to prevent the producer from exploiting uninformed human vulnerabilities. In the case of quack medicine, we have an easily exploited glitch in our brains that makes us associate exotic substances with medicine.

So why don't we regulate/ban quack medicine then?

We do. Dunno what country you're from, but in the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Food_and_Drug_A...

Sorry, that's BS. Here in the US, we have chiropractors, homeopathy, TCM, and other "alternative medicine", all making tons of money, and the FDA doesn't do anything at all about it.

Or people could not buy microtransactions or support games and studios that use them. Seems like something the free market could regulate without legislation.

> Or people could not buy microtransactions or support games and studios that use them.

That's about as helpful as telling people to solve their gambling issue by not gambling. The problem is that many of these microtransaction-based games use the same mechanics as gambling to make them addictive _and_ they're targeting minors with it.

If you are talking about real money loot crates/boxes/packages (as opposed to in game earned virtual currency) you are quite literally talking about gambling. In the case of some games, marketed directly to minors. I am about as free market solution as it gets, but I definitely draw the line at exploiting children (and defrauding their parents simultaneously)

The people who have most issues with gambling addiction play competitive online games. Microtransactions or not, it is competitive online that has people spend all time in game world and their partners wish a new partner.

> Seems like something the free market could regulate without legislation.

Given that this is not occurring, it does not "seem like" this.

People want to play the game, why is it you (or the government's) job to tell them not to? It's their money, if playing a gacha game is fun for them, I really don't see the problem.

With gambling people may be driven to gamble to get out of debt. With gacha games, you can't.

People want to do heroin, why is it you (or the government's) job to tell them not to? ...

Microtransaction games are based around exploiting an inherent flaw in human reasoning; predatory behaviors that exploit our weaknesses as humans should be regulated against.

edit: to back this up: The wordpress blog linked below references 19 clinical studies and explains in detail much better than I care to write up.

https://platinumparagon.wordpress.com/2017/11/16/the-psychol...

>People want to do heroin, why is it you (or the government's) job to tell them not to? ...

When people start killing each other, or letting their lives fall apart around them, just so they can spend more money on another cute girl in Fate GO, then I'll let you make that analogy.

> When people start killing each other, or letting their lives fall apart around them, just so they can spend more money on another cute girl in Fate GO, then I'll let you make that analogy.

Gambling, video game, and internet addictions are real and do ruin lives.

While I don't want to dive into hyperbole territory and don't blame video games for this instance of violence, just this week someone punched and killed their 1 year old child because they lost at a video game[1].

Brains are weird and are easily highjacked by dopamine hits, whether they're obtained from drugs or external stimuli.

[1] https://people.com/crime/dad-allegedly-kills-baby-son-punch-...

Anecdotal but I've personally known people that have sunk thousands into microtransactions for a single game. Claiming that they arent harmful or predatory in any way whatsoever just seems to be an intentionally obtuse claim to me.

I also know people who have sunk thousands on gacha games.

But that does not make it harmful or predatory. People are allowed to spend money on whatever they want, just because you don't agree with their choices doesn't mean you should make it illegal.

>People want to do heroin, why is it you (or the government's) job to tell them not to? ...

In China these days, parents pretty much do treat smartphone games "as bad as drugs" for kids.

Rooting phones to prevent game installation and removing/breaking/locking payment APIs is one of most popular services in phone repair shops.

The line between gambling and microtransactions is often very hazy. They tend to exploit the same vulnerability in our brains that leads to gambling addiction. And the target is often children.

> With gambling people may be driven to gamble to get out of debt.

This is not really the problem with gambling.

Is there any proof children are the ones being affected? The biggest source of money in these games has always been whales. And honestly if a kid used there parents credit card to hit $500+, that sounds like a parenting problem (you probably should have put a stop to it earlier). I don't see a problem with a parent giving there kid $60 to spend on Fortnite skins.

>This is not really the problem with gambling.

Yea it is? People lose money gambling, people bet more money to try and make back what they lost. But you'll always eventually lose money gambling in the long run. It's the most common fallacy that gets brought up in gambling.

With gambling you can get banned from casino or betting shops.

How's that "free market regulation" working out right now?

Legislation already exists either restricting gambling or ensuring that it works in specific, semi-transparent ways. I'm not aware of similar restrictions on microtransactions (though I'm unfamiliar with microtransactions in general).

I’m not a lawyer but I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to apply US gambling laws to pay-to-win games and loot boxes. It wouldn’t surprise me if these games have their own Black Friday [1] soon. Disclaimer: I’m not advocating for this and actually would like to see more relaxed online gaming regulations!

1: https://www.pokernews.com/news/2016/04/black-friday-five-yea...

They could but they won't. The fact that the market rewards behavior from consumers and vendors that's counter to the consumers' best interest is why legislation is needed.

But isn't the whole point is that companies are exploiting a bug in our biology to profit? In that case, the fix has to happen more upstream...

If you want to argue that this could be fixed in libertarian-topia without government intervention, you might argue that I dunno, there could be a class action suit showing that the gaming companies knew that such and such mechanics were resulting in many people becoming addicted/going bankrupt and did it anyway, and maybe that's right.

And if you wanna argue that who is so-and-so to argue that X really didn't want to spend all her money on virtual farm upgrades then that's an argument too I suppose.

But if the problem is people are buying something they don't want to because of a dopamine hook, then arguing that the solution is to stop buying it isn't satisfactory.

A lot of times microtransactions simply are time saving. Even in every Gacha game I know of you can technically pay for free, if you're willing to dedicate the time.

But in Clash of Clans, for example, you can be very 'good' (idk what word to use with these kinds of games) without having spent money. You will of course, have spent your time instead.

>A lot of times microtransactions simply are time saving. Even in every Gacha game I know of you can technically pay for free, if you're willing to dedicate the time.

Theoretically maybe, realistically many of those types of games would require about as much time devoted as a full time job to be winnable, if not playable, without microtransactions.

That's just naive. The slot machine devs deliberately make the game annoying by letting you wait unnecessarily if you don't pay all the time.

How on Earth is it naive to point out these games can be played for free? Countless people do it for Puzzle and Dragons and Fate GO, and these two games are some of the highest grossing mobile games of all times. Just go into their respective subreddits and search F2P.

You can play F2P. If you want to save 3 hours of grinding buy spending $5, why do you want to stop them? It's their money, if people enjoy these games, why stop them? You don't need to control every aspect of peoples lives.

These games are engineered to override your ability to make rational decisions. If you are unwilling to see that and are unaware of why they are called "skinner boxes" or skinnerware, and don't see a problem with games that make you suffer (wait) unless you pay repeatedly, and even excuse the developers for exploiting children's and whale's psychologicall unpatchable vuls then these schemes have already won over you.

Just check how the cigarette industry moved public attention from addictive substances they deliberately put into cigarettes to "personal responsibility of smokers".

It's been brought up! https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2019/05/08/new-micro...

It's a natural example of unbundled/a la carte content distribution. Gambling can be addictive and predatory but pay as you go content isn't bad in and if itself.

Please don't support more government micro-management of our lives. I agree it's a dark pattern, but if we don't get hurt, we'll never learn.

The alternative is hoping enough people "learn" AND reduce their personal short-term convenience to make it financially rewarding for enough development companies to provide worthwhile alternatives AND for that to be obvious enough that enough companies try.

That's a lot of footgunning spent hoping a lot of other people footgun. I've been there, and I was the only that suffered, not the companies doing wrong.

People have been getting hurt for years and they haven't learned yet. Trust me, I'd prefer the market to self regulate, but clearly it hasn't and won't in this regard, as evidenced by the article.

Is this supposed to be a parody of hn libertarian thought? I can't imagine the lesson a child learns from maxing out the credit card of loot crates to be worth more than the money.

The term "skinnerware" should be used more: https://m.facebook.com/notes/richard-garfield/a-game-players...

Is that somewhere on the real internet, too?

https://pastebin.com/BhcrRGAP

The original is on Facebook, afaik. If I'd know an alternative link I would have posted it.. maybe someone wants to temporarily pastebin it (I'm on mobile right now).

What can you do. Kinda sad that somebody posts about exploitative practices on an exploitative website, though.

This is a great term. I think I will try and spread this meme in my cirles.

As expected. Video games such as Call of Duty and Red Dead 2 have been enjoying larger openings and overall sales than the most successful movie franchises.

However if you examine things on the micro level, the games sector is facing a number of challenges.

One is with the micro transactions model: though it is widely adopted in mobile, its inclusion in AAA titles has backfired in terms of PR. Mortal Kombat 11 and several EA titles such as Battefront 2 ans Need for Speed have been penalized heavily both by critics and vocal customers.

When you combine this with the looming pressure of regulation, things don’t look great for that revenue stream.

Secondly you have pressure towards subscription based models. Microsoft has the game pass, Apple is doing the arcade, Google is doing game streaming. So we’re going to see a Netflix type of subscription become more and more the norm. These games are full games, often AAA though there are some indie darlings. They’re not based on consumables.

Because of this, the proportion of revenues coming from micro transactions on both mobile and console is likely to shrink, and transform. It’s going to be interesting to see how this will affect the unit economics of game studios going forward.

The battlepass model is up and coming, where you pay to unlock a track with predictable rewards. As a person who plays a lot of games, I actually really like the predictability even if it means I end up feeling like I have to play a lot more.

Something most people ignore about this topic, things get old.

Addicting clicking games get boring.

Sure it's weird to see a middle aged mom playing these worthless games, but give them another 2 years and they will move on.

Gaming has only evolved to be better. And we have already achieved unlimited entertainment if you are a PC gamer.

Worse games in the future is a near impossiblity. Or at least informed consumers are able to avoid the blight of micro transactions.

The existence of many slot machine and lottery addicts --- even for the simple, totally probabilistic kinds --- seems like strong evidence against your second point.

Unfortunately there is another path people follow. As they get bored of games, they switch to actual gambling. If games improve enough that they don’t deliver the same high, not everyone will improve their tastes and solve their addictions or mental health problems.

I have trouble finding good mobile games that are immersive and not overly gimmicky, cartoony, require repetitive tap actions, or require annoying in app purchases. I seem to bore quickly and find most of the games on mobile to be pretty childish.

I’ve found some I like, but by and large they seem to just exist as commercials for in app revenue. Give me a good immersive game for $20 and I’d do it.

There is a discoverability problem for sure. There are good games out there, but I can't tell you what they are because what I enjoy and what you enjoy are different.

With that, making a game that's good to you appeals to a smaller percentage of the population than making a game full of addictive dark pattern microtransactions, so many of the companies with the money (and consequently advertising) choose to do that.

I think it is quite hard to be immersive on a handheld device, the small screen and limited input options are really limiting in my opinion.

I wonder if you could have a multitouch digitiser on the back of the device and somehow detect which finger is which. Then the input would be based on the finger rather than a particular button.

Its not designed for phones but the Vive Knuckles seem to do independent digit tracking and pressure sensing on grip.

I've seen volume buttons used to turn pages; maybe something like that? Apple's force touch might also have potential. It doesn't have to all be tap-tap-tap.

It's possible to get 100% immersed with a small device https://vr.google.com/cardboard/

Mobile game companies will never do that, because while you and a hundred of your friends will give them $20 to own a genuine game, Whales will give them $1000 a month for their shiny skinner box

Skinner box UI is less laggy in their defense.

Well you can't spend "big" on conventional games like Terraria. I think I got 4 copies for $10. "Freemium" games on the other hand dictate no upper spending limit.

In the past there were no reports which lumped slot machines and PC/console gaming into the same bucket, it obviously just doesn't make sense. There has been a blurring between the two on mobile with many games which are mostly gambling without the cashing out.

As someone who's attempted to figure out what truely makes some games successful vs those that don't, I've read numerous reviews.

Over and over again, with satisfied reviews, I see: "Great way to waste time!", "Nice Time killer". and i just sighhh.

Abnegation is one of the core reasons to play games. Some humans need times in their life to unwind and not be engaged. You can totally overdo it, but recognizing a game that is good for abnegation is totally valid.

Sorry, I know you meant time for idleness and unwinding, but I have to ask: what do you mean with "abnegation"? The word doesn't mean "me time" as far as I know; it means "self-denial" and "rejection".

More on-topic: it's ok for a game to be time-waster, but I suppose when that's the overriding goal of games, it becomes a problem. Play is not only a pastime.

if you're building a product that you want people to use during downtime (think: on a bus/train, sitting in a waiting room, on the toilet), these types of reviews are gold. I worked on an app that behaved more like an os extension/utility (think: something similar to an ios app that is only used to load a keyboard) but had visual design that made it seem like a time wasting game. We were constantly getting reviews with "not a great time waster" or "not enough to do in the app". We had tons of users, but those types of reviews were killing us. It's a thing people want to do: just be able to switch off and do something mindless with a phone.

The rise of the super-casuals.

I'm not saying mobile gaming like Clash of Clans or Candy Crush are bad, just that... man, they aren't for smart people. Likely most games aren't, but playing World of Warcraft and Diablo and Starcraft required a lot of thought and theory crafting to feel like I knew how to be elite at them.

So I know Blizzard is mathematically right to focus on mobile gamers, I just really miss "the good old days" when I spent as much time outside of the game learning about the game as I did playing the game. I doubt I'm the only one, but I know that sort of thing has a limited appeal and over time the market has evolved.

I just miss it. No game has pulled me in like Diablo 2 or World of Warcraft. Games like Fallout (not the latest), XCOM, and Civ are great... but man, if I'm honest, I really miss WoW circa 2006-2010. Doubt I'll ever have a gaming experience like that again.

I'd argue despite the posted revenue figures that no, it isn't right for Blizzard to focus on mobile.

They are a total no-name to mobile gamers, and mobile gamers in general don't care about brand and have no loyalty. They will play what their friends tell them to, which will almost always be and remain one of the top 10 titles with maybe half of said titles changing hands every year.

Yes, companies like Bethesda, EA, Activision, etc have the developer talent and cash to build games that could reach that top 10 app store status, but even they don't have the influence to buy their way there from Google, and the demographics of mobile gamers have very little overlap with traditional video gamers... at least in the audience they want, either very young children or middle aged adults that will spend all their free time on the one game constantly putting money in the slot machine.

If core gamers are going to dedicate themself to one title, its going to be a full featured experience, not a click bot braindrain.

So Blizzard is in large part sacrificing what gives their brand value (their appeal to core gamers) to enter a market they have no stake in or guarantee of success because they see other games winning the app store lottery to make fortunes on very little developer investment and want that money.

Its like being a business owner who sells their stake to buy lottery tickets. Sure, maybe you do win the jackpot of several hundred million without strings attached but you threw away reliable income for hard work to gamble with total chance.

>I'm not saying mobile gaming like Clash of Clans or Candy Crush are bad, just that... man, they aren't for smart people.

Alright bud, let's get back to letting people enjoy whatever sort of games they want and not attacking their intelligence.

My sister-in-law is a doctor, love's candy crush. She doesn't play it for the intellectual stimulation.

Just curious then, why does she play it? Isn't that a puzzle game?

I can’t think of a workplace more suited for small doses of escapism than a medical one.

> I'm not saying mobile gaming like Clash of Clans or Candy Crush are bad, just that... man, they aren't for smart people. Likely most games aren't, but playing World of Warcraft and Diablo and Starcraft required a lot of thought and theory crafting to feel like I knew how to be elite at them.

Clash of Clans has a lot of strategy so I don't know why you're using that as an example. Frankly almost any PvP game is going to have a lot of strategy. My friend who has scored twice as high as anyone else in the school in math competitions loved that game.

You seem to have this idea that smart people only do things that require they use their intelligence. I'd argue that is very much not the case.

>World of Warcraft and Diablo and Starcraft required a lot of thought and theory crafting to feel like I knew how to be elite at them

Outside of PVP WoW doesn't require much thought for the majority of players. Rotations can be automated through things like TellMeWhen and other addons. Then there are addons to tell you what gear is better, when to move, etc. Simming for the most part is a 'solved problem'. And that is only if you want to raid. If you have no interest in raiding you'd be able to do everything by just pressing 2 buttons.

Diablo, you'd be in the top 1% if you just google builds and grind your way there. It's mostly a time thing. And when they had the Ah you could "buy you way to the top".

Starcraft is a pure pvp game so it's slightly different. Skill requirements are probably similar to something like Clash Royal. Although CR can pay to advance (cards). It still requires some general strategy and has a meta.

What you are describing is quantum physics compared to mobile games.

After having gotten a Switch and noticing that I basically never play games on my phone anymore since having done so, I idly wondered if the Switch's release has had any observable effects on the growth of this market. Of course I realized pretty quickly that my experience isn't very generalizable, since I'm in a self-selected group from the outset (i.e. those willing to spend money on a dedicated gaming device) and since I only really ever played non-FTP games in the first place (and refused to ever make IAPs in the ones that I did try out for brief periods before inevitably getting annoyed and/or bored with them). That thought did make me curious, though, as to what sort of product could actually disrupt the FTP game market in the next few years (assuming it doesn't endure an organic downturn in that timespan), if any at all.

It seems like Apple and Google have a lot of opportunity here. My sense is that the subscription model would fit the "immersive" gamer far better.

If they can get, say, 5% of the existing US market to pay $10/month, that's still around 1 billion USD annually.

My guess is that they can probably get a lot more than that.

But they want to spend that money, they want to get edges in those games.

Ah, suddenly "You guys all have phones right?" [1] makes sense. Its about "follow the money".

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5QRgpjfarY

The purchasing analysis is interesting as it doesn't seem to take into account ads on mobile games.

Here's a direct link to the press release: http://www.theesa.com/article/65-american-adults-enjoy-playi...

And this is the Essential Facts PDF: http://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/EssentialFa...

Personally, I haven't kept up with games on smartphones. What listed companies are there that are successful in the space? Seems like it might be worth looking at a few to round out one's portfolio.

[ Male baby boomers aged 55 to 64 like “Solitaire” and “Scrabble”, while women lean towards “Mahjong” and “Monopoly.” ]

No wonder I don't play games with my computer! What an awful selection!

I was super addicted to Bejeweled about 5 years back and my mom is now addicted to that bubble shooter.

It saddens me to see that. At around 15 years ago, there was a specific class of "adult videogame players" — a thing that eventually morphed into modern marginal slash mainstream "internet culture."

Back then, there was no question of that being a deviant thing, and I thought that only very messed up countries can host such culture where people die playing computer, kill people over videogames and live day and night in internet cafes.

Well, nowadays it became an everyday reality for countries far more developed than ones where this originally started.

Not relevant. Article specifically points to casual games played on smart-devices. These aren't people frequenting internet cafes

Are you conflating all adult gamers with unhealthy obsessives?

It's such a weird claim to make especially since the post indicates most adult gamers play casual games on their phones.

Nothing weird here.

For a carefree 13 years old me, it was bordering on personal tragedy loosing 1 to 3 hours a day to damn Quake 3.

I have no words for just how bad it is to be in that state for a person in their thirties, with his/her social obligations and family.

Zynga obsessed adults spending 3-4 hours a day on that are way worse than kids doing the same.

And you add gambling problem on top of that. On mobile you don't even have to input your credit card yourself - Google built a whole freaking gambling/play API specifically for that. One click and it bills your cellphone account, if you live in a right country.

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