Hacker News Reader

Comment by wtetzner | Hacker News Reader

Why not just charge money for games? Seems like a reasonable way for them to make money...

Because the app economy doesn't reward that kind of behaviour. A free game will get more downloads than a paid game. Kids are the biggest consumers of mobile games and they can't download it if it's paid and they don't have a credit card set on their account.

Obscure games with low sales will fall off the rankings pretty quickly. And that's before you consider that there are only a few successful game types (Clash of Clans, Tower Defense, Candy Crush) and probably 10 different clones of each out there. How would you stand out?

This incentivizes devs to just put out a game for free, load it up with ads and hope that it gets enough downloads for it to become an acquisition target.

Why I'm a big fan of such games that also offer a remove-ad's one of fee option. Simple and elegant way to handle many area's - try before buy is covered and allows people the choice.

Not all games/apps work with that approach, but many do and I'm all for fair choice.

Apple Arcade is awesome. $5/month for top tier titles, all of which have no IAP or ads. There are some seriously great games there with voice acting and beautiful artwork etc. You can't beat the price and they add new stuff constantly.

Just a few that I have installed right now, but there are a ton more:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pilgrims/id1296855328

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/jenny-leclue-detectivu/id88256...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tangle-tower/id1437742603

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sayonara-wild-hearts/id1441675...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dead-end-job/id1461747354

Eh, as a kid in the 80s and 90s, we were by far the biggest consumers of console games which cost up to $50-$60, in 1980s dollars, and Nintendo had no problem making money.

Maybe it would be a good thing if children couldn't wantonly download adware without their parents inspecting it?

You're forgetting that you could rent games from Blockbuster before you bought them back then and some consoles had demo disks. You can't rent mobile games to try them before you buy them.

Freemium is the modern/mobile game demo.

If you have kids, try Apple Arcade.

Not sure why they can't just bring back shareware without needing ads. Allow users to download the game for free, but if they want to play more than the first level/area/whatever, they have to buy the game.

Because there are too many games out there competing for your attention. Word of mouth today doesn't work in the way it did back when Doom I legitimized the shareware model. Today, if someone told you about a cool indie studio game and you looked it up online, you'd likely see ads for competing games appear in search results before the actual page.

It should go without saying that Doom was also an incredibly unique game for its time, and the blood-and-guts controversy likely helped spread word about it just as much as the distribution model did.

But it's still free to download the demo...

How does including ads in your app make it more likely to be found in the search results?

You could buy entire games on the app store for the same price it cost to rent them in the 80s and 90s

Nintendo also made money because developers paid them license fees to build on Nintendo's platform. I didn't play anything beyond the Gamecube, but I remember there being many more non-Nintendo titles than in-house productions. In this example, Nintendo is Google, taking a cut on each of those 3rd party games.

Then you create a soft ceiling and miss out on the whales that will spend $1K a month to have a shinier hat.

Still waiting to hear a downside :)

Yes many of those games litterly throw their freemium players as cannon fodder to those whales.

Few get the balance right and many will always tip one way on the odd patch, pandering to the whales - who after all - spend money.

Though the games that just offer hats and other cosmetics, well, you have to love those and certainly a solution that appeases all and rich fools are not to be scoffed at in such games as they are paying for it to carry on.

For some, “missing out” on that kinda exploitation is the reason for not doing it.

I’m not interested in the nicotine business for the same reasons, regardless of how much each smoking whale is worth.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com