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Comment by bjo590 | Hacker News Reader

> Analysts point out that almost half of the accounted three billion are those who play only on smartphones or mobile devices. This segment is also ahead of all others in terms of growth.

This segment is incredibly lucrative for the winners. Niantic has an estimated revenue of 800 million dollars. Supercell's highest reported revenue was just over 2 billion euros. King sold to Activision Blizzard for 5.9 billion dollars in 2016. Epic is going to war with Google and Apple over Fornite money. There's Asian players that are also impressive, but I'm not familiar enough to speak on that market. These revenues and valuations are happening in a high growth market.

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It is so very depressing. Nearly every game released by those companies is an ad riddled garbage fire.

It's an affront to what makes gaming fun. They are "games" in the same sense that slot machines are "games". They aren't games in the sense that non-mobile gamers talk about.

At least those games don't take over your complete life the way big online games. And don't lead to those playing often overnight, am addicted, am sleep deprived raging gamer situations.

Idk, that sounds exactly like something mobile gacha game garbage would do, while also draining the wallets of those more prone to gambling addiction.

Have you seen the hours some people put into farmville and farmville-like games?

Overnight play? Checked.

Addicted? Checked.

Sleep deprived? Checked.

Physical pain from holding the phone and looking at a small screen? Checked.

Raging behavior? Mood is definitively effected, especially when the social aspect has a negative turn.

I know farmville, candy crush and the like playing people. I also know AAA online pubg, world of warcraft etc games playing people. The worst behavior I have seen definitely did not came from farmville candy crush crowd.

Also, overall, steam sales seems to cost way more money I have ever seen being spent on games. And not just that, spending a lot of money on steam sales is point of pride for gamers - who ten turn around and act all superior over causual player ... spending less money (or no money) overall.

> Raging behavior? Mood is definitively effected, especially when the social aspect has a negative turn.

Rage and affected mood are two different things. But again, the level of anger or irritability in relation with farmville are super mild compared to what I have seen in pc/console gamers.

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The most irritable to me is the level of hypocrisy pc/console gamers display when they complain about causual games.

Personally I have observed a person with worse farmville addiction than any pc related addiction I have personally seen. Two accounts on farmville, one on a farmville-clone, each three played at the same time competitive for top ranking, with guilds and guild drama, and candy-crush games on the side.

If we are talking about spending, thankfully the above person did at least restrict themselves to <$100 per months on boosters (or at least that what they told me), but you should be aware that in-store revenue outnumber sales revenue in basically ever game regardless if its on phone or pc (not sure about console but my guess is that the same is true). There is a reason why almost every game company has shifted focus away from game sales and into in-game item sales.

> Rage and affected mood are two different things.

No. Mood swings because of a game is the same regardless if its short bursts or long and moody. If a person allow a game (and the social groups in it) to have lasting negative effect on their mood then that is a problem regardless what kind of game it is.

Rage as in yelling, hitting table with fist, swearing, throwing cell phone accross the room because someone called and he lost match on pc. It is absolutely different then "mood swing" which is used for range of things including mild irritability.

The people I had observed having issues basically played to the point of failing school classes due to chronic sleep deprivation, had atrocious performance in work post gaming session (he talked about playi by game till morning openly) or basically checked out of family life entirely making partner basically single. Let's say that formely gaming friendly wife build up huge aversion toward games.

I knew multiple of these and none of them played farmvile nor anything like that.

I believe people like your friend exist, the farmville top cant be composed of people having healthy relationships and jobs. But they are not around me. Around me the worst were among pc/console players, usually people who self identified as gamers and took it as point of pride.

Maybe rage is a symptom of poorly management of stress and negative emotions? Cars do not cause road rage. People who throw childish temper tantrums is not controlled by the activity, be that driving, gameing, cooking, gambling, fishing, cleaning, sports, constructing, knitting, (so far all places where I have seen rage) or what have you. Childish temper tantrums occurs in all places where people are, and especially places where people who struggle emotionally may go to, and where they might be stressed or be impacted by a negative event.

Fair enough you say maybe but I love Clash Royale (by Supercell) and have definitely played my share of video games over the years.

> slot machines

To note, pachinko are a widely installed business in their country.

Same as medal games in game centers, there has always been a need for super simple, mindless “games”, with or without money exchanging hand at some point.

> Nearly every game released by those companies is an ad riddled garbage fire.

Say what you will about Fortnite, but it's definitely not an "ad riddled garbage fire". They do advertise their store offerings in the lobby, albeit in a pretty unobtrusive way. The game has essentially become a PvP Grand Theft Auto, and it's executed remarkably well. On top of that, it's free to play and has absolutely no play-to-win mechanics. All purchases are purely cosmetic.

It might not be your bag, but I find this characterization of at least one game developed by a studio mentioned above to be completely inaccurate.

I enjoy Fortnite, play it with some old colleagues most weekends. It's simple, cross platform for all of us, been around and not going away, and has several modes to mix things up with. Barrier to entry is $0 allowing any of use to play as casually as we'd like without needing to make an investment. That last point is what should hint the game is going to be pushing sales heavily.

When you launch the game you get full screen ads for newly released skins you have to click past to acknowledge, entire seasons are designed and themed around marketing deals with cinematics of the new stuff and click through walkthroughs about season skins you can by. If you don't have the battle pass there is constant advertising to get it and when you do it provides enough free virtual currency to run you through the virtual store at least a couple times per year so buying the cosmetics feels familiar.

So you have heavy 3rd party ads (as mentioned next season is going to be all Marvel) and heavy first part ads (in game store purchases) every time you launch the game, join a match, participate in a match, finish a match, or leave a party. Just because the ads are integrated doesn't mean it's not an ad riddled garbage fire.

But overall it's a decent enough game that lets me interact with some folks who otherwise wouldn't play something so I like it. I'm just aware I'm being served ads constantly in it.

Just a single game, Fate/Grand Order, has grossed ~3 $billion, and that was as of last year. I'm sure it's much higher now. The amount of money spent by players in mobile makes everything else look like peanuts by comparison.

https://sensortower.com/blog/fate-grand-order-revenue-3-bill...

Those so-called "gacha" games rake in a disgusting amount of money. Even as a casual player, I ended up spending a few hundred on one.

A few hundred dollars? What does that buy you?

Entertainment. No more, no less. You'd be surprised by how many of the asian F2P games are completely playable without spending a dime- yet people do anyway.

So I have moved on to another game that is less money intensive and less time-intensive (can be seen as a good or a bad thing).

What strikes me most is how compelling this material is to command my attention. It's like being under a spell.

They are great at taking money, but even for f2p they are just psychologically optimized to command our attention (which is a bigger concern in depth and breadth of impact).

Can't wait for the future strategies of addiction we can see in the next gen games :D

> It's like being under a spell.

I’ve played two gatcha games in succession and this describes the thing very well. I wasn’t missing a single of play, spend a little money on them, read news and game info everyday. I’m glad I stopped. Some PC games can attract my attention for hours or days on, but they are not a daily burden, and also more satisfying to play.

> "A few hundred dollars? What does that buy you?"

Let's just say that the majority of characters in Fate/Grand Order and other Asian gacha games that one can roll for are young and female for a reason...

You know, famous historical young female characters like Oda Nobunga or Leonardo da Vinci.

Yep, or Sir Francis Drake, Nero Claudius, Jack the Ripper, Mordred, etc. (For people who have never seen the game, the parent poster isn't joking.)

At least they aren't firearms or WW2 warships. -shrug-

A chance at an overpowred character in the game. But just a chance.

Not all of them are for waifu reasons, the game I played was Summoner's War that was PvP oriented but it's all pay2win so there's no point.

https://www.pocketgamer.biz/asia/news/68945/summoners-war-dr...

I played for over a year, the money part wasn't the worst -- the actual time commitment to some of these games is insane.

Even if they have autoplay function, they are psychological attention traps.

I should make a gacha game, hmm.

Nothing casual about dropping $300 on a mobile game. You’re kidding yourself.

That's true, but my spending comment was meant to be relative to other players.

That'll be Tencent, smartphone gaming revenue over $5bn USD in Q2 alone

https://cdc-tencent-com-1258344706.image.myqcloud.com/upload...

And 80% of Apple's App Store Revenue comes from Gaming.

They could have lowered the App's section to 15% or 10% cut without unrecoverable damage to their services revenue stream.

Yeah, Im not sure you can call free to play IAP grindfests “games”. But still, that means 1.5 bn play actual games? Not bad.

It varies, like. Most mobile games are pretty crap, but you have people like Supercell who make good mobile games - I don't like their games, but lots and lots of people do.

And to be fair, most "actual" games are pretty crap too.

90% of everything is famously trash!

There's crap, and there's crap where the design is affected by the need to nudge (or force) people towards buying IAPs.

And trailers and reviews were famously broken for console/PC games historically.

Pretty much every product sold in our society has its' design shaped by the need to make money (i.e capitalism).

I'm not sure why you're singling out F2P games here specifically, relative to all the other half-baked crap designed to make a profit.

At least hundreds of millions of people daily get value out of playing free games without spending a cent. Consider the fact that all console/PC gamers have spent money on the game up-front, whereas a very small proportion of people on mobile pay for all of the rest.

Like, I don't enjoy games with micro-transactions, but clearly lots of other people do. Who am I to judge their fun?

> get value out of playing free games without spending a cent.

Mindlessly grind medallions or whatever. The problem with IAP games (free or not, afaik a Dead Space game was selling ingame crafting materials as IAPs) is they waste your most precious resource: time.

> And trailers and reviews were famously broken for console/PC games historically.

Oh but that's easy. Don't preorder and don't buy games based on just one review. Especially don't buy games based on the developer's trailers :)

I note that my core point, that you can't legislate other people's fun, is not tackled in your response.

Like, I mostly agree with you on the quality of many (maybe most) F2P games, but FIFA wastes your time far more than Candy Crush (and indeed, the people who buy sports games every year seem very strange to me).

Most people aren't aware there are other types of computer fun than the free crap in their phone's app store.

Us HNers are a dying breed, a lot of people don't have computers any more, or when they have them they use them only when absolutely necessary.

Still don't see your point other than "my preference is good, their preference is bad" or am I misunderstanding?

Wasting time is sort of the point.

They're not aware of the alternatives.

And there's wasting time going through varied content, and there's wasting time doing the same thing for days.

Mobile legends does pretty well for Moonton and is extremely popular in southeast Asia

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