Comment by Timothee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Timothee | Hacker News Reader

I dislike free-to-play games because they tend to distort the gameplay towards paying additional in-game credits. It also feels a bit like printers: you get the printer for cheap but pay a lot on inks. Here they lure people in with a well-designed free game that lives on in-app purchases (IAP).

That being said, the revenues discussed in this post are crazy.

On a side-note, I wish the App Store allowed to filter out by apps that have or not IAP. I really don't mind paying for apps and games but sometimes there will be a cool free game available. Nowadays most games are free but with many IAP. If I see a high-ranked free game I tend to turn around when I see it has IAP because I know the gameplay will be around buying more stuff.

On a second side-note, I wouldn't mind the fall of Angry Birds. IMO, the game has received a disproportionate amount of success and the merchandising all over the place has been ridiculous (e.g. a "Angry Birds" Roku box? That makes no sense). The game is ok but not very original or entertaining (again, IMO) but the milking of the brand has been the worst part of it.

> (e.g. a "Angry Birds" Roku box? That makes no sense)

Roku sells a Wii-like game remote [1] (with motion sensors) and pushes Angry Birds as the remote's demo app. It's perfect synergy using a recognizable brand like Angry Birds to sell your own stuff!

1. http://www.roku.com/accessories

I imagine that all it takes is for a few media outlets to pick up on the advent of IAP for Apple to address it. It's becoming somewhat of an ethical problem for them.

Maybe we'll see an equivalent of The Great Google Purge.

It's interesting that the App Store used to explicitly ban upsells ("This feature requires MyApp Pro") in apps, since it is a customer-hostile feature, until they realized they could make a fortune with it.

Do you also object to games with a free 'lite' version and a paid 'full' version, where the two are separate app store entries, or is it only games where you have to pay for the full version via IAP that you dislike?

I'm not really talking about IAP for upgrades but when they're used to buy expendables (be it coins, stars, bonus items, etc.). I'm fine with the "free with in-app paid upgrade" or the 'lite' version and 'full' version (though I find the former cleaner).

However, more often than not with games, IAP is used for expendables and more often than not, the gameplay now revolves around making you buy things, rather than the game itself. You have artificial scarcity on some things, not to make the game more interesting/difficult/rewarding but to make more money for the game author.

Don't get me wrong: I'm totally for developers and studios making money, but not when it skews the gameplay.

I hear you. It irks me to no end when IAP is used as a quarter gobbling mechanism of the twenty first century.

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