Honest In-App Purchases | Hacker News Reader

Honest In-App Purchases

david-smith.org

101 pointseeirinberg76 comments

What got me about in app purchases was that in many games, the moment you purchase anything, the difficulty level ramps up thus forcing you keep buying items just to keep progressing[1]. This is known as 'coercive monetization[2]' and is the reason that I recommend people never buy anything in app.

"According to article, 'once a consumer has been marked as a spender, the game difficulty ramps up massively, shifting the game from a skill game to a money game . . .'"

[1]- http://valleywag.gawker.com/there-is-no-evil-scheme-behind-i...

[2] - http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/1949...

Article 1 is citing speculation from article 2 with that particular quote. They later update, "Note that the difficulty ramps up automatically for all players in CCS when they pass the gates I discuss later in this paper, the game is not designed to dynamically adjust to payers."

In effect, what it's describing is more like a base game with low-level challenges, and a purchasable "expansion pack" of areas with much higher-level challenges. Except that instead of having to gain skill to a point where you qualify for the higher-level challenges, or grind experience to a point where your character qualifies, you have to pay to show that your wallet qualifies.

After all, in a pay-to-win game, your wallet is effectively your sword, used to slash through the game's obstacles--so having an area hidden behind a (monetary) obstacle--a rock you can only crack with a Level 10 Wallet, so to speak--where everything in that area requires at least a Level 10 Wallet to defeat, sort of makes sense; it's isomorphic to the same sort of game logic we're all already used to, just in a much more cynical/pragmatic world.

...now I'm imagining a game made for company-owners, where the goal is actually to be able to pay certain amounts of money at a time, so your leveling curve and progress in the game matches a rise to riches in reality... hm. Probably the only people who could afford to play it, would have too much sense to. :)

"On a more personal level it also worries me that this is drawing away money from the rest of the eco-system."

This fear is likely completely unfounded on multiple levels.

Firstly, nobody is spending all of their money on iTunes. Generally, most people won't even budget for it. That means that most purchases on the app store are 'spur of the moment' in which a consumer will see something they want and buy it. That's also why cheap purchases work best there. So no matter how many $1 in app purchases someone makes, the chance of them 'running out of money' and stopping purchases of all app store products is somewhere close to 0.

Secondly, once you start charging 19.99, someone is far less likely to just say 'eh, let me try it'. People will still buy this if they can work out that they need/want it, but it will be a longer process involving searching for reviews and/or getting feedback from people around them. The number of in-app purchases that consumer makes is unlikely to affect this process. In effect, large apps and small apps are probably completely different markets.

On a completely unrelated note though: if you try to sell me required items in the game for real money, I'm uninstalling your app on the spot. This seems to be a growing trend among a small share of consumers, so we'll see how it goes.

Your last point is why I've basically stopped trying new apps at all. I've been burned a few times now. And it really sucks to put X hours into something only to be beaten over the head by a hidden cost.

I'm hardly a mobile app power user, but I've dumped around $150 on apps. Almost all of that was before in-app purchases. Now even paid apps can have in-app purchasing, making it impossible to know what you're actually paying for without thorough review. So I no longer make impulse purchases and I hardly spend any time doing app discovery. I don't mean to speak for the author, but maybe this is what is meant by drawing money away from the ecosystem.

Right, either they sell you the required item, or the gameplay becomes so difficult that the paid powerup is the only way to feasibly win. I don't know about "drawing money from the rest of the eco-system", but a lot of games use this structure now, so it is changing how games are made and sold.

You know, arcade games were sometimes freakishly hard so that you'd stand there pumping quarters in to try again and again. Nobody called that immoral. I don't think there's anything wrong with charging for continues (or health potions, or clean bombs, or whatever.) Telling you how much money a game makes off people, and how much you've spent on it, won't help you to decide whether the tactics it's using to get you to give it that money are ethical.

Games have their own dynamics, the expectations and rewards are different.

Now, when you download a 'free' drawing app and then find out the pen costs $5, it's just an annoyance; it builds resentment and lowers your trust in the app store. There is no reward other than what you already expected to be there, and even when done well (eg Paper) it still feels a tad bit dishonest.

That sort of thing is a reaction, by developers, to Apple's unwillingness to add demos (and consumer's unwillingness to shell out when there's no demo). Calling it a "pen" is probably not the best way of marketing it, but basically you're buying the full version. The free install is a trial.

If Apple added demoing all of that would vanish pretty quickly, I suspect.

There's a difference between putting a piece of metal in a slot and pushing a button that's vaguely connected to your bank account. I'm sure one of the recent 99% Invisible podcasts had something about the increase in revenue when slot machines were able to use credit cards, or banknotes.

A key difference is that in an arcade game you have to pay to start, and you have no expectations of free play (you have to beat the game to not pay anything more). The same model for in-app purchass would be good actually.

AKA, instead of free to play, its pay to play!

I've only ever played arcade games as an adult, a few years ago. They seemed very exploitative to me, tiny play times for gigantic costs.

When you feed coins to an arcade machine, you are essentially renting someone else's equipment for some period of time. The idea that occupying someone else's machine for a longer period of time would cost more than for a shorter period is a reasonable expectation on the part of the consumer[1].

There is no similar expectation when purchasing a game. It doesn't make sense for me to have to rent more time on a game on my own hardware[2].

[1] Nevertheless, the comparison is apt in some ways, as the process of encouraging people to feed more coins often distorted the gameplay in the same was as it does with IAP-based games. [2] I know, the current reason for much of this is that MANY casual gamers are resistant to put even $1 down initially. There are very few models that work for games targeted at this crowd, and IAP may actually be the best approach here.

It seems like one of the foundations of this article is that customers tend to regret their in-app purchases. I don't doubt that this could be the case, but I'd love to see studies done on this topic. I would think that, even if you assume game devs are greedy or motivated primarily by profit, at least some of them would think that the best long-term play would be to not make users regret their purchases.

I'm a game developer. I want to make one thing clear:

The people who make these sorts of games aren't gamedevs. They are social engineers.

It's unfortunate that the distinction hasn't been very clearly defined. It's not true that just because they've created an interactive loop that they've made a game.

I agree. We shouldn't call these things games. They are predatory social assaults on the unsuspecting.

I relate it to casino gambling without the small potential of being able to get a payout in return.

These things aren't mutually exclusive. Feel free to hinge your argument on a wildly restrictive definition of "game" that is shared by virtually no one, but I think there are better arguments to be made.

If by whiskey...

no true scotsman...

There's no point to use purely semantic arguments to try to bash these guys. Clearly I wasn't using the term "game dev" with the intention of drawing any comparisons to your livelihood, except for the obvious comparison which is that you both produce interactive applications that most people would call "games."

No no, it's a distinction I've wanted to make for a long time. It's a positive thing to encourage discussion of how game development is different from social engineering, and what social engineers can learn from game development fundamentals.

This may be an example of the "no true scotsman" fallacy. You're saying no true game developer would use social exploitation in this way. Implying that any game developer who does, isn't in fact a game developer.

The problem with this approach is that it absolves any such person who considers themselves a true game developer of the responsibility. I think it's more valuable to view social engineering as the dark side of game development, and look for ways to minimise it.

It's similar to the way software developers often come up with (or are asked to come up with) "dark patterns" to manipulate users into signing up for stuff or buying stuff without realising it. It's our responsibility as developers to recognise when this is happening and actively work to stop it.

I've actively started to work on a blog series called The Dark Side of Game Design, while at the same time working on a game "from the dark side" for which I've gotten funded for.

Should be interesting exploration of morality and ethics in it. Only real shame is that current game design of the game I'm working on doesn't include parody of it all. I'm just not that good a game designer yet. :)

I can tell you from my admittedly limited mobile social game development experience that user acquisition is really expensive. You need the users you get to make lots of purchases. If your purchases suck, or elicit regret, you're not going survive for very long. It is very common industry advice that purchases should feel really good and provide instant gratification. Industry experts know that once a user makes a first purchase they have a smaller barrier of entry for making more. The industry is all about whales, not about making a quick buck on a user who doesn't know better.

Of course there are companies who don't know any better that are trying to money grab as much as possible, but they're not as successful as you might think. They achieve ranking with a large advertising budget before disappearing into obscurity. But what a lot of people don't want to accept is that a game like FarmVille is a good game that many people legitimately enjoy and feel good spending money on.

Lots of people feel good spending money on heroin, and it also makes them feel good (proven - it chemically makes you feel good!). But you can't possibly agree that heroin is good for you, nor those who make or sell it is justified in making and selling it.

I did not discuss the morality of addictive game mechanics. I was responding to the assertion that people regret making in app purchases. The author was operating under the assumption that users are being misled or tricked into making purchases that they would later regret. I was merely explaining why most successful IAP-driven games could not reach success this way.

Interesting point. But the whole point of social engineers is to figure how to make people WANT to buy stuff (not make them buy stuff) and that includes making them enjoy their purchases.

What i understand from the article is that people don't regret their purchases immediately. What they regret is the realization that they spent way too much on their game. And thus there should be mechanisms to avoid that regret. And so i love the 2nd suggestion.

Both of the proposed solutions are against the goals of the a store so I suspect it's highly unlikely they'd ever be considered. #1 lowers the amount of downloads of a free app simply because it contains in-app purchases and #2 lowers revenue by reminding consumers how much they've spent and convincing them not to spend. Absolutely ridiculous.

Edit: I just wanted to add that I think the two proposed solutions target in-app purchases in general, rather than just hidden or dishonest in-app purchases. A good solution would be one that doesn't affect positive uses of in-app purchases but does combat negative uses.

"Both of the proposed solutions are against the goals of the app store"

I don't think they are.

The App Store's goals should be about bringing the best apps to the most people. Not about making money by selling apps — even though it does make a little bit of money for Apple.

By having a long term goal based on App quality they encourage more device sales and more consumer trust in the App Store.

Those two things lead to more people being willing to pay more up-front for apps in the long term. Better for developers, and much better for Apple.

A good app could still sell expensive in-app purchases. This article in particular targets consumables. If a game told me I was spending $10 a month on consumables I would be happy to know that — and would continue doing it if I felt it was worth it. It would also let me better understand how those scammy purchases add up in cost, if I were one to go for those sorts of things.

It's not ridiculous if your motivations aren't purely business-driven.

Or, like the point I believe the author was trying to make, it's not ridiculous if it aids in your long term business goals.

The quality of Apple's App Store is one of the key differentiators in the smartphone/tablet market. In-app purchase based software can reasonably be seen to reduce the quality of an app-store for a couple reasons.

1) The low barrier to entry puts f2p software at an initial advantage. This hurts the market for complete software.

2) Competition for profits then becomes based on extracting the most money from users in hard to quantify ways, leading to insidious tricks.

3) Consumers become disenfranchised with the idea of an app, after they become burned a couple times, and trying to look for quality complete software, but finding that it has failed to thrive in the face of free+ alternatives.

Remember that old Columbia Records CD-by-mail thing? It made money because it offered a low initial cost that a kid could sign up for. Then CDs were sent monthly, and eventually a big bill would follow. Can you imagine a quality music discovery service competing with the free one that spammed kids and then left their parents to foot the bill? I suggest no. First, the up-front, honest service would require a reasoned commitment, while Columbia's appealed directly to people's instincts. Second, Columbia poisoned the water. No one could trust the technology of the day (catalogues and mail) to be beneficial after they were hit with a huge surprise bill from the big name in the industry.

I'm not saying that is a perfect analogy, but I think it reasonably fits. The difference here is that Apple is in full control of their destiny- and they can't afford to let things go to shit.

Why would a paid app be in a better place ? I personally refrain from paying upfront for any app. When there is a paid app I usually need to find reviews and watch video before I buy the app. That's a lot of effort. If it is free I can simply download and most importantly play it, no need to find reviews, and then decide myself if I want to buy some InApp items.

Yeah absolutely. It's got to be important to find a way to control quality with in-app purchases, I just think the two proposed solutions target in-app purchases in general, not poor experiences.

Apple iTunes Store...

The author's point was that your game/business should not rely on tricking the user out of their money. The user should be well aware of how much money he/she is spending and the app should be awesome enough that the user feels "it's worth it!"

This is better for the market because its not a competition for who's the best trickster, but who can make the best apps on which people WANT to spend money.

Your assumptions here are - #1 the user won't download an alternate game, and #2 the user won't spend their money elsewhere in the app store

My biggest issue with these In-App purchases schemes is that I have had apps where I've paid for the non-free version, only to have updates come through maybe 6-12 months later that introduce advertising popups AND in-app to win purchases.

At least dont screw over the ones that supported you at the start. It's a real 'fuck-you' to the ones who took you from nothing to where you are today.

So agree with this article.

I'd love to give developers some money for the games they put a lot of time into making. Plants vs Zombies 2... I'll probably buy a plant to make them receive some of that.

I quit Clash of Clans after I realised there is no way it's even remotely possible to get better at the game by skill. It's purely down to how much money you're willing to throw at it.

Plants vs Zombies 2 is atrocious. There's not a single "fun" attribute, it's all just various ways of making money from the users.

• "power ups"

• "plant food"

• the plants themselves

• keys

• stars

All are just methods of juicing money out of the user, and are generally quite time consuming to gain organically. It's a nasty experience given how good the original one was to play while traveling.

On the contrary, Clash of Clans is a game of patience. The premium currency (gems) get traded for time, that's it. Since matchmaking is randomized, it makes no difference to you if you fight someone who gem-boosted to their town level or who spent the several months per level to build without gems.

The skill comes in choosing which troops to take to battle and the order and placing to deploy them. The best players internalize troop AI making their attacks seem laser guided, while the worst players just spam troops and fail.

Clash of Clans, unlike Candy Crush that alters difficulty based on your spend, seems to me to be extraordinarily effective at getting players to want to spend gems for time, while remaining ethical in that a free player can play the entire game up to max level without spending a dime and remains on a level playing field.

> There seems to be a culture developing around designing games and apps that are intended to intentionally mislead and coerce customers into making more and more purchases.

You could argue this for almost anything in the commerce world. Should we start putting signs up in malls that say "Warning! Stores that offer deep discounts are most likely trying to up-sell you to other products"?

If you create a 5-star app that has in-app purchases that impact gameplay, congradulations, you have just earned 1-star.

I'll drop $20 dollars on a decent game in the app store, as long as the playing field is level. But when you begin to link performance to bank accounts, you ruin the game. It's way more intrusive than advertisements, because advertisements don't give anyone an unfair advantage.

You're looking at this from the wrong perspective. These are a distinct class of games--so-called "pay-to-win" games. The playing field isn't uneven; everyone has to pay to win, and those who pay the most, win the most. It's exactly like a grindy MMO-game, but instead of rewarding the people with the most disposable time, the game rewards people with the most disposable money.

Not to say there aren't games that try to make you think they're skill-based and then reveal their pay-to-win nature later on--but the current trend in the market is against this, and moving toward a more bald-faced "yeah, you win this game using your wallet; want to play?"

As far as the concept of a game goes, it's uneven because ultimately, someone is going to have more money than everyone else.

From my experience, games that involve skill are the only ones worth playing.

The thing is, everyone playing those games knows that they're being ranked on how much time they (can) spend on the game. It's part of the social contract of the game. This is why I would dispute saying it's "uneven." Every game ranks people somehow; some people prefer to be ranked given different criteria than others.

- A skill-based game shakes out as a ranking based on skill, so players with high technical aptitude for these sorts of games enjoy participating in skill-based game communities.

- A grind-fest game shakes out as a ranking based on "temporal capital", so people who have a lot of time (and perhaps not a high capacity for skill) enjoy participating in the grind.

- A pay-to-win game, finally, shakes out as a ranking based on, well, money. People who have a lot of money (and perhaps not a high capacity for skill, or time to invest) enjoy paying to win. (I met a "whale" for one of these games, an oil tycoon from a middle-eastern country; he was very happy to be able to basically play a game of fiscal chicken against his tycoon friends/rivals, using the game to prove who was willing to waste more money to get what they want.)

These three game "classes" are each totally sensible on their own, for the players who want to play them. The danger comes almost entirely in trying to sell one class of game as if it were another class, or trying to mix classes of players within a single game.

the problem comes when one class of game vastly outperform financially compared to the others. You end up getting tonnes of pay to win games because it nets the creator/publisher more money, where as skill based games tend to be non-existent anymore because, lets face it, there are way less people who are disciplined enough to play these sorts of games compared to instant-gratification games that gets you to pay for that feeling.

And so you suggest... what? That developers make skill-based games, and then trick pay-to-win players into playing them to make their money? How would that work, exactly? If they can't pay-to-win in the game, they won't be paying at all, and then they'll lose and quit. You'll end up with the same sort of environment you get from a bait-and-switch seems-to-be-skill-but-is-really-pay game: an entrenched upper class who has already "won" the game, and a flow of newbie players who come in expecting to compete on axis X, but end up being exploited on axis Y (in this case, by being beaten to a pulp by those with greater skill.)

And that is why there is more than 1 type of game- because there is more than 1 type of gamer.

$20 games don't make money on the App Store unless it's a known brand. Just look at the top grossing list. I always see anecdotal evidence in these threads where people claim that they would spend money up front, but all evidence points elsewhere. The App Store has been a race to the bottom since day 1.

Ads in aps don't make money. These days they're mostly used for cross promotion.

I know that reality shows that I'm not in the majority, but the majority often has terrible taste. That's why things like Twilight, The Transformer movies, and Justin Beiber are popular.

99.9% of the rest of the players will still give it 5 stars so your 1 star means nothing.

Personally, I try to stay away from free apps/games because I'm never sure what it's really going to cost me.

I don't get that mindset. If you avoid a free app because you might later choose to pay for something inside the app, then why not avoid the app store altogether, since you might also choose to buy a non-free app from there?

Because free apps typically employ monetization tactics that are tacky, annoying and insulting, tactics that are generally not found in paid apps.

To me it's a matter of not wanting to invest into something that you will later have to give up because it keeps asking you for money. Downloading and playing a game is a sort of emotional investment. I prefer an upfront fee for the whole thing rather than being nickeled and dimed with no end in sight.

In reference to that, I'm more concerned about what they do that isn't explicitly mentioned. Until not long ago, there was no permission denial for reading the sdcard/external storage area of Android devices (even now it's generally set to be disabled by default for legacy reasons). Given the amount of stuff apps store on there, an unethical app could have a field day mining such information.

Although apps should take responsibility for what they store or do not store on an sdcard that doesn't always happen. Android really needs a sandboxed area for each app on the external storage and alternatively require an additional permission for universal sdcard access if it's needed (like by file explorer apps). That may be hard to do with the fact that even FUSE backed emulated sdcards found on some devices are still pretending to be a FAT-like filesystem.

To the extent that's true of free apps/games, its equally true of paid apps/games. The only way in which the two differ is that the ones that aren't free come with a particular known cost on top of all the potential unknown costs.

Of course, paid games can screw you as hard as free games. However, in my experience, paid apps/games require less or no amount of in-app purchases than similar free games to extract the same amount of enjoyment.

So far, none of the free games I've acquired and used beyond a brief checking-it-out period have required any amount of in-app purchase for my enjoyment. I think there is exactly one that I've spent anything on in-app purchases, and in that case its been about the same total as a fairly low-end paid game.

Sure, they tend to offer lots of in-app purchase opportunities, and sometimes push them aggressively, but so do plenty of the paid games I have. Literally the only categorical difference I've seen is that paid games have an up-front payment.

One of the issues with the app store is the "power of free". A number of studies in psychology and behavioural economics have shown that people over-value free stuff. You can read an example here: http://danariely.com/2012/02/05/audience-with-a-dragon-tatto...

Once you allow free apps they become too attractive -- the simplest way to dominate a category full of paid apps is to offer your app for free. Then we see the race to the bottom that currently afflicts the app market. If there was a minimum app cost, say 99c, free-to-play would not be the issue it is today.

BTW, I originally heard this point made by Dan Ariely (linked above.)

According to Tim Rogers[1] in-app purchases are already being regulated in Japan. As far as I understand it there must be a finite number of purchases, leading to a "maximum spend" per title, which can be shown in-store.

Not sure how this ties in with that, but it seems several companies are also self-regulating by imposing a spending-limit based on the customers age[2].

[1] https://twitter.com/108/status/292004594555449345

[2] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/169254/report_social_gami...

Complete gacha is forbidden. Not the max number of purchases. The spending limits for minors are self regulated. Also see this doc from gree what complete gacha is: https://docs.developer.gree.net/zh/assets/file/doc/en/Exampl...

Imagine if the government showed you cumulative tax paid. Or the energy/water companies.

Or ISP's.

In Australia this happens. For phone, elec, gas and water, it shows you how much you have paid over the last 6 quarters (or months) as well, so you can compare, and see if there has been a big change.

Hm. I would've known this if I didn't let the lady sort stuff like that out. Ignorance is bliss.

Not necessarily making a point here btw, just a candid thought that struck me.

The option to offer Free trials in the app store would remove the need for in-app purchases for a lot of non-abusive apps and games. That would definitely be the case for all the apps we publish [1].

Users simply don't want to pay money to try out paid apps, unless they have tons of 5 star reviews or are recommended by friends or media. And why should they?

In the absence of free trials we are stuck with offering "free" apps with in-app upgrades.

[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/life-is-beautiful-get-daily/...

These aren't the sort of in-app purchases that are the problem. I've happily purchased each expansion pack in Galaxy on Fire 2 and similar for loads of games. I don't see a problem with this, or for having to pay to unlock the full version

What I do have a problem with, and have refused to spend a single cent on, are anything going by the name of "coins", "gems", "gold" etc. These are the disease the app store needs a way to remove

basically, the tldr is that you (and most people, incl me) are willing to pay for real value (i.e., real content), where as these virtual items (which costs nothing to create) is obviously worth nothing and so no one should pay for them.

These ideas are well overdue. Games like Candy Crush Saga are little more than mini Las Vegas slot machines, requiring only limited skills to play and with no possibility of a payout. The present day is probably going to be recognised in the future as the gold rush for these type of addictive games.

There's a similar situation in PC gaming too - traditional upfront paid PC games vs free to download MMO games which require payments for in game features/characters, e.g. League of Legends, Lost Saga. If you don't pay it becomes difficult to impossible to compete.

Making the UX/UI changes mentioned in this article, would be a bit like a shop owner telling me how expensive their shop is, or how much I've previously spent in their shop every time I went in... I'm not really sure how that solves a problem

I just wish that various app stores had an "in-app purchase" filter. I'd spend more time browsing them if I could filter out the noise of not-actually-free apps.

When I read proposals to limit the in-apps because they hurt gamers, I always wonder if this is the kind of proposals that lead to prohibition in 1920s.

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