I want to link a video

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=869865949690972&fref=nf

tell me what you guys think! Honestly, some of this is certainly true and makes sense for the better part of a growing industry. Do you, as a game developer, feel you must adhere to this method? Can you make a game that is great and still make a decent ammount of money on the mobile side of things? Is the "pay and you play forever" concept dead for the mobile form of games?

Honestly, that's all pretty spot on. Because of the race-to-the-bottom effect initiated by Apple's iOS App Store, and followed on by Android's similar store and rampant side-loading of cracked copies of all kinds of software, there's effectively no market for "box price" software. What's more, this negative trend is amplified as long as visibility is dominated by top-10 and top-100 app listings where the most effective way to become visible to the typical user at all is to make your game free and market the crap out of it's launch to ensure a sudden burst downloads that you hope will crack the list. The skewed, and I dare-say faulty, metrics used also play a part -- for example, the top-10 paid apps includes micro-transactions, and there is no listing for the top box-price software at all. Its difficult for even established franchises from AAA studios to maintain a position on these lists on a box-price alone.

Likewise, the bit about "whales" -- the 1-2 percent of people providing 80% of the revenue or more for a game is completely true, and many games do aim to exploit the same kinds of addictive personalities that various kinds of gambling often do. They've learned who the easy marks are, and have optimized their business practices to best-exploit those marks. In fact, one could argue that the entire mobile freemium market is an exercise in over-optimizing against the only metric they ultimately care about: revenue. They believe that popularity and length of play are something to be valued over satisfaction and fun. It's not just the fault of producers though -- we players have in some way done it to ourselves because we want things now and we want them free.

I think if developers chose to optimize towards different metrics -- say, instead of aiming for most reveneue, they aimed instead for a more even distribution of who's providing that revenue -- then you'd see a lot more balanced game out of that in general. The trouble with that is that it's hard and they don't have an established model for doing that.

I don't think its impossible to do freemium in an ethical way, there's just no formula and no incentive for doing so right now. There are some exceptions of course. Steam's crates and universal trading system is one way to engage users more equitably. League of Legends does a good job with their Micro-transactions because the consumable items modify the game for everyone, rather than offering an unfair advantage. I have no problem with freemium or add-on micro-transactions if they're done in a way that isn't exploitative.

I'd also like to see a return of the old Shareware model of giving away part of the game for free, but putting the rest behind a paywall. iD software gave the first 1/3rd of Doom away for free, but you paid the box price to get the rest. Before app stores, that's how indie developers made money, the model was incredibly common and it built a lot of the big names we know today -- id, Epic -- and some that rose and fell by the wayside, like Apogee.

Reminds me of Candy Crush, Farmville, Dungeon Keeper 3, The Last Stand 4, and so many others

It's almost impossible to do business in an ethical way. Businesses is all about manipulating and convincing people to give you their money. Marketing and everything else is about that. People have problems, and some of these games enable them. Cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, and yes even Apple. Ethical? Probably not, but not everybody try to live ethical lives.

Seeing that F2P seems to be the trend at the moment, with everyone jumping on that bandwagon without understanding what it takes to actually develop a good F2P strategy... For people thinking of doing a F2P game, this is worth a watch:

I don't think the simple act of selling something is inherently unethical, even marketing harmful products isn't inherently unethical. What's unethical is when you cross the line to consciously and willfully withhold or obscure truths that are inseparable from the consumer's ability to make an informed choice, or to knowingly subvert their ability to do so by playing on their addictions (gambling) or preconceived biases (pandering/propaganda). As far as I'm concerned, market your cigarettes all you want, as long as there's an appropriate warning on your product and you aren't funding misinformation campaigns and keeping supposed public servants in your pocket.

I wouldn't ask for a game studio, or indeed any individual, to assume the responsibilities of a customer's well-being. People do have problems, will continue to have problems, and at the end of the day no one but themselves can seek meaningful help. But at the same time, if the success of your business is predicated on people doing oft-uninformed, irrevocable, substantial harm to those around them, and to continue encouraging them to do so for your own benefit, I would consider that unethical. That is to say, if your business would not survive except on the backs of those who are actually suffering for it, then there's a good chance your business's foundation has questionable ethics.

An ethical business gives customers fair trade for their money -- like-value for like-value. Many businesses give great value for comparably little money -- A typical new AAA game gives 20+ hours of earnest entertainment for $60 or less -- Sometimes hundreds of hours, or for about the price of a cup of Starbucks' drip.

The ethics of business are pretty simple: Provide good value for money, play fair, and don't exploit. The trouble is that the markets turn in to mob rule, where someone is always willing to go just a bit lower than the previous guy as long as they can turn a buck at it. But mob rule is largely a myth of our own making, fueled by a desperate desire or need to "succeed".

"Ethics" and "morality" are nothing more than a cultural point of view.

"Ethics" and "morality" are nothing more than a cultural point of view.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_objectivism

That could be a whole other discussion, and except for the extent of it that's directly relevant to OP's query, should probably remain as such.

I'd just like to point out that there have been some games that are legitimately enjoyable (not warmed over shovelware) when played for free, and they offer only cosmetics as premium items. Some of them have found overwhelming financial success with this model, and I don't believe that they're behaving in a predatory manner, since there's no gameplay benefit to the purchase.

Honestly, I see freemium crap as just one more symptom of the mass-market problem. Yes, it is predatory, and indeed pathetic. The thing that bothers me is that the way to get rid of this nonsense is to solve the underlying problem. People who focus on maximizing profit rather than generating value always fall into this kind of trap, and it has many faces to it. It reveals a lot about human nature to understand that this is the executive-level version of 'just punching the clock', and it has the same kind of long-term consequence.

Think about it. If you hire 10 employees and they all do the bare minimum that they can get away with, then you have a crappy workplace culture. On the other hand, if one of those employees suddenly pulls their head out of their butt and starts doing their best to earn their wage and make a fair deal of things then you make them a supervisor, right?

The same system applies here. People are making crap games and ripping customers off because they just want the paycheck. If someone decides to make a non-crap game that doesn't rip people off, what happens?

Good games win the market against bad games.

There's a lot of ways to sabotage yourself:

• Game costs more than it's worth. (Protip - The fair price is also the optimal price. Too low and you lose profit, clearly. Too high and you lose customers.)
• Game simply costs too much. (If your production costs are too high maybe you should calm the hell down and make good assets instead of hyper-realistic ones.)
• Game quality is poor. (Not talking about lack of talent in this case. Talking about obvious lack of effort/polish.)
• Game is sizzle without steak. (High production cost, low fun.)
• Game tries to rip you off. (Predatory freemium.)
• Game is designed to compete with an existing product instead of serve the consumer. (Cheap knockoffs.)

And many, many more.

It's amazing that people can't figure out that things like the golden rule are not just designed to give you a warm feeling in your tummy. When you behave unethically, you are shaping your own environment: making the bed you will have to sleep in when someone who isn't an idiot comes along and does the right thing. There's no reason to feed off the bottom in this industry. The market is huge and varied. Stop worrying about everyone else's profits and projects and do what you need to do in order to make a product that you yourself would be happy to purchase for the price it's being offered at.

You don't have to make all the money. It's okay to make enough money and keep your conscience (and reputation) clean.

This is the adolescent struggle of the games industry. It used to be all about who made the best game, now suddenly people are realizing how huge the market has become and maladaptive behaviors are showing up. Everyone is worried about who is making what kind of money, and there's more and more BS showing up.

Also, since I know the inevitable is coming: I'm not saying or implying in any way that making a profit is bad. Only that ripping people off is stupid. I say this fully expecting that someone is going to come in here and accuse me of saying that profit is bad, even though I just wrote that. (This is because people often mentally use bools where they should be using floats.)