PocketGamerbiz
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 12 months, 2019–2026
19:49 · 758K views · Oct 3, 2016
A 2016 conference talk by a mobile game CEO on the tricks of free-to-play monetization, including player profiles and how to target high-spending whales.
HN mostly cites it critically, as an insider's blunt playbook for psychologically exploiting players in F2P and loot box games.
17 comments from Hacker News
Reminds me of this must see video for anyone interested in the topic, from someone explaining how to do these monetizations tactics: this video Sometimes I wonder what is is about specifically mobile gaming that makes this sort of thing so much more prevalent. Like it is very far from absent from PC or consoles, but it's still a bit different.
Must see video for anyone interested in the topic, from someone explaining how to do these monetizations tactics: this video
I’m not too familiar with gacha games, so I was intrigued. I thought the criticism of EA’s former CEO was funny. But the rest of the article felt like a lot of term-dropping and examples that aren't linked together into a cohesive theory, so I’m kind of disappointed. I think this industry talk about monetization ( this video ) and Tynan Sylvester’s book “Designing Games” were a lot more informative. For example, the blog post says this but then doesn't really elaborate on what any of the clauses mean ("repeatable design levers", "without compromising the core gameplay experience"): > A healthy long-term monetization system should therefore have repeatable design levers that can be used to reliably generate demand without compromising the core gameplay experience. In contrast "Designing Games" has a whole section on fixed/variable reward schedules, e.g. (pg. 210): > We can avoid such shelf moments by superimposing several fixed ratio schedules. Consider what happens when the player can get a dollar for every 10th chest, a diamond for every 10th rock mined, and an arrow for every 10th goblin killed. ... The player shifts focus back and forth between activities, never missing a dopamine-driven beat. I asked some friends who play gacha games and they mentioned “stamina” mechanics as something that makes these game addictive. I’d never heard of it before, but apparently you’re limited to perform X number of actions per day. You can purchase some additional stamina/actions, but this c
Gamification as a field of study also reminds me a lot of this video[1] of a talk about tips for game developers. It is very interesting because it is from 2016 which is close to the time period you mentioned. I’m pretty sure this video has been shared on Hacker News a bunch. [1]: this video
> Only bit I disagree with is that the big spenders are doing it purely because of addiction or gambling. People spend big in games because: * The spending is very stimulating visually and audibly (think lootbox openings) * The gains from their spending translates directly to game-social prestige, game power, or both (i.e. an Advantage) * This Advantage allows them to lord over the players who have spent less (or 0 in the case for F2P players) Whether that manifests into addiction depends entirely on the rest of the game's design (but you know, games that introduce the Advantage tend to want to make a lot of money by getting you hooked on spending...) > Second, games provide a sense of community. A lot of game revenue is monetizing people's desire to not be alone. Calling these players addicted is I think reductive. Yes, these games do provide a sense of community because they are purposefully designed to do so. Without an incentive to play while getting lorded over by whales, the fish will leave. Without a bunch of fish to lord over, the whales will leave. Again, this depends on the game's design, but the vast majority of them encourage addiction to the Advantage and its use against others. Maybe you can extend this analysis to IRL stuff. I don't know because I don't participate in any of it. Source: [Let’s go whaling: Tricks for monetising mobile game players with free-to-play]( this video )