Here is my contribution (a webapp, a.k.a. a website) http://lalo.li/lsd/ coded it years ago mostly drunk on an island in Thailand, I now like to play it again on my iPad with iPencil.
Wow, never heard of this game (unsurprising as it came out a decade before I was born). I was able to play it here [0]. Arrows to move, spacebar to be able to leave the edge. Very cool!
Press F3 to choose language, then use 5 to insert coins, 1 to start 1 player game. Use cursor keys to move along existing lines, use Ctrl+cursor keys to draw fast, use Alt+cursor keys to draw slowly.
Good catch! Thank you for posting this. It's really crazy to be playing games I played when I was a kid (Not this game but other MS-DOS or Arcade games) in the freaking browser...
Yeah... Searching for that game led me back to Chip's Challenge, ended up buying the game ($2), grabbing the level file out of it, and throwing that into TileWorld (cross platform CC engine) to play on my mac. Nostalgia overload.
Good lord, Chip's Challenge? I haven't heard that name in 25 years. It was installed on the first home PC my family had. Windows 3.11. Played the hell out of it back in the day.
Yeah, that's what happens when you code a physics engine slightly drunk. But ... the glitches make the game way more fun, and can be used to win unwinnable scenarios.
Great idea. I really enjoyed Angry Birds when it first came out and when my children asked about to install it on their devices I said this was fine. I couldn't find the original Angry Birds so installed Angry Birds 2. What an awful convoluted mess it was. Instead of a simple, fun physics-based game it's full of lives, spells, bad level design and in-app purchases.
I played the original to death "back in the day" so I'm really sad to hear that they went down this route. Probably also explains why nobody talks about Angry Birds anymore.
I beg to differ. I am not aware of any DLCs. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is free to play. There are cosmetics like gun skins you can purchase, but nothing gives you competitive advantage in the game.
Good point. I guess it's the exception though. Interesting that it probably had similar user numbers for the first few years as Angry Birds but just had a lot deeper and more "creator"-type gameplay.
Does it require you to be connected to the internet? Or does it show you an ad if you are? Also, it shows an ad even if you pay? That doesn't sound great...
I was disappointed to find out Pro Evolution Soccer, by far the best and most realistic soccer game on Android, has this always-online requirement as well. Makes the game completely unusable when on the subway.
Top idea. Really really nice. I recently loaded up a blank Android phone with dozens and dozens of games, pretty much anything I could find for a 12h flight, only to realize most of them were an absolute horror show of IAPs and requiring internet connectivity for no apparent reason. So after you've grown this list (and it already looks amazing, excellent work!) maybe worthwhile considering to add an additional "works offline" flag, including the first start of the game. That would've been amazing to have. Either way — you've cracked the secret: make something people want (and saves them a lot of time).
This is a great idea that lots of people have requested, and it's easy to add technically, the problem is in the messaging. The only way I get feedback now is through the "add new game" form, and in that you can tell me the reason for adding the game. However, "works offline" is a nice bit of info rather than a reason to add the game, so I don't exactly know where to ask for that...
Honestly, I wouldn't mind ads if they weren't so obtrusive. a simple ad on a loading screen isn't the end of the world to me. What's annoying is trying to tap a tiny 'x', unskippable video ads, ads that try to fingerprint my device, ads that slow down my machine, ads with volume, time limiting play unless you buy an IAP (when there's no option for just buying unlimited time for a reasonable price)
I want game devs to be able to make a living, but there's a difference between game devs who responsibly put in monetization and game devs just trying to squeeze every last cent through deceit and manipulation.
I want devs to be able to make a living too, that's why I have ad-supported games on the list, as long as you can disable every single ad with a payment. What I hate is devs seeing me as a wallet to wring as much money out of as possible by preying on my addiction/impulses.
I love to see games that have one-time payments to permanently remove ads. This lets the creators provide a free-ish demo, but also may provide some residual income. It also allows players with less money support the creators.
Over the years though, I have found that shady creators find ways around this. I paid about $10 on "Scrabble Free" a bunch of years ago to get rid of ads. What EA did was essentially abandon this version of the app, and eventually it would not run on modern android versions and replaced it with "Scrabble" Then later to finish the deception, they renamed "Scrabble Free" to "ZZZScrabble free."
Considering the amount of time I spent playing that game and the relatively cheap price, I can't complain too much, but the new game has no option to skip ads, a bunch of in-app purchases, annoying notifications some of which let you straight up cheat. Meanwhile, I have an old scrabble cd-rom from the late 90s that might run right out of the box on my windows laptop, and worst case can easily run under an emulator and I can happily play distraction free until the end of my days.
I'd rather prefer the demo version be published as an separate app, since you can't remove the advertising SDKs entirely even after you pay. Even if the developer was payed and stopped displaying ads, advertising companies have zero incentive to actually disable their code. It might still be spying on users in the background, and you can't be sure about it unless you go to great lengths to see what servers the app is communicating with. Worse, even if the SDK did actually stop functioning, it might be too late since you can't disable ads before first launch.
Because the app economy doesn't reward that kind of behaviour. A free game will get more downloads than a paid game. Kids are the biggest consumers of mobile games and they can't download it if it's paid and they don't have a credit card set on their account.
Obscure games with low sales will fall off the rankings pretty quickly. And that's before you consider that there are only a few successful game types (Clash of Clans, Tower Defense, Candy Crush) and probably 10 different clones of each out there. How would you stand out?
This incentivizes devs to just put out a game for free, load it up with ads and hope that it gets enough downloads for it to become an acquisition target.
Eh, as a kid in the 80s and 90s, we were by far the biggest consumers of console games which cost up to $50-$60, in 1980s dollars, and Nintendo had no problem making money.
Maybe it would be a good thing if children couldn't wantonly download adware without their parents inspecting it?
Nintendo also made money because developers paid them license fees to build on Nintendo's platform. I didn't play anything beyond the Gamecube, but I remember there being many more non-Nintendo titles than in-house productions. In this example, Nintendo is Google, taking a cut on each of those 3rd party games.
You're forgetting that you could rent games from Blockbuster before you bought them back then and some consoles had demo disks. You can't rent mobile games to try them before you buy them.
Not sure why they can't just bring back shareware without needing ads. Allow users to download the game for free, but if they want to play more than the first level/area/whatever, they have to buy the game.
Because there are too many games out there competing for your attention. Word of mouth today doesn't work in the way it did back when Doom I legitimized the shareware model. Today, if someone told you about a cool indie studio game and you looked it up online, you'd likely see ads for competing games appear in search results before the actual page.
It should go without saying that Doom was also an incredibly unique game for its time, and the blood-and-guts controversy likely helped spread word about it just as much as the distribution model did.
Why I'm a big fan of such games that also offer a remove-ad's one of fee option. Simple and elegant way to handle many area's - try before buy is covered and allows people the choice.
Not all games/apps work with that approach, but many do and I'm all for fair choice.
Apple Arcade is awesome. $5/month for top tier titles, all of which have no IAP or ads. There are some seriously great games there with voice acting and beautiful artwork etc. You can't beat the price and they add new stuff constantly.
Just a few that I have installed right now, but there are a ton more:
Yes many of those games litterly throw their freemium players as cannon fodder to those whales.
Few get the balance right and many will always tip one way on the odd patch, pandering to the whales - who after all - spend money.
Though the games that just offer hats and other cosmetics, well, you have to love those and certainly a solution that appeases all and rich fools are not to be scoffed at in such games as they are paying for it to carry on.
I echo the others here, Thanks! I have young kids and we let them use tablets on long trips, vacations, airplane rides. Finding games for them is impossible. They are too young to understand when characters, levels, items are locked. It seems like every 2 minutes they get stuck on some ad screen with a hidden X. I just want a game that when I pay $4, I get the full game. It doesn't even have to be a big, intensive game. My kids would be happy with a finger painting game, as long as all the colouring sheets and paint brushes are available.
OP here, you are right. We bought some cheap Fire tablets and have regretted it. Amazon app store is a terrible experience. Almost 0 reviews for even popular apps. The only nice thing is you can push apps to devices through the Amazon website.
As an adult I downloaded some tower building game and then eventually realized I had to pay to be able to keep playing it reasonably. It was my first experience ever with pay-to-play. I just deleted it and flat don't play mobile games anymore.
Yes, exactly this. I don't have any issue with paying for worthwhile games, but I do have an issue with games that try to continually extract more money from me -- you could spend hundreds of dollars on some of those "free-to-play" type games, and sorry, but the value just isn't there. You often can't even see this until you're into the game already (which I'm quite sure is by design), or read through some of the negative reviews.
A 5-year-old who just wants to play that game with the characters they know doesn't understand this, and honestly, it's just easier to avoid entirely.
I would like to build an app that's a series of games, that are all related. I want to use the freemium model, with a one-time payment. No ads, no subscriptions; once you pay, you own the entire game.
What's a better model for this? A single app with a one-time IAP; or two apps, where one is free with no ads or IAPs, but there's a link to a separate paid app with no IAPs?
It seems there's no way to distinguish easily when you're looking at the App Store whether IAP means a reasonable one time purchase for the full game, or a series of predatory IAPs. So having any IAP at all seems to turn off a lot of people. But I'm not sure two separate apps is the best approach either.
The App Store does list the possible IAPs on the page, so if I see "Full game unlock: $3.99" I'm fine with it. Others may look at "offers IAP" and be turned off< I'm afraid I can't speak for them, but the "demo with IAP unlock" seems like the best of both worlds to me.
The question was how to implement the freemium/shareware model in apps. It's important to understand that this model can make a lot of sense, for example in the case of weird and experimental games, where it avoids people wasting their money on something they won't like and leaving disgruntled reviews. It also encourages people to try something new. One approach is to have a single IAP and make the pricing obvious.
I honestly don't think freemium/Ads are a good model.
I understand what you mean, and i think the model pursued by old games was less toxic. They simply released shareware ... just 10% of the game for anyone to try.
Freemium/Ads works well for addicting things, and im not sure how the negative effects of what’s done there can be honestly counter acted.
So its not that i don’t think that the model generates less money, its just burning down the house.
At least the way it works on iOS, iOS is supposed to keep track of whether you purchased that purchase or not (that type of purchase at least not the 'buy x items' consumables), and require apps to have a 'Restore Purchases' option you can click to load which items have been bought and restore the state of your app.
At least in theory, maybe there's been a few cases where it hasn't worked. I'm not aware of any, though.
I don't know how that works on Android. That might not be supported.
> I would like to build an app that's a series of games, that are all related. I want to use the freemium model, with a one-time payment. No ads, no subscriptions; once you pay, you own the entire game.
That sounds a lot like old-school shareware. The free version was a full copy of the game that only included the first few minutes/hours of the missions/worlds/characters. Paying got you the whole thing.
Anecdata: I made a game like this (where enough functionality is playable to find out if you like it, and there's a one-time IAP to unlock the full game) and got a ton of complaints about it. All of them were about IAP generally, not the one in the game. I think people just see the IAP flag in the store and assume it'll be potions or gems or whatever.
One way to do it for iOS/macOS would be to try to get it into Apple Arcade. I don't know what that takes, but all of the games in it are IAP-free and ad free. A monthly fee lets you play any of them. I assume they take a cut and distribute the remainder based on number of downloads/length of game play, but am not positive about that.
> I would like to build an app that's a series of games, that are all related
This reminds me of the Cloverfield series. It would be interesting if you didn't know the games are related at the start or if you know they're related but they're not necessarily the same format or storyline. They just happen to exist in the same world.
> I want to use the freemium model, with a one-time payment. No ads, no subscriptions; once you pay, you own the entire game.
Well, in 90s, this was called shareware. The limited version (i.e. first level/episode) was legal to copy/share between users and who paid got full version.
the obvious downside is to the consumer.
For apps with IAP, pricing is almost always confusing. You often have to dig through comments.
2, IAPs don't allow the family account to work. I love buying premium games and having them work on all our family's phones.
The Life Is Strange PC series does something similar. They release in episodes and you can choose to buy one ep, or the whole game upfront. I think they're pretty successful with it but I don't think it would be as successful in mobile games.
I built a site that’s adjacent to this idea (www.darkpattern.games). It catalogs the dark patterns found in mobile games. Premium currency and ads are two of them but there are many more. The idea is that you could educate yourself so the dark patterns have less power over you and also you can browse the site to find good games that don’t have dark patterns.
That's a pretty well done site, thanks for taking the time to make it.
I don't think that all 'dark patterns' are necessarily always bad, especially after seeing everything that made your list, as you have "Complete the Collection" as an example.
While I think that it can definitely be abused and does belong on the list, I do think collecting things can be part of the fun of games for people, and that's been in games pretty much since games moved from the arcades into the home consoles.
Like platform games are often 'Collectathons', and one of my favorite games of all time, Yoshi's Island on Super Nintendo, has 5 collectible flowers and 20 red coins (and you have to do it with full health at the end of the level) to get up to 100 points for every single level. One of the things I love to do in that game is try to get the full 100 points in as many levels as possible.
Another one is Badges, which is similar to Collections, but you're collecting the completion of goals instead. Personally I loved when Xbox 360 introduced Achievements, and I still wish the Switch offered them. When done right, it can leave a lasting demonstration of how much I enjoyed the game. Of course there's some stupid, grindy, super time consuming garbage that borderlines on player abuse for them, so I agree they qualify as a dark pattern, but I don't think they're inherently or always a bad thing and something game developers should always avoid if they want to make a game that wouldn't make the bad side of your list.
A lot of these dark patterns I do think are probably always annoying and a bad experience, though, like "Wait to Play".
I don't know how I feel about labeling achievements, grinding, and leveling up as dark patterns
I guess they do technically exploit people's psychological weaknesses to make games more addictive than they'd be otherwise.. if you take all of those out, though, the classic Final Fantasy SNES games are basically just pixel art comic books
Thank you for making this. I've used this site before while trying to explain to my friend how Mobile Legends gets kids hooked on gambling and is basically digital crack. That game might as well have used your site as a manual. It is fun though, but damn, the constant and never ending Skinner boxes, gambling, and dark patterns to suck out money and time are over the top. I think that game covers just about every single point on your site.
Haven't had time to look through the list, but this is exactly what I've been looking for. While I don't play mobile games myself, my (older) relatives do a lot, but since something like the 10th time a scam ad almost got my grandmother to lose 300€, I no longer install anything with ads on their devices. It took me almost an hour to find a bullshit-free solitaire game in the Play Store. It took exactly 3 seconds here.
Thanks, I'm glad you like it! I was expecting to have to curate this list myself and that people wouldn't submit much, but I've found a bunch of amazing games just by reviewing the submissions (including the Solitaire game you're talking about, if I'm not mistaken).
The curated list by android team used to be my goto to find some games, but it deteriorated into useless list.
All other top playstore list are garbage too. Finding anything good that isn't crippled by predatory practices is downright impossible. I don't mind paying for mobile games but this isn't as profitable as hook-line-sinker micro transaction model.
This is awesome, but I'm going to forget it exists, so: please take my email address and feed me notifications about when new games get added. (I might want to be notified immediately, weekly, or every N months.)
Besides that, some minor nitpicks:
- Infinite scrolling would be very nice to have
- The ability to sort the columns by clicking the headers (eg, reviews) might be useful
- I have some, uh, really old devices here that I continue to use. One is on Android 5. There are probably only like 4 people out there that will appreciate seeing a game's minimum Android version, but they'll really appreciate it
- I kind of think surfacing screenshots or description info might be interesting, but that's probably because I'm on 256k slowed internet right now and am loathe to click links (lol) but want to compare/get more info about each game
Also: something interesting is going on with the rating filtering. If I type in "4.8" and select Free under Android, I see 3 items; trying "4.7" gets me a total of 6 4.8-rated items.
> please take my email address and feed me notifications about when new games get added
Hmm, that might be a bit spammy, do you have an RSS reader? Maybe I could add a feed.
> Infinite scrolling would be very nice to have
I had something similar before but people complained that they lost their place when clicking on apps to go to the store. Maybe that's fine now that they open in a new tab, I'll rethink that.
> The ability to sort the columns by clicking the headers (eg, reviews) might be useful
Yep, that's something I removed when I added the filtering system and that I need to add back, thanks.
> something interesting is going on with the rating filtering. If I type in "4.8" and select Free under Android, I see 3 items
I never ended up using RSS, but it seems a lot of others do, so perhaps this is a good idea. As for email, considering the general "success" (???) of signup boxes on websites, I get the impression (not having added such a box anywhere yet) that maybe this is the lowest common denominator solution for notifications in non- to semi-technical situations. Maybe a free email solution could be used to test the waters here, with the send rate options limited to every 1-2 months.
I would love to hear some news about how the financials for Apple Arcade break down for game developers. I've got an awesome game in development and it's tempting to apply to include it in Arcade, but typically Apple they are super-light on details.
There are games of just about every type on Apple Arcade. There aren't a ton of competitive or "deep" games, but there were hardly any of those on mobile anyway.
I've taken a look at their launch list and it's 90% casual stuff with very simple mechanics that I'm not interested in.
My main entertainment has been video games for more than 30 years so I either need a story, complex systems i can mess with or maybe a reflex challenge.
Edit: Say, where can I find a complete list of the games they offer? I just checked their page and they seem very secretive about it. Another sign that it's targeted at parents buying something for the kids to shut them up :)
So by "not targeted at gamers" you just mean that they don't have games you are interested in?
I've really enjoyed my time with Apple Arcade. Before it launched, it was becoming difficult to find a decent mobile game that wasn't 100% supported by ad's. I haven't loved all the games they offered, but I've played about 5 so far that I would have paid full price for if they weren't offered in the service.
Most kids would have a hard time playing Card of Darkness (for example), which is a fairly tough card-roguelike thing. Grindstone is also really good. There are a ton of great games on Apple Arcade. I will completely agree that Apple is bad about promoting it though, they don't really seem to understand how to talk about games at all.
Different gaming hardware engenders different games. Strategy games for PC like Stellaris or StarCraft would work like garbage on the Switch, and games like Hyper Light Drifter are horrible to control with a keyboard/mouse.
Phone games are generally played to fill dead time, rather than someone spending hours strategizing like Civilization, by and large, so in these cases shallowness is a virtue. At the computer I like CKII, but Reigns is good if I'm waiting on lunch.
I'm always amazed how many sites like this make wild assumptions about the domain knowledege of all the people that might come across the site. I think "IAP" is "in-app purchases", but just make that clear. And a better statement about what constitutes "bullshit" and whis is the correct definition would help a lot.
Also, why not also include mobile web games like 2048?
I would request you to consider web apps as well. I tried submitting http://arcadejack.com but no luck. Here is what I had entered as comment: "Consider this no-bullshit math game to help kids practice math. Free, no iap, no login. Everything is stored locally."
Edit: Still super early in dev and pin for "grown up" tab is 1222
Thanks for making this, really. Phone games seem to be a sort of gateway drug for video games and it's a shame that most of them are so laden with microtransactions and attention-hacks. Anything that can steer people away from heroin-adjacent mobile games toward games with substance is a great product in my book. Nice job.
Thank you! I got fed up and made this the other day, after playing Head Ball 2 which is basically "Crack cocaine: the mobile game" in how predatory and insidious it is.
I think it would make a fascinating study on how mobile gaming turned into this, when PC and console gaming (while suffering from some of this) is still viable for people who just want to buy a game and play it without shenanigans.
I recall hearing back in the day iPhones were newer and dedicated mobile webpages were a functional matter, and the iPhone lacked serious competitors some web storefronts would abuse browser charge higher prices for iPhone browsers because they read it as a signal for more disposable income/willingness to pay more.
The "luxury start" for a non-dedicated game device combined with the payment platform intergration of an app store was likely the original sin which turned the mobile game development culture that particular flavor of toxic. Of course that was also probably partly what got them developer buy in to their niche platform - the money.
Sometimes I hate that I can give only one upvote to a story.
Back when the iPad 1 was new, I was actually playing games on mine. Then everything turned into a mess of IAP bullshit and now I don't even look at mobile game releases any more. Hopefully this site will help me find something to play.
I'll throw in one I made for myself and never really showed to anyone. It's a clone of Unblock Me/Rush Hour, but with no ads and undo+redo support. It's only a website since I don't want to bother with app stores (I just save the page to my home screen).
The puzzle variety isn't great, my generation method sorta sucks. I had started to build an exhaustive generator after reading Michael Fogleman's article[1] on it, but haven't finished.
Ah yes, this would be kind of confusing in that case :)
Simply put, it's to move the blue-greenish block off the right side of the grid. You clear the path by moving all the other pieces around as necessary. Each piece can only slide horizontally or vertically, depending on its orientation (they move along their longer dimension).
Any reason why the Genre filter field is a text input rather than a dropdown? I went to look at the Genres available to see which ones I might like but the only way I can see to do this is by scrolling through the pages to look at the available options.
Yes, Apple games can belong in multiple genres and it was easier to do it this way, but I'm probably going to make it a dropdown since it's more usable.
Possibly make it a tag selector for easy multiple selection. You could then leave it a text input that sort of auto completes a tag name and adds it to the search filter
That's a good idea, but then I worry that it would narrow the results too much. Not that big a deal, since you can just remove a tag again, but I'll have to play around with it and see.
I feel this is a google/apple problem.
They need to celebrate and advertise premium games more. Instead, we're stuck in a world where most games are fremium with tons of ads or IAPs, or subscriptions..... It sucks to be a gamer.
I've seen some games that are on both Switch and Android. The Android one has ridiculous IAPs, and Switch is a one-time purchase. I get that it isn't the developer's fault. Premium games don't sell well on Android. But it sucks none the less.
Remember how Angry birds and Cut the Rope used to be good? Now they're a disgrace, full of video ads. And for most of them you cannot pay a single fee to remove.
Some games like Churchill Solitaire require you to pay $5 for the game, but then it doesn't unlock all of the campaign, you have to pay $1 for every 25 after that, then you have to pay to UNDO A MOVE or even get a hint. Then daily games are another $5 a month. So much BS even if you want to buy the game.
Would you be open to adding other Genre's of applications in there? iPad has no built in Calculater application and it has been a beyond infuriating experience simply finding a non-bullshit one without any adds or anything.
One of our main design principles is to charge a fair price and never do any ads, tracking or IAP's. The idea is to be contrary to the vast swathes of crap that is out there...
Its awesome to see kitten game[0] on here! I had no idea it was released as an app. For stuff like this, I'll buy it even if I never plan to play it on the device, to support the creator for the time I've spent on the free version.
I recently changed my relation with video games. I used to play a lot of FIFA (or Football Manager), which are games who are just here to entertain yourself, but there is no backstory at all. Now I see video games as reading a book, or watching a great movie: focus on the story, the art design, the sound design, and the experience in general.
I still play a bit of FIFA, but I reserve it to my social time (even though I find that FIFA create a lot of tensions, while Mario Kart is funnier to play, and the level to be competent is lower).
The problem with most of IAP games are that they are in the same category than FIFA or FM. There is little backstory. While paying upfront for a game (on mobile, a dozen of great games exists, and you can play some of them during short period of time like Limbo...) create a sense of connection with the game, because you invest money in it, and you are ready to really invest time in it. On the opposite, IAP are games where the goal is to make you play as much as possible, to pay as much as possible.
There are different kinds of IAP, some are free demos and you unlock the full game with an IAP, some let you buy extra content in the form of DLC, some remove ads, and some just want to get thousands of dollars out of you. I call the latter "bullshit" to differentiate from the former, which are OK to me.
Games that follow the old shareware model (free to try out, choose whether or not to pay for full game/disable ads) are my preference for sure.
I don't mind paying $5 (or more) for a good mobile game, but with so much crap out there, it's tough to justify unless I am lucky enough to run across a trusted review or it's something from a developer that has earned my trust through previous offerings.
Looking back, the games I buy/unlock tend to be the ones where I get to try them out first. If I play the first 10 levels or 1/5th of the story and really enjoy it, I'm eager to pay in-app to continue the game.
I'm in a similar place. A corollary to this is: I'm pickier about how the stories are told. Games are neither books nor films, and I'll pay a premium for games that find a way to tell their stories in ways that are distinct from those mediums.
I feel dumb so I don't know if it's a UI thing or just my weird brain, but I loaded this page on my phone, on Firefox and and Chrome, and I incorrectly assumed it was just broken. Where was the list of games?!
Finally I read "choose your platform" and realized it was saying that not for adding games or any other reason, but to see one of the lists! D'oh!
Hey dude, your games look pretty fun, sorry you're getting downvoted here
I miss the simple, fun, free linux games of the 90s/00s. And other apps, for that matter. Somehow nowadays everyone thinks that cobbling together an RSS reader or a Solitaire game should entitle them to a permanent passive income or make them into a millionaire CEO
For a few years now I've wanted something like "No-Bullshit Podcasts" which does the same thing - lists podcasts that are either ad-free or that can be made ad-free via purchase, and that don't require a proprietary player.
Hmm, at what point do all the trailers for other shows tip in to the advert category?
I wouldn't want to try counting how many times I heard a trailer about 13 Minutes to the Moon last year, which I'm picking on specifically because I actually enjoyed it to make the point that the bucket choice can be very subjective.
The Brexitcast doesn't have ads. The Infinite Monkey Cage has a 10-15seconds clip in the end where they promote other science-y podcasts (which I always fast-forward anyway).
I also listen to the weekly "SecurityNow", in which out of the 2h there should be at least 10-15mins where Leo reads out his ads. Leo also tries to push SpinRite, but since SR has saved many disks in my lifetime, I gladly listen to that bit (finally we'll have a faster performing version soon-ish).
I don't know. Katya pimps nail polish, and Adam pushes pastries disguised as tales of street meetings with prominent leaders. Either that or I'm getting the wrong message from brexitcast.
In all seriousness though. You've described excellent examples of what I was trying to get at: it isn't always obvious where to draw the line; useful promotions, acceptable [to the listener] ads, and the point where it becomes just too much.
Even on SecurityNow, majority of ads are irrelevant to me. But thanks to SN add I found out about CrashPlan, Lastpass, and some other useful services. I cannot remember the razor as that Leo used to have every-week-for-months (the one that was acquired by Gillette some months ago)(Harry's or something) it was boring and irrelevant for a cybersecurity audience, I guess they were aiming for the "males with money" attributes of the audience.
For others that are predictable like this, I push my downloads through a script before they hit my player. Back of the envelope zsh example to scrub first and last minute:
for f (*.mp3) { mp3splt -d new -o @f $f 1.00 EOF-1.00 }
mp3splt¹ doesn't re-encode files, and as such is neither lossy or slow.
Oooh I love Spaceteam, thanks for the submission. Basically, the way it works is that games are automatically added once an hour if they have no ads or iap and are semi-popular, otherwise if you leave a comment telling me why the IAP they have is fine, they go into a review queue.
I then eventually review the queue and whitelist the games accordingly. Spaceteam should be up in a few minutes, thanks again!
I really, really like this idea 'StavrosK, so thanks for making this site.
I contributed the iOS version of Seedship: I played it a few weeks ago, and it had no IAP or in-game currency to speak of [0]. I only have an iPhone, so I cannot test the Android version [1]. I strongly suspect that the answer is no given that the two web versions do not have those things [2][3].
This project did give me follow on idea though that others here mentioned and/or alluded to in this this thread: content blockers for the App Store/Play Store. Apple and Google only check for a number of things when reviewing app submissions: malware checks, conformance with local laws, major performance issues, certain security issues etc. What if a user could download content blockers to block apps that they don’t want to see? Apple and Google get to free themselves of having to break ties between content curation and being a censor. Users who want use apps that are vetted by a third-party of their choosing to achieve some purpose would be able to do so e.g. apps for children. I’m not sure exactly what Apple or Google would have to accomplish this, but I think they could some of their organization app policy logic combined with a few other things e.g. forbidding side-loading, or adding additional content-blocker specific app signatures that an app could optionally have. There is a good chance that this would hurt advertising, so there would be the appropriate and proportional pushback. However, I consider that to be an expression of what the market wants.
My contribution is a tower defense I've been working on over the last 7 years and that I'm still regularily playing myself: https://mazebert.com/
The graphics are pretty bad (I'm drawing them myself, heh), but there's a lot of depth and content to it.
There are three optional, one-time in app purchases, where you can tip me with a cookie, beer or whisky and get a cosmetic card in return.
Are there more options for a Solitaire game that fit on this list?
My retired father could use something familiar (more like the Windows 95 solitaire, minesweeper, and 'mahjong solitaire' tile matching) games that probably still occupy some floorspace in that grey-matter.
I'd also like some games that might help both younger kids and the elderly by exercising memory matching, pattern deduction, and basic math skills. It wasn't clear how to pick such titles out of the list.
Great idea... I don't mind paying for good games, but what i do mind is games that try to squeeze as much money out of you for just playing it, which fits your definition of bullshit games.
So unlockable DLC and removable ads are fine, but endless pay-to-win consumables aren't.
Sorting by number of reviews would be great - it's a better indicator of popularity than the review score
Measuring popularity is potentially an issue here, since:
- Every game’s popularity measure is competing against all other games in stores, which definitely includes all the “bullshit” games (and there are probably way more of those).
- One form of “bullshit” is gaming the review system itself, e.g. finding ways to generate thousands of “reviews”.
- It is very difficult to get users to submit reviews.
I see many games on the list are free with "One-time purchase".
I find these to be pretty annoying, at least on the Android Play Store. The concept is good: free demo, you pay for the full game. The problem is that it hides the actual price of the game.
Maybe an "actual price" field could be added to the site.
I've previously done some filtering based on whether a game was a PC port. It's much harder to add BS into a game with solid fundamentals, so I expect much more from ports of the Supergiant games, dead cells, oxenfree, etc than games that were created to be native mobile titles.
The flipside is that those games might have awkward controls or performance issues or not be well suited to short play sessions. But it might be interesting to have a column linking to the Steam page for games that were ported in either direction.
Doesn't look like it at first glance, if I absolutely had to I'd screen-scrape the advanced search page for the link, which is a less than great way to do it. I donno.
Are my games eligible? I own a game company named Kidoteca, our target market is small kids so we never put ads or IAP.
The closest thing to ads is a section to see our other apps, but it is hidden (requires reading, to figure out how to get to it, while we expect most of our users are kids that can't read).
Would a game with ads that can be turned off for free count? Its called Snowpounce and here is a video about its development https://youtu.be/7ZYkCOmF0yc
PS. Feature-wise I think this could use a grouping of game series, e.g. Journey the Down - there are 3 parts, but it'd make sense to show them as a single meta-item.
Ah, found the form... but it was on the landing page that serves no other purpose but to forward people to the iOS or Android sections. So there's no real reason to ever go back to it. Perhaps link the form from the actual listing pages?
Oops, that seems to be a pagination problem (they're only in the database once, as you can see here: https://nobsgames.stavros.io/ios/?name=room). I will investigate, thank you.
EDIT: iOS games have a rating that's quantized 0.5 apart, so all the 5-star games were sorting unstably. Sorting by "-rating, -reviews" seems to have fixed that (and is more useful), thanks.
No IAP and no ads? How does a game studio should earn money then? Knowing the fact that business model of games are moving to free to play and than players are now reluctant more than ever to pay a decent price for a game but prefer spend 5x more little by little?
Do you intend to reverse the trend? Real question, no trolling.
How a game studio can make money with a F2P game? Or how can we make money from a free 2 play NoBullshit™ game.
Disclaimer: I'm a game developer, I make a MMO F2P mobile game with IAP and ads.
EDIT: I'm not trying to discuss why a F2P with IAP and ads is not always a Bullshit game, you guess that I'm trying to do things well.
I'll echo others: Charge money. Don't hide the actual cost behind a bevy of different and confusing currencies. Ads are attention vampires, and are not consumer friendly despite their innocuous appearances.
I'd also posit that in-game ads will not be sustainable long term. There's already a huge backlash against ads on web pages, I think that games are going to be close behind. Sites like this are only the start of that trend.
> How a game studio can make money with a F2P game?
Ask Epic games how they made money. Or don't ask, they've talked about it extensively. I'm not fond of the side effect of peer pressure against kids to get money, but the model is otherwise fairly sound.
> why a F2P with IAP and ads is not always a Bullshit game
Ads are bullshit. Gambling mechanics hidden as IAP are bullshit. Allowing individuals to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on a mobile game is bullshit. Avoid those, and you will avoid a lot of the worst blowback.
Well if mandatory subscription is not bullshit then why not.
But i do prefer to offer the game for free so everybody can enjoy it.
Mandatory sub is a huge toll in term of marketing. If you are not Blizzard then it's really harder to market fit with less players.
Another argument against sub (for me) is that the game will be much more fun with more players.
I agree Warframe is a "No-Bullshit" game but you still need real money to buy slots for weapons and Warframes. This is a game where you are supposed to acquire as many of those as possible to complete your collection kinda like Pokemon. It's more of a pay-as-you-go model.
There are plenty of games with IAP and ads on that list, nobody said that a game with IAP is always bullshit. In fact, that's the opposite of what the guidelines say:
You say the business model is moving to F2P but that is only part of the story.
In the complete opposite direction we have Kickstarter et al.
Now perhaps the “get filthy rich” business model is only sustainable by freemium addiction (they pay 5x!). At this point it’s more about greed/entitlement than than it is starving artists getting their bone.
Thanks for your answer.
Factually, kickstarter is not a business model, it's a way to get some seed money from future players.
Once the game goes out you still need to have a business model.
Making a game can be an artist job but it also can be a business which is expected to grow, fast and strong as any business.
I found the use of the word "greed" extremely opinionated. Is CEO of Amazon greed ? Greed let suppose that it's accumulating money in a selfish way, which seems to be a pretty bad stuff. I might not understand the nuance as I'm not a native english speaker but I find really strange to link the desire of making money with the "greed" word.
You are maybe right, maybe it's only possible to consider video games as a sustainable business with freemium addiction. I really ask the question
> Strange to link the desire of money with the “greed” word.
Is it? I didn’t even go full avarice.
There is desire for fair compensation and there is greed.
Diluting a product with IAP and Ads is to treat your players like serfs to be squeezed for “LTV”.
Imagine buying a car where increasing the fuel economy for the next n hours required an “in-dashboard-payment”? It’s dilution to make money, aka greed.
Yeah, diluting the product with ads and IAP is a really bullshit way of doing game. I think I just misunderstood the post because none of the answer I got goes in the direction of my post. IAP are fine, ads are fine, subs are fine, DLC are fine. Bullshit pattern aren't.
It might be then the definition of the NoBullshit. It's pretty extremist in the OP website. If there is ingame currency, then it's bullshit. If there is IAP then it's bullshit. If there is ads then it's bullshit.
maybe don't compete with the simplistic games that don't require ads or in-app purchases? or produce a quality product that people are willing to pay for. if you need your hand held to come to these conclusions perhaps you're in the wrong business.
I don't compete with that kind of games but IAP/ads is the business model of 99% of games which makes money, which is obviously a goal.
Producing a product of quality is a top priority but it's not enough, you need marketing too in order to have market adoption.
There is many games of quality that people don't want to buy. Making a paying game in 2020 on mobile is definitely a wrong strategy choice for most of the games.
Please add an "added date" and ability to sort by that date to only see new entries. I've just looked through 10 pages of games. When I come back next time, I want to view only the ones added recently, so I don't have to look at all the same ones again. :-)
I think you should broaden your categorization logic. One app idea I've never had time to start was to make (basically your project) but with also the intent to help filter by specific attributes like:
- offline play
- ads
- ads removable by IAP
- no gambling via IAP
- multiplayer
- 2 player online (1v1)
- 2 player online (co op)
- 2 player same device
- asynchronous multiplayer (like modern play by email, e.g. words with friends)
- not a farmville clone (almost all games trying to catch simcity SEO on android are actually farmville clone shitware).
- no paywalls
- no pay to win
- native of html5
- turn based
- real time
- board game
- 2d
- 3d
The problem is it's really hard to find good games in the android store because every search result is littered with child gambling addiction shitware, or the specific detail isn't isn't indexed at all anywhere.
Thanks! If I remember correctly, that tweet was probably nearer the end, though my threshold for building something after complaining about it is rather low these days
A bit of ui advice — you can tell what phone I’m browsing on from user agent screen. You should default to showing me the right games right on the landing page.
I personally liked that I could pick. I was browsing HN on Android but wanted to see what games were available for my kids iOS device. I liked that the decision was mine and that it was presented clearly rather than being forced to see a pre-filtered list.
Thanks for the feedback, I think it would be better if I let the user choose since I personally want to look at both lists sometimes (or I'm on the PC). Besides, it's very easy to just bookmark the platform you want and go there, but I will consider it.
Parsing the user agent to determine something is, most of the time, a massive mistake. It isn't reliable, and it will frustrate users the moment you get it wrong.
Clever idea. I'm curious why you decided to allow games with DLC though. That's technically an In-App Purchase. I get it's not a Consumable IAP, but it's still IAP.
Also you can probably add just about any modern (i.e. non-Hasbro) board game conversion to this list. Almost all of them charge a fee up front and won't have anything more than some DLC for their expansions. Like Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Through the Ages, etc.
I'm actually working on a mobile game in my spare time right now, and while I normally like to charge money for them I thought I'd try the IAP route this time, but I wasn't planning on making it anywhere near as obnoxious as most IAP games.
Ads you can pay a few bucks to remove, then a couple of consumables that are optional and you can earn during a game anyway if you're lucky, but can buy more if you want (it's a push your luck game, so luck is part of the design), that's about it.
I'm not looking to make all of the money in the world like these big companies are, just hopefully enough to make some side income and maybe eventually switch to making games full time.
I tried playing a Jeopardy game recently, and it just bombards you with screens of crap constantly. Here's a screen where you can pay to add an item for a round! Use your items to help you answer a question slightly easier! Oh you won! Let's update your win streak! (or Oh no! you lost, you're about to go to 0 on your win streak, but if you pay, you can keep it up, and you'll get a reward if you keep it going enough!), then here's some special event that earns you some random nonsense for getting a question right! here's a level up screen! here's a screen that pesters you about something else (I don't know, I lost track after awhile). Just on and on, and in your face. I can't believe people will spend money for these stupid win streaks and whatnot.
So yeah, I'm hoping mine doesn't come across as obnoxious (obviously it wouldn't qualify for the No-Bullshit list, though). And if it doesn't do well, at least it helped me get back in the swing of making mobile games again (it's been like 6 years).
Good luck with your website, it looks nice! If you can add a few extra filters to it, you might have better discoverability than the Apple App Store, which has been too "Winner-Take-All because we refuse to highlight more than a handful of games or give proper filtering options" for forever.
> Clever idea. I'm curious why you decided to allow games with DLC though. That's technically an In-App Purchase. I get it's not a Consumable IAP, but it's still IAP.
That's why I called it "No-Bullshit Games" instead of "No-IAP games" :P
> Ads you can pay a few bucks to remove
That's fine by me.
> then a couple of consumables that are optional and you can earn during a game anyway if you're lucky, but can buy more if you want (it's a push your luck game, so luck is part of the design)
That's where I kind of start to consider the game "bullshit", I want to play and enjoy myself, not have constant FOMO of what could be if only I'd spent some more money. That said, it doesn't sound nearly as annoying as some of the crap I've installed.
> yeah, I'm hoping mine doesn't come across as obnoxious (obviously it wouldn't qualify for the No-Bullshit list, though).
Oh, I didn't read this far before starting the reply :P I hope so too, and yeah, it probably wouldn't qualify.
>> then a couple of consumables that are optional and you can earn during a game anyway if you're lucky, but can buy more if you want (it's a push your luck game, so luck is part of the design)
> That's where I kind of start to consider the game "bullshit", I want to play and enjoy myself, not have constant FOMO of what could be if only I'd spent some more money. That said, it doesn't sound nearly as annoying as some of the crap I've installed.
I realize that there is an editorial aspect to this, and I think that's a valuable thing. As with any editorial choice, there will always be these interesting questions at the boundary between acceptable and not.
Where do you fall on Fortnite? Fortnite makes raftloads of money, but doesn't require any purchases to win or give advantages in play to purchasers. They make their money primarily from cosmetic add-ons. People who play a lot for free can still claim new skins and such.
I would argue that Fortnite is actually No BS, but I can also see how it's borderline because you could spend virtually unlimited amounts of money in it. But is that the dividing line?
You're exactly right that there's an editorial line, so this list reflects my personal beliefs and classification on BS/noBS. I think cosmetics are fine, since you can fully enjoy the game without them, and if a game ONLY has cosmetics, it can go on the list (there's even a dropdown item for that in the submission form).
> That's where I kind of start to consider the game "bullshit", I want to play and enjoy myself, not have constant FOMO of what could be if only I'd spent some more money.
It probably won't be too much of a FOMO thing really. The game is mainly just a "see how far you get" game, kind of like a Flappy Bird or Temple Run type game, but choice based, not dexterity based.
If you choose poorly you can lose pretty quickly, but then you can just start the game over again if you want. But if you're like "wow, this is the furthest I've been, let's go for it this time!" or whatever, and you burned through the items that you earned during the course of the game, well you could just see if you get lucky and get farther, or you can spend money to get a bundle of items help ensure you survive a bit longer.
But the game is designed that if you keep making the right choices you can continue indefinitely (in practice, though, you will almost certainly pick wrong enough times at some point... I've simulated it, and with 100,000+ simulations, it doesn't get further than a certain point, and it's super rare to get that high).
Personally it's not something I ever spend money on in these things, but I'm pretty anti-IAP for my own personal use and have rarely spent money on IAP in general, but I enjoy playing the game just to see how far I can get just with the items I earn during the game, so I'm hoping even some players that are anti-IAP will enjoy the game anyway.
Because ultimately I'm trying to make a fun game, just add some way to make some money while not charging up front for it.
> If you choose poorly you can lose pretty quickly, but then you can just start the game over again if you want. But if you're like "wow, this is the furthest I've been, let's go for it this time!" or whatever, and you burned through the items that you earned during the course of the game, well you could just see if you get lucky and get farther, or you can spend money to get a bundle of items help ensure you survive a bit longer.
... actually, my assumption will be that you designed the game to require purchasing those items, and I won't even install it :)
It's not only that I have to believe you when you say they're not required, but even if i do, I have to believe you won't sneakily - or not so sneakily - change things in the next update.
It was bad enough when EA bought Popcap and my paid for Plants vs Zombies turned into some bullshit with IAPs.
Yeah, that sucks. Plants vs Zombies should have never gone IAP.
It's fine that you don't trust that it won't change. That's probably a good thing overall to have that skepticism.
This is my first real experiment with designing a free game that isn't just a free flash game with zero monetization that I just put out there and let millions of people play without getting any income for it (what I used to do 15+ years ago...basically just gave a lot of free money to flash game websites that did have ads).
I've worked on a F2P game before at a video game company and it did all those terrible tricks and I didn't feel to happy working on it, was always hoping we'd get a new client for more interesting and fun games, but it never ended up happening before they had to do major layoffs.
I'm not claiming I won't ever do something that you personally won't like, this is mainly just what I'm thinking now. But I'm hoping that being less obnoxious will earn me some more good will than trying to squeeze every last dime out of players like big companies do. I'm just one guy making games outside of my day job, here.
Oh, I see. Yeah, that sounds reasonably okay. Just don't add any of the crappy "pay to play again or wait 39 minutes" mechanics, those are a guaranteed uninstall for me.
I wasn't even considering it. It bugs me too. It's nice to hear what people who are annoyed by these types of games like and dislike though, so thanks for pointing it out.
> Clever idea. I'm curious why you decided to allow games with DLC though. That's technically an In-App Purchase. I get it's not a Consumable IAP, but it's still IAP.
DLC that adds actual content is fine. They used to be called "expansions" :)
Github: https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/lsd (Warning: a single, dependency less CoffeeScript source file)