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Having worked in the f2p games industry for a decade, nothing is as you perceive. Your entire reward stream is scheduled down to the coin, in spreadsheets written by people like me. I know how much you have today and how much you will have tomorrow.

Any reward presentation, assume there is a loot table behind it. You see 4 cards on the screen, but there may as well be 1 big slot lever; cuz no matter where you tap you're doing a single prng rand and getting what the loot table says.

The loot tables aren't at all what you expect, they skew heavily towards 'booby' prizes cuz that makes it easy to predict your progression. The screen might show you 4 cool things you can get alongside 1 lame prize, implying 20% odds; but the sum odds of those 4 cool things will be <5% and most of the time you're getting a predictable lame drip.

The one thing working in your favor is a 'pity' counter. Every time you get a booby prize the pity counter goes up and leads to another rand call. If you succeed at beating the pity counter, it'll give you a good prize and reset the pity counter. The net effect is that I can program the reward stream such that you're guaranteed a good item every 50 pulls or whatever. Some games are just straight with you about this, others aren't.

During the onboarding flow, which could be designed to last months depending on the game's age, your entire reward schedule will be painstakingly controlled down to the coin. Not a single rand call in sight.

My advice is to play these games if you understand all this and have friends to play it with. They've got good hobby value, on a per dollar basis. I mean, have you seen the cost of golf? If you don't get how the monetization works, and you're alone, there's healthier hobbies to spend your money on.




I know at least for Hearthstone, they are fairly transparent about the odds for pulling various cards and even have a pity trigger that gives you the rarest cards if you haven't gotten one in a while (all of this is documented), so it is possible to have a relatively successful F2P game that doesn't lie to the players about this stuff.


Interestingly though, this may be documented, but is it easily accessible? I played Hearthstone in the past and never knew of such documentation.



Again, yes it exists. But I was never directed to it until now. So if it exists but no one knows it does...


> My advice is to play these games if you understand all this and have friends to play it with.

My advice to law makers is to regulate these games into the ground. Your statements enforce my world view. My kid will not play these games.


Not mobile as far as I know, but Prodigy (prodigygame.com) is allowed/encouraged at my kid's school and has a lot of these traits. There are treasure chests at the end of a battle, gems or coins collected, and a constant reminder that subscribers get more rewards. Many of his classmates subscribe.


Ugh, yes. My kids play this one at school and when I read about the game mechanics I was super disappointed. Luckily they stopped begging me to subscribe eventually since I wouldn't budge.


I encourage regulation. I don't think it will have an existential impact on the industry, however.


https://youtu.be/F9cO3-MLHOM

Regulation is always crafted to benefit incumbents and widen their existing moat.


The problem here is it's a lose-lose situation for the consumer. Either the incumbents push regulation that benefits them at the expense of new business and consumers, or regulations are removed and businesses (new and incumbent alike) get free reign to apply any consumer hostile money making scheme their hearts desire.

Maybe there's a third option?


The latter isn't the dystopia you seem to think it is.

We have plenty of existing rules that are fine for enforcing access to markets.

There are tons of people who want to make great products and tons of people who want to buy them and tons of people who want to make them discoverable.

The issue is that large lawbreaking organizations are actively inhibiting that.

Consumers are good at avoiding consumer hostile vendors when they are actually given choices and opportunities to do so.


Off-tangent, but: IMHO all games should have pity counters for random loot drops. With millions of players, the likelihood that someone will flip the coin 20 times and get 20 tails is actually quite high. Just exaggerate the middle of the bell curve and cut off the tails entirely, please, who cares if it's no longer normal? Not the players.


This is precisely why slot machines are one of the most heavily regulated consumer devices in existence. They simply cannot and will not ever be fair otherwise. Mobile gambling (including "loot boxes") is just another regulatory capture play like AirBnB and Uber.


The money in competitive gaming is also in gambling, I gather, from having briefly worked for a company part of which did video game gambling (and the ownership structure and relationship with various tournaments was about as muddy and twisty as you’d expect—oh and their other big thing was hard-right media, including some radio personalities you may have heard of)


This is the kind of thing people should understand about "modern entertainment".

My moment of realization was when I found out the truth of those "claw machines" that pick up a fuzzy stuffed animal. Turns out the claw itself is rigged so that it rarely grasps tightly.


Reading the owner/technical manual for a claw machine can be a real eye-opening experience.


Honestly I thought you were joking ... but the very first claw machine manual I found details how they lower the voltage available to close the claw with increasing height.


What? Any pointers?


Do you ever regret working on this kind of software?


I played F2P games for a number of years and spent probably thousands of dollars on one. I don't regret it. I made a lot of friends, one of whom I still hang out in real life, learned leadership skills, and it was a pleasurable pasttime.

I don't think it should be demonised.


That still makes you a "social drinker" in this context. We need to hear from the 30 rack a night folks to get a fuller picture.


They said they've spent "thousands" on a single mobile game.

We might just have different standards, but that's past "social drinker" status to me. I don't know anyone in my social circle (online or offline) that have spent that much on a mobile game, and my social circle games a lot.

How many thousands does someone have to spend to move past "social drinker"?


IDK, it's not really relevant to my point I don't think. It sounds bad to me too but you're not going to argue an addict into believing they're addicted, even if they are. My understanding of gambling addiction isn't that sophisticated but I think that sort of use still puts them firmly in the minor leagues of use.

Anyway though an essential mechanism of addictions is that they are dynamic. You can interview large groups of users of any drug (and also probably gambling) who will attest to its benefits in their lives. Even if they are currently correct, some of them will later become full blown addicts. It doesn't mean they were wrong at the time, just maybe overly confident about why it suits their lives.

A common AA dark joke is that "high-functioning isn't a type of alcoholism, it's a stage in it." A lot of normal users will end up addicts, a lot of mildly problem users will progress. AFAIK the same patterns show in gambling addiction which is imo one of the major problems with these super accessible entry points into it.


> They said they've spent "thousands" on a single mobile game. We might just have different standards, but that's past "social drinker" status to me.

Assuming “thousands” means 5000, thats 416 per month. Taking an average cost of 10/drink (5 for beer, 15 for cocktail - this skews higher in major cities, lower out of major cities, lower still outside of cities), thats ~8 drinks a week.


I regret choosing to continue the GPs use of "social drinker" to establish the "level" of spending.

If you spend thousands of dollars on a mobile game, that is dramatically outside the average (of my experiences).


The difference seems to be whether its social or alone. I've never spent anything on microtransactions/f2p, but I've certainly spent money on alcohol. It's a world of difference spending $100 in a night with good friends, and $50 on a night alone at home.


Alcohol recovery meetings are absolutely full of people who have to say "I thought if I wasn't doing it alone it wasn't alcoholism." The social context of use is only one factor, it can't be used by itself to determine if the use is a problem.


Demonized? Maybe not. But these games should be 18+ like any other gambling product.


how do you make friends from an online mobile game?


would make friends over chat. I had some friendly interactions with other Hearthstone players, and could see how we might have established friendships (I did playing WoW, though the game was the glue and I only have the good memories of those shared experiences now).

I finally pulled the plug on videogaming, though, because I found it too compelling; when everything else pales in comparison, and all I think about is the game, and after playing I don't feel very good (as opposed to after reading, for example), it's time to recognize my limitations and stop. I'm still riding out the withdrawals, as autumn is a time where I feel especially drawn to that escape, but I'm confident it'll get easier and I'll continue to thank myself for making the leap.

I do need to actively remind myself that my experience is not universal, and that videogames can be part of a healthy and/or social life.


"Gacha" games typically have some kind of "guild" system (often as another ploy to increase stickiness and engagement) and many better guilds will have Discord servers.


No, I think F2P is just another way to fund game development. There's no indication that it will cannibalize premium games. So everyone can play games the way they want to play them.

Mobile gaming created an entirely new sector and doubled the total revenue of the games industry. It did it by finding people who weren't playing games, and giving them games to play. I think a lot of the panic around microtransactions is a response to the demographics shifting away from a small group of self-identifying gamers, and investors paying proportionate attention to the demographic trends.

The two markets of course influence each other, but I view that as a net good which drives innovation in both spaces. Nobody is forced to spend money on video games, so if you don't like a game's business model you don't have to spend any money on it. If others agree, it will flop; and the next generation of games will take history into account.


> doubled the total revenue of the games industry. It did it by finding people who weren't playing games, and giving them games to play

Found a way to skirt regulation and get more people hooked on slot machine type games who previously couldn't be reached due to access or legal issues.

paypal (originally): we're not a bank (we only offer payment services)

uber: we're not a taxi service (we only offer ride booking; and our employees are independent contractors)

airbnb: we're not a hotel service (we only offer short-term rentals)

f2p: we're not gambling (we only hook whales on slot machine-like games)


I think hate of micro-transactions comes from the value perspective of those who choose to not participate. More traditional games are pretty cheap if you compare them and spending on f2p type of games can rack up. To substantial numbers. When talking about hundreds or thousands spends you could get dozens or hundreds of very decent traditional titles for that money...

Maybe part of the fear is that those consuming traditional games would end up spending lot more per game and that is not entirely unreasonable...


> So everyone can play games the way they want to play them.

This is simply not true if a game has addictive features built in. And you know that by now, I am certain.


Has the future-self of gambling addicted eight year old been forced to spend money on video games?


Thank u for your blog. Very thoughtful with helpful references.

Any books u recommend on gamifications?


I don't know of any books on gamification specifically, but would be interested if others do. The Deconstructor of Fun blog is a consistent resource on microtransactions. [0]

For an introduction to game design in the general sense, there is Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design. [1] I think it's better to approach gamification as something that emerges from a holistic appreciation of game design; rather than gamification as a goal in-and-of-itself. But that's the long way. I don't know any shorter.

[0] https://www.deconstructoroffun.com/blog

[1] https://schellgames.com/art-of-game-design/


You have just described my experience with Diablo Immortal


Is the pity counter stored on the server?


The gaming data is all stored server side and subject to the tightest controls imaginable. You would never be able to twiddle bits and get an advantage in the game. Your PI however is sold to all and sundry, as well as being made available in an S3 bucket with no permissions for anyone who doesn’t want to pay for it.


What PI do mobile games even collect? Is it just payment history?


I'm sure it includes as much location data as it can divine, time of day you play, hours you play, anything it can get from too many permissions, etc.




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