Mobile games make an embarrassing amount of money exploiting addiction. It's a "great" way to make a quick buck.
this post was submitted on 31 May 2024
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yeah, get people mentally engaged, and invested, then put friction in the way of the thing they want to do, but the friction can be solved with money.
Add a social aspect, a timelyness/urgency aspect, a fomo aspect, and bam.... skinner box people pay money into.
Mobile games like these are designed with the help of addiction experts, each phase of the game is designed to trigger different emotions which builds up to constant frustration in the end.
The key is then manage that frustration by constantly showing the player that they could easily remove the source of the frustration by simply buying more resources.
This has to be done in way to keep the player feeling justly treated according to the rules of the game.
The game can't outright just steal your resources, but it can spawn in enemies to waste them and then limit how many resources you get in a specific time, that makes sure you don't blame the game itself but rather individual parts of the game.
Even better if another human stole the resources, like in clash of clans.
I got caught up in GTA Online, I bought thousands of SEK worth of shark cards, I was able to get a few nice cars, and a lovely house, but Rockstar/Take2 were very clever, in the name of realism you had utility bills to pay, you needed to pay for having your car impounded, you could buy facilities to farm more money, but they cost as well, you needed special offices to get some cars, those cost money on top of needing to buy the car.
It was death by thousand cuts, and after a year or so, I just realized what a shit game it was an uninstalled it, I did have fun in the game, but it also taught me a very valuable lesson.
Don't buy shark cards.
Clash of Clans is kinda safe in this, nobody cares anymore if they get attacked as there are now so many ways to farm resources that got added after the game started dwelling in the player count.
Years ago and it became a hit I realized I needed one more line in Candy Crush to finish the level way too many times for it to be a coincidence. Deleted. And lesson learned
To put into context; Microsoft bought Activision/Blizzard for 69 Billion dollars. A huge portion of that was actually King.
Around 2014, over 93 million people were playing Candy Crush Saga, while revenue over a three-month period as reported by King was over $493 million. Five years after its release on mobile, the Candy Crush Saga series has received over 2.7 billion downloads, and the game has been one of the highest-grossing and most-played mobile apps in that time frame. As of September 2023, it had reached over $20 billion in revenue.
Safe to say mobile market makes a lot more money we’d be comfortable with.
I shared my arcade membership with my mom a while ago (I had gotten it included) and it put her purchases on my card. This bio-chemist (very smart lady in some specific subjects) spent over $25 on ‘micro’ transactions in a week or so. They prey on the group that just want to get things done.
Mobile games make more money than the entire rest of the gaming sector combined.
Would not be surprised if a handful of mobile games make more than the entire rest of the sector.
~~mobile games~~ pocket casinos
Freemium games are kinda hit and miss. But if it hit, the cash can be absofuckinglutely huge. And the misses aren't even that costly. So they try again and again. Good marketing is the key though, because in the flood of similar products the ones on top of the feed gets downloaded, hence i wouldn't be even very surprised if that marketing costs were greater than actual development of the game.
Just anecdotal evidence but a game developed where I worked around 2009 had a marketing budget twice as big as the production budget, and it was their "best game" so not just to push some crap.
It's not just long hours that wear out game developers 😅
You sure Dolph won't be busy busting heads because he smelled crime or performing outrageous sexual experiments on his incredibly hot but skeptical female lab partner?
Supercell makes a lot of money, that's for sure
Who are the stars?
Is that really Hemsworth? I thought it was just a good impersonator.
I found an article that explains who everyone is (except, hilariously, for Dolph Lungren) https://chipandco.com/hollywood-stars-face-off-against-social-media-influencers-in-launch-trailer-for-squad-busters-566523/
Word of warning that page is terrible with an ad blocker. I wouldn’t approach it without one
Thanks…you weren’t wrong about the page. It’s basically an add for the game with adds all the way down!
From the article:
Chris Hemsworth, Christina Ricci, Ken Jeong, Will Arnett, And Auli’i Cravalho Squad Up in Launch Trailer for Squad Busters
The Hollywood gang, while quipping about Ricci’s skeleton-summoning staff, encounter another player’s squad whose characters are played by Internet sensations including TikTok superstar [Bella Poarch]as Witch, real-life woodcutter [Thoren Bradley] as Greg, lip-syncing legend [Gabriela Moura]as Shelly and YouTube extraordinaire [ZHC] as Chicken.
In a knowing wink to the viewer, Seth Phillips, better known as [Dude With Sign] makes a brief cameo during the battle to ‘appeal to a younger audience’
“And to appeal to old cunts who saw Masters Of The Universe when it came out in Cinemas, Dolph Lungren …”
Btw it’s me that’s the old cunt, saw it with some mates for someone’s birthday. Was very underwhelmed
Don’t forget Expendables 4…he is sober now as the sniper but is half blind due to his age and can’t hit the side of a barn door from 20 m away.
You have to go back to the early days to discover the true genius of Dolph like Maximum Potential he has a Maters in Science yet he sounds like a boxer who left high school at 16 and had been in the ring for 10 years.
And now I’m gonna go watch Universal Soldier again
Slip a bit of Thunder Gun in there as well.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Apart from Hemsworth, I recognize Gob from Arrested Development, and the dentist-turned-actor who played the Spanish teacher in Community (and bad guy in Hangover).
They make an insane amount of money and have huge advertising budgets. Raid: Shadow Legends has been a meme for years at this point because they sponsor anything that will take them.