Comment on Old gamers don't understand what mobile gaming has become
sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 1 day agoyes, but mobile games now are literally casinos, with research going into making them as addictive as possible to maximise in app purchase and advertisement revenue
source: worked in ad tech for several years, specifically in the mobile gaming industry and cost/ad optimisation. a job I regret ever taking and which feels very scummy in retrospect.
I have literally played mobile games for decades and have never spent a dime on micro-transactions.
Meanwhile, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on full length games for PC and console. Sometimes handheld and mobile too.
So I got to wonder, why are all of you unable to just buy a mobile game outright?
Because they all come with microtransaction stores, including sevwral of the ones you’re spwcifically lauding, ya numpty.
No, they don’t. It’s not hard to find premium, paid mobile games without microtransactions—I’ve already listed examples. And I’ve cited hard data: there are 14,139 such games on iOS alone.
If you can’t find even one of them, the problem isn’t the platform. It’s that you’re not actually looking.
To be fair, the iOS app store will show the top 200 paid games, and that’s it. There are a bunch of categories for games, but ‘paid’ isn’t one of them; there is no other way to see or filter just paid games. It’s always sucked and Apple has never fixed it.
I honestly don’t know how any developer is supposed to be successful on there with a paid game, because if it’s not already in the top 200 list, most people will never be able to see it in the store without specifically searching the name.
Ah, the classic “world hunger is a myth, I have eaten today.”
I’m not saying there are not the rare gems in mobile games (just bought Don’t Starve on Android last month!), but like 99% of games for mobile are just s money making scheme using dark patterns to influence your brain to give them money.
And congrats on not spending on micro transactions! You do realize the world doesn’t revolve around how your perceive things, right? If young people are exposed to micro transactions like that, it alters their brains and not in a good way. And that’s science, there really isn’t much you can argue with.
You do realize that iOS alone has more paid premium games—without microtransactions—than the entire combined library of NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube, right?
Cool, that’s why half the games you listed are just gambling machines in disguise?
cybervseas@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Specifically worth pointing out the research and refinement of the skinner boxes in mobile games today is a continuous and ongoing process, with revenue also being continuous and ongoing. Any games and moral panic of 80s to 2000s were about products that didn’t change after release and were one-time only purchases.
Modern mobile games vs. shareware are incomparable in terms of harm they could do, real or perceived.