From my experience, free to play games are basically always guaranteed to be deceptive in order to recoup the cost of development.<p>There are a few examples that don't fit, like; TF2 and Fortnite I suppose. But I'd always rather pay a fixed fee for a game and be confident there's no incentive to sell me something...
I’m interested in learning some of the techniques that make gaming more enticing. I’ve got some educational apps for iOS that I would like to make more engaging. I’ve noticed that after 5-7 days retention really trails off. Do people buy into badges, leveling up, daily streaks, etc?<p>Two of my apps:<p>Hundred Words:
<a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hundred-words/id1469449237" rel="nofollow">https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hundred-words/id1469449237</a><p>Language Pairs: <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/language-pairs/id1438817614?mt=8" rel="nofollow">https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/language-pairs/id1438817614?...</a>
Facebook is full of free to play games and so are Android and iPhones.<p>I'd rather pay a flat fee for a game and not be forced to buy in game currancy to buy gems and other things to buy extra items in the game.<p>Some people pay hundreds of dollars on ingame items to become a wallet warrior and beat the grinders playing for free.
I briefly worked on recommenders for a fair sized fashion retailer. I was flabbergasted to learn just how much certain shoppers spend. (Though we purposefully called them "platinums", vs "whales", internally. Better optics.)<p>For me, becoming more aware of "whales" highlighted other power law distributions, Pareto's Law, or whatever we call it, throughout society.<p>A few "bad apple" cops get most of the complaints.<p>A few alcoholics drink <i>a lot</i> more than others.<p>A handful of people do most of the property damage crimes.<p>Etc.<p>So whatever else comes from this "freemium" awareness, there are some useful, important policy implications.
I would peg it down to innumeracy and inability to handle relativism and anchored valuations.<p>I would wager the same people who become whales are merely the same who would overspend on traditional sales periods for physical stores.