These games take money out of the pockets of kids that can usually ill afford it and are typically not aware of the consequences of their addiction until it is much too late.<p>And that addiction is there by design, not by accident.<p>Chalk it up to bad parenting or whatever you want but in the end this is still a scam delivered in the form of a game, aimed squarely at a vulnerable group, one that by law can not enter into binding contracts.<p>The fact that it brings in an insane amount of money is not an excuse, though I'm sure that there are enough people to who this kind of income is enough to throw away all their ethics and start raking it in.<p>In-app purchases work because they defer the visualization of the amount actually spent until the phone bill comes in.<p>Kids literally have no idea how much they're spending on these things (in fact, most adults don't realize it either).<p>I see enough young kids in my surroundings getting into trouble with parents, debt collectors and all kinds of other nastiness just because games like these cause them to overspend due to the addictive elements embedded purposely in the game.<p>Apple, for all their oversight on the appstore is 100% complicit in this, apps are routinely thrown out for trivial reasons but mixing teenagers (a vulnerable group if there ever was one) and impulse buys at exorbitant prices is A-ok with them.<p>And no, this is not a 'blame the computer games for kids behaviors' argument, it is a blame the makers of addictions for the problems stemming from those addictions.<p>The argument seems to be that if they don't screw them someone else will. But that's nonsense and one of the reasons why marketing stuff directly to kids is illegal in many places.
Have you actually played Clash of Clans or Hay Day? Those things are amazingly well designed for money printing purposes. Everything in the games are designed to be slippery conversion funnels filled with hooks that pull you deeper and deeper. The idea is to monetize addiction with very high conversion rates.<p>Some of the ingredients: free to play, every action prompts a IAP (wait or pay), quick&easy progress in beginning, instantly addictive, competitive (leaderboards&prizes), social pressure (you have to join a clan and fight for it) etc. All of this very well executed in a great game.<p>Edit: So, the author's point that they 'just executed proven idea better and added content' is not the reason why they are so successful. It's the starting point. Real innovation here is that they are probably among the first who really focus on conversion optimization in games.
I'm interested to find out that this is where my 12 year old son sunk about $25 into in-app purchases ("bag of gems") over 2 days of playing this game (Clash of Clans) on his iPod Touch. He says its an awesome game, but this seems way too overpriced to me. All his friends from school are also playing it, and probably also sinking cash at a high rate into this company (and Apple).
If you make any sort of money, someone will always be at the other end paying that exact sum of money.<p>If you are a sympathetic person, the higher that sum is, the more you will be focused on ensuring that the money paid is paid by people able to do so responsibly and people knowing what commitments they are getting into.<p>This sounds like quite the opposite.
Interestingly that is nearly 1/4 the revenue of Zynga [1] (3.2M/day if you're wondering)<p>[1] <a href="http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AZNGA&fstype=ii&ei=OGCsUKD9NOapiQKnXw" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AZNGA&fstype=ii&...</a>
When I got my first smartphone (not that long ago) in my naïvety I installed some random free game from the Google Play store to see how obtaining software works. I don't remember which game it was, but I remember being stalled a couple minutes in, being offered some kind of upgrade that I could buy in order to progress in the game. With real money.<p>With. Real. Money.<p>I'm baffled that no one else here (although I'm sure there's plenty of us) seems to be baffled at the mere concept of playing a game and being asked in that game to spend real money in order to make it fun to play. If the commercial success of your "game" depends on it, I will not steep so low as to discuss whether that tactic is legitimate in this particular case or not. In my world, it's not, nor will it ever be. Make a game that's fun to play and then sell it. If you can't do that, bad luck. Or try harder. Or go make something else that has value in and of itself.<p>I feel stupid now for writing this comment. It's an overly dramatic one that probably no one will read, and it's kind of off-topic anyway. But I really feel like pointing out how I can't wrap my head around the concept of in-game-charges, and how such a lame, opportunistic thing could worm its way into mainstream game creation.
Data points like this always make me wonder what the non-game part of Apple's app store (and Google's, Amazon's, GetJar's, ...) looks like. Is there any good data on that?
We've been seeing articles everywhere about how App economics don't make sense, it looks like games are the exception. I'd love to see the communities thoughts about this!
For what it's worth, the tutorial described there reminds me of at least one RTS I've played, although I can't place which one. Particularly that you start the game under attack. Maybe a C&C game or an Age of Empires game?<p>Not sure.
Startup copies another game exactly down to the tutorial and makes money... CONGRATS, YAY, SO IMPRESSIVE<p>Zynga copies another game exactly down to the tutorial and makes money... LAWSUIT OMG HATE HATE HATE<p>You people are such hypocrites