Indie-Resource.com

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/07/16/ ... obile-game

Please someone tell me this is just a bad joke... her game made $200 million? Really?

Yup, make shit and people will dump their shit into it. Craziness.

Well it surprises me and doesn't. First she's a PR, so that's a job well done
But what makes me sad is that people spend money on this cr*p...

In-app purchases prey on the stupid. Who would have been better to attract your potential audience in this case? Seems pretty ingenious to me.

Jackolantern wrote:Seems pretty ingenious to me.

Oh yeah, she's laughing all the way to the bank

Okay, time to make Flappy Kardashian!

But wow, social climbers - figures there'd be money floating around there.

Wonder if there's a way to tap into that? I only want a couple of million, I'm not greedy!

You know, stuff like this really rattles my whole world view.

As a (occasional) gamer who also makes games, I have always hated the in-app-purchase and low-value DLC model dominating the world today and have refused to go that route in my own designs. I still wish for the days of just paying a fair amount up-front for everything.

But then things like this game and Snoop Dog/Lion's "Golden Jay" make me just want to say F it. When devs like the makers of this and Candy Crush Saga are making literally hundreds of millions of dollars on games that look like they would have taken 2 or 3 months to make, yet hang players by their ankles and shake every last cent out of them while not even being ashamed to make it obvious, and players by the millions flock to it, why bother? When there are hundreds of great games with fair pricing strategies that have almost no downloads, and this garbage attracts armies, who am I actually wanting to make good, fair games for? This is the garbage the majority of the world wants, apparently...

I think you hit it on the head Jack. But the problem you speak of stems further into society than this. It shows you the current state of what the masses want. To make the most amount of money in a short period of time, this is what it takes. A dumbed down mass of people that are easily shaken of their money.

I play a game called Book of Heroes on my phone. It has In-app purchases where you can buy Gold Shields which then you can use for energy refills, cosmetic changes, etc. The thing I find with their in-app purchasing model, is it seems that if you are patient in the game and play it regularly, you can bypass buying anything and will still have the full experience without the purchasing. The people that tend to purchase the Gold Shields seem to be the ones that want to dominate the leaderboards, and other useless frivolity like that. It seems to work for Venan.

I guess there are extremes and it depends on what you want to do. I have envisioned massive amazing games, but then realize that they are too complex for the average user and would not be a success.

IMO, a well designed free-to-play game will allow players to play normally and progress through the game without spending any money. It just takes longer than if you buy credits/gold/lives/whatever.

The money option is there to catch the impatient people. My wife spends *way* too much on Candy Crush. She knows it. She knows that if she is just careful and plays smarter, she can keep playing for a long time without having to spend any money. But then she was just *almost* there... and died... so she'll get it next time (BUY) and oh... so close again (BUY)

I generally avoid games like this, just because they are such money sinks. But there are a few strategy/empire games that I have enjoyed playing, and I might buy some credits once in a while just to support the author.

Saw on another new site that a lot of players of Kim's game are not happy with the bugginess. I foresee Kim's game disappearing before long, but not before filling her bank account

OldRod wrote:IMO, a well designed free-to-play game will allow players to play normally and progress through the game without spending any money. It just takes longer than if you buy credits/gold/lives/whatever.

The money option is there to catch the impatient people. My wife spends *way* too much on Candy Crush. She knows it. She knows that if she is just careful and plays smarter, she can keep playing for a long time without having to spend any money. But then she was just *almost* there... and died... so she'll get it next time (BUY) and oh... so close again (BUY)

I generally avoid games like this, just because they are such money sinks. But there are a few strategy/empire games that I have enjoyed playing, and I might buy some credits once in a while just to support the author.

Saw on another new site that a lot of players of Kim's game are not happy with the bugginess. I foresee Kim's game disappearing before long, but not before filling her bank account

I think we are seeing the number of games where you can effectively play for free shrink. I tried Candy Crush a while back, and I honestly don't know if you can really play it all the way through for free. The entire game is designed to put up road blocks unless you pay.

I would like to think that ten years ago, games like these would not have been acceptable, but the idea of DLC and in-app-purchases enveloped us so slowly that the mainstream market has been trained to accept it. It is hard to even find people in the Google Play or App Store review comments complaining about games with major "pay-to-win" mechanics. They seem to be fine with it. And the market is going to continue to change because of that fact.