This is disgusting. I've turned down job opportunities based solely on the feeling that it would compromise my values / principals. So whether you just need to pay the mortgage, your school loans, or for the booze and clothes you're going to wow all your friends with tonight, if you're one of the many people building these sort of companies and normalizing these type of practices, I say to you, this is wrong. And if you choose to keep on keepin' on, don't expect me to associate with you; expect me to do what I can to roll back the mess and harm you're producing. If you do this kind of work and, god bless you, you stop, then I say to you, thank you and please share your experiences / stories with us. This sort of stuff doesn't just mean I feel my privacy bubble is popped. This is the stuff that changes the way we live and who we become. We have more productive capacity now than in all of human history, let's do something beautiful and good with it.
I worked in mobile gaming and left it, so I'm hoping to give a nuanced response here.
Obviously virtual slot machines aren't good for players, for the gaming ecosystem or the software ecosystem. Virtual slot machines are proof positive that they exploit people psychologically, since there's absolutely no rational reason to play a zero-payout gambling game. More importantly, these apps make up 1/11th of the top 200 grossing on the App Store, sucking money and talent out of riskier and more rewarding pursuits.
It's unfair though to look at what the producer describes and say free to play gaming is this huge existential crisis of conscious. Anything near the end (i.e., end user) of the value chain is going to be dealing with people's demographics, their wants and needs, etc. Of course game developers are interested in their player's features, no more differently than stores use loyalty cards, magazines survey their readership, etc.
There's a consequence to what you're saying: The only honest work doesn't deal with the end user. Maybe if you're building database testing tools you're doing a total social positive. Well, we can't all work for infrastructure companies messing around with Haskell libraries all day.
Who do you think is using all those elegant hierarchies, those pickaxes in the app goldrush? The producer says they integrate forty SDKs! That's forty different tech startups, some of them with billion dollar valuations.
What created AWS? The intensive, pathological tracking of people's preferences in book buying. What created all of Google's server infrastructure? The intensive tracking of people's searches. I'm not saying forfeit your values or principals. But the alternatives to free to play gaming are just less obviously exploitative.
I see you've found a way to rationalize everything.
Honest work is software which doesn't violate the customer's rights and privacy. There's no bonus points for merely not breaking the law and I can guarantee you that this producer is breaking the law big time in the EU. There's always the choice of selling software for money, but you and many other producers have given up your morals a long time ago in exchange for IAP and ad dollars, so you're blind when it comes to recognizing them.
There are many companies in this world, some will succeed, a lot won't. If the alternative is having human beings treated like rats in a maze, it would be better for society that those startups creating SDKs would simply die.
Yup. That's why this "final thought" doesn't add up:
> You want to put a stop to this? Stop playing free games. Buy a game for 4.99 or 9.99.
No. The only solution is to stop playing games that exploit people's privacy in such a way. No matter what you pay for them.
What about people who can't tell how bad they're being exploited? Well, for starters, paying 4.99 is not going to suddenly make them able to tell. Surely paying may make them believe the game is more honourable, but that's really the same spiel all over again, is it not?
No it's much simpler. Just get your games from a company in a jurisdiction where this shit is illegal. Like in the EU.
Just like people are sometimes wary of certain foreign brand electronics having cheaper chips or whatnot in them, now you know what US-based game companies are legally allowed to do to their users. And the lengths they will go to do it.
> We don’t want to be making games like this, and we don’t want another meeting about retention, cohorts or churn.
And please. "Look at what you made us do!", have some personal responsibility.
I know "+1" comments are against HN policy, and if you had contact info in your profile I'd have sent you a mail instead. But you don't, and this has to be said:
" I remember we had a whale in one game that loved American Football despite living in Saudi Arabia. We built several custom virtual items in both his favorite team colors and their opponents, just to sell to this one guy. You better believe he bought them. "
That answers one question I had. How to target the whales. I remember one free-to-play pay-to-win game I played where they had a promotion to get a random chance of getting a new OP character. On the first day, one player had 9 maxed out. The forums calculated the player likely spent somewhere between $30-50K to get them. I then realized how big a deal "whales" are in games. A big enough whale can employ a dev for a year.
"Whales" are critical to the revenue of many industries. gambling, alcohol, gaming, fashion, etc. all make a large chunk of their revenue from a small(ish) number of whales. Obviously the percentages vary by industry, but there's a reason when you go to Vegas and drop 10k at the craps table that you can get a "free" luxury suite from the hotel.
"Facebook is going gangbusters because of ads for free-to-play games, developers are excited about the chance to cash in via Facebook ads, Google and Twitter are trying to mimic Facebook’s success, and Google and especially Apple are hanging their app store hats on the amount of revenue generated by in-app purchases.
In other words, billions of dollars in cold hard cash, and 20x that in valuations are ultimately dependent on a relatively small number of people who just can’t stop playing Candy Crush Saga."
>It is almost certain you have or are playing a game I have produced or worked on in a major capacity.
Maybe for a few minutes. I like to think I'm good at analysing game mechanics, as a long time gamer and sometimes amateur game designer. So I mostly avoid F2P games. The tactics are repulsive to my tastes, and I can smell them from a mile away. When there's a choice between struggling to meet a challenge by improving my skill, or paying my way though, my inclination is to take a 3rd choice: stop playing this and do something else. So I much prefer paying up front for a game. I'm old-school that way.
Maybe this option is viable, as a 'serious' gaming hobbyist, only temporarily. But right now, the best games (in my genres of choice) are sold on the traditional purchase model. They are PC and console games.
Generally, I don't like 'endless' games; I prefer a game to have an ending: I play it, experience it 'fully', finish it, then move on to something else.
(But... just to undermine everything I've stated above, I am playing Pac Man 256. It has good gamefeel. I'll play it until I get all the powerups, perhaps. No interest in high-scores...)
tl;dr: IMO F2P games are inferior instances of the artform. Be cool like me and play superior PC and console games.
Also, Jonathan Blow has some interesting points to make on how the payment form of games (and entertainment in general) affects their structure/quality. This is the one where he talks about addictive mobile Skinner box games [x]
As someone that's into the classic AAA $60 games, I'm happy that F2P is sucking all of the casual gamers out of the market - I think the overflow of smart, challenging, deep games coming out owes a lot to the fact that the market is efficiently segmented.
There may be benefits for AAA gamers to these games that collect/analyze massive amounts of data - I wouldn't be surprised if some of this analysis leads studios to stumble across really engaging/fun patterns that are applicable to AAA games. As an example, I've heard discussion of how analytics has raised game "shininess" (basically making every screen tap/game interaction viscerally satisfying) to the level of an artform - I'm assuming that this has led to knowhow that EA/Blizzard/Rockstar have gone on to apply to some degree in $60 box games.
Huh. This is an interesting consideration, that by pulling casual gamers out of the AAA market, your dollar/vote has more weight wherever you put it, which means a much more selective and competitive market for those titles.
You assume that just F2P games do this? If it "adds value" - however management describes that - then you can assume that they've considered it (at minimum) or have done it (likely).
Do what, exactly? I said a bunch of stuff about the badness of F2P. Some of it, yes, is not exclusive to F2P.
Let's be specific. I extolled the superiority of AAA. (Edit: I admit I wasn't specific before. I said PC and console, and the 'best' games.) I don't think Metal Gear Solid 5 or Bloodborne mine my data and try to sell me endless IAP trinkets.
But I did give my the PlayStation service access to my Facebook and Twitter to I could post screenshots. So maybe they're already doing datamining there, and it's only a matter of time before everything goes totally corrupt and shit.
But it's a totally different economic model. £40-50 per game. For the time being, I reckon I'm safe.
There is an intersection between F2P and AAA, you know. TF2, StarCraft II, LoL. Most online-only competitive games. Even Nintendo's Splatoon is sort of here, despite costing $60. They all mine metrics; wouldn't you, if people's gameplay was going through your servers?
And that's ignoring MMOs. I don't think anyone can say WoW isn't "AAA".
I don't think mining metrics itself is a bad thing. As a player of primarily online competitive games like Counter-Strike or SCII, there are certain metrics that I want devs to keep track of, like average game length, which units/guns/etc. are used most commonly (may indicate an issue with game balance). I think data about the game is useful to the devs and ultimately the players, since it can influence improvements to the gameplay experience. I'm sure that the data being kept by many F2P games is well beyond what I would consider acceptable or necessary, though.
I guess you're right. I prefer single-player games, so I'm mostly unaffected.
But there's less of an incentive to mine data and go whale-hunting when you are paid up a flat fee (whether up front, or regular subscription) by your customers.
Of course, it's all software and can change at any moment.
True but with DLC and the catalog that more and more of these studios have (aka EA), I'd wager this is becoming more regular and more likely. I think for subscription-based games, it would be even worse.
Imagine that you lament on Twitter "I just don't time to play X as much as I'd like!" and then someone else pops up and asks "oh, have you fought Y? Did you find [unique drop] yet?" Then next time you're in the game, you get that special drop.
All of it appears to be unconnected and random but odds are you'll go back to that person to celebrate and be hooked again.
(This is an off the cuff scenario, the actual scenarios are probably way more mature.)
Having worked in mobile games for a few years, it's frightening how confident he is in his data. Demographic data is notoriously hard to acquire and validate within mobile apps. Yes, you collect everything you can (like every other company) but you absolutely do not own anyone. You beg and plead and issue content updates to keep them in the game.
I guess it's the same story as with "targetted" advertisement. I'm still to see any advert that'd offer me something I'd like. Don't remember one, ever.
In all those years - none. Not even close. Best notifications from Google Now is occasional weather reminders (because, duh, after an year they noticed I check them almost daily), which is very far from being useful. Steam - the platform that should know my gaming habits - had almost never offered me games that I was interested in (although "item from your wishlist is on sale now" surely worked). Music stores don't have a single clue of what I like and what I don't and all they do is some awfully rough genre matching which is nearly disappointing.
So, companies - gaming or else - surely have tons of data but I somewhat doubt they can use it any meaningfully, at least from consumer perspective (but hey, If they don't make me open the wallet and don't advertise them - it doesn't work for them too, right?) Wonder if the companies are somewhat hyping themselves on importance of this data and how it helps them, than it really does.
I can't speak to your experience, but seeing the performance boosts from good ad targeting is very impressive. Google and Facebook represent two of the largest advertising revenue streams in the world. The success of their ad units is directly linked to their ability to target based on user behavior. That being said, I feel ad targeting is a very different problem then games. Funnels behave differently and data collection is much more challenging in ad tech.
He mentions Facebook logins being required, this is probably how they can be so confident - that gives them a lot of data on individuals and relationships from a company with no qualms about privacy. Tie that to in-game behaviour across games and you have a lot of info.
Every single industry that can will do this, especially those that make most of its money from a small number of its users.
The interesting part of the article was where they specifically targeted one of their whales. They found out which American football teams he liked and introduced in app items that matched those colors so he would buy them.
Casinos are well known to get as much information about their players as possible, and to get their high rollers to keep coming back.
Retail stores have done the same. (See How target figured out a girl was pregnant [1]).
With technology providing more and more information and indirect insight into our lives, it's only a matter of time until everybody does the same. The only way to prevent it (as best as possible) is simply to not play/not link to facebook/etc.
I've often theorized that casinos could have highly accurate scales in the chairs to keep track of people.
Hypothetically (but I've seen it in action): I don't necessarily sign up for the players club yet, I walk in and walk up to 3 machines and put a dollar in. Lose -> lose -> minor win. Then I say "oooo I'm going to keep playing with this money!" then I end up losing more than I originally had on hand.
I guess it could be as simple as they're watching you but it's got to be fairly easy to automate. "Hmm this guy weighed 215.3lbs when he came in, that's guy id 1528." then just have a small window. I'm sure there are other 215lb people there but it's not that vital... lol Anyone have any insight as to whether or not I'm just insane?
Honestly, it's far simpler than that. Most casinos these days have player cards that every machine accepts that from the players perspective can store money on, but is really just giving them the ability to keep perfect tabs on player habits. Combined with fully networked machines, it's seems futile to move between machines just to try and throw the odds around, as they're most likely tracked and adjusted in real time.
They log every single button press you do, but they don't change odds on the machines in real time; that's illegal. When you setup a slot machine you have guards and cameras watching your every move. Software is validated with checksums before it is put into service. The exact settings you put in are in some states pre-approved by the local jursdiction for that machine for a certain time period (X years).
Changing the odds of the machine is a ton of work.
Weight is way more variable than that. Every one of these scenarios affects your weight: Spend some coins at a slow machine? Holding coins compared to putting them on the machine? Holding a drink? Eating or drinking something? Holding a purse? Leaning on something? Talking animatedly?
It's easy to weigh a few pounds differently between waking up and going to sleep. Much of that is lost through breathing.
Well the idea would be to get an average or something a "baseline" to filter leaning/talking animatedly/etc. Obviously it's probably not how it's done I'm just speculating. Obviously the coin difference would be something but that is something that can be within the margin of error. You give it a ~4lb window or something and all of that's covered. 10 quarters in a pocket is .12lbs.
Besides all of that, we're talking about within a few hours here not day to day. I just mean to give the person that beginners luck then drive them to keep playing. Obviously the accuracy wouldn't be all that vital but it could save the casino a lot of money if they're keeping track of that kind of stuff even if they only have a 50% accuracy.
Keep in mind leaning on a counter or table, putting a leg up, eating and drinking. In the end, you are also putting weight sensors, which are fairly notorious for being fiddly, in a bunch of chairs. The wider you have to make the margin or error, the more false positives you'll get. I imagine an a medium size casino there's a lot of people that weigh ~180 lbs. In the end, it's a passive tracking system, where you get data events and then try to classify them, which I think is more error prone than actively tracking the people themselves through other means. With as many cameras as they have, it probably easier (at this point) to just make sure they always overlap, and have a motion tracking algorithm track people across the video feeds.
If you're saying to use things like "140.2 pounds plus or minus 4 pounds" to try and differentiate among the many, many people in a casino... no, that's not really going to work.
I was under the impression that Vegas had already implemented facial recognition with their "eyes in the sky" to ostensibly identify cheaters. No reason it couldn't be repurposed to identify whales, too (if it hasn't been already).
Someone I know had a missing relative in a Vegas casino. He enquired at the front desk. They asked for a pic and replied a minute later that "he is not on the gaming floor".
Actually it would probably be easier to just track your cell phone, and have a profile for each individual phone they've seen. Lots of stores already do that. I strongly suspect casinos do as well, since they have more to gain by doing so.
Algorithms for determining wins are highly regulated by the gaming commission and the source code must be certified before being deployed. You can't get away with the juicing of stats in IRL gambling that you can with online F2P games.
I'm probably not well enough informed, but this struck me as weird:
“And if you are a whale, we take Facebook stalking to a whole new level. You spend enough money, we will friend you. Not officially, but with a fake account. Maybe it’s a hot girl who shows too much cleavage?”
Why would people friend random accounts of people they don't know?
I doubt only F2P games hoover up the data. Ever read a EULA, end-to-end, and understood everything? Neither have I. But I will offer as a hypothesis that the phrase "we collect user data to enhance the gameplay experience" has a level of semantic elasticity unrivaled outside of politics.
Cheers, it's good to know that options already exist.
I recently learned of uBlock Origin, a browser plugin. Its author calls it an HTML firewall. This is the sort of functionality I think is ideal: it blocks tracking by default, by preventing connections to a list of ad servers, but is fully customisable.
Yep. uBlock works on mobile Firefox as well if you're mainly interested in web-based tracking (as opposed to stuff in other applications). For that, you need more system-wide blocking and permissions as mentioned by aw3c2.
This might have worked back in 2008 or so, when this variety of app was still using third-party analytics software. In fact there was such a thing for jailbroken iOS versions - my startup even helped build one in an attempt to stave off some negative PR we were getting.
I think generally you're better off using AdAway which is more like a "traditional" hosts-file-based adblocker. I'd be more concerned with using some third party proxy for all data than some sleazy marketers trying to figure out how to sell me virtual gold or whatever.
I'm assuming the reference is to literally targeting a single person, but how much money can they make selling the 'whale' these additional IAP items, compared to the effort involved in having to research him and create them?
My wife and I spent $10,000 on a video game once. It wasn't F2P; it was a kickstarter prequel of our favorite vintage game [0], which we've been playing for 20 years. But the same principle applies.
There are people out there who have a lot more money than us, and are willing to spend it to be entertained. For a lot of games, their idea of a "whale" is someone who spends a couple hundred bucks a month on swag; at that level it's not worth trying to target individual buyers. For some games, though, it's someone who they can get to spend $50,000 on a set of vanity items. If someone is already dropping thousands of dollars on your game, that suggests it might be profitable to have someone gather info on them and see if they have a passion you can target. And often, you can create a whole class of "premium" items for very little work, just slapping a custom skin and a +5% bonus on top of a pre-existing game object.
Startups are about doing things that don't scale--initially. By targeting a few whales you can figure out what strategies work. Once you've validated individual strategies then you can codify them for your millions of other users.
Is "Producer" the right word for his job title? Or is psychopath closer to reality?
Talking about other humans in such a disassociated way. At least one armed bandits in vegas don't create fake facebook profiles for some scheme to extract more money from you.
(A few years ago, someone said that social game developers are like heroin dealers and regular game developers are like weed dealers. It's a very apt comparison)
You have so little basis (beyond your emotional reaction) for even an implication of such a psychiatric diagnosis that I have to call you out on it. The hyperbole serves no one.
