Why are gaming apps now just created in a paint by numbers format?

[turdpower]

Why are all apps basically the same now? They don't even try to hide it.

Every game you are a person/vehicle/animal/thing and you have to improve, lets call it XP, to improve your XP you have to compete in different missions.

Missions give you coins.

Coins pay for you to update attributes.

Increasing attributes make missions easier.

Everytime you complete a mission eventually you will go up a level.

Go up a level and you get a super rare thing that is better than a coin, seemingly a gem.

You can buy gems for actual cash.

Gems buy you the best things in the game, you seemingly can't get access to some things in a game unless you lay down actual cash or spend years playing a game.

You can normally buy an unbeatable character for massive cash.

Oh and you only have a certain amount of "lives" before you have to wait an hour to have another go.


Why is this a thing now?

[turdpower]

forums.rajah.com the app:

You are a new poster to the forums, you only get 5 posts a day and you've got to increase your post count.

Everytime you post a new thread and get replies, you get rep or if you post on an existing thread you might get positive rep.

You can buy 100 extra posts for 5 reps, or 1000 extra posts for 25 reps.

You can use reps to increase your intellect, humour or likeability rating (our of 100)

You can buy 1 rep for 69p or 10 reps for the bargain of £5.00 etc

Reps will get you access to new players so you can post more than 5 times a day, unlockable characters include; Rogerer (90, 80, 50), Peter Griffin (10, 40, 20) and Simon (100, 100, 100)

Simon can also be bought for £29.99 and also has infinite posts per day.

[The Rosk]

What about them TV dinners eh? What's all that about!?!?

[Fanny]

can anyone on here actually make apps? Why don't we actually try to make one?

[Gary J]

We could make a space invaders type game where you have to blast through the gaps in Simons Teeth or just rip off Angry Monkey and replace the monkey with an animated Slare.

[Fanny]

we're going to be MILLIONAIRES GAL

[The Rogerer]

It shakes money out of people. They resemble games but they're closer to fruit machines - except they don't pay out.

You give away your game for free, 99% of people might never put any money into it but those 1% of "whales" will be willing to put hundreds or thousands of pounds in.

I've read loads of good articles/videos about it and if one that isn't 2 hours long comes to mind I'll post it here. Loads of rants from games developers that trying to pitch anything that isn't an addiction/money machine is instantly shot down.

I just watched a video last night where Tommy Refenes said he put his free app back on the App Store for $15, and e people bought it, so he put it to $50, and someone bought it, and then he kept putting it up, where it was then at $350.

Ian Bogost is a good one, he made a game called Cow Clicker on Facebook where you just clicked a cow and nothing happened, as a deliberate joke about stuff like farmville. Shitloads of people got addicted to it and played for ages, were annoyed that he took it down, he wrote quite a lot about it.

It seems that there's loads of people who are just happy to mindlessly tap at a screen (WWE Supercard), and other people are just happy to put hundreds of pounds towards this pursuit. Sometimes people just like to buy into brands. WWE supercard has absolutely nothing to do with wrestling anyway. You might as well be playing with water filters on cards. Eva Marie kept beating people on charisma ratings.

[turdpower]

I get it, but why are they ALL like that?

Some, but very few, are just riddled with ads and I prefer that.

[turdpower]

can anyone on here actually make apps? Why don't we actually try to make one?

I don't know about other formats but for apple you have to buy a license and it's not cheap.

[Fanny]

baloney

[The Rogerer]

It's £100 a year for Apple I think. I can develop apps without that but you can't publish them to the app store. I have actually made an Android app, get me.

[Fanny]

so let's get Rog to make an Android app, sorted :yes:

Right, Rog, how many pixels in a byte?

[The Rogerer]

This will fall into a disaster with people arguing about what their stats should be

[Fanny]

Rog do an app where it's just Simon's face and you get to punch it. Constantly. Like Limmy's 'Jumping'

[The Rogerer]

I'll take that under advisement

[The_Mike]

This is a thing now because a couple of games (like Candy Crush) made a stupid amount of money and were so popular the media sometimes talked about them, and then the media talked about the media talking about them, so it created a feedback loop that made more stupid amounts of money. And making money is all anyone wants to do now, so they'll copy what worked that one time, and milk the format to death, hoping they won't be the ones who enter the bubble right before it bursts. It's just like Hollywood slapping together endless revivals and reboots of old franchises - something that made money before will always be tried again and again before anybody tries something different.

I don't bother with mobile gaming at all, so it's not a big deal to me. Like Rog I've read some articles about it that tend to see it as doom and gloom, a combination of the creative death of the industry and crooked exploitation on a massive scale. I'm not sure I buy that, exactly, I think stupid people who are stupid will always stupidly throw their money at something so what does it matter if it's a game, but perhaps I'm unsympathetic to how cynically addictive such things can be. South Park's episode on the evils of freemium games was pretty good, though I'm a wary of such discussions wading into pearl-clutching prohibition territory. And I just don't see the appeal of mobile games, they are usually just lesser in every department, and being 'mobile' seems to give every company license to tack on freemium gimmicks to milk you for cash. I'm happy just watching videos or listening to music on a phone if I need to kill some time, I'm not sure what clicking all the shinies in a game is going to add, but I use my phone so sparingly anyway.

Somewhat related, I have been looking forward to the sequel to the artificial life series Creatures, which is now being cobbled together by some company that's turning it into an iOS freemium extravaganza. This used to be a science experiment wrapped in a philosophy lesson, and now it looks like a way to get children to rack up massive bills on different coloured, big-eyed Norns.