Let’s go whaling: Tricks for monetising mobile game players with free-to-play

What Hacker News said

Strong rec grotorea · 2023-09 · on “The Casino in Your Pocket”

Must see video for anyone interested in the topic, from someone explaining how to do these monetizations tactics: [this video]

Strong rec grotorea · 2023-09 · on “The Casino in Your Pocket”

Reminds me of this must see video for anyone interested in the topic, from someone explaining how to do these monetizations tactics: [this video] Sometimes I wonder what is is about specifically mobile gaming that makes this sort of thing so much more prevalent. Like it is very far from absent from PC or consoles, but it's still a bit different.

Recommends jonathanyc · 2024-07 · on “How Mihoyo's monetization works”

I’m not too familiar with gacha games, so I was intrigued. I thought the criticism of EA’s former CEO was funny. But the rest of the article felt like a lot of term-dropping and examples that aren't linked together into a cohesive theory, so I’m kind of disappointed. I think this industry talk about monetization ( [this video] ) and Tynan Sylvester’s book “Designing Games” were a lot more informative. For example, the blog post says this but then doesn't really elaborate on what any of the clauses mean ("repeatable design levers", "without compromising the core gameplay experience"): > A healthy long-term monetization system should therefore have repeatable design levers that can be used to relia

Recommends layman51 · 2025-02 · on “Among top researchers 10% publish at unrealistic levels, analysis finds”

Gamification as a field of study also reminds me a lot of this video[1] of a talk about tips for game developers. It is very interesting because it is from 2016 which is close to the time period you mentioned. I’m pretty sure this video has been shared on Hacker News a bunch. [1]: [this video]

Cites lozenge · 2019-09 · on “Ban kids from loot box gambling in games”

That isn't generational, it is part of your personality though. You just described two of the four player profiles in this talk on monetizing games: [this video]

Cites constantcrying · 2026-01 · on “Italy investigates Activision Blizzard for pushing in-game purchases”

To be honst I think state run lotteries are a pretty good idea, if they would replace other forms of gambling, which apparently is becoming less and less true, especially with the rise of the completely under regulated prediction markets. Regarding the subject at hand, I think a very obvious and necessary first step is banning children from participation. Obviously this is easily circumventable, but at will at least be some form of harm reduction. I think another possibility as a first step is a forced limit on how much an account is allowed to spend in a given time, e.g. the company is only allowed to add digital goods not exceeding X euros to the owners account, together with restrictions

Critical en4bz · 2019-07 · on “'My son spent £3,160 in one game'”

If you haven't seen it all ready just take a look at the infamous "Let's Go Whaling!" talk here [1]. They're not even hiding the fact the these are the type of people Free2Play/Pay2Win games prey on anymore. [1]. [this video]

Critical Ygg2 · 2019-07 · on “'My son spent £3,160 in one game'”

> If I understand correctly, you're saying that AAA game companies are at fault for producing video games that influence people through addictive psychological tricks to the point of ruining their lives. No, not AAA exclusively. But there is a certain set of games that relies on these tricks. See [this video] > Are McDonald's commercials to blame for obesity and heart disease? Did McDonalds create a "Diabetes increases sales" video? Because AAA and mobile games did.