Comment by jeffwask
3 years ago
He's saying every game needs to be an MTX riddled nightmare to be successful. As a gamer I reject that and have been with my wallet for a while. There are hundreds of dev teams producing great stuff below the AAA level that only ask me to buy the game once not every day.
IMO it's not clear just from the immediate context in the article that he's actually advocating for MTX or ads.
If he is, then he deserves all the flak. If he's simply talking about having a market fit so your game sells at all, then IMO that's just talking about the viability of the game as a product - and in this case it's just about whether making the game makes financial sense, not whether you can juice the customer for more money.
He just executed a merge of his company with a company that produced know malware delivery platforms for installing scamware.
I think we can guess where his intentions lay
Having read the full context on the original article on pocketgamer.biz, he is, in fact, making the assertion in this post title -- that game creatives that aren't working with sales and publicity teams from the beginning to build in monetization are idiots.
Original article: https://www.pocketgamer.biz/interview/79190/unity-ironsource...
Edit: I say this because I don't understand how it's not clear that he's driving for monetization in every game.
11 replies →
> He's saying every game needs to be an MTX riddled nightmare to be successful.
Come on, that's clearly not what he's saying in that quote. I don't like microtransactions either, but it makes your position weaker to get hyperbolic.
He's saying you have to include monetisation when planning for your game, rather than pretending it doesn't exist. To me this seems so obviously true that it's almost a product design axiom, let alone a priority for businesses. The question is how it should be done, and how well it will be done, which he says nothing about in that quote.
To me, "monetization" means everything except for just selling your product for an upfront sticker price. When it comes to games, that means subscriptions, ads or microtransactions. Arguably, the latter two aren't inherently scummy, but I find it very distasteful when a game's design is fundamentally changed to push them.
This is the reason I completely avoid F2P games to begin with. I can't deny it's financially very lucrative though.
I think the confusion is in the art vs business part of the conversation. Some people are not making games for business purposes, they are 100% focused on the creative pursuit. Does that make them stupid? Of course not, they're competent adults who made their decision not to prioritize money over the experience of the game. I think it's pretty clear that's who he's talking about as well, with the "pure, brilliant.." comment.
> He's saying you have to include monetisation when planning for your game, rather than pretending it doesn't exist.
What's wrong about monetizing your game by, I don't know, selling copies of it?
That only gets you some of the customers’ money, not all of their money.