How YOU Are The Content In Free To Play Games
Support my game design hot takes on Patreon:
We know that mobile games are bad, right? But I had no idea just how poisonous
some of them are. And that’s because I’ve been secretly talking with developers
from big companies and I was told exactly how these games exploit the players
psychology to get them to spend money.
Relevant Links
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Twitter:
Discord:
Useful Resources
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NATIONAL PROBLEM GAMBLING HELPLINE: 1-800-522-4700
Let’s go Whaling:
Video Contents
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0:00 Intro
0:34 Toxic Mobile Games
1:47 Sponsor Segment
3:15 The Industry
6:59 How They’re Made
10:56 Abusing Attention
14:08 How They Getcha
19:11 Social Fear
Footage Used
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Special Thanks
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Twenty – Producer
TraZox – Co-Editor
Anubius – Community Manager
Will Hendrix – Subtitles
Tia – – Thumbnail illustration
![Top 10 Multiplayer Games for Pc | Free To Play | [ Games to Play with Friends ]](https://thexpgamer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/0qmj-tjh4lcmaxresdefault-1024x576.jpg)
Of course YouTube recommended me this video the day after I paid for Genshin's Battlepass after I'd explicitly sworn myself off from paying it
OH MY GOD, Out There OMEGA is my FAVORITE mobile game. My CHILDHOOD!
Homie, did you for real use a F2P game advert in your video about how shitty F2P games are? Lmao
"Torulf Jernström"
"CEO OF TRIBEFLAME"
Isn't "Tribeflame" the team who made "Benji Bananas"?
Edit: "Smash Hit". Mediocre's Smash Hit. If there's ONE game I must mention, it HAS to be Smash Hit.
All other games from Mediocre are also good at being good experiences.
After all, "Dennis Gustaffson", the person I think was the most important at this three-man studio, is somebody who makes video game technology rather than games. He is also the one who started and is making "Teardown".
genshit
3:54
holy shit there's re-volt gameplay here holy shit
ReversEstory is an amazing roguelite thats quite unique in its touch screen movement and shootemup gameplay! Its quite challenging at first but gets reall good.Also its FREE!
Also Deadcells, I know I know its a mobile port but a damn good one which is fun to play and intuitive! Ofcourse I dont need to tell u about the gameplay Its the Ultimate roguelite that keeps giving!
gacha amiright
I am aware of some of these tricks such as loot boxes however I don't know about loss aversion and price trick, thanks for those.
With information from this video, I'll be sure to avoid games who make our wallets dry including Raid Shadow Legends.
I hate gacha games
I hate waifubait gacha games with a passion.
14:00
Hmmm, I've played at least one mobile game that's just a good game rather than a cash grab. Arknights is a gacha game yes but as an F2P I have better sqauds than some whales. Free high end operators, all awards are able to be received using a friends unit and free units. And power creep is there, but day one units is still a meta unit years later.
Not perfect yes but still a game that is honestly just focusing on being a good game and profit making secondary.
I was thinking about making a mobile game in which you can trade coins (primary currency) for gems (premium currency) and vise versa in a special shop you would encounter in game. I am planing on keeping it purchase free, and this video gave me all the more reason to keep it that way. Maybe if i do make that game I'll post the name of it here!
This is the most underrated channel i have ever seen
I entirely agree on the concept that those predatory tactics are bad. But I really dislike the idea of "I will never pay for a mobile game, and that's good." There are plenty of actual, good, fun mobile games out there that don't have these predatory tactics and deserve some money. By adopting the stance of "I will never spend anything on a mobile game" you almost force devs to adopt these predatory tactics in order to get any money out of their project. Instead, give money to good mobile games, support those developers that put out a fun, skill-based, interesting game and don't interact with predatory games.
downwell – great game, not toxic, no in game purchases. only 3$
wait the video was actually sponsored by raid shadow legends? i thought the sponsorship was satire
yall should try orna its a really fun gps game with no ads somehow
SNKRX is a good one
dani mobile games are good, geometry dash too
lmao i died laughing from the raid shadow legends sponsor
You are a genius
The old games made by HEXAGE like Radiant Defense are some solid mobile games, they might have some paid content but the whole game is free iirc
I've been collecting a list of the "good" mobile games that I've enjoyed over the years.
Some of them, I've gotten bored of and uninstalled. Ones I have installed:
PC ports: Among us
DemonCrawl
HyperRogue
Minecraft
Terraria
Solitairica
Plague Inc.
Stardew Valley
Mini Metro
GameDevTycoon
SNKRX
(not installed):
Muse Dash
Oxenfree
Death Road to Canada
(Nitrome games)
(Devolver Digital games)
(Humble Games games, especially Slay The Spire)
(Amanita Design games)
MAZEMAN (Which I'm sure you are familiar with)
(many of the games on Google Play Pass (and some of the games on Apple Arcade) fit here)
Mobile Only: Rogue Adventure
Home Quest
Cardinal Quest 2
Candies & Curses
Mobile games with PC ports: Gun Rounds
Heck Deck
Another thing I've noticed, is that almost all of these are either PC ports (usually with a price tag & on Google Play Pass) or experimental passion projects (HyperRogue). The ones that are mobile-only tend to either be supported by ads, a small amount of "ethical" in-app purchases, or both.
A few games that are still "good" despite me personally not placing them on as high of a pedestal:
Occidental Heroes
Life In Adventure
Cat Bird
Survive! Mola Mola! (& other games inspired by/related to it, including Magikarp Jump & Hunk Cook: Catch & Serve)
Candies & Curses
Realm Grinder (a flash game port)
Here's a list of games that I would say are more "ethical" while using the same systems as the scummy ones (mostly single-player or TCG games):
Nexomon (originally a mobile game)
Nexomon: Extinction (originally a pc/console game)
Monster Chef
StormBound (a pc port that monetarily works like HearthStone)
CUE (Cards. Universe. Everything: a trading card game that works like a trading card game)
Creatures of Aether (A strategy card game with mobile game TCG systems)
BotWorld Adventures
& here's a list of games that I personally enjoy (or enjoyed) despite them being scummy mobile games:
GameOfDice
DiCast
King of Thieves
CrashArenaTurboStars (CATS)
Brawl Stars
Clash Royale
Gacha games that I played for some amount of time & enjoyed before the free pulls dried up & I left:
World Flipper
Cookie Run Kingdom (this one didn't really dry up, I just got bored)
Blue Archive
Each of these lists have more games I know about that fit in them, but these are the ones I care about listing.
THE IRONY IN THAT RAID SPONSORSHIP 💀💀💀💀💀
It's incredibly genius to accept a sponsorship for greedy game and then drive people away from it just with the topic of the video 💀
I want to mention the "The Room" series of puzzle games. Slightly creepy, fairly short, but very good experiences.
Are we just gonna ignore how he said
"Thanks for already subscribing"
That's dirty considering how everyone either already subscribed on a previous video, or would have subscribed halfway through this video
I uh… I thought the RAID sponsor was satire until I scanned the QR code and AdAway tripped up… amazing.
Sasquatch
DO NOT SHARE VIDEO
Best action you can take is not playing the games and not supporting them in anyway including sharing this video with an ad that supports and shares the same predatory actions that are talked about in this the video don't fall for the raid shadow legends it predatory and the creator of the video is just a predatory for sponsoring this content making money off of people with problems. they make money he makes money its a lost for anyone else but a win for him if you share this video.
The balls on dis man
One of my favourite mobile games is Swordigo. It's about a dude with a sword. It has microtransactions, though they really don't feel like the game is designed around them, especially as it's a Single Player game. It's probably also not too great of a game, but I think it has a lot of charm and I really like it
The sponsor is ironic lmao
That clip about Desert Eagle skin gun thingadoodle:
They're so excited about getting it, then immediately after, "How much is it worth?" Ugh.
Magic survival on android is legitimately one of my favourite games of all time. highly recommend it to anyone reading this comment
Man the discount thing is weird
Indie games attract me more nowadays. On PC, I recently played Project Zomboid and Rimworld. I love them.
The only mobile game I have spent money on is the rhythm games because they are actually good and worth the price, if you get past the steep learning curve.
you know whats ironic?
you cant play most of the Mobile games… In a mobile manner.
You cant play most of them without wifi.
Imagine you are in a plane, without wifi, where you have to spend about 2 to 5 hours depending on where you are going.
this is the PERFECT TIME to pull out your phone and play offline games (and music but lets put that aside for a second)
you open your phone. then open that game that you thought would be an offline one, AND BOOM. turns out it requires the
Internet.
Didn't you just make a video about dangerosity of mobile games and predatory technics to make you do what they want while also making me like, subscribe, share, and comment on this video, while at the same time sponsoring a mobile game? Dang this man is good
By the way are you not allowed to say that you did this sponsor to mock raid and that's why you just heart every comment stating it without responding ? 🙂
The thing is, if you look hard enough and try not to wade through the ads, you can find GOOD mobile games, free or paid. It just takes time. Even some gacha games can be easily played without spending a cent. (My personal favorite is guardian tales since you can get plenty of the premium currency by playing the campaign, and the best heroes are simple to get. There’s probably better paid games and maybe a better free game but you get a solid amount of content with this.)
Anyways can more people recommend games like he did at the end of the video? Cool.
For those (few) games where paid items are purely cosmetic, would a non-paying player still be contributing to the overall issue?
i would recommend
Mindustry: you are a drone that gets dropped on a planet to use the resources to make bases, but someone has already done that and will try to stop you by attacking in waves. its basically tower defense but with factorio's mechanics.
grim quest: you are a mercenary thats trying to survive in a world where an empire has fallen due to a tear in space that is spreading corruption onto the land. its a good game that i enjoy playing in my free time. story is pretty good and they even got a prequel to a time before the tear. the only microtransaction is to remove an ad at the bottom of the screen (it doesn't effect gameplay at all). also has a lovely discord server
You were talking about pricing bellow the currency purchase amount so you have some left over as you had VALORANT's battle pass on the screen, which funnily is one of the only games I have seen that doesn't do that. The pass costs 1000 VP, and you can get exactly 1000 VP with $9.99.
I've been playing a lot of Infinitode 2 and it's great. It's a tower defense game where every level lasts until you lose and you have to earn all kinds of resources to do research to enhance your towers and beat your previous scores. If you take a cursory look at it you would think this would be a prime opportunity for the developer to sneak in anti consumer BS but I've been extremely impressed by how they have seemingly went out of their way to avoid it. Yes, the game sells currency, but you can earn all you need at a fair rate. Yes, they sell a permanent 2x money booster but the game is free and a one time purchase of like 5 euros is more than fair for what you get. Yes, they have ads after you finish a level but the game NEVER forces you to watch one, you can choose to watch it for +25% more loot or just press continue. It's never bugged me to watch an ad or buy things.
So yeah, prime example imo of monetising a free game effectively while also remaining ethical. Looks like the developer cares, and that makes me happy to support them.
Super Auto Pets!!!!!! Amazing free to play game!
raid dont give a fuck
one of my favorite mobile games is arcaea: a rhythm game with minimal monetization (aside from the necessary small song packs that keep the game alive)
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