Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-26829117-20160522124555/@comment-27824793-20160523173713

UGO2SLO wrote:

Ianb1973 anyone who pays is addicted/foolish/crooked? Your a bitter little person. So your not rich its life. Why are people with money hated so much? Poeple have the right to pay or not pay but don't crucify those who pay for doing so. You have the ability to become rich if you want so put up or wake-up.

I wish Wikia had a private messaging function. Oh well.

UGO2SLO:

I am afraid you misunderstood my comment. Do you understand the revenue model that exists in the freemium gaming app world in 2016? The popular games that have tens or hundreds of millions of downloads work like this: 99% of players play for free and will never make an IAP. A minuscule percentage of players make IAP and spend an average $ per month on IAP that is much higher than an coccasional buyer would. I believe for Candy Crush, all of the developer's revenue came from < 1% of players who averaged something like $23 per month EACH in IAP.

Since many of the minority who do choose to make IAP only do it once or occasionally, in order to reach that average of $23 per month for players who have made any IAP, you need an even smaller % of that 1% who make IAP to be spending a lot more than $23. Those are the players I am referring to.

Effectively, the somewhat serious player who makes one or two IAP over a year is not valued by the developers. Free players are valued because the developer gets to claim "100 million downloads and 57 million active players!" The 1% I referred to as "addicted/foolish/crooked" are NOT the player who makes an occasional IAP, they are the people who do have addictive personalities and are compulsively making repeated IAP to advance/finish; those who don't do the math and end up being victims of the freemium model; people using stolen credit cards or Daddy's credit cards so they don't care if 1,000 GC costs more than an entire console game in actual cash. My disdain is more accurately aimed at the developers for the freemium model that IMO is unfair to the compulsive spenders (and to occasional purchasers) and benefits only those who are dishonest or disconnected from reality enough to pay massive sums for IAP in an app (who enable this business model that is unfair for many others.) I have a friend who is a founder of a successful gaming app development outfit, and he tells me that some players will spend more than a thousand dollars a month on IAP. Those "whales" are what keep the business model alive. Most people who are wealthy got that way due to their hard work and brains. Do you really think the majority of us would see value in spending thousands on an app? No. Only if it is Daddy's money or crooks using stolen credit cards.

I have seen your comments about resuming racing in the real world. Glad your health has improved. Best of luck with it and stay safe. This is the Internet, so anyone can claim what they like, but your comments towards me are actually quite ironic and amusing when you take into account that I am the very opposite of what your misinterpretation of my post caused you to assume. I am actually a lot like you as an outlier amongst RR3 players. I am in my 40s, and have played more than 2,000 hours in two years (as my screen caps in other threads have shown) due to free time because I am semi-retired from a career in finance and tech and having sold a tech company for a ridiculous amount of money at a young age during the Dotcom bubble. I have my iPad Mini with me most of the time, and have plenty of time to play RR3 whether I am in California, the UK, or off traveling elsewhere. In real life, I have owned or own more than 6 of the exotics in RR3, did some racing myself (on 2 wheels and 4) in my younger days, and have connections to people in high levels of auto racing that I don't wish to divulge here for privacy/ID purposes.

Perhaps I should have been more clear: I have no issue with the gamer who makes an occasional IAP. They are victims of the business model to me. I myself refuse to spend one cent on IAP because I disagree with the business model, and not because I could, and of course it might be more convenient to do so at times with certain apps, yet FM's current business model is one that punishes anyone who makes even one IAP, so I stand by my characterization that to make even one IAP would be foolish for that reason!