[tyfon]

> The company would collect these monthly fees, then divide up the revenue between developers based on how much time users spend playing their games

Sounds terrible for short indie games and good for long grindy games.

That's not a future I want for my gaming. Not that I am an apple customer in the first place but hopefully this won't affect what is delivered on the other platforms.

[seanwilson]

> Sounds terrible for short indie games and good for long grindy games.

What would be a good system to determine a fair amount between games when a user is paying a fixed amount per month for all games?

You could ask for ratings (e.g. overall, originality) but these will be a lot more nuanced than time spent. You could ask users what split between games they think is fair (feels like a lot to ask especially if you're playing a lot of games).

[deltron3030]

>What would be a good system to determine a fair amount between games when a user is paying a fixed amount per month for all games?

It could be made relative to the time that needs to be spent to complete the game, and maybe a different category for open ended and multiplayer games.

Treating all games equal would be bad design, because "game" is often only the most generic category they share, they're digital experiences and should be treated as such.

[derefr]

> You could ask users what split between games they think is fair (feels like a lot to ask especially if you're playing a lot of games).

Generate a pie chart based on playtimes, and then let the user adjust it to match their subjective experience. Pre-bias the pie slices by multiplying the default percentage cut by their rating of the game if they've given one.

[duncanawoods]

I think it could create some fascinating effects - probably not ones they would want! E.g. players might punish someone like EA despite playing their games or they might reward "aspirational" games they barely touch.

[duncanawoods]

> What would be a good system to determine a fair amount

Maybe something more like other content services - ensure there are multiple competitive fixed-rate game services that take risks and auction/bid on getting a specific game for a season at a time. It could include both an upfront payment and a performance payment.

[tyfon]

That could work, although most services (gamepass, ps now) just buys the game for a period with upfront cash. A performance element would most likely reduce the former.

[Felz]

A bit of a wild idea:

Deduce how important a game is to people by introducing small amounts of artificial delay when playing it. This could be input delay, or maybe the game freezes up for a second every minute, or it takes a bit longer to launch or something.

Measure the dropoff rate. People should be really willing to keep playing great games even when inconvenient, and drop marginally-fun grindy games faster. With a large enough install base, you shouldn't need to degrade anyone's experience very much to get enough data.

[techdragon]

Not a wild idea at all.

This is pretty much how people A/B test for maximum revenue in “free” to play games monetised using micro transactions and other in app purchases.

It’s turned into pure evil there and it’s probably just as likely to spawn pure evil somewhere else.

[jayd16]

Seems to be focused on iPhone games which is already dominated by the freemium model. Maybe they'll offer some kind of "season pass" that gives you some daily amount of MTX currency for every game that supports it.

I agree, it doesn't seem feasible for narrative driven games.

[drivingmenuts]

Most of the long, grindy AAA games are on Windows only, so really, not much worries there.

I have yet to see a game listed in the App Store that wasn't also on Steam, so I'm not worried about that either.

Apple may be good at many things, but games is not one of them. There's not enough bang for your buck on the Mac platform when it comes to gaming and you can't easily and cheaply mix-n-match your hardware like you can with Windows.

I love Mac for everything else, but if I going to seriously game, I will buy a Windows box and use it for that only (well, and running Linux in a VM - for reasons).

[tyfon]

I'm doing my PC gaming exclusively in linux now a days with steam+proton helping out a lot.

Just bought sekiro on friday and it runs like a dream without me having to configure a thing.

[AsyncAwait]

Yeah, Linux gaming is in a good shape & projects like https://lutris.net make it seriously accessible for anyone without further configuration on their part.

[drivingmenuts]

My needs are based on only occasionally needing to run a Linux VM but running games more often. More like an XBox that isn’t locked down. I’d be paying way more for hardware and the cost of buying Win 10 isn’t that expensive anymore.

[lordnacho]

> Sounds terrible for short indie games and good for long grindy games.

Short and long are terms that make sense for games that have a natural start and end. Not every game has that story-likeness, so even a simple game that can keep people's attention (or get a lot of little slices) could do well.

[tyfon]

Yeah, so the market will be filled with never-ending grindy games. Not my kind of thing.

The only one I've gotten into of that nature is the binding of isaac which would undoubtedly do well under this scheme. But we need the story driven games too and they are going to have a hard time under these conditions.

[usaphp]

Well technically it takes less time and tesources to develop a short indie game vs a long game, so it’s reasonable that they will get more money. Also If a long game is boring nobody will play it longer than it’s worth

[zrm]

That's not true. It's trivial to create a game that will take arbitrarily long to win by just increasing the number of times the user has to perform the same task in order to advance.

That is a trade off against being boring, but having developers optimize games to explicitly be as time consuming as possible and just not-boring enough that you don't quit them in disgust is not really a helpful incentive.

[badsectoracula]

I see you do not know about JRPGs :-P.

[l24ztj]

Grinding is perceived as a negative; if a grindy game is good enough to keep you grinding, why shouldn't it deserve to make more money?