@@Fluffal_Enthusiast The battle cats does it so that you can regain energy when you watch an ad or roll lucky capsules once when it’s around. Even though a lot of stages can be brute forced with paying money for Ubers there are stages that are testaments of skill like HT floor 30 or Laboratory of Relics invasion, i mean 4 crown stages were ment to test your skill the most. No crazed or brainwashed cats, no Uber or Legend rares, just Rare and Special cats.
I don’t care too much personally if there is a banner ad… and in some games that has more intrusive ads but a “Remove Ads Forever - 10$”, I’m fine with it as well. I don’t mind paying for a game I enjoy and like 10$ ish, maybe 15$ max, I can just consider as buying the game. But the little fairly method is most preferred one as a free option. Paying to remove all ads is my favourite method if I really like the gameplay because then I never have to see any ads at all, and I still get to play the game and get all rewards.
You can actually apply that to a lot of real life examples... especially political ones :) The more you pressure stuff onto people the more and heavier they dislike it
Games that make you watch an ad after completing a level makes it feel like they're punishing me for playing their game well. The scenario you're describing are almost always the same games.
@@davidtt8372 Eh, depends how long said "level" takes 🤷♂️. For example, a coloring app I use to relax almost systematically plays an ad after every image, but it takes like 40-60 minutes to complete them.
@@davidtt8372 Yup. I feel that so much. Complete a level "Hey, good job. Wanna watch an ad to increase your reward?" "Nah, not this time." "Oh, well okay. Here's an ad anyway. No reward for this, you gotta watch it tho."
This is why so many people have come to appreciate your insight - you are always on the side of the player AND the developer. It's not a war for you, it's just a conversation between people.
Except, notably, on the SKG initiative, where he was 100% on the developer side, and making shitty remarks about the leaders championing the players side.
@@cousinpatsey2471 As a player and a software engineer, I agreed with his stance on that. The SKG demands were too vaguely worded. There are a lot of scenarios where it would have been unreasonable for a company to be forced to comply with it.
@cousinpatsey2471 nah, you're just too ignorant and/or dumb to understand the nuance of his point there. It's likely willful ignorance because of a hard stanced political/social worldview you have. If you don't see his point, it's because you either don't want to or you're too dumb to understand context and just think with "Box A vs Box B."
@@cousinpatsey2471 That's a false representation of the SKG initiative as being a "players vs devs" scenario. The SKG initiative was not some magical ideal that described a perfect scenario for players. That's just wrong, and plenty of players had issues with it. Of course most of its supporters went around in groups berating nay-sayers so they felt like it had near-unanimous support. It had pros and cons for players, and while initially well-intentioned, people were taking it way too far. They heard the initial idea, thought "oh that sounds good" (and Thor to an extent, just not the same extent, agreed) and then for some reason went all-in defending every single aspect of the initiative despite its many many flaws, both for devs and players. You will almost never get something right on the first try, the initiative should've been open to criticism, adjustments, and improvements, not treated as gospel like it was. Treating the industry as a whole as a conversation between devs and players sometimes requires that for specific topics, you converse with a subgroup (and it was a *subgroup,* not all as you suggest) of players (or devs, which he does *very regularly* but you don't point any of that out as "exceptions" to the original comment) and explain to them that they're being destructive, not helpful. You cannot claim to be on the side of the players while allowing the players to walk themselves into what you think are bad decisions without saying anything to them about it. If you listened to Thor's arguments, you know he saw the initiative as destructive to both players and devs, not just devs. You've either forgotten that, never listened, or are intentionally misrepresenting his beliefs. You've also either fallen for, or are intentionally spreading, a lie: "making shitty remarks about the leaders [...]" This did not happen. He described a single specific tactic being used to try to push the legislation through as "disgusting." This comment was not directed at any *person* and people actively lied to make it sound like he had committed some atrocious act against the dude. Oddly often opting to speak in nebulous or exaggerated terms rather than simply *describing what actually happened* just as you did here. This was blown massively out of proportion simply because Thor pointed out some flaws with a piece of legislation that had somehow accrued what to me seemed a cult-like fanbase.
There's this Idle clicker game I was obsessed with in highschool because I liked the art and the music was soothing AF. I loved their approach on ads so much. It had its equivalent of the little fairy, and it also had an in-game shop that allowed you to watch a certain number of ads everyday for powerups/rewards. The thing is, if for whatever reason the game couldn't show the ad, it still gave you the reward with a little message that said something along the lines of "Sorry, we're having trouble displaying the ad, here's the reward anyway." The game recognized the player wanted to watch the ad for the reward anyway, so instead of punishing the player for an issue in the app outside of their control, they still gave the boost/reward. Loved that game honestly, though it's been ages since I last played it. (The game is "Guitar Girl" if anyone is wondering)
@@howdyfriends7950 It obviously would depend on how the game is designed, but it should be pretty easy to detect this. If the game can maintain a connection with a publicly accessible server, and that connection drops before an Ad can play, it would be obvious it was the player's internet connection (versus still being able to access the game server, just not the origin of the ad)
ANOTHER ANTIMATTER DIMENSIONS PLAYER (or, player at one point) BTW the final version is out and it actually has an ending now Edit: I actually read the comment completely, but guitar girl is cool, too. Sorry for my misunderstanding, but at least more people know about AD now!
@@AndrewS-vu4ji I don't see any fishing games from the same company as Guitar Girl, but there is a fun fishing game with that ad setup by a different company called A Girl Adrift.
I'm fine with the optional ad system, but I *love* optional ads that you can pay to permanently remove the ads. Like, if you pay a bit of money, you just get the reward from the optional ads without having actually watch an ad from that point forward.
Right because at that point, you’re essentially downloading the “trial version” of a game and then just purchasing the full version with bonuses after confirming you like it. This is how it should be, but can be difficult in multiplayer situations because it technically supports P2W.
Did this on the tower, spent $5 I think it was and I don't have to watch ads for the daily gems or gem bonus. Had no issues with the ads just had a bit of money to buy one
One thing I like about the fairy method is that it feels-and often is-less intrusive. They don’t interrupt normal flow of gameplay since they’re optional, require action by you (the player), don’t get in the way of anything that’s part of the game, and give you warning beforehand.
"You scratch my back, I scratch yours". Players are consumers, and consumers like to be in control. Help us players help you gaming companies help us players
Capitalism works best when its all about giving, not taking. You give me something useful, I give you money for it. Everyone profits, and ends up happy and satisfied. The problem is that all too often, its all about taking instead. You take as much of my money as you can, and I have to fight to take something even slightly useful from you. Which just leaves everyone angry and disappointed. Economic transactions are supposed to be cooperation, not combat. Buyers and sellers are partners, not enemies. But far too few companies understand that.
Do you want to watch an ad for a prize? No, thank you. Ok, here's a 30-second ad with no prize. Now that the ad is over, wait 5 seconds for the tiny X to light up.
It's even worse now: they queue 2 ads back-to-back, so after you X out the first one, you have to watch ANOTHER 30-second ad. It's a full minute of fuckery.
Soul Knight has a feature where, if you die in the dungeon, you can watch an ad to revive. It revives you with a pop-up that says "ad will play after game over", and lets you keep playing until then. I always watched that ad.
The games that make people happy to watch the ads are the ones that retain their player base forcing an ad every two seconds with no reward is just speed running getting your shixt uninstalled
@@markopolo1271 with how little effort and generic those types of games are and the number of people that end up playing them, even briefly, it doesn't matter if a lot of people see one ad and uninstall. They still make a lot of money.
Personally I've always appreciated there being a "no more ads" purchase (so long as there isn't an unreasonable cost) and a "buy me a coffee as thanks" straightforward no reward option
@@Merilirem Sure but like Thor said in the video, nobody wants to go buy mobile games. It's typically just too big a risk; so many mobile games are garbage due to the lack of regulation, and nobody wants to end up paying for garbage, so only mobile games that get outstanding reviews (like BTD6) can get away with charging you for installation (and BTD6 has a little p2w stuff too but it's pretty unobtrusive and you're not forced to use it to fully appreciate the game as it was meant to be played).
"I always appreciated the option where i can pay the dev, but never actually will, just like everybody else. Devs shouldn't get a penny from their games burr burr"
That also implies that they made the normal reward lower than what you actually need to progress, forcing on you an inconvenience where you either watch ads and double the reward or you will have to go through the same stage twice
The mobile version of Vampire Survivors does this, and it’s great. You get a revive for watching an add, and you can boost the gold from your run by watching more ads. They even allow you to completely turn the request off. They do offer paid dlc, and I ended up getting it to support the dev team.
@@ottokarl5427 You have to understand one thing: the devs were not interested in making a mobile version of their game at first. The problem became that people were just stealing their game, recompiling it for mobile, and monetizing it in the bad ways Thor talks about. So the devs were like "Well, if we're going to do this, we're going to do this RIGHT." They didn't want the scam games to make all the money and leave them in the dust. So they went HARD into making the mobile version good, and it paid off.
I love how you're such a kindhearted person even with all this knowledge you have so you just call things like they really are and hold people and companies to standards
One of my favorite ad styles is in games like Trackmania, where they have a stadium you're driving through and there are real ads on billboard around the stadium. I think I remember seeing something like it in some soccer games where they put them on the LED wall around the field. I actually don't mind seeing them at all because it adds to the realism and i admire the work that went into it.
My favorite implementation of this is in Vampire Survivors, as ads make you quite meaningfully OP there to the point that you progress in the game faster than you would on a desktop/home console version. The boost from watching ads is tangible and doesn’t feel like it’s locking a game behind ads. Also, ad removal mtx is quite a fine way to disguise a proper purchase so one gets to have a cake and eat it too.
That what is supposed to happen but that social contract is so obliterated that a lot of people dont trust it anymore. Too many paid up front games have these other montetization methods wrapped in, which just feels like fraud.
I'd rather know what I'm getting into before I pay. This is a problem with digital goods, as with physical ones I'd just return the product. With digital goods you could finish a game and "return" it, for example. It's hard to use an honor system and let people play your game for free and pay if they think it's worth it, but this is pretty much what this video promotes.
@@nullfield1126 i just check for "in-game payments" before i purchase and try to do some research. Sometimes that can mean micro transactions, sometimes it means dlc, like with A Dance Of Ice And Fire
There was a mobile game i used to play called "soda dungeon", it was an idle dungeon crawler game, It had an option at the beginning of every run to enable a banner ad at the bottom on the screen for the entire run, in return the player would earn 10% more gold for the entirety of the run when enabled, again its an idle game, so your not normally pressing any buttons and there was plenty of space between the button and the ad if you do. Later in the game you are able to purchase with in game credits the removal of this option, in favor of just having the 10% gold increase always active.
I can only think of a couple, but my favorite is crab idle evolution because they use this to reward you for not idling, and while you upgrade, they still appear, so every check-in is like maybe 3 4 ads for an idle game
This is what Adventure Quest and the other Artix Studios games did! This method was so effective, they had to put a daily limit on how many ads you could watch lol.
Yeah, I mean, if all you needed to do to get a not insignificant boost was spend like, 5 minutes watching 10 30 second ads, yeah, why not? Also probably to prevent bot farms, since there is pvp for some of the games if I remember right, so preventing someone from easily getting the strongest stuff at a comparatively low level is important. Would discourage players if every enemy at their level was a bot that could just 2 shot them.
@@garethkalum8297Guardian status was goated and from a different time. I miss those days. $20 and I get a cool plate, an exclusive set of armor and access to MORE in-game content? FOR EVER?!? HELL YA!!! One birthday I asked for it as a gift and it was like a whole different experience from then on. God I was soooo invested in that game. Played for literal years until AQ3D came out. Too bad that “pay once for all” model died off by the time I became a functioning adult with adult money. Now EVERYONE is tryna keep squeezing money out of consumers during their time on games even if they play PVE exclusively. Everything is a goddamn subscription now, ads included. Sadness.
I wish companies would realize that ads are not the problem, but rather that pissing people off is. Making more invasive ads only leads to advances in ad-block software. If it takes me longer than a few seconds to figure out a website because of ads then I just won't use the website. There is nothing that I need that requires me being annoyed by a website's ads, especially a website that is annoying even despite using an ad-blocker. Actually, if it takes me longer than a few seconds to figure out a website then I just won't use it, ads or not. I'm an unemployed cripple who can't work so I have nothing but time, but even I don't have time for that shit.
No, the problem is to have a company. Showing 1 ad per day per player will make a company lose money and developers will end up looking for another job.
Not Pirate saying what I’ve told most my bosses in sales jobs that people hate when you badger them or force them into a corner. Thank you Pirate for being a beacon of sensibility
top paid games list is the way to go, though. to the game devs and publishers who still sell their games or let me pay a one time (sane) amount to remove ads: i love you so much
The issue is very few people want to actually buy mobile games. I'm guilty of this too, the only games I've ever bought on mobile are Slay the Spire and Slice & Dice, and they're games I spent a LOT of time playing on PC first. I think it's a combination of mobile games being perceived as less valuable due to how much of the mobile market is free to play, and a (not necessarily fair, but also not fully unfounded) sense that the mobile market is a cesspool and anything that asks you to pay is probably a scam.
@@masterplusmargarita I only bought a few games, im not even remotely interested in most that's f2p. 1) Rebel Inc. - Love it on the go from time to time. 2) Day R Survival (Premium) - liked it so I bought it, don't play it as much as I should tho. 3) GTA Chinatown wars because I enjoyed it back when it originally released on DS and even more when it came to the PSP - A purchase i fully regret for multiple reasons: a) Controls feel clunky on mobile to me b (for biggest issue)): I often have no Mobile Internet as I don't really need and use it, and the god damn game I paid bucks for requires me to log in so Rockstar can verify that I actually bought it after it being installed for a long time and checked multiple times. The fact alone that a company is even allowed to sell a game that was originally made to be played wherever you are with no connection in mind without changing it and then requiring a permanent connection for a port to another mobile device that might be used in remote areas is just mindboggling.
Shout outs to Slice and Dice, Loop hero, You Must Build a Boat and Peglin for still offering a one time buy option. But if the alternative is ads, Super Toss the Turtle still stays the GOAT for staying out of the way entirely and just asking after a run.
The problem with that kind of monetization system is that it often leads to mobile games being designed in a way the forces you to watch the ads to make any meaningful progression. Games that have an upfront cost usually don't work, but some games do it like cytus II, and games that do do it often contain other micro transactions. Mobile games with micro transactions are usually p2w because cosmetics can be difficult to do on mobile especially for smaller scale games which are the norm on mobile. The lucrative nature of mobile games in combination with the complexity in monetizing them generally leads to all but the highest tier of mobile games to monetize themselves using the easiest method ads.(It's also the monetization method that's best at easily capitalizing on the massive size of the mobile game player base)
That or the rewards from the ads aren't worth the click. One of the best mobile games I played, which is extremely F2P, finally introduced a reward wheel for watching ads and the rewards are absolute garbage. You could farm more than you earn in the 30s it takes to watch an ad. It's apparently hard to balance not making progression tied to watching ads and not making them utterly worthless. I haven't found many that have found a good middle ground. I did play one where the ads felt worthwhile but weren't required. But that's probably because it was a P2W game so they just made the rewards a little more generous than usual to help F2P out. Even if you watch all the available ads daily, it won't get you anywhere near a whale but could give you an advantage over other F2P. That was fine to me because I was content just trying to beat out other F2P in PvP.
I remember playing an old ios game that did this. It was essentially ace combat but on ios at the time. Every time you watched an ad you would recieve one singular premium currency coin. I clicked that watch ad button for days while playing around in forge on Halo 3 in order to buy every single premium currency plane. I literally watched to win. Unfortunately that was 15 years ago and i haven't come across a single other game doing that since.
My only problem with the "fairy" method is that some games basically make it impossible to progress without you watching the ads for the extra rewards. Like a puzzle game makes the "undo move" button locked behind an ad (totally fine), but then the puzzles will get needlessly complicated way too early, forcing you to either watch an ad to undo, or lose progress.
that's why i like the ads in cookie run kingdom, they don't even show up unless you click a specific interface, and when you do it's like "hey !! if you watch an ad i can give you some diamonds and rainbow cubes, or i can speed up the construction process for you !! but if not it's ok :3"
i have a minesweeper app on my phone that does that. every couple of losses it decides to play and add. well going to the home screen and back bypasses the add and is way way faster.
I used to agree and think the same until mobile game companies realized they can click bait and/or falsely advertise everything, so now I just don't do mobile games cause the ads are so aggravating
That's why i love the way Battle Cats does ads. There are 0 forced ads, and when you do watch an ad, its your own doing. And it gives you rewards like Cat Food, Energy, A free continue if you lose on a level, and more. There are micro transactions, but the way the game is made, you can easily get through if you have patience. And you never feel like you're forced to buy something or forced to warch an ad. I still play Battle Cats and i will keep playing until i finish the game... maybe a bit longer.
My favorite ads so far have been in Idle Slayer. It caused me to buy their no ad upgrade. "Heres your offline gains, want to watch an ad to double it?" and "Oh no you failed the platforming challenge. Want to watch an ad for a second try?" Turns into "Here's your offline gains. Oh you're ad free? Here's your free double!" and "Oh no you failed the platforming challenge. Oh, you're ad free? Try again on us!"
That's why I only play "King God Castle" on my phone, It's exactly like this. Every ad is an optional and you get a reward for it. Also, what's super important is that ads would be limited per day for each different reward, so you would not feel like grinding ads all day. ❤ Love you Thor
It’s very frustrating and sad that “pay upfront” isn’t considered an option. I’ve bought small games before and whenever a game I enjoy has a “pay to remove ads” option I almost always take it. And it’s such a double standard too, because people will happily fork out $5-10 for an indie game on PC but something with the same amount of content or possibly even more on mobile gets the cold shoulder because, mobile is considered less of a platform or something I guess? In a way, the mobile market, through its insistence that everything should be free, brought the predatory monetization upon themselves.
I do not game on my phone because I do not like touch screen controls (I hardly like it for general phone navigation). My phone is a tool, not a console. I wish we were still getting stuff like gameboys and vitas for mobile gaming.
The tower is a perfect example of this. Never any forced ads or banners, only rewards for watching ads. They also give the option to pay a small amount to permanently get the ad rewards without having to watch them or you can just play the full game with no ads ever.
Thor comes off as a “know it all” but I find myself. Not being able to disagree with him.
Месяц назад
That's what i like about SoulKnight. There is a TV screen in lobby where you can play ads. Also when your character dies, they offer one-time resurrection for the cost of one ad to be played when you finish the run.
There is another way that I really like: there is a Carmagedon port for mobile, it is free, but at the beggining when you open the game for the first time it shows you an ad, and it is the ONLY ad you will see in the game.
This short reminds me of Soda Dungeon 1. The game didn't play ads for me at all unless I wanted to get a reward. Hell, it allowed me to receive rewards for tapping the ad button while I have no connection and even acknowledges that I did that. Played that game to death on my phone and I still fondly remember it.
I follow this rule too. The only exception to this rule it a game I play called inflation RPG. It's a rogue-like and after each run you have 1 ad. Each run is typically 10 minutes+ just to start and upwards of an hour later on. So one 30 second ad per ~25 minutes of play time I find not terrible.
Eternium is like this. The loot from treasure chests you can find on a level doubles if you watch an add, but you can refuse or ignore the chest completely, the game is still playable
I hear you and mostly agree. WIth our mobile card game we don't want to introduce any thing else than the game, stright to the point. We do use full screen ads for non-premium players. I don't think our community would like coins.
My favorite ad systems are games that don’t run forced ads, but let you double rewards and earn extra stuff for them. I’m also willing to pay a one time charge to permanently remove ads if I like the game enough. Fun mobile games can be hard to come by. And I understand that there’s a cost to making fun mobile games. I’m absolutely willing to pay $3-$5 for a mobile game I’m enjoying.
I like mobile games that let you pay a one time fee to never have to watch an ad, but still get the bonus/ buff button. The Village's Beginning comes to mind. Even Majong Gold does it
I remember this game, endless frontier, where you had exactly that. Sometimes you would encounter a chest, if you click on the chest, a pop up would ask you if you wanted to watch an ad, and after that, the chest would open
One of my favorite mobile games Soul Knight does something pretty cool. So it's a roguelike, and when you die in a run, you get to option to revive with either in-game currency (that you don't need to pay for), or watch an ad, and if you pick ad, rather than playing it immediately, it plays it after you finish the run.
One thing I love about the Final Fantasy mobile games I’ve played is that the only time I see ads is if I want to get basic rewards that works up to IG currency, or if I want a small boost to my energy gauge (maybe just to top it off). I never see ads otherwise.
this is actually similar to what I would like to do with a website. Where the user gets one of their currencies from watching ads the ads are in a separate section of the site and organized by product. If you don't like a product you can hide it, if you are male, you can hide ads for female products, and other things like that. You get more currency for giving a review on the ad. Other currency is for doing other activities on the site, normally stuff like using one currency to do an activity and based on that activity you get a different currency. It is a complicated system, but I have a plan to lay it out in an easy to follow way.
The best ads like this also have scaling rewards instead of a flat one, so as you get farther in the game and have seen the ad more times, the reward becomes worth more to watch it again
I remember a mobile game, something about vehicles or something anyway, when I realized I could get like… 10 premium currency for a single ad, I watched those ads for HOURS, EVERY DAY, until I had everything I wanted. Which was a lot. I gave that company so much ad money.
I once played granschase dimensional chaser in mobile, the way they did ads were fantastic. Gacha games in general have stamina system, and the way their ad works is they give you stamina when you watch ads up to 10 times per day. Stamina in other gacha games can be seen as a premium currency, coz aside from its natural refresh timer, you need to buy it to get more. I wish more stamina based game do this. Instead of paying for stamina to play more, you just need to watch an ad.
I once had a game where it gave you gold for watching ads but the ad was mandatory, you couldn't not watch the ad but it gave you gold for it anyway. Every 15 to 20 minutes it would give you one of these mandatory ads and then some gold. It was made in such a way that you can't turn off your wifi to avoid it too. I don't remember how much gold it gave but I don't think it was much.
Tiny space program has this exact setup. 30 second ad for 100 coins, I sit and let ads play back to back for 10 minutes at a time, hopefully that dev is making good money on it. I Really respect that
Part of me wishes that out-right paying for mobile games didn't go out of style. Playing a full version of CoD Zombies with no ads on my iPod Touch for a couple dollars was an amazing experience. I understand why people prefer not to pay upfront for mobile games, but part of me does miss the old days.
Fallout Shelter is a good example of "ads done right" You'll literally never get served an ad unless you seek it out. They will make you aware if you click this button you can watch an ad and get a reward but thats it. I watch the ad every single time i open the game cause that quantum is useful.
I play the drag racing mobile game CSR2. The game utilizes fuel pips for each race and one of the ways you can refill your tank is by watching voluntary ads. It works exactly how Thor describes and I'm happy to utilize it every time. It's genius.
Ad is forced? I'll watch none, i delete the app this instant. I get money for watching the ad? I'll watch 30 ads in one sitting. No joke, once i watched like 50 ads, played some game on PC, phone on the side clicking the ad button every 30 sec.
Those 30 second ads are a great break to wipe your ass mid restroom break. I gotta be brutally honest, in my opinion, the best mobile games are ones you play for like 5 minutes on the toilet a couple times a day.
There is a tower building game that does this. A drone will come across every so often and ask if you want whatever its offering. just have to watch an ad. I love that game.
Soul Knight has a pretty good way of introducing ads. You could either revive by spending gems (common currency) or by agreeing to watch an ad at the end of the run.
Usually I think the same but there's one mobile game which didn't show ads till you completed the game once (it's like a roguelite deckbuilder kinda thing) I got super hooked on the game and it showed ads sometimes after that full screen no warning but after the ad you got the option to pay for no ads and get bonus optional items (extra Lives, more currency and additional cards) for like 5 bucks. A reasonable price to pay for a good mobile game imo. Otherwise yes I follow this principle to heart
Ive always wondered if mobile game devs can pick how to run ads. I don't mind *most* full screen ads as long as they're closeable in 5ish seconds. The problem is that how it works now is you have to click upwards of 3 times to actually get out of an ad and every step is time gated. First comes the video of someone playing the game terribly. You can skip that after 5-10 seconds, which leads to the playable part of the ad. You can skip that after 5-10 seconds. *Then* comes the splash page for the ad, you can also close that after 5-10 seconds. Oh, and all the close buttons have a "hitbox" that's smaller than the actual icon, so you *will* sometimes just open the ad on the store. Other times the full screen ad is just a splash page for Facebook and has a good sized X on it that can be clicked in 3-5 seconds from the ad start. Those I don't mind even if theyre forced full-screen ads, provided they're not thrown in my face every 60 seconds. If devs could choose only to use the latter sort of ads the whole experience would be more pleasant, but I have no idea if they can or not. I suspect not.
Life in Adventure, a text-based adventure rpg, has an option to watch an ad and reward you with 2 gems. It'll take 5-30 seconds each but, hey, you can get the dlc basically for free in a few watches. It also does the full-screen ads, but only at the end of your session, either when you win or when you die, which I think is a pretty decent compromise. It's a pretty fun game, it deserves a bit of support.
For a game owned by EA, Real Racing 3 actually does quite a good job of this - the microtransactions do make it a bit pay to win, but the single-player nature of most of the game makes that less apparent. You can always watch ads to get rewards/speed up progress, and its completely optional. Not perfect by any means, but genuinely good and really works well for me
Cradle of Empires doesn't do the ad fairy thing, but there are only three ways to see ads, all of them basically voluntary: Ads for small rewards that add up to a prize, ads for small energy potions (5 a day), or an ad for an extra spin of a prize wheel with all in-game stuff to get. Nowhere else. They likely get most of their money through deals they offer, but still. I've said it before on a different short of yours, I think, but I personally can handle the banner ads and sometimes the full screen ones. Those tend to be very contextual.
I can't remember the game but when ad roll thing would come up they would pause your active game processing, but background stuff would keep going like resource collection, etc. They would ask if you want to watch an ad and get a reward. If you checked no, it would disappear for like 30 to 45 game time played, then same thing again. But it would go away with no punishments but no rewards. It's the most chill and invasively non-invasive ads I've encountered to date, cause IF you opted the ad they'd go away for like 3 to 4 hours game time played and you'd get a decent reward for it.
there’s a game called soda dungeon. this game has ads you choose to watch, only occasionally has full screen ads, and you can grind enough earnable currency to disable ads
I started playing Egg Inc again after playing many spam ad games and it's amazing for this reason. Ads are entirely optional, and you get big rewards for them
I love how Battle cats does it with getting like a free continue with ads or regaining energy, which is I think a non-predatory way of incentivizing watching an ad
A game i play called seekers notes has full screen ads but you actually get something for it if you watch them. Whether thats free energy for a stage or other stuff that's actually useful. You have to click them to watch them too. So full screen ads can be done well if you get something out of it and arent forced into watching it
I love the little fairy method because its much less intrusive than the other two
Wait, what are you doing here instead at the bottom of an MBT video?
@@Fluffal_Enthusiast The battle cats does it so that you can regain energy when you watch an ad or roll lucky capsules once when it’s around. Even though a lot of stages can be brute forced with paying money for Ubers there are stages that are testaments of skill like HT floor 30 or Laboratory of Relics invasion, i mean 4 crown stages were ment to test your skill the most. No crazed or brainwashed cats, no Uber or Legend rares, just Rare and Special cats.
@@MomirViggwilv I can have hobbies
I don’t care too much personally if there is a banner ad… and in some games that has more intrusive ads but a “Remove Ads Forever - 10$”, I’m fine with it as well. I don’t mind paying for a game I enjoy and like 10$ ish, maybe 15$ max, I can just consider as buying the game.
But the little fairly method is most preferred one as a free option. Paying to remove all ads is my favourite method if I really like the gameplay because then I never have to see any ads at all, and I still get to play the game and get all rewards.
You can actually apply that to a lot of real life examples... especially political ones :)
The more you pressure stuff onto people the more and heavier they dislike it
Big exception to this rule: If I click to not watch the ad, and still get an ad, but no reward for it, I still uninstall your game.
Games that make you watch an ad after completing a level makes it feel like they're punishing me for playing their game well. The scenario you're describing are almost always the same games.
@@davidtt8372 Eh, depends how long said "level" takes 🤷♂️. For example, a coloring app I use to relax almost systematically plays an ad after every image, but it takes like 40-60 minutes to complete them.
@@davidtt8372 Yup. I feel that so much.
Complete a level "Hey, good job. Wanna watch an ad to increase your reward?"
"Nah, not this time."
"Oh, well okay. Here's an ad anyway. No reward for this, you gotta watch it tho."
Completely agree with this, that is annoying
This types of ad is demonic because wtf!! 😂😂
This is why so many people have come to appreciate your insight - you are always on the side of the player AND the developer. It's not a war for you, it's just a conversation between people.
Except, notably, on the SKG initiative, where he was 100% on the developer side, and making shitty remarks about the leaders championing the players side.
@@cousinpatsey2471 As a player and a software engineer, I agreed with his stance on that. The SKG demands were too vaguely worded. There are a lot of scenarios where it would have been unreasonable for a company to be forced to comply with it.
@cousinpatsey2471 nah, you're just too ignorant and/or dumb to understand the nuance of his point there. It's likely willful ignorance because of a hard stanced political/social worldview you have. If you don't see his point, it's because you either don't want to or you're too dumb to understand context and just think with "Box A vs Box B."
@@thaddeuskSo help us word it better
@@cousinpatsey2471
That's a false representation of the SKG initiative as being a "players vs devs" scenario.
The SKG initiative was not some magical ideal that described a perfect scenario for players. That's just wrong, and plenty of players had issues with it. Of course most of its supporters went around in groups berating nay-sayers so they felt like it had near-unanimous support. It had pros and cons for players, and while initially well-intentioned, people were taking it way too far. They heard the initial idea, thought "oh that sounds good" (and Thor to an extent, just not the same extent, agreed) and then for some reason went all-in defending every single aspect of the initiative despite its many many flaws, both for devs and players. You will almost never get something right on the first try, the initiative should've been open to criticism, adjustments, and improvements, not treated as gospel like it was.
Treating the industry as a whole as a conversation between devs and players sometimes requires that for specific topics, you converse with a subgroup (and it was a *subgroup,* not all as you suggest) of players (or devs, which he does *very regularly* but you don't point any of that out as "exceptions" to the original comment) and explain to them that they're being destructive, not helpful. You cannot claim to be on the side of the players while allowing the players to walk themselves into what you think are bad decisions without saying anything to them about it. If you listened to Thor's arguments, you know he saw the initiative as destructive to both players and devs, not just devs. You've either forgotten that, never listened, or are intentionally misrepresenting his beliefs.
You've also either fallen for, or are intentionally spreading, a lie: "making shitty remarks about the leaders [...]"
This did not happen. He described a single specific tactic being used to try to push the legislation through as "disgusting." This comment was not directed at any *person* and people actively lied to make it sound like he had committed some atrocious act against the dude. Oddly often opting to speak in nebulous or exaggerated terms rather than simply *describing what actually happened* just as you did here. This was blown massively out of proportion simply because Thor pointed out some flaws with a piece of legislation that had somehow accrued what to me seemed a cult-like fanbase.
There's this Idle clicker game I was obsessed with in highschool because I liked the art and the music was soothing AF. I loved their approach on ads so much. It had its equivalent of the little fairy, and it also had an in-game shop that allowed you to watch a certain number of ads everyday for powerups/rewards. The thing is, if for whatever reason the game couldn't show the ad, it still gave you the reward with a little message that said something along the lines of "Sorry, we're having trouble displaying the ad, here's the reward anyway." The game recognized the player wanted to watch the ad for the reward anyway, so instead of punishing the player for an issue in the app outside of their control, they still gave the boost/reward. Loved that game honestly, though it's been ages since I last played it.
(The game is "Guitar Girl" if anyone is wondering)
the downside of this is that people can take advantage of it by just turning on airplane mode
The other game by that studio(it had something to do with fishing) was also really good.
@@howdyfriends7950 It obviously would depend on how the game is designed, but it should be pretty easy to detect this. If the game can maintain a connection with a publicly accessible server, and that connection drops before an Ad can play, it would be obvious it was the player's internet connection (versus still being able to access the game server, just not the origin of the ad)
ANOTHER ANTIMATTER DIMENSIONS PLAYER (or, player at one point) BTW the final version is out and it actually has an ending now
Edit: I actually read the comment completely, but guitar girl is cool, too. Sorry for my misunderstanding, but at least more people know about AD now!
@@AndrewS-vu4ji I don't see any fishing games from the same company as Guitar Girl, but there is a fun fishing game with that ad setup by a different company called A Girl Adrift.
I'm fine with the optional ad system, but I *love* optional ads that you can pay to permanently remove the ads. Like, if you pay a bit of money, you just get the reward from the optional ads without having actually watch an ad from that point forward.
Right because at that point, you’re essentially downloading the “trial version” of a game and then just purchasing the full version with bonuses after confirming you like it.
This is how it should be, but can be difficult in multiplayer situations because it technically supports P2W.
This version is goated
I support this method until they start charging 20+ dollars
Did this on the tower, spent $5 I think it was and I don't have to watch ads for the daily gems or gem bonus. Had no issues with the ads just had a bit of money to buy one
I've paid for that in games only to find out that you still get ads from fairies. Very upsetting
One thing I like about the fairy method is that it feels-and often is-less intrusive. They don’t interrupt normal flow of gameplay since they’re optional, require action by you (the player), don’t get in the way of anything that’s part of the game, and give you warning beforehand.
"You scratch my back, I scratch yours". Players are consumers, and consumers like to be in control. Help us players help you gaming companies help us players
Capitalism works best when its all about giving, not taking. You give me something useful, I give you money for it. Everyone profits, and ends up happy and satisfied.
The problem is that all too often, its all about taking instead. You take as much of my money as you can, and I have to fight to take something even slightly useful from you. Which just leaves everyone angry and disappointed.
Economic transactions are supposed to be cooperation, not combat. Buyers and sellers are partners, not enemies. But far too few companies understand that.
Do you want to watch an ad for a prize? No, thank you. Ok, here's a 30-second ad with no prize. Now that the ad is over, wait 5 seconds for the tiny X to light up.
Yes that's the most annoying type of
you forgot to watch 2 another screens after you clicked the X, with the same X delay. dude, who invented this deserves the hottest cauldron in hell
Fat finger the X 3 times before funally getting it
It's even worse now: they queue 2 ads back-to-back, so after you X out the first one, you have to watch ANOTHER 30-second ad. It's a full minute of fuckery.
Oh you watched the ad? Now app-store popped up on its own :) you’re welcome!
Soul Knight has a feature where, if you die in the dungeon, you can watch an ad to revive. It revives you with a pop-up that says "ad will play after game over", and lets you keep playing until then.
I always watched that ad.
The games that make people happy to watch the ads are the ones that retain their player base forcing an ad every two seconds with no reward is just speed running getting your shixt uninstalled
Ayyy! Someone who knows that game too! It's not just the free revive, it also gives you coins and gems if you interact to certain NPCs.
@@markopolo1271 with how little effort and generic those types of games are and the number of people that end up playing them, even briefly, it doesn't matter if a lot of people see one ad and uninstall. They still make a lot of money.
Personally I've always appreciated there being a "no more ads" purchase (so long as there isn't an unreasonable cost) and a "buy me a coffee as thanks" straightforward no reward option
Yeah that's basically just buying the game or thanking someone for making it. Which is how paying for games should work.
so like trial version in the old days, you got to play the game but you can buy it later if you want the full experience
@@Merilirem Sure but like Thor said in the video, nobody wants to go buy mobile games. It's typically just too big a risk; so many mobile games are garbage due to the lack of regulation, and nobody wants to end up paying for garbage, so only mobile games that get outstanding reviews (like BTD6) can get away with charging you for installation (and BTD6 has a little p2w stuff too but it's pretty unobtrusive and you're not forced to use it to fully appreciate the game as it was meant to be played).
"I always appreciated the option where i can pay the dev, but never actually will, just like everybody else. Devs shouldn't get a penny from their games burr burr"
This is my preferred way of consuming mobile games.
Let me try the game, and if you're not an ass about it, I will buy the full version.
"You give me gold, you get to make money" -Thor, Goblin Lord
I wish he had said "you give me gold, I give you gold"
Not only you're ok to watch that ad, you're actively looking for that ad.
"Do you want to watch an ad and double your rewards?"
*clicks No*
"Alright. Here's an ad and no rewards."
Thats so true
But you can skip it ;)
@@HYBRIS95 That does not change anything. I selected "no", and getting an ad anyway, even if it's skippable, is annoying.
That also implies that they made the normal reward lower than what you actually need to progress, forcing on you an inconvenience where you either watch ads and double the reward or you will have to go through the same stage twice
@@Raptorox exaclty. I said I didn't want ads, and if the game would force it anyway, that's an easy uninstall for me.
The mobile version of Vampire Survivors does this, and it’s great. You get a revive for watching an add, and you can boost the gold from your run by watching more ads. They even allow you to completely turn the request off. They do offer paid dlc, and I ended up getting it to support the dev team.
Why am I 100% not surprised that the Mobile Version of Vampire Survivors is totally legit and fair?
God I love these devs
Also, the DLCs are like, $2.50. The game is crazy cheap.
Yeah that game is the shit and the dlc doesn’t suck. It’s like the one mobile game I play
@@ottokarl5427
Especially since the game is designed to mock all of the f2p predatory games.
@@ottokarl5427 You have to understand one thing: the devs were not interested in making a mobile version of their game at first. The problem became that people were just stealing their game, recompiling it for mobile, and monetizing it in the bad ways Thor talks about. So the devs were like "Well, if we're going to do this, we're going to do this RIGHT." They didn't want the scam games to make all the money and leave them in the dust. So they went HARD into making the mobile version good, and it paid off.
I love how you're such a kindhearted person even with all this knowledge you have so you just call things like they really are and hold people and companies to standards
One of my favorite ad styles is in games like Trackmania, where they have a stadium you're driving through and there are real ads on billboard around the stadium. I think I remember seeing something like it in some soccer games where they put them on the LED wall around the field. I actually don't mind seeing them at all because it adds to the realism and i admire the work that went into it.
and also, most importantly, it doesn't get in your way and you get to decide if you wanna look at the ads
Yeah that's genius!
It's called football not "soccer" learn English please, American
Yeah, that what they do in Cuba due to lack of better options
Hey trackmania mentioned
I love the fairy method. It always reminds me "I should get some water/use the bathroom/take a break" and the ad's a great time for it.
My favorite implementation of this is in Vampire Survivors, as ads make you quite meaningfully OP there to the point that you progress in the game faster than you would on a desktop/home console version. The boost from watching ads is tangible and doesn’t feel like it’s locking a game behind ads.
Also, ad removal mtx is quite a fine way to disguise a proper purchase so one gets to have a cake and eat it too.
I actually prefer to pay up front. I often can avoid ads and micro transactions and i get a more quality product
That what is supposed to happen but that social contract is so obliterated that a lot of people dont trust it anymore. Too many paid up front games have these other montetization methods wrapped in, which just feels like fraud.
@@koboldsage9112 unfortunately... It's why i only have a small handful of mobile games.
I'd rather know what I'm getting into before I pay.
This is a problem with digital goods, as with physical ones I'd just return the product. With digital goods you could finish a game and "return" it, for example.
It's hard to use an honor system and let people play your game for free and pay if they think it's worth it, but this is pretty much what this video promotes.
@@nullfield1126the solution for that is a free trial and then a paid game.
@@nullfield1126 i just check for "in-game payments" before i purchase and try to do some research. Sometimes that can mean micro transactions, sometimes it means dlc, like with A Dance Of Ice And Fire
There was a mobile game i used to play called "soda dungeon", it was an idle dungeon crawler game, It had an option at the beginning of every run to enable a banner ad at the bottom on the screen for the entire run, in return the player would earn 10% more gold for the entirety of the run when enabled, again its an idle game, so your not normally pressing any buttons and there was plenty of space between the button and the ad if you do. Later in the game you are able to purchase with in game credits the removal of this option, in favor of just having the 10% gold increase always active.
@@Chip10591 I loved soda dungeon and soda dungeon 2
Soda dungeon is amazing
That game was goated
Oh I loved soda dungeon!
goated game
I can only think of a couple, but my favorite is crab idle evolution because they use this to reward you for not idling, and while you upgrade, they still appear, so every check-in is like maybe 3 4 ads for an idle game
This is what Adventure Quest and the other Artix Studios games did! This method was so effective, they had to put a daily limit on how many ads you could watch lol.
Yeah, I mean, if all you needed to do to get a not insignificant boost was spend like, 5 minutes watching 10 30 second ads, yeah, why not?
Also probably to prevent bot farms, since there is pvp for some of the games if I remember right, so preventing someone from easily getting the strongest stuff at a comparatively low level is important. Would discourage players if every enemy at their level was a bot that could just 2 shot them.
Lmao that's amazing
Distinctly remember buying guardian statue as an upfront one off payment
Throwback from the deepest wrinkles of my brain
@@garethkalum8297Guardian status was goated and from a different time. I miss those days. $20 and I get a cool plate, an exclusive set of armor and access to MORE in-game content? FOR EVER?!? HELL YA!!! One birthday I asked for it as a gift and it was like a whole different experience from then on. God I was soooo invested in that game. Played for literal years until AQ3D came out. Too bad that “pay once for all” model died off by the time I became a functioning adult with adult money. Now EVERYONE is tryna keep squeezing money out of consumers during their time on games even if they play PVE exclusively. Everything is a goddamn subscription now, ads included. Sadness.
I wish companies would realize that ads are not the problem, but rather that pissing people off is. Making more invasive ads only leads to advances in ad-block software. If it takes me longer than a few seconds to figure out a website because of ads then I just won't use the website. There is nothing that I need that requires me being annoyed by a website's ads, especially a website that is annoying even despite using an ad-blocker.
Actually, if it takes me longer than a few seconds to figure out a website then I just won't use it, ads or not. I'm an unemployed cripple who can't work so I have nothing but time, but even I don't have time for that shit.
The problem is that unless you use something like pi hole, ad blocks on mobile games is non-existent.
No, the problem is to have a company.
Showing 1 ad per day per player will make a company lose money and developers will end up looking for another job.
Not Pirate saying what I’ve told most my bosses in sales jobs that people hate when you badger them or force them into a corner. Thank you Pirate for being a beacon of sensibility
top paid games list is the way to go, though. to the game devs and publishers who still sell their games or let me pay a one time (sane) amount to remove ads: i love you so much
+
The issue is very few people want to actually buy mobile games. I'm guilty of this too, the only games I've ever bought on mobile are Slay the Spire and Slice & Dice, and they're games I spent a LOT of time playing on PC first. I think it's a combination of mobile games being perceived as less valuable due to how much of the mobile market is free to play, and a (not necessarily fair, but also not fully unfounded) sense that the mobile market is a cesspool and anything that asks you to pay is probably a scam.
@@masterplusmargarita I only bought a few games, im not even remotely interested in most that's f2p.
1) Rebel Inc. - Love it on the go from time to time.
2) Day R Survival (Premium) - liked it so I bought it, don't play it as much as I should tho.
3) GTA Chinatown wars because I enjoyed it back when it originally released on DS and even more when it came to the PSP - A purchase i fully regret for multiple reasons:
a) Controls feel clunky on mobile to me
b (for biggest issue)): I often have no Mobile Internet as I don't really need and use it, and the god damn game I paid bucks for requires me to log in so Rockstar can verify that I actually bought it after it being installed for a long time and checked multiple times.
The fact alone that a company is even allowed to sell a game that was originally made to be played wherever you are with no connection in mind without changing it and then requiring a permanent connection for a port to another mobile device that might be used in remote areas is just mindboggling.
Shout outs to Slice and Dice, Loop hero, You Must Build a Boat and Peglin for still offering a one time buy option.
But if the alternative is ads, Super Toss the Turtle still stays the GOAT for staying out of the way entirely and just asking after a run.
Geometry dash does this with their main full version. Like 5 dollars to buy the entire game, no ads.
The problem with that kind of monetization system is that it often leads to mobile games being designed in a way the forces you to watch the ads to make any meaningful progression.
Games that have an upfront cost usually don't work, but some games do it like cytus II, and games that do do it often contain other micro transactions.
Mobile games with micro transactions are usually p2w because cosmetics can be difficult to do on mobile especially for smaller scale games which are the norm on mobile.
The lucrative nature of mobile games in combination with the complexity in monetizing them generally leads to all but the highest tier of mobile games to monetize themselves using the easiest method ads.(It's also the monetization method that's best at easily capitalizing on the massive size of the mobile game player base)
That or the rewards from the ads aren't worth the click. One of the best mobile games I played, which is extremely F2P, finally introduced a reward wheel for watching ads and the rewards are absolute garbage. You could farm more than you earn in the 30s it takes to watch an ad.
It's apparently hard to balance not making progression tied to watching ads and not making them utterly worthless. I haven't found many that have found a good middle ground.
I did play one where the ads felt worthwhile but weren't required. But that's probably because it was a P2W game so they just made the rewards a little more generous than usual to help F2P out. Even if you watch all the available ads daily, it won't get you anywhere near a whale but could give you an advantage over other F2P. That was fine to me because I was content just trying to beat out other F2P in PvP.
I remember playing an old ios game that did this. It was essentially ace combat but on ios at the time. Every time you watched an ad you would recieve one singular premium currency coin. I clicked that watch ad button for days while playing around in forge on Halo 3 in order to buy every single premium currency plane. I literally watched to win. Unfortunately that was 15 years ago and i haven't come across a single other game doing that since.
What about your Halo 3 maps?
@@ZorroCeleste1 They still exist on my 360 hard drive. Console bit the dust but if I ever wanted to I could buy a new one and play them.
Like Cats and Soup! Every single ad is decided by the user. You can run the entire game without ever watching a single ad.
There is even a upgrade that gives you free daily ads for watching ads!
Cats and Soup mentioned!
Pog moment
My only problem with the "fairy" method is that some games basically make it impossible to progress without you watching the ads for the extra rewards. Like a puzzle game makes the "undo move" button locked behind an ad (totally fine), but then the puzzles will get needlessly complicated way too early, forcing you to either watch an ad to undo, or lose progress.
Locking undo behind an ad is ridiculously horrible what??? What kind of puzzle games are you playing where that's tolerable???????
@@zackbuildit88 its usually extra undos????? Like you get 3 to start with and any more costs you an ad???????
Nah those games are shitty and you know you should uninstall them
@@Frederic_104 how do you tolerate that?????
@@zackbuildit88 I don't I'm just explaining it???????? If you're playing puzzle games on your phone you're kinda behind the curve already?????
that's why i like the ads in cookie run kingdom, they don't even show up unless you click a specific interface, and when you do it's like "hey !! if you watch an ad i can give you some diamonds and rainbow cubes, or i can speed up the construction process for you !! but if not it's ok :3"
If an ad shows up on my games, I just close the game and reopen it, it takes less time than the ad 😂
i have a minesweeper app on my phone that does that. every couple of losses it decides to play and add. well going to the home screen and back bypasses the add and is way way faster.
@@rookooful Usually for those, disconnecting from the internet stops those adds too. If that's an option, that is
I used to agree and think the same until mobile game companies realized they can click bait and/or falsely advertise everything, so now I just don't do mobile games cause the ads are so aggravating
That's why i love the way Battle Cats does ads. There are 0 forced ads, and when you do watch an ad, its your own doing. And it gives you rewards like Cat Food, Energy, A free continue if you lose on a level, and more. There are micro transactions, but the way the game is made, you can easily get through if you have patience. And you never feel like you're forced to buy something or forced to warch an ad. I still play Battle Cats and i will keep playing until i finish the game... maybe a bit longer.
My favorite ads so far have been in Idle Slayer. It caused me to buy their no ad upgrade.
"Heres your offline gains, want to watch an ad to double it?" and "Oh no you failed the platforming challenge. Want to watch an ad for a second try?"
Turns into
"Here's your offline gains. Oh you're ad free? Here's your free double!" and "Oh no you failed the platforming challenge. Oh, you're ad free? Try again on us!"
i love idle slayer so much
That's why I only play "King God Castle" on my phone, It's exactly like this. Every ad is an optional and you get a reward for it. Also, what's super important is that ads would be limited per day for each different reward, so you would not feel like grinding ads all day. ❤ Love you Thor
those are kind of shorts that give so much insight . one day i will have my game and put you in the credits
I got an app on my phone where the ads are in a separate screen, you have to intentionally go there to watch them. This is ideal, honestly.
I like the sound of that. What is it?
It’s very frustrating and sad that “pay upfront” isn’t considered an option. I’ve bought small games before and whenever a game I enjoy has a “pay to remove ads” option I almost always take it. And it’s such a double standard too, because people will happily fork out $5-10 for an indie game on PC but something with the same amount of content or possibly even more on mobile gets the cold shoulder because, mobile is considered less of a platform or something I guess? In a way, the mobile market, through its insistence that everything should be free, brought the predatory monetization upon themselves.
I do not game on my phone because I do not like touch screen controls (I hardly like it for general phone navigation). My phone is a tool, not a console. I wish we were still getting stuff like gameboys and vitas for mobile gaming.
Games that do the "little fairy" often boost progress significantly for watching those ads too. It's very nice to see in a fun game
Except, there's always a chance that the game decides to show you an ad anyway and you don't get the gold, and that's not fun at all.
This is literally a remade youtube short never thought id see the day
He's done it a few times
That's how you spread awareness among the new viewers.
The tower is a perfect example of this. Never any forced ads or banners, only rewards for watching ads. They also give the option to pay a small amount to permanently get the ad rewards without having to watch them or you can just play the full game with no ads ever.
I love this! Basically saying "if you give me fake money, I'll get you real money." 😂😂
Egg Inc: hey we allow you to turn off ads 👍
egg inc is honestly really good about it. the fairy is not super intrusive and just sits in a little bubble at the top of the screen.
you're missing the wombo combo of "if you pay money you'll never have to touch the fairy to watch an ad for gold again it will happen automatically."
Thor comes off as a “know it all” but I find myself. Not being able to disagree with him.
That's what i like about SoulKnight. There is a TV screen in lobby where you can play ads. Also when your character dies, they offer one-time resurrection for the cost of one ad to be played when you finish the run.
There is another way that I really like:
there is a Carmagedon port for mobile, it is free, but at the beggining when you open the game for the first time it shows you an ad, and it is the ONLY ad you will see in the game.
This short reminds me of Soda Dungeon 1. The game didn't play ads for me at all unless I wanted to get a reward. Hell, it allowed me to receive rewards for tapping the ad button while I have no connection and even acknowledges that I did that. Played that game to death on my phone and I still fondly remember it.
I follow this rule too. The only exception to this rule it a game I play called inflation RPG. It's a rogue-like and after each run you have 1 ad. Each run is typically 10 minutes+ just to start and upwards of an hour later on. So one 30 second ad per ~25 minutes of play time I find not terrible.
There’s also the Soda Dungeon option of being able to straight up remove ads with in-game currency
Eternium is like this. The loot from treasure chests you can find on a level doubles if you watch an add, but you can refuse or ignore the chest completely, the game is still playable
Wish there was a list of games somewhere with this model because the hardest part is finding the games that are worth playing
I hear you and mostly agree. WIth our mobile card game we don't want to introduce any thing else than the game, stright to the point. We do use full screen ads for non-premium players. I don't think our community would like coins.
My favorite ad systems are games that don’t run forced ads, but let you double rewards and earn extra stuff for them.
I’m also willing to pay a one time charge to permanently remove ads if I like the game enough. Fun mobile games can be hard to come by. And I understand that there’s a cost to making fun mobile games. I’m absolutely willing to pay $3-$5 for a mobile game I’m enjoying.
I like mobile games that let you pay a one time fee to never have to watch an ad, but still get the bonus/ buff button. The Village's Beginning comes to mind. Even Majong Gold does it
I remember this game, endless frontier, where you had exactly that. Sometimes you would encounter a chest, if you click on the chest, a pop up would ask you if you wanted to watch an ad, and after that, the chest would open
One of my favorite mobile games Soul Knight does something pretty cool. So it's a roguelike, and when you die in a run, you get to option to revive with either in-game currency (that you don't need to pay for), or watch an ad, and if you pick ad, rather than playing it immediately, it plays it after you finish the run.
One thing I love about the Final Fantasy mobile games I’ve played is that the only time I see ads is if I want to get basic rewards that works up to IG currency, or if I want a small boost to my energy gauge (maybe just to top it off). I never see ads otherwise.
I always watch those ads like a small little window pops up like hey watch this and ill give you the rest of the gold needed for that upgrade 😂
this is actually similar to what I would like to do with a website. Where the user gets one of their currencies from watching ads the ads are in a separate section of the site and organized by product. If you don't like a product you can hide it, if you are male, you can hide ads for female products, and other things like that. You get more currency for giving a review on the ad. Other currency is for doing other activities on the site, normally stuff like using one currency to do an activity and based on that activity you get a different currency. It is a complicated system, but I have a plan to lay it out in an easy to follow way.
The best ads like this also have scaling rewards instead of a flat one, so as you get farther in the game and have seen the ad more times, the reward becomes worth more to watch it again
That makes it an explicit agreement as opposed to an implicit one. That is something that I like.
"you just waited 5 hours for this loot haul. Would you like to double it by watching this 15 second ad?" *Absolutely!*
Honestly I love this approach, its one of the reasons I really like merge dragons
I remember a mobile game, something about vehicles or something anyway, when I realized I could get like… 10 premium currency for a single ad, I watched those ads for HOURS, EVERY DAY, until I had everything I wanted. Which was a lot. I gave that company so much ad money.
I once played granschase dimensional chaser in mobile, the way they did ads were fantastic.
Gacha games in general have stamina system, and the way their ad works is they give you stamina when you watch ads up to 10 times per day.
Stamina in other gacha games can be seen as a premium currency, coz aside from its natural refresh timer, you need to buy it to get more.
I wish more stamina based game do this. Instead of paying for stamina to play more, you just need to watch an ad.
One of the better mobile games I've played ran ads using a system similar to this. I would watch it almost every time.
Indie games rock with this. Artix Entertainment Ballyhoo ads were my childhood 😂
might be the realest short i've ever seen
I once had a game where it gave you gold for watching ads but the ad was mandatory, you couldn't not watch the ad but it gave you gold for it anyway. Every 15 to 20 minutes it would give you one of these mandatory ads and then some gold. It was made in such a way that you can't turn off your wifi to avoid it too. I don't remember how much gold it gave but I don't think it was much.
Tiny space program has this exact setup. 30 second ad for 100 coins, I sit and let ads play back to back for 10 minutes at a time, hopefully that dev is making good money on it. I Really respect that
Part of me wishes that out-right paying for mobile games didn't go out of style. Playing a full version of CoD Zombies with no ads on my iPod Touch for a couple dollars was an amazing experience. I understand why people prefer not to pay upfront for mobile games, but part of me does miss the old days.
I can’t even play 1 match of UNO without getting a f*cking ad
Fallout Shelter is a good example of "ads done right" You'll literally never get served an ad unless you seek it out. They will make you aware if you click this button you can watch an ad and get a reward but thats it. I watch the ad every single time i open the game cause that quantum is useful.
I play the drag racing mobile game CSR2. The game utilizes fuel pips for each race and one of the ways you can refill your tank is by watching voluntary ads. It works exactly how Thor describes and I'm happy to utilize it every time. It's genius.
Ad is forced? I'll watch none, i delete the app this instant.
I get money for watching the ad? I'll watch 30 ads in one sitting. No joke, once i watched like 50 ads, played some game on PC, phone on the side clicking the ad button every 30 sec.
10000% I’ve spent more time watching ads for gold than I have actually playing the games
Those 30 second ads are a great break to wipe your ass mid restroom break.
I gotta be brutally honest, in my opinion, the best mobile games are ones you play for like 5 minutes on the toilet a couple times a day.
You are a hero and we need you to run all modern games 🎉💜
There is a tower building game that does this. A drone will come across every so often and ask if you want whatever its offering. just have to watch an ad. I love that game.
Soul Knight has a pretty good way of introducing ads. You could either revive by spending gems (common currency) or by agreeing to watch an ad at the end of the run.
Man i wish every studio thought like you
Usually I think the same but there's one mobile game which didn't show ads till you completed the game once (it's like a roguelite deckbuilder kinda thing) I got super hooked on the game and it showed ads sometimes after that full screen no warning but after the ad you got the option to pay for no ads and get bonus optional items (extra Lives, more currency and additional cards) for like 5 bucks. A reasonable price to pay for a good mobile game imo. Otherwise yes I follow this principle to heart
My favorite part of this video is this is exactly how I go about playing games today
This is why soul knight is still one of my favorite mobile games of all time because of the way they place their ads
Ive always wondered if mobile game devs can pick how to run ads. I don't mind *most* full screen ads as long as they're closeable in 5ish seconds. The problem is that how it works now is you have to click upwards of 3 times to actually get out of an ad and every step is time gated. First comes the video of someone playing the game terribly. You can skip that after 5-10 seconds, which leads to the playable part of the ad. You can skip that after 5-10 seconds. *Then* comes the splash page for the ad, you can also close that after 5-10 seconds. Oh, and all the close buttons have a "hitbox" that's smaller than the actual icon, so you *will* sometimes just open the ad on the store.
Other times the full screen ad is just a splash page for Facebook and has a good sized X on it that can be clicked in 3-5 seconds from the ad start. Those I don't mind even if theyre forced full-screen ads, provided they're not thrown in my face every 60 seconds. If devs could choose only to use the latter sort of ads the whole experience would be more pleasant, but I have no idea if they can or not. I suspect not.
Life in Adventure, a text-based adventure rpg, has an option to watch an ad and reward you with 2 gems. It'll take 5-30 seconds each but, hey, you can get the dlc basically for free in a few watches.
It also does the full-screen ads, but only at the end of your session, either when you win or when you die, which I think is a pretty decent compromise. It's a pretty fun game, it deserves a bit of support.
For a game owned by EA, Real Racing 3 actually does quite a good job of this - the microtransactions do make it a bit pay to win, but the single-player nature of most of the game makes that less apparent. You can always watch ads to get rewards/speed up progress, and its completely optional. Not perfect by any means, but genuinely good and really works well for me
Cradle of Empires doesn't do the ad fairy thing, but there are only three ways to see ads, all of them basically voluntary: Ads for small rewards that add up to a prize, ads for small energy potions (5 a day), or an ad for an extra spin of a prize wheel with all in-game stuff to get. Nowhere else. They likely get most of their money through deals they offer, but still.
I've said it before on a different short of yours, I think, but I personally can handle the banner ads and sometimes the full screen ones. Those tend to be very contextual.
100% Correct! Also love the pop up when first commenting on your video
Same. I use those ads all the time. Sometimes ill just keep watching ads to save enough in game currency to do something
I can't remember the game but when ad roll thing would come up they would pause your active game processing, but background stuff would keep going like resource collection, etc. They would ask if you want to watch an ad and get a reward. If you checked no, it would disappear for like 30 to 45 game time played, then same thing again. But it would go away with no punishments but no rewards.
It's the most chill and invasively non-invasive ads I've encountered to date, cause IF you opted the ad they'd go away for like 3 to 4 hours game time played and you'd get a decent reward for it.
there’s a game called soda dungeon. this game has ads you choose to watch, only occasionally has full screen ads, and you can grind enough earnable currency to disable ads
I believe ride to die had the "watch add for gold" ad's. One of the few mobile games i actually finished.
The worst part is when the fairy gives you an ad even when you say no
I started playing Egg Inc again after playing many spam ad games and it's amazing for this reason. Ads are entirely optional, and you get big rewards for them
Subway Surfers did it perfectly.
I love how Battle cats does it with getting like a free continue with ads or regaining energy, which is I think a non-predatory way of incentivizing watching an ad
A game i play called seekers notes has full screen ads but you actually get something for it if you watch them. Whether thats free energy for a stage or other stuff that's actually useful. You have to click them to watch them too. So full screen ads can be done well if you get something out of it and arent forced into watching it