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This blog post will be concerning the ethics of IAPs and ads in current mobile games.

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Summary

Where do you draw the line when it comes to monetisation in games? I found myself asking this question during the beginning phases of this project, as someone who has uninstalled game due to excessive ads and prompts to make purchases I had found myself at the point of having to now monetise my own game. I found in my research that for both IAPs and ads I believe that there are unspoken laws when it comes to you the developer deciding how you will implement them, as well as on the players side as to how they receive them. The ideal way of doing this is by having a "freemium" game, that is a free game with a mixture of ads and in app purchases. When it came to my game I decided to have both (focusing primarily on IAPs), however I had to implement them in a way that kept in the idea of making a successful marketable game.

ethics

Ethics of IAPs

When I was commencing my market research I found that IAPs were in fact the best way to make money from my game, however they would need to be well implemented and not frustrating to the player. As I stated the ideal way of monetising a game is by having a freemium game, this freemium label is often associated with some kind of pay wall that the player will come up against. Whether that be not enough of a in app currency, a difficulty ramp that requires excessive farming, or limited amounts of resource the player may collect. Having encountered hard pay walls in the past have found this to be frustrating at the time and now since I understand more about game development, unethical in a sense. So when it came to my game, I was more focused on making the game popular and because of this I decided that the pay wall in our game would be significantly lower than other games in the freemium category. This also meant that I would not jeopardise the long term retention of players at the expense of short term monetisation models, as David Ogilvy puts it "The consumer is not an idiot; she is your wife"("Gamasutra - Ethical Free-to-Play Game Design (And Why it Matters)", 2016) and as such should be treated in a caring not exploitative manner. This being said, games are a business and the developer needs to make money to put food on the table, this means it is up to the developer to find the ethical middle ground for their monetisation model so that they may indeed make money but they are not twisting the players arm to do it. There are many reasons as to why you shouldn't follow an unethical model regardless.

Why shouldn't you follow an unethical model?

Not all developers may be as easily swayed as others and instead may be looking for that short term reward, however there are many reasons as to this is a bad idea these include;

Making your player angry

The major reason why you shouldn't use an unethical model is that the player may ultimately get angry with your game and immediately uninstall, meaning that you will end up making less money anyway as less people are playing your game.

Giving your competitors the edge

You may in fact push people towards your competitors as they have a model that allows for more freedom to the player to play the game, instead of pushing the player through pay walls.

Short term reward < long term retention

Overall a short term reward will not beat a long term retention for your game, yes you may receive a large reward at the start however if you are sacrificing your long term capability to do this you will end up losing money in the long run.

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Why should you follow an ethical model?

If this still isn't convincing enough as to why a developer should use an ethical monetisation model, there are even more reasons as to why you should use an ethical model;

Your customers will be happier

The first big one is that the players will be overall happier playing your game than they would be with an intrusive exploitative monetisation model. This means that you will receive more downloads, better ratings and reviews, less uninstalls and because of these things more money.

You'll have a better reputation

No game developer wants to be known as that one guy who makes overly intrusive games, sure you may make money however is it really worth being known in the industry as someone who uses unethical monetisation models.

You'll probably make more money

If all of these reasons are not enough, the overall fact is that you will almost certainly make more money with an ethical monetisation model than you would with an unethical one.

Conclusion

So when it comes to making a model of monetisation it comes down to using common sense, don't bombard the player with ads, make the game pay to progress not pay to win and make the player want to pay don't make the player need to pay. And most of all you need to respect the player, not spit in their face with an amazingly fun game play that twists their arm to play, the player will make a purchase through wanting to. The main thing to remember is that this effort to make sure your games monetisation model is ethical will almost always pay off.

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