Free-to-play Gun Bros unleashes $500 Kraken
Free-to-play iOS shooter Gun Bros prices an in-game gun at roughly $500.
What's the most you'd pay for a virtual item?
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Shacknews
replyJeff Mattas posted a new article, Free-to-play Gun Bros unleashes $500 Kraken.
Free-to-play iOS shooter Gun Bros prices an in-game gun at roughly $500.-
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Look at iTunes "top grossing" rankings. How many of these are "free" games supported by in-app purchases?
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its getting dominated by freemium. but not even good freemium, its like the zynga style gameplay freemium where you have 2 mins of gameplay and you have to pay to play more
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Are you serious?
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This is great. Just like the I am Rich app.
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"As ultimately silly as the initiative may seem, it's also hard to knock Glu for its attempt to prey on rich idiots. They're a business, trying to make a buck."
No, it's easy to knock them. This is a deliberate and cynical business move to prey on their customers who are most given to compulsive excess. I firmly believe that game design is about being an advocate for the player, not the careful architect of compulsion loops and superficial communities centered on the ownership of virtual items. What this developer is doing is unethical and that charge applies generally to many if not most applications of the "free-to-play" business model. When developers have the gall to openly speak about the metrics based way in which they design their games to maximize ARPU, from individual mechanics to high level theme, I fear for the future of the industry.-
It's called self control. This is such a ludicrously priced item only the super rich or super retarded would consider this.
Cynical would be charging 10 dollars for a weapon. Charging 500 for an in game item in a game like Gun Bros is just funny.-
It would be funny if it were an April Fool's joke. In reality though of course they're hoping someone will buy it. They probably know they have at least a few rich OCD fans who have to own every item, and this is specifically designed to leech obscene amount of money out of those people.
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Excellent post.
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games are pretty much supposed to be a charity or nonprofit amirite?
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Whoa, whoa, whoa. Games shouldn't absolve people of personal responsibility.
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well said, unfortunately most consumers aren't this lucid.
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have you seen the prices of tabletop game pieces? This is nothing new and will not have a massive effect on the industry as a whole.
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Offering all items within a low price range excludes everyone who is willing to invest more money into a game. Although 500$ may seem far out of range, many other F2P games offer very high priced items as well. As long as the item is not mandatory for succes in the game, all is well.
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It sounds like, technically, you could "earn" all the in game money necessary to purchase it simply by watching ads when you start the game, it would probably take a year and a half but still.
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this freemium model is getting out of hand
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I removed the free version of gun bros from my android tablet yesterday, due to it's insistence on constantly running AirMailService in the background.
Couldn't turn the damn thing off no matter what.. and of course the micro-payments were ridiculous. Bye bye what could have been a fun game, from a morally void developer.
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feel free to explain why
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and the reason they can't price this at $500 for the big spends and a different, lesser gun at $50 and a different, lesser gun at $5 and a different, lesser gun at 99c is what?
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Good point. That's an angle I didn't even consider.
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Uhh it's not like that's the only item available
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Marginal cost = 0 means that the supply curve is horizontal, not vertical, and that the supply curve is the horizontal axis. Under these conditions, a monopolist's profit maximizing price is wherever the own-price elasticity of demand is equal to 1. In a perfectly competitive market, the price would be pushed down to zero.
("Infinite supply" is not well-defined, but could indeed mean zero marginal cost.)
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heh...seriously. I once bought a cheeto for $500 just to say I did. Fucking poor people.
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heh, you sound like someone who has more money than sense
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whoa wtf we can sell unusuals? damn I wonder how much my flaming magicka hat is worth
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