Changes to Review Scores on Google Play

General
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I can’t speak to CoG’s exact reasoning, but a common marketing reason is to encourage people to upgrade to the version without them. Trust me, I’ve seen my royalty statements here and I’ve developed and published my own games. The amount of money we get for ads is very, VERY small.

As a Commodore 64 and original Nintendo gamer, I understand and sympathize with your perspective, but the landscape has changed. It’s not something that can simply be ignored by devs.

Mobile gamers have been conditioned to think of games as free or low-priced. An analogy that might make sense is Amazon’s shipping prices. Amazon takes a HUGE hit on shipping their items to your doorstep for free. This, in turn, has conditioned the average internet shopper to believe that shipping is either dirt cheap or shouldn’t cost anything. Now people are less likely to shop with competition who can’t afford to take a huge hit on shipping prices. When the biggest and most influential companies set a standard, the public expects that to be THE standard.

When it comes to mobile games, the biggest publishers discovered that the best way to make the most money is to offer the game for free and charge huge amounts of money in optional microtransactions. Mobile gamers are purposefully conditioned to believe games should be cheap or free and that paying money should be an option. This changeover was made easier by the different demographics of mobile gamers as well. Since the popularization of mobile gaming, demographics have expanded to include significantly more women and young children, many of whom are unaccustomed to PC and console gaming and thus unaware of older pricing structures and marketing concepts.

Here’s another example: On a PC or console, paying $15/$20 US dollars for a quality game is usually considered a deep discount. A deal. On a mobile device, that’s considered absolutely outrageous. Most mobile gamers wouldn’t even consider paying that amount for a game. They’d liken it to highway robbery, even for a high quality experience. Charging them a full $60/70 for a new game? Unthinkable. That’s the reality of the market.

Devs don’t have the option of ignoring mobile gamers. Depending on sources, mobile gaming makes up more than a third of development, and almost HALF of revenue in 2018/2019 so far. I would love it if that weren’t the case, but it’s an unmistakable trend.

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43

As with most statistical analysis, you really need to be careful and to avoid cherry picking … there are many different types of developers with many different focuses and some of the most successful do ignore mobile games.

This chart is misleading in that it shows “screen” … with “casual webgames” and tablets being separated from PC/MMO games … which they are not in reality. As example, “casual web games” are playable on PC computers, tablets or phones. Not just “mobile gaming” and the apps on one device are often available on others.

So the reality of revenue is that 51% of the revenue is console/PC alone with an additional 15% being disputable.

What is not in doubt is that mobile gaming is growing, just as other market segments are.

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Revenue for games on multiple platforms are separated out. For example, on CoG releases, we itemize every sale according to platform and keep track of sales per platform for the lifecycle of the game. A large game playable on every console/tablet/PC like… say… Minecraft simply wouldn’t slush all their sales together and call them mobile sales. Mobile sales are mobile sales, regardless of what platforms the game is also available for. If that’s not what you meant, I’m afraid I have misunderstood your post.

And I did point out that this data is not the be-all and end-all. I said is’t “Depending on sources,” since polls of all kinds are prone to anomalies and bias.

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What does this have to do with …

and how does that square up with

when the chart you cite, clearly shows that 51% of the revenue is for non-mobile gaming and an additional 15% being disputable as to being mobile or not.

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I was responding to the paragraph before that one where it sounded like you were suggesting that since games were released on multiple platforms, the games’ revenue sources were in question. If that’s not what you were saying, then I’m afraid you’ve lost me.

The chart syncs up exactly with where I said almost half (45% specifically.) I’m not sure I see what you’re taking issue with? Tablet games are played on tablets. Tablets, by almost all metrics, are considered mobile devices and the vast majority of them run on the same Android and iOS operating systems as phones.

The third of development statistic was from another page, but is generally explained by the fact that PC and console games require more manpower than mobile games, and thus more development time. But focusing strictly on revenue, mobile games are approaching 50%, yes.

Either way, we seem to agree that it’s an incredibly important emerging market which accounts for billions of dollars annually and is generally reported to make more money than any other single platform.

Edited: I just realized that this is getting way off track from talking about the review scores and new Google algorithm. Apologies for derailing the thread.

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Freemium for the win (j/k I hate being spammed with lots of obnoxious ads as well like some games do. I hate pushy pay to win microtransations even more.) It depends on the model. I can also vouch that the money from ads in HG titles is not high. COG got kicked off the better earning ad systems quite a while back for some reason. Also if you look at the games that use them, they either have huge numbers of people regularly playing (and the ad money ads up) or they use them to plug in game currency (so people are watching lots of full length ads and probably still have to top up with real life money to buy things.) Anyway, that’s my take on why ad based apps can be big earners for some companies.

Yeah I’d agree with that. People who play more console games seems to understand that games cost at least something to buy (although I have noticed that there seems to be a growing percentage that appear to want a lot more for less/free. Most people have zero comprehension of how much money is needed to get a large game produced for sale.) Honestly I love steam/online game stores, I remember how much more expensive it used to be to have to buy them in CD format and if you bought a crappy or buggy game you were stuck with it.

Amazon- This goes for any large retailer really. Fun fact, people have come into where I work wanting us to price match items that they can have delivered to their door CHEAPER than we can buy it from our wholesalers. There’s just no way bricks and mortar shops can generally compete. They have huge buying power and get discounts on what they buy so it’s cheaper to start with, then because they’re selling bulk, they can afford to make less per item and take a hit on things like shipping and still make a profit. I suspect eventually when enough other places are out of business and the competition is lower, the prices may start to creep upwards again.

Anyway, in terms of the google algorithm, we’re just going to have to live with it. Google always does what ever they want with these things. A while back everyone was cranky as their suggested lists were completely wacked (and kept pointing people towards unrelated freemium money earner games). Even now, they’re capping the search for HG/COG so you don’t see all the games unless you search in a specific way and it’s not like anyone can work out why they’re ordering the games they include on that list when they do (doesn’t seem to relate to downloads, star score, release date etc.) Anyway, they’ll always be doing things that don’t help out indi developers but not much you can do about it except complain to them directly that you don’t like the new algorithm (and expect to get a copy/paste email in reply.)

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I hate this new system already. :mask: The Magician’s Burden dropped from a decent 4.1 to a mediocre 3.9.

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So far it doesn’t seem to have affected me much, but I will admit I haven’t tracked it religiously for the last while. I remember having 4.9 when it came out, still 4.89 on apple and 4.84 on android, at least if app annie is to trust. It’s harder to see on sensor tower (they just show filled in/partially filled in stars) but interestingly enough the number of reviews doesn’t add up between them. 2118 vs 2127. I get 2139 on the actual google play site, and there the score is 4.7. So… a little confusing.

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50

My most recent one seems to have dropped a point, of the two older ones one has gone down by a point and one is the same since I last checked (although I couldn’t swear that’s not due to new reviews as I can’t remember exactly how many the older ones had.)

@malinryden yeah the differences in reviews between the PC play store and Android one have been there a long while (it’s not the new algorithm). They seem to go in and out of sinc and the review numbers don’t always add up or show the same star rating. I gave up trying to understand it a long time ago.

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I must be in the minority then as UnNatural has gone from a 4.2 to a 4.5. Has anyone else seen their rating go up?

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Very nice! The sad thing is that could change just as dramatically the next month if a few bad reviews roll in. With ratings being calculated mostly based on new reviews, they now might swing wildly a dozen times instead of being concrete.

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Yeah. That’s true. I will have to keep an eye on it.

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My ratings/reviews have definitely hit a rough match on Google Play in the last month or two (CCH is down to a 4.5, when I think it used to be a 4.7 a while back).

BUT…I still got 8 new GPS reviews (not just ratings) for August thus far on an almost 4-year-old game, which I’ll take, because even though half of those reviews were bad, it still shows sales. Actually, per App Annie, sales have went up significantly (like triple) for July and August…anyone else see this?

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Yes! And I couldn’t see any XoR-specific reason that it should be so. Maybe some new wave of customers have stumbled on CoG at last.

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I did notice many new reviews had been post in the month of June to August for several games which are 1 or 2 years old , plus some new members joining the forum… last but not least, the number of download had been increased as well…
hence it is an encouraging sign that both HG and CoG titles had gain more readers and customers

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My Google Play total number of reviews dropped today from 842 to 757. I noticed that the same happened to Choice of Magics (803 to 709). To see this drop you may need to refresh the store page or (on Android) back out and go back in again.

Anyone else have tons of disappearing reviews today?

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I did a little digging today on Magics. I’d start by saying that Google is rolling out a shiny new ratings system that prioritizes new reviews over older ones. They don’t say anything about “deleting” old reviews, but I have to imagine that that’s part of this new ratings system.

After digging into the Magics reviews and thinking about it a little, I suspect that what’s happening is this: when we release games, the people who go and immediately download the games are people who know our products. They enjoy what we make, and they generally give good ratings to our games. Thus the high early reviews.

But after a certain period of time, the user base of our games have either purchased the game or they haven’t. And the purchases start to transition to new users, people who aren’t familiar with our games. Some of those people may convert into regular users, but many of them are put off by a) the paywall b) our politics c) the lack of localization.

Looking at Magics’ 1-star reviews, I see a number of those from places like Croatia, China, and Malaysia. Seems logical that a user would download the game, see that it wasn’t in their language, and 1-star it out of frustration.

Similarly, people leave vocal text reviews about the paywall in the games, or whinging about the lack of ads, etc etc. And, always, people complain that we have things like nonbinary individuals in the game. My point being, over time, people who are…incompatible…with our company leave a proportionately higher percentage of reviews, and with the new rating system, that’s starting to matter.

My conclusion is this: I’m glad we started the Omnibus for Android when we did, and I only wish we’d gotten it released earlier.

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It is far better I suppose for the company and for drop off the entitled reviews The omnibus. Still, personally for myself Is better independent. But due both are active is better of two worlds.

However, It is not Omnibus more used by fans than for casuals?

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You’ve got a point there I think. If I were to just stumble upon CoG then just to give it a try I’d probably download a stand alone game with an interesting looking summary, instead of what seems to be a collection of the titles.

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Yeah, I say that because I have to actively searching for the omnibus for both hosted and cog. It wasn’t automatically