And again, i see only an option to hide games with in-app purchases, but no separation for games that sell in-app consumables and games that are free demos and allow purchase of further content with one-time payments.
You're not doing anyone a favor by penalizing the modern equivalent of shareware games and discouraging demos.
Edit: As a discovery tool it also misses a massive feature a user needs to be able to usefully discover new content with this: The ability to hide games they don't care about. User-provided tags also do not exist and the existing breadth of tags is pitiful.
It's something I would like to do - but requires a large manual labour invest. Not to mention it changes over time. Something that's on the TODO list definitely.
I don't think it's really 'penalising demos' though - since there's also a 'Free' filter, which the game will show up under. Of course I understand it would be better to separate IAP & IAC, but I'm only one guy :)
I'll be categorising the 'demos' and 'lite' versions soon though (since they'll show up under both 'Free' and 'No-IAP' sometimes, which isn't really fair).
Which then would also show games with consumable IAPs, which for the majority of problematic games are the actual issue, since that's what drives abusive game design.
> I'm only one guy :)
Are you truly intending to remain the only arbiter of what is in there? If it was crowd-sourced with moderator control this could become something great, but if it remains only you, then (and this is only my personal opinion) this seems like it's dead before it started.
Strongly recommending you find some people who're interested in curating and whom you trust to make good decisions. There are many ways to automate and quantify such things, but sometimes the uman factor cannot be avoided. Letting people tag things privately, and then contacting the ones who seem to be doing prolific and/or high quality tagging would seem to be an easy selection process.
It _is_ stil in beta and made by one guy. By all means offer suggestions, but let's not jump down the guy's throat about it. I agree that this is far from a complete, functional product, but I'd like to see it become one, not be abandoned in disgust.
I'm being curt because i am short on time, what's there and uncommented on is decently enough, and most importantly: Over the past year i've seen various projects like this come up, pass by, and remain useless and unused due to a lack of deep understanding of the issues of the market and lack engagement with the userbase. This one's not very different from the ones i've seen before and has not yet shown remotely enough potential to merit anything but the minimum effort to try and kick it in the right direction. Besides, i have little patience for software developers who perceive criticism of their software as personal slights. Does that make me an ass? Maybe. Do i care? No.
Fortunately GeneralTSpoon seems to be able to take criticism just fine.
Great idea! Are you planning to support F-Droid or other non-Play store sources?
I know first hand[1] that visibility of an Android game is basically zero if it's not on the Play store. So something like this could help alternative ways of distribution to become feasible.
I would really like to, but there are a couple of problems...
1) Distribution - I don't want to take responsibility for distributing random APKs that could have sleeping viruses in them (that I don't catch). And with something like F-Droid it would first link to a download for F-Droid, and then there'd have to be some sort of collaboration to deep link correctly into F-Droid from an install.
2) IP Infringement, Copyright, etc - Like you mention on your blog post, Google is coming down pretty hard on apps that infringe on copyright (I also know from first-hand experience) - and I don't want to be a party to that. Seems like a good way to get a ban.
Your game looks very nicely polished though. It really sucks that it's not allowed on the Play Store (like in so many other similar cases). IP companies appear to be making a fortune these days by just sending out automated take-down requests for things like this - no (real) appeal, just poof and months of your work disappears into the void!
If it's automated take-downs you're concerned about, that makes total sense. But if it's just regular copyright you're worried about regarding the screenshot stuff, it might be worth checking with a lawyer -- seems pretty squarely in the realm of free use.
I actually had screenshots up - but an update was rejected (I guess after a human looked at it), and I had to removed them.
Unfortunately I haven't once seen Google go for Fair Use in the multiple instances I've been involved in already. The truth is, once you're big enough to have contacts in Google, then you can start to appeal. But if you're small fish, you're gonna fry. Don't want to take any chances on this one.
That doesn't really solve the problem unfortunately - if the app is already on Google Play then F-Droid isn't needed.
What F-Droid needs (maybe it already has these things too?) is:
1) It's own URI schema for these things - so that you can link directly to F-Droid without a Google Play link. So https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=in.p1x.tanks_of_... should take you to the app if F-Droid is installed, otherwise you should be prompted to download it from the web page.
2) A way to deep link into the app when it's not installed... so that if the user downloads and installs the app, the first page they see is the one they wanted to see (e.g. a particular app).
Why does it need the "Identity" permission? (I'm also curious why it needs the "Wi-Fi connection information" permission, but that one's less worrisome to me.)
Identity is for GCM (android.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS). For sending notifications (coming soon). I personally don't care who you are :)
WiFi connection info (android.permission.ACCESS_WIFI_STATE) is for displaying more helpful error messages when you've got a connection problem on your end (rather than a server problem).
I'll put this in the app description to make it clearer.
> I'll put this in the app description to make it clearer.
Thank you for responding! I know that app developers are almost as much at the mercy of Google's coarse-grained approach to permissions as are app consumers, but all the same I am paranoid, and it makes me a lot happier if there's a description of how permissions are used.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 52.6 ms ] threadYou're not doing anyone a favor by penalizing the modern equivalent of shareware games and discouraging demos.
Edit: As a discovery tool it also misses a massive feature a user needs to be able to usefully discover new content with this: The ability to hide games they don't care about. User-provided tags also do not exist and the existing breadth of tags is pitiful.
I don't think it's really 'penalising demos' though - since there's also a 'Free' filter, which the game will show up under. Of course I understand it would be better to separate IAP & IAC, but I'm only one guy :)
I'll be categorising the 'demos' and 'lite' versions soon though (since they'll show up under both 'Free' and 'No-IAP' sometimes, which isn't really fair).
Which then would also show games with consumable IAPs, which for the majority of problematic games are the actual issue, since that's what drives abusive game design.
> I'm only one guy :)
Are you truly intending to remain the only arbiter of what is in there? If it was crowd-sourced with moderator control this could become something great, but if it remains only you, then (and this is only my personal opinion) this seems like it's dead before it started.
No, but as of now, I am. Designing a quantifiable system for ranking a game is one of the problems that needs to be solved if moderation is to work.
Fortunately GeneralTSpoon seems to be able to take criticism just fine.
I know first hand[1] that visibility of an Android game is basically zero if it's not on the Play store. So something like this could help alternative ways of distribution to become feasible.
[1] http://tetrios.tumblr.com/about
1) Distribution - I don't want to take responsibility for distributing random APKs that could have sleeping viruses in them (that I don't catch). And with something like F-Droid it would first link to a download for F-Droid, and then there'd have to be some sort of collaboration to deep link correctly into F-Droid from an install.
2) IP Infringement, Copyright, etc - Like you mention on your blog post, Google is coming down pretty hard on apps that infringe on copyright (I also know from first-hand experience) - and I don't want to be a party to that. Seems like a good way to get a ban.
Your game looks very nicely polished though. It really sucks that it's not allowed on the Play Store (like in so many other similar cases). IP companies appear to be making a fortune these days by just sending out automated take-down requests for things like this - no (real) appeal, just poof and months of your work disappears into the void!
Unfortunately I haven't once seen Google go for Fair Use in the multiple instances I've been involved in already. The truth is, once you're big enough to have contacts in Google, then you can start to appeal. But if you're small fish, you're gonna fry. Don't want to take any chances on this one.
https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/issues/154
What F-Droid needs (maybe it already has these things too?) is:
1) It's own URI schema for these things - so that you can link directly to F-Droid without a Google Play link. So https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=in.p1x.tanks_of_... should take you to the app if F-Droid is installed, otherwise you should be prompted to download it from the web page.
2) A way to deep link into the app when it's not installed... so that if the user downloads and installs the app, the first page they see is the one they wanted to see (e.g. a particular app).
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.taleoftale...
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.com.biyori...
[3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.capybaraga...
[3] is already there. Fantastic game!
> Against DRM? Search for games that don't offer in-app purchases.
What does DRM have to do with IAPs? And I'm pretty sure everything on the Google Play store has Google Play DRM.
I'll put this in the app description to make it clearer.
Thank you for responding! I know that app developers are almost as much at the mercy of Google's coarse-grained approach to permissions as are app consumers, but all the same I am paranoid, and it makes me a lot happier if there's a description of how permissions are used.