Best Google Play Pass games and apps available
New features for Play Pass don’t mean much
Especially when they are designed to mimic in-app purchases
This all sounds great until you realize that one of the main stated benefits of subscribing to Play Pass is to be free of in-app purchases. Yet Play Pass rewards provide a very similar incentive to in-app purchases, pushing the culture on a user base that specifically signed up to escape it. Those little dopamine hits from small, frequent rewards are the most potent source of this problem, and implementing them in this indirect form serves to get users hooked easier than ever, just in time to play some in-app purchase-riddled games that Play Pass doesn’t cover. Many people refrain from playing games that contain microtransactions because they have problems with self-control, and features like this won’t help with kicking the habit, almost as if the health of its users isn’t Google’s concern.
Recent AdMob tweaks can put ads in the gameplay
Google wants developers to integrate ads into game elements
I tested the Google Play Games for PC beta — these are the best titles right now
Mobile gaming comes to PC thanks to Google. Let’s take a look
Multiple account functionality and wider PC support are on the menu
The third and final listed updates concern Google Play Games, an app that provides additional game content for your Android device, including quick game access, achievements, and leaderboards. The listed tweaks sound pretty neat, introducing improved achievements and faster switching between devices. This update gives developers more control over the incorporation of multiple different sign-in options, while nifty, could lead to some problems down the road if push notifications and email ads become more commonplace.
Google is also broadening its library of PC games available for Google Play Games, but the selected examples of the Play Store’s current lineup of quality PC titles are unflatteringly obvious. The given examples: Lineage2M, Odin: Valhalla Rising, Genshin Impact, and Dragonheir: Silent Gods, are all free-to-play games with aggressive in-app monetization, not exactly the best ambassadors. The choice to single out four titles that are all full of micropayments as “Some of the most popular PC games” sets a troubling precedent for what Google Play Games intends for its future ports; does ‘most popular’ translate to ‘makes the most money off a free service’ here? Sure looks like it.
One thing is clear, we can all look forward to more ads on Google’s services
The Google for Games developer summit update highlighted the useful new features it was introducing to Google’s services but heavily downplayed the monetization aspects in a way that made them glaringly obvious. Excessive ads and overexposure to in-app purchases permeate this update, and it ultimately felt like a huge commercial for Google’s favorite revenue sources. Gross.
