A sustainable business has the capacity to help a lot more kids than an unfinished open source project that never gets released on iOS because no one wants to pay the developer fee.
This isn’t “HackVille by Zynga,” it’s an indie dev trying to make a product they believe in. I hope it succeeds and inspires more high quality edutainment.
My point is that packaging the app in such a way as to put off your target audience is inherently unsustainable business.
I agree with that criticism, and I'd encourage the dev to iterate on non-micro-transaction monetization schemes. The part I disagree with is that a profit motive is antithetical to helping kids.
It'd be nice if we had robust, no-strings attached funding streams to make this kind of content, but we don't, so if we want it to exist, consumers need to pay for it.
You're not arguing against the GP but for the same thing from different angles. They're saying the approach is fighting the goal, while you're just saying "I hope they're successful".
I was responding to the claim that making money is in tension with helping kids learn.
I think it’s fair to claim that a large enterprise will eventually crank the money dial to maximum extraction. But a solo dev is free to follow their conscience and make money in a responsible way.
I don’t like the “pay per hint” model as currently implemented, but I’m willing to give the developer the benefit of the doubt that they didn’t think it all the way through.