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"It makes me sick to my stomach as it so transparently preys on the weaknesses like addiction and compulsion." You know what makes me sick to the stomach? Deve

by revorad 14y ago

"It makes me sick to my stomach as it so transparently preys on the weaknesses like addiction and compulsion." You know what makes me sick to the stomach? Developers starving themselves to death because of a complete disregard to basic business sense and a misguided sense of righteousness. 5 easy steps to homelessness: 1. Spend years building products for a platform, where $1.99 is a high price. 2. Avoid doing even the most basic mental arithmetic to figure out how many units you need to sell at $1.99 to be able to pay rent. 3. Then set the price to zero, because you're a nice guy. 4. Sell in-app purchases for the super duper high price of $2.99, thus raising your customer's LTV to a magnificent $2.99. But, don't be an asshole. Ask for the upgrade politely and quietly, in the third screen of the settings. Remember, you don't work for $ZNGA! 5. Make it up in volume "We really want to stick to the ‘free and pay 2.99 to unlock’ model, but if only .5% of users buy our game, we’re going to have to figure something else out. It’s very malleable at this point. Perhaps we’re giving too much away for free, it’s really hard to say until we see more data.” 6. Look a bonus step no.6! If after following steps 1-5 you're still not quite homeless, then it's time for some more data collection. Spend another year or so A/B testing the gradients of your upgrade button. And oh maybe, your upgrade price is too high? Yeah, test that. Excuse me while I relieve myself of the agony of watching people do this over and over again. AAAAAAAAAARGHH!!! FOR FUCK'S SAKE, STOP IT!!!!! Why do developers worship Apple, but absolutely refuse to take the slightest hint from them on how to do business? Read this - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html And repeat after me: "Commoditize your complements." "Commoditize your complements." The app store is the most brilliant and brutal execution of this strategy. Apple is selling $500 phones - the most expensive phones - while simultaneously making developers fall over each other and well, go homeless, to make software for their platform to give away for free. As if that's not tragic enough, the celebration of the lottery winners has the public and developers believe that making apps is a great business to be in! patio11 has been trying to drill these things into people's heads for ages. But, all he seems to get is upvotes and not enough people getting his point. You don't have to suddenly go all Zynga on your users. There's a vast chasm between selling virtual sheep to addicted grandmas and giving away the farm for less than the price of a toilet roll. You can charge a good price, which does not depend on huge scale to pay the rent. Edited to add: Lest I sound like some smug business know-it-all on a high horse, I've made the same mistakes. Most of us are like this. We need to make a conscious effort to be good at business.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago
This is so true. I've been working on an app for a while now (very part time, mostly scratching my own itch). A few months ago, I decided to do some thinking about what it would take to make a business out of it. The very first thing I concluded is that, to make a sustainable business, the app has to be seen as a marketing expense and the actual business needs to be somewhere else. Trying to make it with an app alone, especially in a niche market, is not going to happen. Games are even worse, because, by their very nature, they are a boom/bust industry. You survive in one of two ways as an indie: making incredible games and marketing the crap out of them or making a lot of OK games to flatten the boom/bust curves. It sounds like these guys want to do the former, which is awesome, but they've fallen for what I call "arrogant developer syndrome", which is simply that they believe "If you build it great, they will come and throw money at you." Marketing is as important to product development as writing software. You can build software without marketing, but you won't build a product. (As a side note related to said app/business, if you are in any way involved in startups [including wanting to start one someday], I'm trying find that actual business. I've got a very short survey that I could use feedback on: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/F7W9P5P http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/F7W9P5P )
- revorad 14y ago
  Well, I wish these guys only suffered from "If you build it great, they will come and throw money at you.". No! They suffer from an advanced mutation. "If you build it great, those guys over there will come and throw money at you. Ewwwwwwww. Green stuff. Let's move over here to these guys. They will come and throw 1-star reviews at us. It's the only thing that can push our limits and make us even greater."
  - csallen 14y ago
    I used to work with a group of developers in the MIT Media Lab who, honestly, were some of the most moral and upstanding individuals I've ever met. They spent a lot of time trying building software to help people in need. But the one thing that I could never wrap my head around was the fact that they saw money as inherently evil. They went so far as to actively avoid using or accepting money, to the point that it actually hindered their Samaritan efforts. The more "good" people who see money as evil, the fewer good people who will use it. Which means that a higher proportion of it will go to "evil" people and deeds. Which, in turn, feeds back into the loop to power the false perception that money itself is a bad thing.

by revorad 14y ago

SoftwareMaven 14y ago

This is so true. I've been working on an app for a while now (very part time, mostly scratching my own itch). A few months ago, I decided to do some thinking about what it would take to make a business out of it. The very first thing I concluded is that, to make a sustainable business, the app has to be seen as a marketing expense and the actual business needs to be somewhere else. Trying to make it with an app alone, especially in a niche market, is not going to happen. Games are even worse, because, by their very nature, they are a boom/bust industry. You survive in one of two ways as an indie: making incredible games and marketing the crap out of them or making a lot of OK games to flatten the boom/bust curves. It sounds like these guys want to do the former, which is awesome, but they've fallen for what I call "arrogant developer syndrome", which is simply that they believe "If you build it great, they will come and throw money at you." Marketing is as important to product development as writing software. You can build software without marketing, but you won't build a product. (As a side note related to said app/business, if you are in any way involved in startups [including wanting to start one someday], I'm trying find that actual business. I've got a very short survey that I could use feedback on: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/F7W9P5P http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/F7W9P5P )

revorad 14y ago
Well, I wish these guys only suffered from "If you build it great, they will come and throw money at you.". No! They suffer from an advanced mutation. "If you build it great, those guys over there will come and throw money at you. Ewwwwwwww. Green stuff. Let's move over here to these guys. They will come and throw 1-star reviews at us. It's the only thing that can push our limits and make us even greater."
- csallen 14y ago
  I used to work with a group of developers in the MIT Media Lab who, honestly, were some of the most moral and upstanding individuals I've ever met. They spent a lot of time trying building software to help people in need. But the one thing that I could never wrap my head around was the fact that they saw money as inherently evil. They went so far as to actively avoid using or accepting money, to the point that it actually hindered their Samaritan efforts. The more "good" people who see money as evil, the fewer good people who will use it. Which means that a higher proportion of it will go to "evil" people and deeds. Which, in turn, feeds back into the loop to power the false perception that money itself is a bad thing.