22 ms·

I suspect many game developers find themselves in an awkward spot: 1) People seem to balk at paying >$5 for a mobile or tablet game. (With some notable excepti

by chasing 13y ago

I suspect many game developers find themselves in an awkward spot: 1) People seem to balk at paying >$5 for a mobile or tablet game. (With some notable exceptions.) 2) The $0.99 or $1.99 price point is not financially viable for most games. 3) People do seem willing to purchase coins or lives or more daily playtime via in-app purchases. Some spend tens or hundreds of dollars on a single game. If you're building a game for a large company like EA, you're probably forced to take the most lucrative path. EA's not an atelier for starving artists. And if you're a small, struggling game studio, you probably can't afford to leave money on the table. So what's the solution? If people are unwilling to pay reasonable prices up-front for games, how besides in-app purchases does a game company profit from their work? This is an honest question, because I also generally hate how IAP is integrated into most games. I'd much rather pay up-front.

bo1024 13y ago
Well, not developing for mobile is one option.
aaronetz 13y ago
I (naively) hope that eventually people who prefer microtransacions will realize what a waste of money it is, and start paying upfront. But seriously, maybe a good solution would be to design the in-app purchases in a game so that instead of endlessly paying for consumable items, one would pay for actual game features. That way, you can play the basic game for free, and then start "constructing" the full game piece-by-piece by purchasing individual features. For example, an RPG where you can play the warrior for free but then pay $X each for additional characters. Or a "dungeon-keeper"-style game where you can pay to unlock more types of monsters and tools.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >I (naively) hope that eventually people who prefer microtransacions will realize what a waste of money it is, and start paying upfront. You mean like getting a NYT subscription for $200 dollars, instead of paying for the 10-20 articles I want to read all year for like $1 or $.5 a piece?
- gambiting 13y ago
  Radiant Defense on Android works exactly how you described. It's a tower defense game,where in the free version you are given some towers, but there are a few which are locked behind a paywall - so you have to purchase like 6 separate packs to unlock them all(totalling like £8), but once you do, that's it, you own the entire thing and there is nothing else to buy.
kmfrk 13y ago
I think we have to give additional purchases some degree of legitimacy; look at EVE Online and the upcoming Star Citizens of examples of in-game purchases that, at the very least, are not dark user patterns or scams. I generally find in-app purchases on iOS games to be scummy as hell, though, so the big problem is probably that it's a Wild West for dark user patterns in games on the App Store.
- danielweber 13y ago
  Online games are more amenable to legitimate purchase models. When the game is entirely offline, though, it's just nuts to require the player to put in more money.
  - AJ007 13y ago
    Contrarily, if you introduce pay for performance in to a competitive online game, it completely fucks the competitiveness. We can accept sports where players and teams spends millions of dollars of on training, equipment, etc. What if instead the team just paid the money to buy additional points from the referee? Yeah, that is not a game. The appropriate way to do this is to make premium/paid items cosmetic only with zero influence on game play. If your game blows, this model doesn't work.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      Sure it is. It's called "United States national elections".
danielweber 13y ago
My rule is that there is no such thing as free-as-in-beer software. (There are exceptions, but they are exceptions.) The developer's bills will get paid one way or the other. The simplest and most efficient way is to just pay them up front. If you try to get things for "free" both you as the consumer and the developer will end up worse off.
- Proleps 13y ago
  Most open source/free software(free as in liberty) is free as in beer. It gets payed for by donations and/or big sponsors. It has no hidden costs. Not everything is available as open source/free software, but it is enough have a usable computer and even some games.
  - giovannibajo1 13y ago
    The difference is that such software goes through multi-year evolution and usage (be it bash or OpenOffice or kernel) so it makes sense for a company to invest on feature X that's missing for them, and get everything else for free. On the other hand, in the game market, most games are a one-off experience with a very short lifetime (excluding MMO games). So there is no way they could be constructed through subsequent donations and evolutions. Add to this the fact that open source communities are only made of programmers (because they are the ones benefiting most from the network effect and from incremental integration of software components), while games require other kind of professionals. Eg: volunteer designers in OSS world are mostly non existent; most of them are on the payroll of some sponsor.
- AJ007 13y ago
  Dwarf Fortress, the creator writes you a short story or illustrates a drawing in crayon in exchange for your optional donation. Quite the exception.
  - bobjordan 13y ago
    ...and the developer lives on about $35K/year, which is far less than what he could be generating with that franchise.
DanBC 13y ago
I don't care if a game has IAP or not. I do care Bout how playable the game is without IAP. Blocky Roads could probably start offering cars or road packs as IAPs and people would buy them. That's not destroying the game.
coldtea 13y ago
>1) People seem to balk at paying >$5 for a mobile or tablet game. (With some notable exceptions.) 2) The $0.99 or $1.99 price point is not financially viable for most games. This sounds like: I want to sell for $5 but customers won't buy my product at that price. Well, in that case your product, however much your toiled and however much you spend to make it, is not viable?
- dominostars 13y ago
  > Well, in that case your product, however much your toiled and however much you spend to make it, is not viable? Exactly, it's not viable. Only IAP driven games are. That is the problem being discussed here.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    Sounds more like a fact than a problem.
    - krisgee 13y ago
      The problem is that everyone with opinions hates IAP even though they're ridiculously good at making money.
- ojii 13y ago
  The problem with that logic, as much as I'd like to believe it, is that customers seem to be very happy to pay >5$ after "buying" the "free" game in IAP. And because "free"+IAP is the norm these days, customers scoff at expensive games. Why pay 5$ if you can get another one for "free"? I'd much prefer the free demo + paid full version to be honest as I'd like to see if a game is worth it. If it is, I'm happy to pay a decent price. Then again, I might be a minority.
- pjc50 13y ago
  .. except is can be made viable by changing the charge structure; that's the whole point of IAP. It defies simplistic supply-and-demand analysis because there is no longer just one price, but many; the customer has to make a constant series of decisions about the value of instant gratification. Some people hate this.
alok-g 13y ago
An important thing to keep in mind is that #1 here is the state of the affairs after the fact, i.e., when people can see many games that are apparently free built using the IAP concept. Dan Ariely noted that the mobile app industry has done this to itself by ... well better read in his own words: http://danariely.com/2011/12/25/the-oatmeal-this-is-how-i-feel-about-buying-apps/ http://danariely.com/2011/12/25/the-oatmeal-this-is-how-i-fe...
ItendToDisagree 13y ago
Kingdom Of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing) is a game (well webgame) that I think has a good business model. The game and all of its (vast) content is free. But to get certain items or items of the month (that are optimal but by no means necessary), you donate $10 to the site. It is not a pay-to-win type of scenario because it is a single player game (with one minor PVP minigame element). It also never feels scummy because you can do basically everything in the game without ever paying a single cent. Even 'premium' content that is unlocked by purchasable items is generally tradable and purchasable with the in-game currency (meat) that drops from the monsters. Thus you don't have to pay up front... But you do end up donating some money for interesting items at some point due to the game being great, current, funny, having a great community, etc. The business model probably wouldn't work for most, but in the case of Kingdom of Loathing it works really well.
- syntern 13y ago
  Do they have public numbers on how much they make with this model?
  - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
    I do not believe so... Though I could be wrong and they are out there somewhere? What I do know is that it was enough for the two initial guys to now do it full-time and they now also employ something like 4 additional people full-time (I think its 4 additional).
    - syntern 13y ago
      Thanks, that is a good ballpark figure.
  - ta_tatata 13y ago
    You advertise the game as free with voluntary donations (Mr. A and Mr. Eh accessories). Without pressing for financial info, can we ask: Does this translate into a full-time paying job, cover the expenses of running the project, or simply add a bit of pocket change here and there? Why did you choose this business model? KoL's donation revenue is currently sufficient to support a full-time staff and a second team working on a new game. I feel like we were extremely fortunate to have launched when we did and to have gotten the critical mass in the beginning that makes it possible for this to be a career instead of just a hobby. As far as choosing the business model, I'm not sure there was ever a moment when I made a choice about it. A couple of months in, the hosting bills were starting to cost more than I was comfortable paying out of pocket, so I put up a link to ask for donations to offset the cost. A player suggested, "Hey, why don't you give donators an in-game reward?" and I figured "Hey, why not, it couldn't hurt." To my surprise and delight, it was pretty much instantly profitable. I was still processing the donations by hand for quite a while -- the revenue model was really kind of an afterthought. After it got to the point where I was able to comfortably and safely quit my day job (and finally start paying Josh, who had been diligently working for free for several months), I started offering the monthly specials, which caused another surge in income and allowed me to hire an office manager, another writer/designer, and another programmer. Since then we've added a full-time customer service/abuse-tracking position and part-time forum and chat-moderation supervisors.
lisper 13y ago
The obvious solution is to put a cap on IAPs. Once you've paid however much it should have cost to buy the game outright in the first place, everything gets unlocked. Unfortunately, that won't happen because it's much more lucrative to raise a generation of "gamers" who don't know any better than to provide a continuous revenue stream in exchange for the occasional dopamine hit.
- weixiyen 13y ago
  Most people who play it would still never pay for it though. Mobile games are somewhat dependent on whales to justify the costs of upfront investment. It's more like one person paying for 10 other guys who can enjoy it for free.
  - judk 13y ago
    More like 100 than 10.
ensignavenger 13y ago
Why not offer the customers an option? Download the game free with limitations that you can buy in game stuff to get around, or pay $5 and have the limitations removed (or an unlimited amount of the in game currency whatever. Sounds like the next logical evolution of shareware, to me. You would probably get a lot of people who would download the game free, try it out, maybe make some in game purchases, then decide to upgrade to the $5 version, so you would make $5 + whatever they spend on in game items before upgrading. (Or whatever price you decide to charge). You won't be making hundreds off anyone, but you'll probably get more bites overall.
- gfodor 13y ago
  If you're honestly asking, the reason this isn't done is because the main source of revenue for these free to play games are the people who become addicted. ("whales") They spend enormous amounts of money and if they had the option to just upgrade then this would cut the legs out from the main chunk of the revenue the game generates.
  - democracy 13y ago
    I would personally buy jelly splash from wooga for 20 bucks but I would not spend anything in-game as it seems like cheating to me.
- jrs99 13y ago
  If you make that an option, then children might not spend $500 on their sword upgrades.
  - derefr 13y ago
    What child has $500? "Whales" are adults. (Usually, specifically, they are people in high-stress/high-reward jobs, like finance, who want to release their stress by throwing out their rewards. Same as casinos.)
    - manthgre 13y ago
jrs99 13y ago
The most lucrative path is NEVER to rip your customers off or sell a basket of virtual blueberries to children for 50 dollars each. That's the solution of someone thinking one quarter ahead. If a game company cannot find a way to be profitable without IAPs it might want to find something else to do besides make games.
- wpietri 13y ago
  > The most lucrative path is NEVER to rip your customers off Las Vegas begs to disagree with you.
  - jrs99 13y ago
    I don't think the successful casinos today are as profitable as they could be. I believe they can be MUCH more profitable than they are now.
    - girvo 13y ago
      Then you fail to understand the sheer amount of analytics and data casinos use to tweak everything to "perfection"...
      - gaius 13y ago
        But but but San Francisco hipsters invented data science! No-one was optimizing their businesses based on numerical data before!
      - jrs99 13y ago
        http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/mar/11/sahara-hotel-casino-close-may-16/ http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/mar/11/sahara-hotel-cas... casinos fail all the time. i'm not talking about keeping what casinos have right now and "tweaking" that. I'm talking about a reimagining.
        vidarh 13y ago
phaus 13y ago
I don't necessarily think that there is a solution. In almost all cases, the game itself is the problem. Most people won't pay full price, because most mobile games lack depth. When you develop for mobile, you can either make a game with simple mechanics, or you can make a game with terrible controls. Those are the options. While it is possible to make a great game with simple mechanics, it takes an extraordinary level of talent that most game development shops simply don't possess. On the PC/console side, you of course have ports of popular mobile games. In addition, however, you have AAA games like Diablo 3 that are reasonably complex, yet seem to have been intentionally ruined by IAP and the real money sale of items that affect performance.
- chasing 13y ago
  > Most people won't pay full price, because most mobile games lack depth. I think you might have this backwards: Mobile games lack depth because their developers know most people won't pay full price. Mobile games can have great depth. Just like PC/console games can be extremely simple and trivial. (Depth doesn't come from complex mechanics or controls, btw. In fact, those things are often used to mask how shallow a game really is.)
  - phaus 13y ago
    I agree that the ability to use complex control system isn't necessarily an indicator of depth, but it certainly opens up a lot of possibilities. There are entire genres that have always been and will always be terrible on touchscreen devices. Perhaps you are also right that most developers won't even try to make a real game, due to the difficulty in getting customers to pay for them. Now that its more profitable to milk small amounts of money out of non-gamers, I think the rest of us are going to eventually get stuck playing the kick starter lottery in order to see real games hit the market.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    > > Most people won't pay full price, because most mobile games lack depth. > I think you might have this backwards: Mobile games lack depth because their developers know most people won't pay full price. Chicken, meet egg. :( This is why I hate the mobile space for gaming.
FreeKill 13y ago
I know this might be crazy, but what about Apple/Google setting a floor on app prices? What if no app could sell for less than $2.99 or even $4.99? Although, I'm sure that would probably result in less money overall for Google and Apple, so it would never happen, but if customer expectations were at a higher price point, maybe the developer options would increase.
- kylec 13y ago
  I disagree with this because I think that there's a lot of cases where a free or very cheap app makes sense, but maybe they could do something to better surface the IAP pricing. I think metrics like the average amount of money spent by users or the highest IAP amount displayed prominently next to the app in the store would make it so that apps that try to pull stuff like this are much easier to recognize before the user downloads the app and invests time into it.
  - JetSpiegel 13y ago
    They could still allow free apps, for FLOSS software and glorified web browsers.
- csomar 13y ago
  I think Google/Apple are happy with the game developers figuring out the solution to maximize the profit. They take a 30% cut.
  - gurkendoktor 13y ago
    It makes sense for Google, but I don't understand Apple's motives at all. The IAP model ruins gameplay for everyone but the whales. But Apple is making most of its profit through hardware, and now I (as a non-whale) have lost one of my main reasons for buying an iPad. It used to be a great casual gaming device. I guess I'm just gonna play Carcassonne on iOS 6 forever :)
- mcphage 13y ago
  > I'm sure that would probably result in less money overall for Google and Apple, so it would never happen, but if customer expectations were at a higher price point, maybe the developer options would increase. Given Apple & Google take a flat 30% of money coming in, if they get less money, that means developers are also getting less money. So I don't know how that would increase developer options.
Already__Taken 13y ago
If software refunds existed as a matter of course then up front prices should make a comeback. Otherwise the customer must trust marketing and we know how trustworthy that is.
ronyeh 13y ago
Nintendo has resisted this trend of nickel-and-diming users with bags of coins and gems. However, they're struggling mightily to convince modern consumers to fork over $60 up front for their (very fun) Mario games. I'm an indie developer and my paid games have done very poorly. It's just so much easier to convince someone to download my apps for free, and then try to upsell them later on. I've also resisted bags of coins, but probably to my own detriment.
- elpool2 13y ago
  I don't mind at all when a game is free for the first few level but then asks you to pay to unlock the full version. It's basically the same as the old shareware model, giving you an option to try out the game before purchasing. It's only when paying money actually becomes part of the game that I start to feel ripped off.
  - ronyeh 13y ago
    I agree with you. However, most consumers just play the free part and then move on to the next game. Everyone's busy, and there are so many games to try! Sadly I find myself feeling the same way (as a consumer). I don't really want to pay > $5 for a game. Yet, I don't like microtransactions... so I generally just play the free part of a game until I get bored and move on.
    - xerophtye 13y ago
      Yes, but then again, you're probably not the type that spends ANY money for IAP (not judging you, am like that too). Now consider people that DO spend money on IAP, wouldn't it be much better if that money is utilized properly? Wouldn't it be much better if those people aren't being scamemd and milked dry, but intead are being given a rich gaming experience for that money? PS: i recently ran in to a game for people like you and me. They give you the premium stuff for unlocking a few (surprisingly achievable) achievements. Yay devs! (Its BADLAND)
- bane 13y ago
  I'm curious why the very successful Apogee model of indie sales and development (first episode is free and later episodes (sequels) cost) hasn't really stuck around.
ig1 13y ago
IAP isn't just a mobile concept, the non-mobile IAP sector is as large as the mobile one. The desktop game CrossFire did $1bn revenue last year through micro-transactions: http://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/us-digital-games-market/ http://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/us-digital-games-marke...
munificent 13y ago
> 1) People seem to balk at paying >$5 for a mobile or tablet game. (With some notable exceptions.) The dotcom bubble of the 90's taught people to expect everything they do on a computer to be free. We're still digging ourselves out of the very deep psychological hole that VCs of that time dug.
- judk 13y ago
  Not the VCs. The natural scaling costs mean that marginal cost is cheaper than the hassle of billing. The trick is how to cover the overhead.
  - im3w1l 13y ago
    Spotify for games
jonnathanson 13y ago
It's a problem of economics. The costs of making table stakes-quality mobile games has been holding steady, if not increasing. Meanwhile, the price people are willing to pay up front has been converging on $0. Something's gotta give. One could argue, and perhaps somewhat convincingly, that the mobile gaming space is in its chaotic adolescence. It started off as an undifferentiated mass market, but making games for the mass market is extremely challenging unless you're a big publisher with economies of scale. Enter IAP, the best way to bootstrap a game and maintain cash flow over the lifetime of a given gamer. So now IAP has been exploited to the hilt. It's everywhere. It's the new mass-market model. Don't want to do IAP? In that case, you should find a lucrative niche. Differentiate. Certain developers are doing fairly well charging large (by iOS & Android standards) up-front prices for deep games in hardcore categories. Square-Enix, for instance, routinely charges upwards of $15 for its Final Fantasy releases, and by all accounts, it's doing just fine with them. (S-E is a fairly big publisher, but I see no reason why a small RPG shop couldn't attempt the same, provided it got itself in front of the right initial audience.) Devs and publishers who don't have $10M+ in venture funding in the bank are going to have to make their peace with freemium, with niche pricing, or with IAP. Any of these things can be done well. IAP can be done well, for that matter. It's not, in and of itself, an unalloyed evil. De facto-forced IAP, of the sort you need to opt into in order to pass a roadblock, is the dickish (if lucrative) way to go. But IAP that is a fun add-on to an already awesome gaming experience is a bird of a different feather.
neovive 13y ago
I think part of the problem is not having a decent try before you buy option in the major app stores. Since the app stores manage purchase and licensing, it would be easy to remove apps after the demo period. The 5+ years of free and .99 cent apps created a psychological barrier that still stands today; thus the rise of IAP.
- invalidOrTaken 13y ago
  >I think part of the problem is not having a decent try before you buy option in the major app stores. Part of the reason for this is that the games suck. When a game is good, word of mouth tends to spread it.
quackerhacker 13y ago
If I pay anything for an app, I hate the fact that after I'm bored with it, I'll usually leave it on my device since I paid for it. If you think in app purchases are bad, you haven't seen skylanders (activision) or infinity (Disney). These games require action figures to experience the game...wouldn't be so bad if each action figure wasn't over $10!
- jrockway 13y ago
  $10? I'm guessing you don't collect anime figures.
  - unsignedint 13y ago
    LOL, from the perspective of someone who routinely buys anime figures >$50 I find it funny. Although, I guess there is a big difference when you see the value (more of an artistic value to figure itself) rather than as a secondary instrument to play the game.
shurcooL 13y ago
There is a solution, but it won't work: 1. Release games for "pay what you want, whenever, as many times as you want". 2. Educate people that if they don't pay voluntarily for things they want to support/see more of, they will end up living in a world where they're forced to pay for crappy non-games (e.g., the micro-transactions above). It won't happen cuz most people aren't smart enough to see the benefits of paying for things they want to see more of/support voluntarily. I wish they'd be, but it doesn't seem so. You get what you pay for is pretty applicable here.
watwut 13y ago
Playstore is horrible for matching buyers and sellers. You can filter games by category and that is it. Plus, mobile games reviews are practically useless. I can not even is no way to guess difficulty nor whether I will like the game. The problem is, there are hundreds games coming out for Android every month. I might like maybe five of them, many are of them are crap and many many more are good games - for someone entirely else then me. Tell me, how do I find those five I might like? Useful reviews are practically non existent. I'm not willing to pay 5$ for something I will probably play for 10 minutes. In order to find 1 game you will like, you have to buy maybe 10. So, basically, those games I do not like count into my games budget. They are partly reason why I'm not willing to pay much for one game. If there were a way (maybe curated storefront) for me to know in advance I will be playing this game for hours next two months, I would gladly pay those 5$. I would see it as cheap. As it is now, it is 5$ for something I will likely not play at all.
- xerophtye 13y ago
  so.... You're ok with the "few levels for free, then pay more the rest" model?
robbles 13y ago
It seems like a simple solution to me would be to make the game free, but with most features blocked behind a SINGLE in-app purchase. That way you can download it, play what amounts to basically a demo, and decide if you like the game. If you don't, you've lost nothing, and the game developer gets the opportunity to add an additional step to their funnel and see how many people genuinely don't like their game or are frustrated / confused by it. If you do, you buy it with the IAP and now have the rest of the game forever. What am I missing here? Is this hard to do? Or prohibited somehow? Disclosure: I'm not a mobile game developer, so maybe I'm missing something here about the rules of the app stores.
- robdrimmie 13y ago
  This is completely possible and as a consumer my preference. Most hidden object games follow this practice.
- Fasebook 13y ago
  Not only this, developers shouldn't shy away from charging what they think the game is worth, $5, $29, $59, $99, whatever. If the game is good, people will pay it.
  - chadillac 13y ago
    I would bet the higher that price the less likely the sale and also the more likely the piracy. Charging even $5 for a game will likely drive your actual installs and sales through the floor. If you make a good product but most people can't justify paying for it, they'll just find an alternative means of playing it. Also the pump and dump industry in the app stores especially in gaming is another thing you have to worry about. You make a good game at a $10 price tag within a couple weeks you'll find your exact game with slightly altered graphics and a similar name that will be under cutting your price point. This used to be much worse, but unless you're a big studio like EA, Rovio, or King it's still a problem for you as a little guy.
  - throwaway092834 13y ago
    This is simply not true. Price has an enormous impact on units sold.
ivanca 13y ago
Most soldiers after returning home find themselves in an awkward spot, killing is the only thing they do right, and having a PTSD doesn't help to pick other skills, so their only pahts are: 1) They become hitman, even if its socially unacceptable 2) They become mercenaries even if it is for enemies of USA 3) They commit suicide So what's the solution? If people is unwilling to let them kill everyone in sight how does a soldier profit from their work? This is a honest question, I generally hate mass shooting and soldier suicides. /s
ii 13y ago
Solution: make a game free with a small number of free levels and sell unlimited levels for a fee as a one-time in-app purchase.
dsuth 13y ago
In some cases IAP actually facilitates better games. Developers can put in enough effort to get the base game up and running, and then use IAP to spur additional content development throughout the life of the game. I'm thinking specifically of Hero Academy here. A really neat little turn-based strategy game which cost a few bucks when it came out, and had (I think) 3 teams to choose from the beginning. More teams or different skins for your team cost extra. This was the best use of IAP I've seen, and facilitated the devs getting what was essentially a proof of concept out, then building on it. For gamers it gave you the freedom to just buy the base game, or only pay for the additional features/teams etc that you felt were interesting. I would never have paid $20 for that game off the bat, but because I had the freedom to choose what I DID buy, I probably ended up spending a lot more, and happily so. So IAP is not inherently bad, it's just frequently (and intentionally) misused to turn games into cash generating slot machines via intentionally bad game design. It doesn't have to, and isn't, always that way.
ballard 13y ago
By making in-app purchases valuable and small, people are more likely to spend more on engaging games. This can increase TLV for good, replayable games.
ca98am79 13y ago
The solution is for more people to build games simply for the love of building games. For example see Dwarf Fortress.
- JabavuAdams 13y ago
  Nope. They've already been doing that for decades. The games industry is like the music industry in that regard. There's no shortage of people who are making games for the love of it. The vast majority of them will just never be able to support themselves doing it.
somewhatjustin 13y ago
Emulate a demo as much as possible without breaking the guidelines of the Play or App Store. I feel that once I put money into a game once, I should be done. With that being said, it can be hard to make a $10 investment based off of 4 screenshots and a description.
mabhatter 13y ago
for me though the evidence of intent is in having $39 and $99 level tiers. There's no way to expect that to ever be "reasonable" for a mobile game. I could go with up to about $20 in IAP. For instance the Settlers of Catan iPad game is rather expensive at $9 up front with expansions at $2 - $3 each that match the paper version of expansions and you can easily sink $20 in to get all the pieces, but you don't NEED all the pieces to play the same game that's in the paper version box. Many other games do a very fine job of using it to unlock new "expansions" as they add extra additional effort to the game every few months. Those ultra expensive tiers are nothing but "click bait" to see if children and/or stupid people will "just pay it". I did half to laugh that the reviewer clearly never played games like farmville. That worked out really well with it's timers and everybody checking in a few times a day to manage their items. so he's a little overreacting. That said, this new game looked really nice but I won't be buying...and I was already skeptical because it's EA. EA has plugged $50 games with this kind of stuff. I wasn't really holding my breath here. I don't want to play "dungeon-ville" I want to play an RTS. The problem is that somebody could probably put this together for say $20 without using servers at all. But the App store buyers are so stingy with expensive games, only really established games like Final Fantasy can get away with more than $10. So they have to have some other way to get the $20 or even $10 or they can't make ANY GAME to sell you because they have bosses.
unfamiliar 13y ago
Free trials.
mathattack 13y ago
This article hit on something very true... I used to LOVE games. Many of the top programmers I knew got their start making awesome games. Now the people I know getting into games are experts in gamification. And the games are absolutely awful. They just try to play into our personal addiction. To limit addiction, I refuse all in-app purchases for games. As such, games suck for me, and I now hate them.

by chasing 13y ago

bo1024 13y ago

Well, not developing for mobile is one option.

aaronetz 13y ago

I (naively) hope that eventually people who prefer microtransacions will realize what a waste of money it is, and start paying upfront. But seriously, maybe a good solution would be to design the in-app purchases in a game so that instead of endlessly paying for consumable items, one would pay for actual game features. That way, you can play the basic game for free, and then start "constructing" the full game piece-by-piece by purchasing individual features. For example, an RPG where you can play the warrior for free but then pay $X each for additional characters. Or a "dungeon-keeper"-style game where you can pay to unlock more types of monsters and tools.

coldtea 13y ago
>I (naively) hope that eventually people who prefer microtransacions will realize what a waste of money it is, and start paying upfront. You mean like getting a NYT subscription for $200 dollars, instead of paying for the 10-20 articles I want to read all year for like $1 or $.5 a piece?
gambiting 13y ago
Radiant Defense on Android works exactly how you described. It's a tower defense game,where in the free version you are given some towers, but there are a few which are locked behind a paywall - so you have to purchase like 6 separate packs to unlock them all(totalling like £8), but once you do, that's it, you own the entire thing and there is nothing else to buy.

kmfrk 13y ago

I think we have to give additional purchases some degree of legitimacy; look at EVE Online and the upcoming Star Citizens of examples of in-game purchases that, at the very least, are not dark user patterns or scams. I generally find in-app purchases on iOS games to be scummy as hell, though, so the big problem is probably that it's a Wild West for dark user patterns in games on the App Store.

danielweber 13y ago
Online games are more amenable to legitimate purchase models. When the game is entirely offline, though, it's just nuts to require the player to put in more money.
- AJ007 13y ago
  Contrarily, if you introduce pay for performance in to a competitive online game, it completely fucks the competitiveness. We can accept sports where players and teams spends millions of dollars of on training, equipment, etc. What if instead the team just paid the money to buy additional points from the referee? Yeah, that is not a game. The appropriate way to do this is to make premium/paid items cosmetic only with zero influence on game play. If your game blows, this model doesn't work.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    Sure it is. It's called "United States national elections".

danielweber 13y ago

My rule is that there is no such thing as free-as-in-beer software. (There are exceptions, but they are exceptions.) The developer's bills will get paid one way or the other. The simplest and most efficient way is to just pay them up front. If you try to get things for "free" both you as the consumer and the developer will end up worse off.

Proleps 13y ago
Most open source/free software(free as in liberty) is free as in beer. It gets payed for by donations and/or big sponsors. It has no hidden costs. Not everything is available as open source/free software, but it is enough have a usable computer and even some games.
- giovannibajo1 13y ago
  The difference is that such software goes through multi-year evolution and usage (be it bash or OpenOffice or kernel) so it makes sense for a company to invest on feature X that's missing for them, and get everything else for free. On the other hand, in the game market, most games are a one-off experience with a very short lifetime (excluding MMO games). So there is no way they could be constructed through subsequent donations and evolutions. Add to this the fact that open source communities are only made of programmers (because they are the ones benefiting most from the network effect and from incremental integration of software components), while games require other kind of professionals. Eg: volunteer designers in OSS world are mostly non existent; most of them are on the payroll of some sponsor.
AJ007 13y ago
Dwarf Fortress, the creator writes you a short story or illustrates a drawing in crayon in exchange for your optional donation. Quite the exception.
- bobjordan 13y ago
  ...and the developer lives on about $35K/year, which is far less than what he could be generating with that franchise.

DanBC 13y ago

I don't care if a game has IAP or not. I do care Bout how playable the game is without IAP. Blocky Roads could probably start offering cars or road packs as IAPs and people would buy them. That's not destroying the game.

coldtea 13y ago

>1) People seem to balk at paying >$5 for a mobile or tablet game. (With some notable exceptions.) 2) The $0.99 or $1.99 price point is not financially viable for most games. This sounds like: I want to sell for $5 but customers won't buy my product at that price. Well, in that case your product, however much your toiled and however much you spend to make it, is not viable?

dominostars 13y ago
> Well, in that case your product, however much your toiled and however much you spend to make it, is not viable? Exactly, it's not viable. Only IAP driven games are. That is the problem being discussed here.
- coldtea 13y ago
  Sounds more like a fact than a problem.
  - krisgee 13y ago
    The problem is that everyone with opinions hates IAP even though they're ridiculously good at making money.
ojii 13y ago
The problem with that logic, as much as I'd like to believe it, is that customers seem to be very happy to pay >5$ after "buying" the "free" game in IAP. And because "free"+IAP is the norm these days, customers scoff at expensive games. Why pay 5$ if you can get another one for "free"? I'd much prefer the free demo + paid full version to be honest as I'd like to see if a game is worth it. If it is, I'm happy to pay a decent price. Then again, I might be a minority.
pjc50 13y ago
.. except is can be made viable by changing the charge structure; that's the whole point of IAP. It defies simplistic supply-and-demand analysis because there is no longer just one price, but many; the customer has to make a constant series of decisions about the value of instant gratification. Some people hate this.

alok-g 13y ago

An important thing to keep in mind is that #1 here is the state of the affairs after the fact, i.e., when people can see many games that are apparently free built using the IAP concept. Dan Ariely noted that the mobile app industry has done this to itself by ... well better read in his own words: http://danariely.com/2011/12/25/the-oatmeal-this-is-how-i-feel-about-buying-apps/ http://danariely.com/2011/12/25/the-oatmeal-this-is-how-i-fe...

ItendToDisagree 13y ago

Kingdom Of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing) is a game (well webgame) that I think has a good business model. The game and all of its (vast) content is free. But to get certain items or items of the month (that are optimal but by no means necessary), you donate $10 to the site. It is not a pay-to-win type of scenario because it is a single player game (with one minor PVP minigame element). It also never feels scummy because you can do basically everything in the game without ever paying a single cent. Even 'premium' content that is unlocked by purchasable items is generally tradable and purchasable with the in-game currency (meat) that drops from the monsters. Thus you don't have to pay up front... But you do end up donating some money for interesting items at some point due to the game being great, current, funny, having a great community, etc. The business model probably wouldn't work for most, but in the case of Kingdom of Loathing it works really well.

syntern 13y ago
Do they have public numbers on how much they make with this model?
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  I do not believe so... Though I could be wrong and they are out there somewhere? What I do know is that it was enough for the two initial guys to now do it full-time and they now also employ something like 4 additional people full-time (I think its 4 additional).
  - syntern 13y ago
    Thanks, that is a good ballpark figure.
- ta_tatata 13y ago
  You advertise the game as free with voluntary donations (Mr. A and Mr. Eh accessories). Without pressing for financial info, can we ask: Does this translate into a full-time paying job, cover the expenses of running the project, or simply add a bit of pocket change here and there? Why did you choose this business model? KoL's donation revenue is currently sufficient to support a full-time staff and a second team working on a new game. I feel like we were extremely fortunate to have launched when we did and to have gotten the critical mass in the beginning that makes it possible for this to be a career instead of just a hobby. As far as choosing the business model, I'm not sure there was ever a moment when I made a choice about it. A couple of months in, the hosting bills were starting to cost more than I was comfortable paying out of pocket, so I put up a link to ask for donations to offset the cost. A player suggested, "Hey, why don't you give donators an in-game reward?" and I figured "Hey, why not, it couldn't hurt." To my surprise and delight, it was pretty much instantly profitable. I was still processing the donations by hand for quite a while -- the revenue model was really kind of an afterthought. After it got to the point where I was able to comfortably and safely quit my day job (and finally start paying Josh, who had been diligently working for free for several months), I started offering the monthly specials, which caused another surge in income and allowed me to hire an office manager, another writer/designer, and another programmer. Since then we've added a full-time customer service/abuse-tracking position and part-time forum and chat-moderation supervisors.

lisper 13y ago

The obvious solution is to put a cap on IAPs. Once you've paid however much it should have cost to buy the game outright in the first place, everything gets unlocked. Unfortunately, that won't happen because it's much more lucrative to raise a generation of "gamers" who don't know any better than to provide a continuous revenue stream in exchange for the occasional dopamine hit.

weixiyen 13y ago
Most people who play it would still never pay for it though. Mobile games are somewhat dependent on whales to justify the costs of upfront investment. It's more like one person paying for 10 other guys who can enjoy it for free.
- judk 13y ago
  More like 100 than 10.

ensignavenger 13y ago

Why not offer the customers an option? Download the game free with limitations that you can buy in game stuff to get around, or pay $5 and have the limitations removed (or an unlimited amount of the in game currency whatever. Sounds like the next logical evolution of shareware, to me. You would probably get a lot of people who would download the game free, try it out, maybe make some in game purchases, then decide to upgrade to the $5 version, so you would make $5 + whatever they spend on in game items before upgrading. (Or whatever price you decide to charge). You won't be making hundreds off anyone, but you'll probably get more bites overall.

gfodor 13y ago
If you're honestly asking, the reason this isn't done is because the main source of revenue for these free to play games are the people who become addicted. ("whales") They spend enormous amounts of money and if they had the option to just upgrade then this would cut the legs out from the main chunk of the revenue the game generates.
- democracy 13y ago
  I would personally buy jelly splash from wooga for 20 bucks but I would not spend anything in-game as it seems like cheating to me.
jrs99 13y ago
If you make that an option, then children might not spend $500 on their sword upgrades.
- derefr 13y ago
  What child has $500? "Whales" are adults. (Usually, specifically, they are people in high-stress/high-reward jobs, like finance, who want to release their stress by throwing out their rewards. Same as casinos.)
  - manthgre 13y ago

jrs99 13y ago

The most lucrative path is NEVER to rip your customers off or sell a basket of virtual blueberries to children for 50 dollars each. That's the solution of someone thinking one quarter ahead. If a game company cannot find a way to be profitable without IAPs it might want to find something else to do besides make games.

wpietri 13y ago
> The most lucrative path is NEVER to rip your customers off Las Vegas begs to disagree with you.
- jrs99 13y ago
  I don't think the successful casinos today are as profitable as they could be. I believe they can be MUCH more profitable than they are now.
  - girvo 13y ago
    Then you fail to understand the sheer amount of analytics and data casinos use to tweak everything to "perfection"...
    - gaius 13y ago
      But but but San Francisco hipsters invented data science! No-one was optimizing their businesses based on numerical data before!
    - jrs99 13y ago
      http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/mar/11/sahara-hotel-casino-close-may-16/ http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/mar/11/sahara-hotel-cas... casinos fail all the time. i'm not talking about keeping what casinos have right now and "tweaking" that. I'm talking about a reimagining.
      - vidarh 13y ago

phaus 13y ago

I don't necessarily think that there is a solution. In almost all cases, the game itself is the problem. Most people won't pay full price, because most mobile games lack depth. When you develop for mobile, you can either make a game with simple mechanics, or you can make a game with terrible controls. Those are the options. While it is possible to make a great game with simple mechanics, it takes an extraordinary level of talent that most game development shops simply don't possess. On the PC/console side, you of course have ports of popular mobile games. In addition, however, you have AAA games like Diablo 3 that are reasonably complex, yet seem to have been intentionally ruined by IAP and the real money sale of items that affect performance.

chasing 13y ago
> Most people won't pay full price, because most mobile games lack depth. I think you might have this backwards: Mobile games lack depth because their developers know most people won't pay full price. Mobile games can have great depth. Just like PC/console games can be extremely simple and trivial. (Depth doesn't come from complex mechanics or controls, btw. In fact, those things are often used to mask how shallow a game really is.)
- phaus 13y ago
  I agree that the ability to use complex control system isn't necessarily an indicator of depth, but it certainly opens up a lot of possibilities. There are entire genres that have always been and will always be terrible on touchscreen devices. Perhaps you are also right that most developers won't even try to make a real game, due to the difficulty in getting customers to pay for them. Now that its more profitable to milk small amounts of money out of non-gamers, I think the rest of us are going to eventually get stuck playing the kick starter lottery in order to see real games hit the market.
- saraid216 13y ago
  > > Most people won't pay full price, because most mobile games lack depth. > I think you might have this backwards: Mobile games lack depth because their developers know most people won't pay full price. Chicken, meet egg. :( This is why I hate the mobile space for gaming.

FreeKill 13y ago

I know this might be crazy, but what about Apple/Google setting a floor on app prices? What if no app could sell for less than $2.99 or even $4.99? Although, I'm sure that would probably result in less money overall for Google and Apple, so it would never happen, but if customer expectations were at a higher price point, maybe the developer options would increase.

kylec 13y ago
I disagree with this because I think that there's a lot of cases where a free or very cheap app makes sense, but maybe they could do something to better surface the IAP pricing. I think metrics like the average amount of money spent by users or the highest IAP amount displayed prominently next to the app in the store would make it so that apps that try to pull stuff like this are much easier to recognize before the user downloads the app and invests time into it.
- JetSpiegel 13y ago
  They could still allow free apps, for FLOSS software and glorified web browsers.
csomar 13y ago
I think Google/Apple are happy with the game developers figuring out the solution to maximize the profit. They take a 30% cut.
- gurkendoktor 13y ago
  It makes sense for Google, but I don't understand Apple's motives at all. The IAP model ruins gameplay for everyone but the whales. But Apple is making most of its profit through hardware, and now I (as a non-whale) have lost one of my main reasons for buying an iPad. It used to be a great casual gaming device. I guess I'm just gonna play Carcassonne on iOS 6 forever :)
mcphage 13y ago
> I'm sure that would probably result in less money overall for Google and Apple, so it would never happen, but if customer expectations were at a higher price point, maybe the developer options would increase. Given Apple & Google take a flat 30% of money coming in, if they get less money, that means developers are also getting less money. So I don't know how that would increase developer options.

Already__Taken 13y ago

If software refunds existed as a matter of course then up front prices should make a comeback. Otherwise the customer must trust marketing and we know how trustworthy that is.

ronyeh 13y ago

Nintendo has resisted this trend of nickel-and-diming users with bags of coins and gems. However, they're struggling mightily to convince modern consumers to fork over $60 up front for their (very fun) Mario games. I'm an indie developer and my paid games have done very poorly. It's just so much easier to convince someone to download my apps for free, and then try to upsell them later on. I've also resisted bags of coins, but probably to my own detriment.

elpool2 13y ago
I don't mind at all when a game is free for the first few level but then asks you to pay to unlock the full version. It's basically the same as the old shareware model, giving you an option to try out the game before purchasing. It's only when paying money actually becomes part of the game that I start to feel ripped off.
- ronyeh 13y ago
  I agree with you. However, most consumers just play the free part and then move on to the next game. Everyone's busy, and there are so many games to try! Sadly I find myself feeling the same way (as a consumer). I don't really want to pay > $5 for a game. Yet, I don't like microtransactions... so I generally just play the free part of a game until I get bored and move on.
  - xerophtye 13y ago
    Yes, but then again, you're probably not the type that spends ANY money for IAP (not judging you, am like that too). Now consider people that DO spend money on IAP, wouldn't it be much better if that money is utilized properly? Wouldn't it be much better if those people aren't being scamemd and milked dry, but intead are being given a rich gaming experience for that money? PS: i recently ran in to a game for people like you and me. They give you the premium stuff for unlocking a few (surprisingly achievable) achievements. Yay devs! (Its BADLAND)
bane 13y ago
I'm curious why the very successful Apogee model of indie sales and development (first episode is free and later episodes (sequels) cost) hasn't really stuck around.

ig1 13y ago

IAP isn't just a mobile concept, the non-mobile IAP sector is as large as the mobile one. The desktop game CrossFire did $1bn revenue last year through micro-transactions: http://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/us-digital-games-market/ http://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/us-digital-games-marke...

munificent 13y ago

> 1) People seem to balk at paying >$5 for a mobile or tablet game. (With some notable exceptions.) The dotcom bubble of the 90's taught people to expect everything they do on a computer to be free. We're still digging ourselves out of the very deep psychological hole that VCs of that time dug.

judk 13y ago
Not the VCs. The natural scaling costs mean that marginal cost is cheaper than the hassle of billing. The trick is how to cover the overhead.
- im3w1l 13y ago
  Spotify for games

jonnathanson 13y ago

It's a problem of economics. The costs of making table stakes-quality mobile games has been holding steady, if not increasing. Meanwhile, the price people are willing to pay up front has been converging on $0. Something's gotta give. One could argue, and perhaps somewhat convincingly, that the mobile gaming space is in its chaotic adolescence. It started off as an undifferentiated mass market, but making games for the mass market is extremely challenging unless you're a big publisher with economies of scale. Enter IAP, the best way to bootstrap a game and maintain cash flow over the lifetime of a given gamer. So now IAP has been exploited to the hilt. It's everywhere. It's the new mass-market model. Don't want to do IAP? In that case, you should find a lucrative niche. Differentiate. Certain developers are doing fairly well charging large (by iOS & Android standards) up-front prices for deep games in hardcore categories. Square-Enix, for instance, routinely charges upwards of $15 for its Final Fantasy releases, and by all accounts, it's doing just fine with them. (S-E is a fairly big publisher, but I see no reason why a small RPG shop couldn't attempt the same, provided it got itself in front of the right initial audience.) Devs and publishers who don't have $10M+ in venture funding in the bank are going to have to make their peace with freemium, with niche pricing, or with IAP. Any of these things can be done well. IAP can be done well, for that matter. It's not, in and of itself, an unalloyed evil. De facto-forced IAP, of the sort you need to opt into in order to pass a roadblock, is the dickish (if lucrative) way to go. But IAP that is a fun add-on to an already awesome gaming experience is a bird of a different feather.

neovive 13y ago

I think part of the problem is not having a decent try before you buy option in the major app stores. Since the app stores manage purchase and licensing, it would be easy to remove apps after the demo period. The 5+ years of free and .99 cent apps created a psychological barrier that still stands today; thus the rise of IAP.

invalidOrTaken 13y ago
>I think part of the problem is not having a decent try before you buy option in the major app stores. Part of the reason for this is that the games suck. When a game is good, word of mouth tends to spread it.

quackerhacker 13y ago

If I pay anything for an app, I hate the fact that after I'm bored with it, I'll usually leave it on my device since I paid for it. If you think in app purchases are bad, you haven't seen skylanders (activision) or infinity (Disney). These games require action figures to experience the game...wouldn't be so bad if each action figure wasn't over $10!

jrockway 13y ago
$10? I'm guessing you don't collect anime figures.
- unsignedint 13y ago
  LOL, from the perspective of someone who routinely buys anime figures >$50 I find it funny. Although, I guess there is a big difference when you see the value (more of an artistic value to figure itself) rather than as a secondary instrument to play the game.

shurcooL 13y ago

There is a solution, but it won't work: 1. Release games for "pay what you want, whenever, as many times as you want". 2. Educate people that if they don't pay voluntarily for things they want to support/see more of, they will end up living in a world where they're forced to pay for crappy non-games (e.g., the micro-transactions above). It won't happen cuz most people aren't smart enough to see the benefits of paying for things they want to see more of/support voluntarily. I wish they'd be, but it doesn't seem so. You get what you pay for is pretty applicable here.

watwut 13y ago

Playstore is horrible for matching buyers and sellers. You can filter games by category and that is it. Plus, mobile games reviews are practically useless. I can not even is no way to guess difficulty nor whether I will like the game. The problem is, there are hundreds games coming out for Android every month. I might like maybe five of them, many are of them are crap and many many more are good games - for someone entirely else then me. Tell me, how do I find those five I might like? Useful reviews are practically non existent. I'm not willing to pay 5$ for something I will probably play for 10 minutes. In order to find 1 game you will like, you have to buy maybe 10. So, basically, those games I do not like count into my games budget. They are partly reason why I'm not willing to pay much for one game. If there were a way (maybe curated storefront) for me to know in advance I will be playing this game for hours next two months, I would gladly pay those 5$. I would see it as cheap. As it is now, it is 5$ for something I will likely not play at all.

xerophtye 13y ago
so.... You're ok with the "few levels for free, then pay more the rest" model?

robbles 13y ago

It seems like a simple solution to me would be to make the game free, but with most features blocked behind a SINGLE in-app purchase. That way you can download it, play what amounts to basically a demo, and decide if you like the game. If you don't, you've lost nothing, and the game developer gets the opportunity to add an additional step to their funnel and see how many people genuinely don't like their game or are frustrated / confused by it. If you do, you buy it with the IAP and now have the rest of the game forever. What am I missing here? Is this hard to do? Or prohibited somehow? Disclosure: I'm not a mobile game developer, so maybe I'm missing something here about the rules of the app stores.

robdrimmie 13y ago
This is completely possible and as a consumer my preference. Most hidden object games follow this practice.
Fasebook 13y ago
Not only this, developers shouldn't shy away from charging what they think the game is worth, $5, $29, $59, $99, whatever. If the game is good, people will pay it.
- chadillac 13y ago
  I would bet the higher that price the less likely the sale and also the more likely the piracy. Charging even $5 for a game will likely drive your actual installs and sales through the floor. If you make a good product but most people can't justify paying for it, they'll just find an alternative means of playing it. Also the pump and dump industry in the app stores especially in gaming is another thing you have to worry about. You make a good game at a $10 price tag within a couple weeks you'll find your exact game with slightly altered graphics and a similar name that will be under cutting your price point. This used to be much worse, but unless you're a big studio like EA, Rovio, or King it's still a problem for you as a little guy.
- throwaway092834 13y ago
  This is simply not true. Price has an enormous impact on units sold.

ivanca 13y ago

Most soldiers after returning home find themselves in an awkward spot, killing is the only thing they do right, and having a PTSD doesn't help to pick other skills, so their only pahts are: 1) They become hitman, even if its socially unacceptable 2) They become mercenaries even if it is for enemies of USA 3) They commit suicide So what's the solution? If people is unwilling to let them kill everyone in sight how does a soldier profit from their work? This is a honest question, I generally hate mass shooting and soldier suicides. /s

ii 13y ago

Solution: make a game free with a small number of free levels and sell unlimited levels for a fee as a one-time in-app purchase.

dsuth 13y ago

In some cases IAP actually facilitates better games. Developers can put in enough effort to get the base game up and running, and then use IAP to spur additional content development throughout the life of the game. I'm thinking specifically of Hero Academy here. A really neat little turn-based strategy game which cost a few bucks when it came out, and had (I think) 3 teams to choose from the beginning. More teams or different skins for your team cost extra. This was the best use of IAP I've seen, and facilitated the devs getting what was essentially a proof of concept out, then building on it. For gamers it gave you the freedom to just buy the base game, or only pay for the additional features/teams etc that you felt were interesting. I would never have paid $20 for that game off the bat, but because I had the freedom to choose what I DID buy, I probably ended up spending a lot more, and happily so. So IAP is not inherently bad, it's just frequently (and intentionally) misused to turn games into cash generating slot machines via intentionally bad game design. It doesn't have to, and isn't, always that way.

ballard 13y ago

By making in-app purchases valuable and small, people are more likely to spend more on engaging games. This can increase TLV for good, replayable games.

ca98am79 13y ago

The solution is for more people to build games simply for the love of building games. For example see Dwarf Fortress.

JabavuAdams 13y ago
Nope. They've already been doing that for decades. The games industry is like the music industry in that regard. There's no shortage of people who are making games for the love of it. The vast majority of them will just never be able to support themselves doing it.

somewhatjustin 13y ago

Emulate a demo as much as possible without breaking the guidelines of the Play or App Store. I feel that once I put money into a game once, I should be done. With that being said, it can be hard to make a $10 investment based off of 4 screenshots and a description.

mabhatter 13y ago

for me though the evidence of intent is in having $39 and $99 level tiers. There's no way to expect that to ever be "reasonable" for a mobile game. I could go with up to about $20 in IAP. For instance the Settlers of Catan iPad game is rather expensive at $9 up front with expansions at $2 - $3 each that match the paper version of expansions and you can easily sink $20 in to get all the pieces, but you don't NEED all the pieces to play the same game that's in the paper version box. Many other games do a very fine job of using it to unlock new "expansions" as they add extra additional effort to the game every few months. Those ultra expensive tiers are nothing but "click bait" to see if children and/or stupid people will "just pay it". I did half to laugh that the reviewer clearly never played games like farmville. That worked out really well with it's timers and everybody checking in a few times a day to manage their items. so he's a little overreacting. That said, this new game looked really nice but I won't be buying...and I was already skeptical because it's EA. EA has plugged $50 games with this kind of stuff. I wasn't really holding my breath here. I don't want to play "dungeon-ville" I want to play an RTS. The problem is that somebody could probably put this together for say $20 without using servers at all. But the App store buyers are so stingy with expensive games, only really established games like Final Fantasy can get away with more than $10. So they have to have some other way to get the $20 or even $10 or they can't make ANY GAME to sell you because they have bosses.

unfamiliar 13y ago

Free trials.

mathattack 13y ago

This article hit on something very true... I used to LOVE games. Many of the top programmers I knew got their start making awesome games. Now the people I know getting into games are experts in gamification. And the games are absolutely awful. They just try to play into our personal addiction. To limit addiction, I refuse all in-app purchases for games. As such, games suck for me, and I now hate them.