7 ms·

It is fascinating how much the "micro-transaction" model on the iOS platform continues to bury everything else. Spiderweb throwing in the towel I would guess h

• pivo 12y ago
  > And as anybody who's spent 5 mins on app-store "optimization" knows - the better your paid, the better your organic - by a right mile. Sorry, I guess my English is bad. I do not understand this sentence. Could you explain?
  • Mtinie 12y ago
    > the better your paid, the better your organic - by a right mile I interpreted it as meaning the higher your app is ranked in the 'paid' category (preferrably in the top 20 or higher), the better your organic acquisition rate is going to be (logically because you'll get all the "free" advertising for being featured on the front page of the "Top Paid". It's a self-reinforcing cycle...more customers, higher ranking, more customers...if you can swing it.
  • benmathes 12y ago
    paid advertising turns into far better organic growth by a very large margin.
  • rjbwork 12y ago
    He's saying that the more money you put into paid ads and the more conversions you pay for, the more organic (non-paid: referral, from press, or search, etc.) conversions you'll get.
  • polansky 12y ago
    Yeah, that was tricky. I think he means "the better your paid [search results], the better your organic [search results]." Meaning you can buy improved organic search results.
  • mbesto 12y ago
    I think a few people missed the mark here (in the sub-comments). The point is, if you're already have paying customers, you will get more. Users looking to download new apps discover them on the Top Paid charts more than anywhere else. The exception is to get featured, but this is a crapshoot. In other words, social proof is the strongest indicator for the long term viability of revenue for iOS apps, and it's hard to be gamed. So (as others have rightfully pointed out) many app developers solve this issue in their early days by using paid ads...mainly FB ads, as their conversion rate analysis is so ridiculously well engineered. Which means you can theoretically turn off paid search/discovery and rely on on your high position on the Top Paid charts to drive you more even traffic. (Note - Many of them do not turn off paid acquisition channels as they are still highly lucrative anyway)
  • bisrael 12y ago
    It means the better your paid install rate (via advertising), then you'll have greater organic installs as a result (usually due to your app spamming enough unwise people on twitter and facebook). This is a natural result of paid advertising driving installs which the app store uses to rank games in their categories or create recommendations for their landing pages. Source: I worked at a f2p mobile company.
• Mithaldu 12y ago
  > It is fascinating how much the "micro-transaction" model on the iOS platform continues to bury everything else. It's not only iOS, it's exactly the same thing on Android. Some companies also tried it on Vita and PS3 with games like Rainbow Moon and Destiny of Spirits, but ultimately failed. Interestingly i've also been able to get people to completely drop free-to-pay games by getting them other hardware like PS Vita or Nintendo 3DS. So basically the only platforms where this happens are the two primary cellphone platforms.
  • Steko 12y ago
    Are we pretending PC isnt a platform?
    • Mithaldu 12y ago
      As far as i know free-to-pay stuff never worked even remotely as well as on cellphones, because on average pc gamers are more experienced and recognize more easily when a skill-based difficulty curve morphs into a payment-based difficulty curve. So i didn't think it worth mentioning.
      • Steko 12y ago
        League of Legends, TF2, Minecraft, Dota 2, Hearthstone, World of Tanks (etc) are all wildly successful F2P PC titles.
        • Mithaldu 12y ago
          How is minecraft free2play or free2pay? Also, afaik LOL, TF2 and Dota2 sell content as micro transactions, not consumable cheats. I don't know if the same is true for Hearthstone, and i know this is true for WoT, but its lunch is being eaten by War Thunder, which also only sells content.
          • Steko 12y ago
            I'd love to hear the substantial difference between Clash of Clans selling you gems that make your building finish faster and LOL selling you XP boosts?
• deleted 12y ago
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  • charlesdm 12y ago
    Supercell is based in Finland, which is an EU member state.
  • rinon 12y ago
    Supercell is in Finland, an EU country. From my understanding Supercell actually pays much higher than prevailing wages.
    • octaveguin 12y ago
      Software developers are generally paid quite a bit less in Finland than in the valley (e.g. 5k euros is quite high for a dev there) with a comparable cost of living. It's expensive in Helsinki and you won't find better paid developers anywhere in the world outside of the states. Not to say the above is correct - it's no sweat shop and the few outliers like supercell and rovio cannot possibly be there because they threw a lot of labor at it. They're quality game companies that hit the market at the right time and knew their audience enough to keep them.
      • Mikeb85 12y ago
        > Software developers are generally paid quite a bit less in Finland than in the valley Pretty sure Silicon Valley is an outlier when it comes to wages for software developers...
      • ptaipale 12y ago
        Just to add about the employment costs in Finland: 5000 € gross salary means about 6000 € total cost with payroll-related taxes and mandatory payments included, and about 3250 € net pay per month after taxes. It's certainly no sweat shop, but I would consider it modest cost if you account for the quality of the developers.
        • octaveguin 12y ago
• seanalltogether 12y ago
  I genuinely hate how apple has pushed microtransactions as the only viable route for app/game demos on their platform. I want to try out an app or game for free, and then decide if I want to purchase the full thing or not. This is how games always worked, and this is how Steam / PS3 / Xbox work. The infrastructure apple provides however forces demos to live in the same category as microtransaction games, and as a result, the best games either get lost in the sea of free stuff, or completely forgo a demo and just list in the paid section. Quality content doesn't stand a chance.
  • Steko 12y ago
    Apple hasn't pushed this. If anything they are pushing quality paid titles and trying to given them lots of visibility. The market however has spoken.
    • seanalltogether 12y ago
      > Apple hasn't pushed this. Of course they have, otherwise they would have long ago provided ways for paid apps to offer demos. There are lots of quality apps that would be rescued from the freemium category if Apple provided this as a distribution feature.
      • Steko 12y ago
        You can have the demo experience you're describing by unlocking the substantial content as a single IAP. It's not Hollywoods fault we got Transformers 3, it's the 50 million people who bought tickets to Transformers 2.
        • ThomPete 12y ago
          And the reason we got Transformers 3 is because the 50 million people will buy whats being made available for them and pushed. Keep in mind that via Spotify's subscription model it's only something like 20% of the what users listen to thats chart music. The rest is outside the normal popular genres. So it's a chicken and an egg discussion.
• Steko 12y ago
  Meta critic reviews don't hold much weight for me here, there's a knee jerk mentality in much of the professional press against all freemium games that's justified in many cases but certainly not across the board. I don't play Clash of Clans or Game of War but I do play Boom Beach from Supercell and I can tell you with zero spent in over a year its far and away better than any other mobile game I've seen and I've bought almost every 4.5 star or better Toucharcade game for iOS.
• blub 12y ago
  IAPs have destroyed the gaming market on iOS. Funnily enough there's a lot of money being thrown around and a few companies have become rich, but if you're looking for quality it's really really difficult to find something worthwile. I was hoping that iOS could become a premium platform for games, with titles like Broken sword, The orient express and others. There are a few gems here and there, but most of it is IAP-infested, pay to win. Even if I could in theory play those few good games, I've decided to give up on the iPad, as ultimately those companies won't be able to support themselves and I expect fewer and fewer quality games.
• mpeg 12y ago
  Spiderweb can't compete with the likes of Supercell because their games are niche. It's an old-school 2D party-based rpg, it looks dated and they recycle the engine year after year to release more games, as their loyal fanbase is more interested in the new storylines and quests than they are in gameplay updates. I love spiderweb games, but you could spend millions marketing them and they would still be niche, I don't think the discovery issue is the only challenge here; casual management games are the Call of Duty of mobile gaming.
  • Lawtonfogle 12y ago
    Not only are they niche, they are also pretty distinctively not skinner boxes with a nice display. Games at the top often are.
  • duskwuff 12y ago
    Recycling? More than you might think! The iOS version of Avernum 2 was a port of the desktop version released a few months earlier, which was a remake of the original version of Avernum 2 from around 2001, which was itself a remake of the 1996 "Exile II". The graphics and game engine changed a bit, but the storyline was essentially identical.