Watch an Ad to save progress (99 Rockets)!

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by Itatake, Nov 26, 2015.

  1. Itatake

    Itatake Well-Known Member

    Mar 7, 2012
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    Sweden, Göteborg
    Today is a great day! We (Itatake) launch our new iOS game 99 Rockets! I am very curious to hear what you think of the game itself and what you think of our business model (Watch a Video Ad to Save Progress)? Please tell me what you think, good or bad idea? To many or few Ads? Do you have any good suggestions on Video Ad platforms (we are using Adcolony)?

    https://itunes.apple.com/app/99-rockets/id922871241?mt=8

    [​IMG]

    Regards
    Mattias
     
  2. Destined

    Destined Well-Known Member

    Aug 11, 2013
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    Personally I don't think that is great. Australia there are plenty of places you phone won't have connection to the internet and the ad would fail.

    I think powerups for watching ads is a better model.
     
  3. Tosty

    Tosty Well-Known Member

    Oct 18, 2014
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    Just looked through the featured games list and looks like yours made it this week. Well done.
     
  4. antony.thai

    antony.thai Well-Known Member

    I have no idea about it, but if it's me, I will click the ads to save my progress, no reason for me to refuse saving my time. In my opinion, your game is very polish (I personally like it a lot) I will even paid for the game on my iphone. Congratulations!
     
  5. Itatake

    Itatake Well-Known Member

    Mar 7, 2012
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    Sweden, Göteborg
    We have no power ups yet, but yes, connecting them to Ads is good.
     
  6. Itatake

    Itatake Well-Known Member

    Mar 7, 2012
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    Sweden, Göteborg
    Thank you very much Antony :)

    If you made the In App Purchase this should please you:

    99 Rockets Updated!
    Now ALL Ads will be removed if you make/made the In App Purchase (Remove Ads)! The review bug is also fixed, meaning you can now review the game through the App :)
     
  7. Option4Studios

    Option4Studios Active Member

    Jan 1, 2014
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    Well done in getting featured!

    I had a quick go and as Antony said, it's a well polished game. It definitely intrigued me the idea of watching a video to save progress.
     
  8. Grumps

    Grumps Well-Known Member
    Patreon Indie

    Feb 2, 2009
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    First off, I just checked out the game. It's an amazing game. Seem like a very risky move there with the watch ads to save progress. One of the easiest way to hate any game with levels is the need to restart from the beginning when you lose a level. Monetizing a core feature will easily be break any good game. Imagine me losing every alternate level. Do I save after every level? (the levels are short but I hate playing it over and over again).

    Personally, keep rewarded ads for things that would incentivize users, bonus something. Don't take away the core and force them to eat those ads. Rewarded ads are worst than normal ads because #1, they pay almost the same and #2, you can't skip them. At this rate I'm gonna spend more time watching ads than actually playing your game.

    And on AdColony, they got good ads quality. But on the downside you can't skip their video ads even if its non-rewarded (it's very annoying). In another word, 30 seconds per video? I didn't realize that until I have tons of pissed off customers complaining about ads that are too long.

    Hope you will reconsider on both. I guess you noticed that from your 2 star reviews on the last version. Overall it's a good game, monetize carefully, don't focus on earning money. Focus on how your users will enjoy the game and the money will follow after.
     
  9. Itatake

    Itatake Well-Known Member

    Mar 7, 2012
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    Thanks for your input ”Grumps” / Next Studio ☺ We had a pair of critical bugs at the first launch unfortunately. The whole week we where featured globally we CHEERED and at the same time CRIED and wanted Apple to upload a fix as soon as possible. Those bugs rendered bad reviews not the ”Watch an Ad to Save Progress” feature. What we have seen is that people do not read text and our ”Watch an Ad to Save Progress” icon was not helping. A lot of people never saw the Save Progress feature and some of them did not understand that they triggered an Ad to Save progress. In our latest update we fixed that. The icon is a movie icon and makes it much clearer that ”if I tap on the button I will see a video”. We have also fewer Ads overall. AdColony got good quality as you say but it is really frustrating that their ads are too long. We are looking at other Ad-networks to remedy that. After we fixed the bugs people rate us high, and after the new update they are even happier. The tricky thing is that we are quite invisible now that we no longer are featured. And why in the … have not Touch Arcade made a review of 99 Rockets yet ;) ? We will release the game on Android in January hoping people on both sides will discover the game.

    Mattias
    Itatake
     

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