Seriously, what kind of spoiled little brat goes out of his way to leave a furious 1 star review of something he got for free? Has anybody else noticed the trend where the reviews seem to get worse the less you charge? A $2 app seems to get fair reviews, once it goes to 99c, people seem less satisfied, then when it's free, they think we owe them something? All I can think is that it's little kids with their iPod Touch 2G who don't have credit cards to buy the apps with... Have you guys had any frustrating experiences with negative reviews on a freebie?
It's because if someone sees a game for $2 they won't impulsively download it without liking the genre, so you get people who actually like the genre and screenshots downloading your game. Then when it goes free, people download the game whether or not they like the genre or screenshots, and yeah you get the immature kids and whatnot too.
there are preconceived notions that the higher the price, the higher the quality and the value is more. its a catch 22 it seems more exclusive free apps are easier to market and reach a bigger audience but it doesnt matter what price point, there will always be haters
Haters guna hate dude! Nothing you can do about it unfortunately... I actually had a string of 1 stars for my latest game, got me really down. But then the users fought back and I got a string of 5's. One even flammed the hater with a whole paragraph (see below)!! One thing that I think helped me was a hint on the loading screen to rate the game (via a button in the options menu) if ppl liked it. The latest update has had 10 times as many ratings since this was added. Hater Lover
I think another important factor is that the more someone pays for a game, the more invested they are, and will spend more time giving it a chance. Its a bit like downloading hundreds of emulator roms (not that any of us have or would), they suddenly seem less valuable, and those games you used to love get about 5 seconds of play. To the kids downloading a slew of free apps every week, in their eyes, WE'VE probably wasted their time if they don't like it after a few seconds of playing. At least apple fixed one important thing, you no longer get prompted to rate an app when you delete it. Before this was changed free apps would get hundreds more one star ratings. Nick
man.. I don't even care about impressing the cheapskates anymore. If I can get a big chunk of them to download the app (and shoot my download counts up) then honestly that is really all they are good for, because that volume alone can have measurable effect (chart visibility). If your app is any kind of good, then the increased potential is there that people who actually do like it will see it, and thus increase the odds that you might get some positive reviews/sales of IAP/word of mouth/whatever. As for the actual negative reviews, things are different now since "rate on delete" has been gone for awhile. It was disheartening since so many people would be prompted to give low reviews out of spite, now they really have to go out of their way to do it and that drives the percentage of it actually happening way down. Sure you will still get more hates then loves, typically, but honestly a good bit of that is going to be on you for not properly figuring out how to get a solid amount of people to positively rate your game. In general, statistically speaking, people will not care if they are happy vs if they are angry, look at any typical app if you don't believe me on this. The real issue here is that reviews are just generally going to be useless unless you can get substantial volume of them up there somehow (hundreds? thousands?), bad or good honestly. Make a horrible app that is so bad that "people HAVE to see why it is so bad" and if they are so driven to vent on it, it still gets visibility and in a way you have still "won" somehow (and again, it's up to you to be creative enough to use this volume of eyeballs to your advantage and monetize it in some manner). long story short? disregard the cheapskates. concentrate on figuring out how to get some positive buzz for your app, it's not easy but not impossible either. The real issue is when there is no buzz at all/flatline.
