There is another way to look at your business model and why privacy policies are important. Who is your customer that you can monetize and what is your customer acquisition costs? If the customer is the app developer for one app, any self-respecting VC will throw up at a $5000 CAC even for initial seeding and that is not even counting sunk costs in the business. Such a business will simply not scale. The customer that can be monetized (through brands where you make the money in this) is the end-user that registers their e-mail with you. If you get 10,000 end-users registering with you for an app funded by you, then your CAC is $0.50 which is not too bad (ignoring sunk money). But that means those customers must be further monetizable, not disappear with one e-mail sent (in which case you have not acquired the customer at all). If monetized for one award transaction only it might give you just a few cents for spending $0.50. So the business model has to be further monetization and/or a pull from the developers themselves without being rewarded after this seed period. That might happen if the rewards themselves provide value to the app and hence to the developer. This would mean zero CAC other than your infrastructure for hosting the service, BD ro get brands and continued development amortized. I suspect you (or your VCs) are counting on the latter with former as the backup plan at the minimum. I have no reason to believe you will necessarily succeed/fail in the latter and so wish you good luck in your plan. But you will only be as good as the rewards you have at the moment at any point in time, so you have to keep that pipe filled with sufficient goodies all the time. Maintaining that inventory is hard over a longer period of time especially if the brands providing the reward cannot get followup access to the user (via e-mail) but if you can maintain that without sharing the e-mails all the power to you. Nevertheless, it would be unwise to get developers under the assumption (and the corresponding privacy policy) that the e-mail addresses will not be further shared/monetized. It will likely cause problems later for you or for the developer or both if you are forced to change it. My bet is that you will be forced to monetize the e-mail addresses in the near future. No amount of assurances now will prevent that unless it is explicit in the contract terms with the developer. But your lawyers (and VCs) will never allow you to provide such a guarantee. Hence the pickle.
As with all "monetization" models, I am primarily concerned about the user experience. With so many games to choose from, it's really important to keep and delight the users that come through your door. If it feels clunky, scammy, or just plain annoying to get these rewards or ads, it will ruin our players' experience and thus, our long-term monetization model. (This is primarily why Facebook and other such platforms decided to not have advertising in your face initially. So they could build an audience first.) Is there any evidence this type of "real-world" reward system improves the gamer's experience or won't at least drive people away? And will it disrupt IAP for the developer? How will this sit alongside a freemium model? If someone is playing the game JUST to get real-world rewards...they don't seem like the people who would also pay for virtual goods. Perhaps those are different types of players that would never pay for IAP in the first place? Do you have any data on this? And how do these rewards monetize in comparison to traditional ads or IAP?
David, our number one focus is user experience. We care about the devs we work with and don't want to ruin the user experience of the game. We do it in a number of ways: - The reward will show up only at breaks in the game, so it doesn't use up valuable screen real estate during game play. - The pop ups are only up for 10 seconds, so it gives the user enough time to see it, but doesn't stay there to bother him/her. - The user enters their e-mail inside the app, so they don't exit your game. And it depends on how IAP are used in your game. I checked out Cannon Cat, and it seems you can improve the character with IAP. In that example, the player would be able to receive rewards based on their position on the leader board, as well as receive better rewards the better they do, based on how your achievements are weighted. Based on that, it should increase your IAP. We don't find that people play a game strictly for real rewards, but as a bonus. It's just another reason for them to play your game. EDIT: Also, check your private messages, just sent you one.
No, they pay 20 developers they select. Presumably, they will be happy if you include it without getting paid. kunaalkiip who has been posting for them here sent me a PM 10 days ago saying that he would get back (after SXSW) on the privacy policy issues I raised above and its consistency with Apple's default privacy policy for apps since user e-mail addresses are collected within the app by a third-party. I recommend waiting for that clarification before considering this.
The money isn't free. Just think of it as getting money from a vc. It's targeted to people who have popular games and don't have money to promote it like college students creating apps. The clauses would not cause problems if things don't go wrong. The problem is that vc companies are always sold to get multiples of the investment back and no one knows what the new company will do. The clause could put the developer liable for any unfavorable actions by someone else. Also,look at this from an advertiser perspective. They are look for a return on investment. This means that they want to get back the product cost plus marketing cost that the net customer lifetime value is more than the investment. More money spent on something else means less disposable income spent via Iap. Kiip gives very specific rewards of mainly junk food as it is a highly profitable and competitive industry. The selling point of kiip is to target and reach the newer generation of children in the electronics era and condition them to favor one brand over another and become life long customers. Most people don't want it as healthy eating is the new fad and this doesn't help the obesity problem in the US. When people don't want something presented that is considered spam or junk which i assume is 75-80 percent of popups (they have an average redemption rate of 1-3 percent from pr release and you only get paid for redemptions). Is this a potentially profitable industry. Yes it is. Is it the best way of approaching the rewards concept? Not sure but the founder of the company sold to apple and rebranded iAd started something similar except users collect points to redemn for what they want or need instead of having something unwanted pushed in front of them. They have opt outs from the program and automatic opt outs after a few non responses to not piss anyone off especially if it is a paid game.
Just wanted to clarify - they're looking for COMPLETED projects right? Not games that are still early in development?
Anybody hear back from this yet? The last email they sent out said they'd be contacting people the first half of June. The first half of June is officially here but no word as far as I can tell.
It looks like a scam to me by the look of the first post I don't know why you guys are putting so much energy into that thread...
