freemium or store?

depends on game, marketing budget etc.

 

Personally I think the store model, just pay some money get a game, is the nicest model for developers and customers. It's simple and it makes it all about the game rather than how can I suck money out of you as you play, or get you to click on an advert.

Having said that, if you do wish to use your game making skills to make some extra money, rather than just making games for the love of making games, you do have to put more focus on the money channels. And I have seen over time that the amount people are willing to pay for games has dropped. In the sense that now there is such high expectation for a $1 game, and the competition for cloners has become very intense. Basically if you do make a simple game for $1 and it is a success (think "threes") you can expect 10 clones to appear within a week, all of which are free. Not to say that you can't be successful selling a game, just that the level of development quality and graphics has been pushed up very high, which inturn means the skills, knowledge and time needed is higher, and so the risk is much more. From a consumer's point of view this is good (in the short term), because it means they are getting much better games for a $1 purchase.

Due to this, many games now go down the free path, making their money from designing highly addictive games, which they can stunt your growth in unless you pay something. This does offer a fun experience to the gamer, but also a layer of frustration because they can see how their game could be more fun if the only paid a bit. It is a business model of creating artificial problems and inconveniences so you can charge to solve them.
For example, it could be thought of as someone giving you a car for free, but it has a caped max speed of say 20 mph, then charging you to remove that cap. This creates a frustration in the person who received the free car, because it is a problem that has been deliberately created. But the person did still get a free car, so it is not all bad. The balance with this model is in the customers perceived value of what they get for free, out weighing the frustration caused from an artificial problem being created. This will differ from person to person, with some people not even seeing the problem as artificial at all but actually a real problem. I.e. Why are hearts required to play a level in candy crush? Answer in their mind: Because obviously you need to put something in to start playing a level.
I say this because it can be hard as a developer to think in the way that others perceive and use technology, for us we see everything as being created by deliberate actions of the person that made it, but for others its almost like games just appear, and the problems in them are just part of how it has to be. So turning this around, and using the free car again: Lets say you got the free car, that only goes 20 mph but you are not aware that it has been speed capped, you now think wow I got a free car. You might think it goes a bit slow after using it, but your focus is still on the free car. Then if I say, I can make your car go at a normal speed for only a small fee and it will only take me a matter of moments to add the fix, you would think wow that is a really good deal, and probably accept it, feeling happy that you got such a good deal. The same is true with IAP.

So after saying all this, I don't see that the model of providing a free game with limited growth actually upsets many people. It only really annoys those that are knowledgeable enough to see that the growth has be deliberately limited, generally kids are less able to see this. If you think about this in business terms, using the pain of a problem. The original pain, in the "buying a game model", is just boredom and wanting to do something fun. The artificially created pain, from the freemium model, is much more controlled and is basically to continue getting the same enjoyment they were getting. So the artificial pain is stronger, and has only one solution, which means that the price point is higher. So you can charge more for IAP than you can for just selling your game. Obviously the artificial pain is controlled by how addictive and enjoyable your game is, which will differ from person to person. Whether this model is ethical or not is a whole different debate.

Anyway, if you want to make money I would go with the free model. If you just love making games, then sell it and don't worry about disrupting game play.

 

Unless you expect your free game to get millions of downloads, it probably won't be very profitable. You need to hit a certain critical mass, in order to see any real profit. Keep in mind that less than 1% of players are actually paying for anything.

In other words, the market may be trending towards f2p on the top grossing charts, but don't assume that it'll work for the long-tail of the app store. "Free" is NOT a silver bullet. It takes a ton of skill (and a lot of luck) to do f2p properly.

 

the flip side is going free ensure downloads.

I would rather have thousands of downloads and make little then make a couple of hundred and have 100 downloads. Just a few hours pay. I always want to give my chance of lots of downloads because it is rewarding to know people are playing.

There are loads of worries with making money from a game, but mostly you will spend too much time worrying about that when your game isn't good enough to make much from. If your game is good enough then whatever method you choose will probably end up being profitable.

 

Not necessarily. This is a good piece on the difficulties that Punch Quest had (f2p runner from the guys who did Wayward Souls)

http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/31/3577838/punch-quest-iphone-game-struggle

But again, yeah, if the goal is just to have people see your game, then sure -- f2p will fare better.

 

It their eyes it was a failue but 10K for 600K downloads probably is reasonable although you would like it to be 2-4 times that. There question is if they went premium would 13 or 14K people of downloaded. The answer probably not without significant advertising which then means you need way more thank 13 - 14K downloading it.

The math of indies and mobile games rarely comes out well unless you have a lot of downloads.

 

After having some games on Google Play it seems to me that the best way to make money nowadays is to make games and sell them to sponsors.

 

I'm considering to make my games and sell them instead of submitting them applications stores lottery.

You sell the rights of the game to someone that will pay you some amount of money. You may ask as much as you can, but the offers will be heavily dependent of the quality of your game.

you can register on FGL and offer your games.

FGL acts as an intermediate. Sponsors pay to FGL. Once the game is delivered to sponsor, FGL pays you. So there is no risk neither to sponsors nor to developers.

Notice: You sell binaries. Not source code.