Freemium Anyone?

I think it's a cool space to be in if you can provide value for the players. I'm glad it's doing well for them!

BUT, I'm still a bit mad at them for cancelling Rolando 3 because they couldn't figure out how to make it freemium.

There's place for both types of applications IMO!

 

I think we're going to look into the Freemium model. People need a chance to try out things to see if they like it - provide a good product and people will buy stuff for it.

 

Their excuse makes absolutely no sense. There's plenty of ways they could have done it, the most glaringly obvious being to provide 5-10 levels free and sell the rest as level packs.

 

Freemium isn't so much "FREE+PAY" as it is "FREE+CONSUMABLES". Once someone has bought and completed Rolando 3, there's nothing more else to buy without creating a lot of level packs. Whereas with a proper freemium game you can extend gameplay, provide personalisation and make a game that people can continue to play.

That's why it was cancelled, because the game has an "end".

 

I don't see how level packs don't qualify as "extending gameplay and making a game that people can continue to play". If personalization is the issue, just replace "level packs" in my last post with "level editor".

 

The difference is that level packs extend gameplay once for each pack purchased. The player can then play them as much as they want for as long as they want.

With consumables you can continue to derive revenue from players over and over again, as long as they continue to play.

I think you can make money both ways, but the consumables seems like it has a higher average rate of return, especially because of hardcore players.

 

But it's the same even if you're selling skins/themes/other customizing features. Take minigore (not a freemium game, but uses a similar DLC model), for example, players can purchase extra characters if they like, but they can then just as easily decide to just play the game with the ones they already have and never buy any more. Same with We Rule.

 

More profitable in the long run due to the more hardcore gamers that keep coming back to it, and also due to those who want to get far in the game quickly, for whatever reason.

Morally, it's fine as long as you don't need to buy the optional items. As long as the items remain optional and simply exist to enhance the Player's gameplay experience, then the game remains F2P.

 

It is not the same at all. Skins, themes, etc. only need to be purchased ONCE and can then be used as much as the player wants.

Consumable items get purchased multiple times. Let's say you have a farming game and you can buy seeds. Clearly there is a difference between the following two scenarios:

1. You buy carrot seeds once and can then use them forever to plant as many carrots as you like.
2. You have to buy new seeds every time you want to plant more carrots.

Also, if you want to have the carrots grow faster instead of waiting, you can buy fertilizer to speed the growth.

People are impatient, and are willing to pay money for things like that.

Flower Garden is an example of the fertilizer concept, and it is doing quite well for the developer (supporting him as a full time developer).

 

I'm honestly not seeing much of a difference. With the seeds, you buy a new batch of seeds every time you decide you're not content with what you already have and want to get some more carrots; with level packs, you buy a new pack every time you decide you're not content with what you already have and want to play some new levels.

 

The difference is the amount of content. It would take a whole lot more effort to produce a level than it is to produce a variety of seeds.

A single player might buy a bundle of 10 carrot seeds for .99 several times. On the other hand, there's absolutely no chance that he will purchase the same levels, or a level editor, multiple times. You might think that the answer is charge a bit more for a level since there's more content there, but given the sort of economy present in the app store, a single large price tag has less appeal than several small ones.

Your carrot seed buyer is thinking "I'll just buy this sack of seeds once, and it'll help me reach my goals in game." However, if he buys the sack and barely fails to reach his goal, or has advanced far enough in the game to set a loftier goal, he's motivated to make the purchase again. So, from a developer's POV, selling consumable carrot seeds is much more efficient than selling non-consumable levels.

 

Imo, there are 2 types of freemium:

Full Freemium: Where you can still PLAY the game without the DLC, but the DLC improves the game (Farmville, We Rule, Godfinger, Eliminate, Touch Pets: Dogs, etc.)

Partial Freemium: Where the game is free for the first few levels then app purchases for the next sections (Rolando 2 for example)

 

Then there's 2 possible solutions. Either developers need to stop being afraid to set higher price tags - GTA and Chaos Rings sold well, despite the price - or they could go for the level editor model and charge player 99c to share X number of levels (which would also cover the bandwidth and server costs, making that a non-issue). They could even try a more inventive pricing system, where the level editor and submitting levels is free, and the downloaders cover the bandwidth costs by paying for download credits which they can use to browse and download levels other people have submitted.

The level editor route would solve both the "amount of content" issue RovolvingDoor brought up, as well as the "player shouldn't NEED to buy the DLC" point Theta-Omega made earlier with respect to level packs.

 

The difference is the potential money the developer can make.

With level packs the amount of money the developer can earn per user is the total cost of all the DLC + the game.

With consumable DLC the developer can make as much money off each user as they are willing to spend, because they can sell each user individual DLC again and again.

 

It's not a matter of how much they can potentially spend, it's a matter of how much they're likely to spend. In both cases, you're going to get as much from each customer as they're willing to spend; if you as the developer are not meeting demand (i.e. by not offering enough DLC levels or ways for people to spend their DLC "credits") , that's a whole different matter.