Something that I don't think is helping in general is the vast number of "copy-cat" games. There will be a game that sees a major spike in popularity because the idea is fairly fresh. Then, in a rush to profit while the idea is still in its prime, 50 other apps come out that are essentially the same with only aesthetic differences and nothing new to offer to the genre. It's gotten to the point now that there are so many games in the App Store that slogging through it trying to find good ones can be a chore.
That's pretty much the same attitude I'm taking and hoping it's true. I have to believe that there are a lot of people out there who would rather spend $1-5 and just enjoy the game instead of being hassled to 'pay up!' at every turn. Perhaps I'm just an old man yelling at a cloud though... :/
This has also been my only pricing/revenue model I've considered so far, keeping it old school. But sadly, for me at least, it isn't really working - so much so that I am now very serious considering turning to the freemium model and giving it a try, maybe even implementing consumerable IAPs rather just simply a single non-consumerable IAP to unlock the full game. I prefer to keep things simple and avoid IAPs - not least to simplify the coding! - but I feel i need to try something different for my next app. Cheers,
I'm just curious... has anyone heard of, experienced, or seen any small indies experiencing any more success in the freemium realm than they have with paid games? To be honest, I've heard more stories and seen more freemium flops from even well known indies than I have paid ones. Conversely, I've also seen MANY more indie success stories in the paid realm than I have freemium. Again - yes - freemium is where a large portion of the money is being made at the top, usually for a specific type of game, but I have yet to see anything that suggests freemium works for middle of the road or struggling indie, or for more hardcore games. From our own experience, all of our paid games make way more than our free versions or past free games. Again, I'm just wondering if there really is any evidence at all to support any sort of claim that freemium is the way to go for anyone other than the very top dogs.
It depends on how you use those labels. We saw how many people buy our expansion iap's in Great Big War Game and did some easy math expecting to earn more money giving the base game away gratis. Didn't hold up at all, although we didn't make much effort to publicise the freeness. Our next game is "pay what you want", which is like freemium only more honest and with no timers, paywalls, etc that people hate. I'll let you know how that goes. Or maybe not as we're staking our future on it as our war games range don't pay the bills now regardless. I think if you're going to go free, with either freemium or just a trial unlock, you need to work the market and get tons of people aware they can try it for free. More than you get from just the odd random website review.
I'll be very interested to see how it pans out. I really do hope Combat Monsters does well for you guys - watched the trailer the other day and it looks great! As far as reaching an audience though, that's what I'm worried about with the free market, personally... I look at largely publicized, "core" games like Zynga's Solstice Arena, or the recently released The Drowning by Mobage (which had a ton of buzz), both not really do that well at all. RAD Soldiers is another quality core game that didn't look like it did as well as it should've (all 3 of those games currently are doing worse than Great Big War game - some significantly so - according to the grossing charts). Those of course are just 3 examples, but its a trend I've been paying attention to for a while now. In fact, I can't really remember an original "core" game succeed in the freemium market at all - indie or not - at least not recently (not saying there aren't any, just having a hard time remembering any)! I guess I'm just saying if some of these huge companies with much more resources than us indies - who arguably helped pioneer the F2P system - are releasing core games that are getting heavily featured, have a ton of exposure, and still aren't doing great as freemium... it just makes me nervous, that's all And that's not even taking into account competing with games that are paying for installs, which seems quite commonplace in the free charts. I'm not saying one way is better or worse, and in the end you never know... maybe those games just weren't good enough to capture their audience. I'm just saying when it comes to original IP, core games, I just haven't seen many examples of success in the free market. At the very least they're rare, and even rarer from an indie developer.
All I really have to offer on this is that those at the top of freemium are making way more than those at the top of premium. This might easier stretch down to the amount of money the likes of us need to exist is what I'm hoping, but it's really just hope. Our problem is that our game design requires this type of pay model from the beginning. CCG's have always been "freemium" not just before freemium kicked off wide scale, but before even iPhones were a thing. M:TGO for instance. There's no backing away from that so we have to fully commit to it, in the face of all the negative press generally surrounding the term which I do think is misrepresentative.
The market as a whole is growing bigger and will not likely to stop in near future. But I understand why the OP put out this question. The problem is that there are too many apps and games flooding the market. People don't need so-so apps/games anymore. Developers need to provide higher and higher quality and a lot of money for marketing. That will soon exceed the capabilities most indie developers. So for many of us indie developers, I think it will become harder and harder to get money. So as a trend, "the winner takes it all" will become more true. Only big / rich / extremely good / lucky developers will get more and more money. Others will have few options: join big companies or quit the game.
I still think theres a huge marketplace for indies. The iOS scene reminds me of the early 80's when home computers arrived, there were a lot of 'bedroom coders' creating games, selling them to larger companies or even releasing them themselves and making a lot of money Granted the app store is saturated with so many games but theres such a wide wide range of games out there its great. With so many games there are so many clones/poor games as well but with youtube/iOS sites if you do your homework you can ignore the rubbish out there.
@psj3809: That have been correct until now, but I think in the future when the iOS market get matured, it will eventually be a playground for big / rich / extremely good / lucky guys only. That's what happened for the PC game market, right?
No. There is a vibrant and buoyant market for smaller indie studios and independent developers on PC.
Yeah sorry, don't mean to be discouraging! Definitely not saying freemium can't be successful, and you're right about CCGs, for sure. Again, best of luck! Actually I think it could be argued that indies are making a resurgence across all platforms, including PC, thanks to digital distribution platforms like Steam, xbox live, etc.
I like alot of Indie Games, like recently Whirl the Squirrel, Lums, and Baby Nom Nom are all great inexpensive games on ios. I'm liking games like this way more than many of those freemium published ones. I hope Indies have more of a role in the future market.
Don't get me wrong. I did NOT mean that there will be no place for indie developers. (Just a side note, I've quit my daytime job in a big company recently to go indie myself) What I mean is that when the market get more matured and more stable, there will only be some significant players: Big / Rich / Extremely Good / Lucky guys Big / Rich: Giant companies like EA, Gameloft, Disney, DeNA, GREE, etc. Extremely Good: TeamMeat (Super Meat Boy), 2Dboy (World of Goo), Zepto lab (Cut the Rope), etc. (PikPok, you're also in this category) Lucky: something like Gangnam Style Other so-so indies like the ones who are making a few hundred - a few thousand dollars per month now will likely get much less or nothing in the future if they don't get lucky or advance themselves to the "Extremely good" category
For indies the best model is paid. The only reason why most indies fail with paid is that they are releasing sub-standard stuff, a game that is already on the app store, or selling at 99c (you need extreme bulk sales to live off 99c)... The indies that succeed in the paid model are the ones that go for a specialist game product. Ideally something that most devs would find hard to implement, spend a proper dev cycle to produce something of worth and sell at a reasonable price. So your core potential audience is a 100,000 people and you sell at $3.99... so if you hit that audience you are into profit. If your team is pretty experienced you can more or less get a game made for $100,000 that would actually be worth the selling price. It's really simple math... To make a good quality game and sell for 99c is a road to failure. The make a poor quality game and sell for 99c is failure as well. Some lucky devs manage to get lucky with a golden app and make millions on the 99c price but you as devs should not gamble with a business. For indies the freemium market should be avoided at all costs unless you have $ for PR and Marketing. To get noticed in that space costs lots of cash! To get into this loop of success is: Marketing/PR drives sales, Profit investment drives Marketing/PR. The reason is this market can be fixed in your favour will lots of cash... and example is chart boosting - getting a company to make thousands of downloads of your app to get it into good chart positions. So if you want to be a successful indie you need to pick a specialist market that will have a core audience, spend some real dev time and money to make the best of it's kind, and sell the app so you make a profit from your core audience estimate. A really good example of this model in use is what True Axis have done with Jet Car Stunts and True Skate, with whom I've been involved with in some form or shape in the last 4 years. There is also room for innovation on the app store - different selling models that no one has even gone down yet. I'm actually quite shocked about this but I'll be keeping that information to myself
Agreed. Digital distribution (just like for other industries) has largely leveled the playing field for developers. Self-publishing before Steam, App Stores, etc, was almost impossible without a third-party publisher/distributer (sound familiar book industry?). Unfortunately, marketing and word of mouth, is easier when you have more resources at your disposal. Those with the biggest bullhorn are going to get their content in front of the most people--regardless of how good or bad that content is. There are certainly exceptions to this, but those exceptions have required a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and luck to get their products to the top.
Lot of good and interesting points here. I would slightly disagree that the math is simple. I think applying more rigor to the math could alleviate some of the frustration. If you're starting out you really need to understand the time-value of money. How much time do you have and how much is it worth? If you have a full time job and no outside commitments that number is going to be lower than someone with a family to support. This is critical to understand because if you don't have a good sense of what your time is worth, then you'll never know what your break-even point is. If you don't know your break-even point then you don't know when or how your game/product will be successful (in this particular case, success=profit). 99 cents might be the right number to price the game and it might not be. What your time is worth, and how big your market is (how many people play genre X), all contribute to the pricing strategy. Just because the mobile market at large has an appetite for free/low-price games does not mean that that is how the market will remain long term. I also concur that mobile development requires a bit of a different business model. I think liberal application of lean development works here as well. There's a delicate balance in determining how much of a gaming experience you can deliver and at what cost. At the end of the day, obviously that experience needs to feel complete. But that doesn't mean it must be finished. That's where I see IAP being a great mechanism. Level packs, episodic content, etc are all ways to extend the life of the game (and brand) while providing revenue for the developer. There are obviously abandonment rates to contend with but will save that for another thread.
