There are getting to be quite a few free to play games on the appstore. Do you think free to play will start to dominate the app store in the future? Are you ok with it?
Yeah, free with iap is the current trend, and I bet you have read the news on this that the profit of freemium has surpassed premium to play.
Yeah I know. I said it hasn't dominated premium yet because most games are still premium. I'm a little scared that soon we will have to pay 3$ for the next level in a game.
Free to play is the working model right now because it allows apps to be visible in a crowded market. You get 10x more download with a free to play app, and that's what you need to start word of mouth and so on. Right now, unless you are Gameloft or some well-known brand, it's pretty tough to be ranked with a premium app. But as soon as everyone will go freemium, it will be the same mess. So my belief is that free to play is going to somehow start to not work again, in a year or two. One game changer that might happen is that some sort of third party comes into the battle and creates the perfect app-search engine for the appstore. Something like what Google is to the web, but for the apps. Then as a developper you'll start to target smaller communities. Right a lot of devs try to please "all players on smartphones" and do million selling premium/freemium titles. I'll be happy when we start to actually aim for smaller communities and still be able to earn a living with that.
I myself don't like freemium models and IAP. I seldom support games with IAP. There are some games which effectively use IAP to add extensions to an already complete game. Others use IAP to give players "cheats" to aid with their gaming experience and not affecting the regular players much. There are others who release and incomplete game and expect people to shell out everytime a mini episode comes out. The freemium model for social games, made into mainstream through facebook games, basically just lets you buy credits to save time. One thing I have not seen yet is the MMORPG style of freemium the "item mall" type of business model, then again that MMO department of iOS is a bit lacking. As a consumer, I generally shy away from freemium models and try to support premium games. So if you like freemium titles then you should support them by downloading and buying the IAP. If you are like me then try to stay away not to support the business model.
Hah...it's just the business model and it's reasonable. But whether I will support a game or not irrespective of its business model depends on its quality. If I like the game, I will support it anyway.
i dont pick up freemium games anymore, im fed up with getting charge after charge just to play a game... i just want to buy a game, then play it without having to worry about paying again later ... you know, like the good ole days
As a developer I feel intensely pressured to investigate free-to-play. I feel that a smaller dev can put out almost nothing that the masses would care for anymore, unless it has some high production value. But in my own experience when I put out free (with some catch) I am able to get a relatively strong number of downloads. Otherwise, <5 downloads a day (at best) is a seriously losing proposition. I do want to try something different though, I still think it is possible to make "free to play" where the player can still get the full experience without having to pay up, yet still there are definite ways for the developer to monetize. It's still early and there's got to be a happy medium somewhere.
IAP is a no no to me, for BFG titles i only purchase for their full price , perhaps i have few bad experience with IAP charging me for the second time when i had purchased the IAP before. So premium is always the choice for me
There is a sweet spot that I believe that has yet to be hit. I think Tiny Tower is a good direction however its iap adaption rate is very low (around 2.3%) Even with our paid app we see iap between 30-40% of daily downloads on average days. We are also intrigued by a free to play system that does'nt require the person to buy iaps to get enjoy the game, but maybe enhance it. And while we did have great success with LW, we only ever broke the top 50 overall for a week or so when we were paid. When we did a free promotion we hit the top 10 in a day. There is a sweet spot that I believe
I find it's hard to begin with a premium. So I changed the price of my game from 0.99 to free. Then, the rank increased quickly to Top Free 100. But my game includes iap by which I can make a living. If your game is good, it's ok to let people try it when it comes out at the very beginning regardless of its profit.
Freemium is seeing such popularity right now because there's an enormous gap in information between developers and consumers on the App Store. It's created one of the most egregious cases of adverse selection I've seen. As freemium gains in popularity, the shovelware that gets released at $0.99 will start to disappear since it will no longer be a winning proposition (thankfully we seem to already be getting to that point) and premium will again signal to the consumer that a game has value and is worth downloading. I've been wanting to write on the economics of the App Store since it exemplifies a ton of lesser known economic principles. If there's any interest in that, maybe I'll go through with it.
Where are you getting that 2.3% number? I could have swore I saw them saying they were seeing twice the average at around 6%? Either way, the sense of scale on this is just insane. When you've got 4 million people playing your game, even 2.3% of them giving you money amounts to an insane amount of cash.
