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In-app purchases and other "casual game" business models
Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
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is that you can make the player choose between "pay us" or "find us new players"

What do you mean by that? It's against Facebook's ToS to "incentivize" invitations. (Unless you just mean you get rewards for friends signing up regardless of the method.)

OnlineCop
Member #7,919
October 2006
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At my game studio, all our games are freemium models. They are implemented pathetically, but since the games are targeted at young children whose accidental clicks generate our revenue, The Boss has kept the same model in place.

There have been a few freemium games (Jetpack Joyride, Icecream Jump) with IAP models that changed only aesthetics. They were completely free to play as much as you want, and would only alter visual effects: paying and non-paying players would get the same gameplay experience. Some other ones, like Bubble Mania or CSR Racing, use an energy system that limits how much you can play per day. Once you run out of energy (bubbles, gas, etc.), you had to put it down for several hours so your energy regenerated, or IAP the energy to continue. So same game for paying and non-paying, but paying players got to play longer.

Blockheads, for iOS, was a time sync. Earlier versions would pause what you were doing, so leaving and returning to the game hours later was no different than just continue playing and waiting out whatever task you were doing. Recent changes to the game now let you "do stuff" offline, but its biggest IAPs came from speed-ups. If you had the time and patience to wait, it's 100% free. If not... $$ cha-ching $$.

All these games listed have grossed in the millions for their IAPs. They are probably a small handful of games that have done IAPs "right" -- where players want to pay for IAPs to enhance their games.

That being said, the IAP model beats those annoying ads in my book. And as I've only seen the subscription model work for either very large games (World of Warcraft) or a very small handful of indie games (AnimalJam), I would think that it would be incredibly difficult to pull off correctly.

What is the scale of your game? What is your target demographic?

Jonatan Hedborg
Member #4,886
July 2004
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Matthew: For example; when you run out of lives, you can either wait, pay or ask a friend for help. Stuff like that.

Trent Gamblin
Member #261
April 2000
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StevenVI said:

I don't know their rules, but would it work to have no immediately purchasable "full" version of the game, but rather only have it available via in-app purchase to enable it? Then you have a popup saying "Click here to buy the remaining quests now!"

Yes, you're allowed to do that as long as you don't call it "Lite" (which is the word I was looking for instead of Demo.)

pkrcel
Member #14,001
February 2012

Jonatan: Candy Crush Saga is neat-o! ...the quality level is quite high even thou gameplay gets a little repetitive after a while....anyway props for having released the Android version, now the timed levels are actually fun ;D

Me and my wife are quite high level and haven't paid a buck, for example, but the one and only obnoxious thing in the game IAP model is the pay-not-to-wait when you finish a quest and have to get three tickets from friends (or pay less than 1$).

I understand what marketing says...(I do work in sales actually :P ) but MEH!

Your game is one of the examples in which I fully understand IAPs, and even w/o buying anythimg the game is fun.

It is unlikely that Google shares your distaste for capitalism. - Derezo
If one had the eternity of time, one would do things later. - Johan Halmén

MiquelFire
Member #3,110
January 2003
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@Jonatan Hedborg: My sister has an iPhone 4, my mom has a first gen Kindle Fire. Any reason the Kindle Fire can run the game noticeably better than the iPhone 4? (maybe take this as a sign to put the game on Amazon's App store as well, so people with Kindle Fires don't need to install from some random web site that got the APK)

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Jonatan Hedborg
Member #4,886
July 2004
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Any reason the Kindle Fire can run the game noticeably better than the iPhone 4?

I'm not working mobile, so I can't really guess. Isn't the kindle fire a higher performing device in general? It's like a mini-tablet?

Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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The kindle fire is a tablet, but its not really "high performing". The nexus 7 is a lot faster, and about the same price.

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Jonatan Hedborg
Member #4,886
July 2004
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I said "higher" ;) Compared to iPhone4 that is.

MiquelFire
Member #3,110
January 2003
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Wait, the Fire is better than the iPhone 4 in terms of power? (I do know the Nexus 4 is better than the Nexus 7, personal experience there :P)

Speaking of, I really need to look into what background tasks just out right kills performance on my Nexus 7. It has a habit of running slow at the oddest of times, moments in which I'm sure my Atrix was fast at.

---
Febreze (and other air fresheners actually) is just below perfumes/colognes, and that's just below dead skunks in terms of smells that offend my nose.
MiquelFire.red
If anyone is of the opinion that there is no systemic racism in America, they're either blind, stupid, or racist too. ~Edgar Reynaldo

Elias
Member #358
May 2000

I hate candy crush saga... it doesn't let me play more than the first 20 levels because I have no Facebook friends to send me 3 tickets. So simply had to stop playing and uninstalled it.

--
"Either help out or stop whining" - Evert

Jonatan Hedborg
Member #4,886
July 2004
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Elias said:

it doesn't let me play more than the first 20 levels because I have no Facebook friends to send me 3 tickets

Well, you could always pay ;)

If I recall correctly, we are working on alternative methods of getting tickets from friends (not via facebook).

But yeah, the model isn't for everyone.

Elias
Member #358
May 2000

Well, as I said, I'd never ever pay for any IAP :P

--
"Either help out or stop whining" - Evert

LennyLen
Member #5,313
December 2004
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(I do know the Nexus 4 is better than the Nexus 7, personal experience there )

Oddly enough, from the few times I've used a Nexus 4, it has seemed less responsive than the Galaxy Nexus which is a year older. I just broke the screen on my Galaxy Nexus and was offered a free "upgrade" to a Nexus 4, but instead I'm opting for getting the existing phone fixed. The wireless charging was tempting, but I prefer performance.

Vanneto
Member #8,643
May 2007

I once bought an IAP and I felt like a sucker 1 hour later. :-/

In capitalist America bank robs you.

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