The previous success is through visibility & promotions and yes in a way getting customer hooked, they get something for showing it off to more people. Word of mouth is still very strong especially in something so personal like apps and games, this theory was just for games purposes that based on different "world's" of levels. I honestly swear I would paid more $ for the free games that I am playing now, but since the Games stay free...that's totally awesome for me as a consumer no complaining here of course
What are you guys talking about? I think FavIgames has a brilliant idea and you guys are not supporting him/her/it simply coz you're pissed that you didnt think of it first. @FavIgames How was your meeting with Steve Jobs?
I would have paid for more if most of the games weren't really FREE all the way...........honestly. So far I've paid for about 4 games and 1 App, 3 of them had a LITE version, and yup, I got hooked. Free games, I've downloaded about 50 in the past month, some stays and some don't of course.
I quit my last job, cos my boss took away all my commission (more than half my pay) cos I was doing so well, he decided I would fight for more....transferred me to wholesale and gave me an impossible quota"thinking I would try to make HIM more money" (industry-wise) which resets every month.....long story......I'm finally trying to get into the gaming and computer industry. And it takes persistence and passion to know more people in this field.
It's ok.....there's lots for me to learn here too....I'm a her by the way Steve Jobs?? Sorry my head might not be working right now, what Steve Jobs?
I knew that! but I recently DID have a physcial meeting with a friend name STEVE and Talking about JOBS....so....that didn't add up right away. nevermind
So you aren't exactly the best person to be advising devs on pricing policies eh? You stated yourself you play them as "minigames." And your facebook link in the sig? You GIVE AWAY an app a day? No wonder you don't pay for any apps... How is the resume sending going? Any leads?
It's disappointing how quickly someone giving a solid piece of advice can result in a full-fledged flame war. Sure, FavoriteIGames is biased and may not have as much experience with the App Store market as others on these forums. But everyone should read the first post again and see how innocent her intentions were. I realize developers sometimes take offense when customers give them advice, but they shouldn't. It's free advice and we [Edit]should either accept it, ignore it, or give constructive criticism[/Edit]. There are a lot of great things on these forums to benefit from, but after seeing this I'm tempted to leave.
Seriously? What advice do you find useful? This is the internet, people post stuff that is uninformed and ignorant all the time. If people aren't called on it they will never become informed or intelligent...
It's one thing for a person with experience in a field to offer advice, but when someone comes in and tells you they don't know ANYTHING about your field and then proceeds to give you advice, it's difficult to attach any credibility to it. Imagine if I went into a forum of plastic surgeons and said "Hey, I don't know a damn thing about plastic surgery, but I am sure that my experience putting on band-aids qualifies me to give advice on how to better suture incisions." Or maybe I could tell them that "Only porn stars get boob jobs", so you should create a custom service for them (aka the OP's ridiculous comment that "Girls like puzzle games").
One thing is for sure she has introduced herself in the last two days with a bang! I hope she continues on the forum with her 10c and 25 cent comments, just to stir up the community. It is good for a forum when someone causes emotions to rise. This girl has some energy and she probably really meant well with her comments. If she can take the bashing and come out of the other end of the tunnel in one piece than she is a keeper. To her defence the app store defies all logic any ways!
I guess that is the part that bothered me the most. It's one thing to come up with hair brained ideas that are so totally uninformed they are actually laughable but it is another to make false stereotypical generalizations like she did.
I will attempt to reply to most of your comments to hopefully give you some insight into why everyone is reacting the way they are: This doesn't make sense for many games. Plus, the first week an app is released, you get the revenue from the early adopters who have been waiting to buy your game (because you've been doing a lot of pre-launch marketing, right?). Setting it to free right away could cost you a lot of money. This is simply not possible. In-app purchases must be $0.99, $1.99, $2.99, etc. You can let players buy "points" instead of specific items though, which may work better for you in some types of games. Developers have experimented with many types of in-app purchases. Buy levels, buy points, buy fertilizer for plants, buy "continues", make donations based on how much you like the game. Lots of potential for creative ideas here. It is just silly to say that people won't "jump in" to pay a dollar for an app. $0.99 is the impulse purchase price in the app store. Have you ever seen Angry Birds or Doodle Jump available for free? No, yet those games have sold MILLIONS. Doodle Jump doesn't even have a lite version (although Angry Birds does, so you can try before you buy there). This is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard on TA. Seriously. You would get slaughtered in the forums and review sites if you did this. Really, really, REALLY terrible idea. In the app store, visibility is more important than quality. There have been many games that sold extremely well that were really not that great quality-wise, but they were "good enough". Popularity generally comes from visibility, and value is hard to argue between $0.99 to $2.99, where most games are priced. I pay $12 for a 90 minute movie, so even $2.99 for a game an hour is a good "value" by comparison. Of course many people don't choose to judge the value with that type of comparison, but that is how I evaluate apps. The app store provides the developer with the ability to release free lite versions of apps, or to have a single app that has in-app purchase to allow you to upgrade to the full version. The try before you buy concept is quite familiar to game developers. Developers are not trying to "trick" consumers into paying for apps with known bugs. All software has bugs. Sometimes the bugs don't happen to everyone, or the developer is not able to reproduce the problem. Most developers hate knowing that their app is out there with bugs, and will try to do whatever they can to fix them. It's rather presumptuous and insulting to tell us that we shouldn't try to trick our customers, as if that is such a common practice amongst us. Sure, they could have gone that way, but when a game reaches that level of popularity, the rules change. Then you get more notoriety and good will by releasing more content for free. You have millions of fans then spreading the word about how much free content you keep adding. Unfortunately those rules do not scale down linearly, so for less popular games, it is not financially feasible to do this. If Angry Birds was based on buying level packs, I don't think it would have been as popular for as long as it has. I've worked in traditional gaming companies (including EA) for 5 years, and have been doing iPhone development for 2 years, and sorry, but your ideas just do not apply to either the traditional games industry or to the iOS games industry. Creating a good app is certainly helpful, but when there are only a few hundred feature slots, but thousands of apps submitted per week, yes, you still need some luck to be one of those chosen (or have an inside contact at Apple). All the developers on this forum understand self-promotion, networking, submitting to review sites, running contests, participating in threads, etc., but that is often not enough. Getting into the app store is not an "opportunity"; it does not require luck. Just develop your app without violating any of Apple's rules, submit your app, and you're in. That's it. What takes luck is getting FEATURED on the front page or in one of the subcategories. That is what Apple's team decides on. There are hundreds if not thousands of quality games that exist on the app store that just are not popular. You can do everything right and still languish in obscurity. Conversely there are many apps of poor quality (my opinion) that have done amazingly well. This is a very bad idea. Consumers don't know what they want in a game until it is shown to them. You would never develop games like Flight Control or Canabalt or Spirit or geoDefense by looking at the "interest of the general consumer". It takes vision and talent to create a new game idea and bring it to life. The recently released Solipskier is another great example. I didn't know how much I wanted to play that game until someone made it! Now my finger hurts from playing it too much! That is a completely bizarre and incorrect generalization. I have about 30 puzzle games on my iPhone, and I can assure you that I am all man! Just to be clear, the "gaming" industry has different rules than the "computer" industry, and the iPhone gaming industry has a completely unique set of rules that are different again from both of those. You need to decide which industry you actually want to be in and then learn its rules.
