well then its not for you... its not for me either as a customer.. but the huge success streak of free to play from browser games, to mmo, to iOS games shows people don't mind. i would not call it scam since no one forces you into anything.. its just a popular business model some people have something against.
Yes, it's not for me, no argument. In fact that's the point I'm making. It seems to me there's a way it could work for me, and I'm surprised no one's tried it. And maybe scam is a harsh word--I wasn't trying to offend anyone whose games use virtual currency. Sorry. All the same, if a system's success relies on obscuring the user's best interest, I think it could use some improvement. No?
What if the developers did something like the reverse... where you can buy tokens/credits that are equivalent to the same dollar value (i.e. a 99c token) and spend those in the store. Then if there is also in-game currency like gold, then this gold can be converted into these same tokens/credits. Almost like Chucky Cheese.
Madgarden-- That's a very clever approach. Again, for myself, there have to be two things to trigger impulse purchases: transparent pricing and attractively priced items. If I know what the cost is, and the cost is low enough, you can get my money.
I thought on this a bit more, and it could actually be handled even more transparently. Basically, IAP items are priced in terms of credits/real money as I described... and if you didn't have any credits, then it would automatically buy them for you (with user confirmation) in order to purchase the specified item with those credits. To the user, it would appear just like a regular IAP purchase. And if you did happen to have extra credits, for example due to automatic in-game gold conversion, it would use those instead. So in either case, there's only ever one click to buy something, and 1 credit = 99c, so there's no confusion. Gaining extra credits through play to offset purchases is then a nice, hassle-free bonus.
well another issue with exchange rate is you loose alot of flexibility if you don't do it.. if you get 1 fooznik for 1 dollar.. then you will have difficulty to sell that into items.. imagine an rrpg like fargoal.. what do you want to sell with a minimum price of 1 fooznik? or do you start to plit them smaller into like 0,25 fooznik? at the end doing it the other way 1dollar to alot more foozniks allows you to sell stuff with very tiny costs (>1cent) the thing is 1 dollar is not a good price point for micro transactions.. you get full blown games for that amount (on iOS) and every second week there is a sale which dumps down even bigger products to that price point.. so to be micro you need to have some "odd" conversion ratio.. or you need to offer something really substantial for that minimum price of one dollar.
I only see selling currency as feasible if the player can earn said currency in the game. Then it feels like getting a boost. If you're selling currency to sell your IAPs and the only way to get said currency is to buy it, why not just keep it as money? We plan on doing IAPs in an upcoming game for various levels, only we plan to keep it straight cash and sell different tiered bundles (buy level for X amount, buy levels 5,6,7 for Y amount, where Y<3X) that sort of thing.
