hi all,
I recently uploaded a new free game - IdunkU
I just wanted people to know that free games are usually made by indie programmers and designers who worked hard on their games
and count on their users to click on their sponsers banners now and then so the free gaming can live well and prosper.
fyi - each click gets the developer ~0.01$.
so the question i am asking you is: are you clicking those ad banners in games? if not, why?
market.android.com/details?id=tomer.idunku
No I don't click.
If you are a good enough developer you work for a proper gaming company and they pay your wages.
On the other hand, if you can code a gameloft like game on your own I would happily pay 8 dollars to buy the game.
It all depends on game quality. Let's be honest, free games are usually ****e.
I rarely if ever see the ads as I only enable data to go on CrapBook or check my email.
i have never known anything about it
thanks alot
So this is just a general philosophy type question, but it bugs the hell out of me.
One of the games that I was addicted to, for quite a while, was Airport mania 2. One of the best features about this game is that it had support for multiple users. That way, on our family tablet, I could play it, my wife could play it, and so could my daughter, and all our progress and scores were separate. This was so awesome it's hard to describe. Kind of like having an epiphany.
So the main question is, why do other uber popular games like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, etc not support multiple users.
Tablet are becoming more prevalent these days and most families I knew have one tablet that is shared. Not being able to separate my game scores and progress from those of other family members is really bad. I don't play most games any more because someone else in my family already does and I want to play a whole run by myself.
From a programming standpoint it doesn't seem like it'd be that hard. A separate set of stored data for each profile and a screen to let the user choose which set of data to load. However since very few games do this, I'm guessing there's more to it than that, or they just don't care...
Anyway, just rambling but wanted to see if anyone know of a reason that more games don't do this since it'd be such a great feature in a shared device world...
I would 100% agree with you. While its of more use in the Tablet world, as phones, in my experience, are shared less frequently, I really why developers of all types don't see this as a big goal in their game design process.
I mean, whether it's easy or not is relative to the code a developer produces, but in theory it is a simple addition to most games' source.
What you think of 'Rule the Kingdom' ?
It seems like a great idea, an rpg + sim/simcity style game.
Its free to download.
The part that I think breaks the gameplay is the huge fremium portion of the game. It takes forever to do anything unless you spend crystals, which are extremely rare unless you buy them with real money.
But without the fremium, I think the game would be great. (I refuse to spend money on fremium games)
EDIT:
Haha, just found a huge exploit in the game, so now you don't need to to buy diamonds to speed things up
The game's time is dependent on the system's time. Meaning if you go to settings and increase a day, a lot of resources you were making just finish instantly (and you get the daily chest).
There are downfalls to placing the system's time back to the real time.
What I did:
Went back to the year 2001, used the diamonds that came originally, to heal my character. Now i'm playing till i pass the game. Safely advancing the time by day. When i complete the game, i go back to today's time and wait for the new content with a loooot of resources hehehe.
eddymonti said:
What you think of 'Rule the Kingdom' ?
It seems like a great idea, an rpg + sim/simcity style game.
Its free to download.
The part that I think breaks the gameplay is the huge fremium portion of the game. It takes forever to do anything unless you spend crystals, which are extremely rare unless you buy them with real money.
But without the fremium, I think the game would be great. (I refuse to spend money on fremium games)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will say it right off the bat, and it goes with ANY game on ANY console; I despise freemium and pay to win. They are horrible and just scam the customer. Even when you "purchase" a game and are able to buy your way through faster and better equipment. I had a game similar to that called MyCountry and I downloaded a cheating client so I could have as much money as I wanted and actually play the game. I can't stand those. Other than that I know quite a bit of people to play that game and enjoy it, so it could be fun. Who knows.
Anyone have suggestions for similar games, pref. with no pay to win / pay to get items ?
Been looking for sim games for ages ( civ like games etc)
DeBoX said:
Anyone have suggestions for similar games, pref. with no pay to win / pay to get items ?
Been looking for sim games for ages ( civ like games etc)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Or age of empire like game, or better still a port of space empires
Im surprised there are not more real time startegy games for android, as real time strategy and touchscreen controls seem to go hand in hand if done right
DeBoX said:
Anyone have suggestions for similar games, pref. with no pay to win / pay to get items ?
Been looking for sim games for ages ( civ like games etc)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am a big fan of the SimCity series and EA has a full on port of in the Play Store that is very well made. Very nice touch controls. Don't know if that's your sort of game, but I thought it was worth it. And i completely agree with the A full Touch RTS would be fantastic
Sent from my GT-N7000 using XDA Premium HD app
Updated the original post with info to make this game free, not fremium.
As the title says, are in-app purchases as effective as I'd like to think they are?
As we're all fully aware, there are a lot of people around the internet who will do whatever they can to get a game or app that they shouldn't be able to.
Obviously developers have to make money when they choose to because otherwise they could be making a loss and not want to continue to develop any more. What is their best option to make money?
1) They could have a price on their app/game but once paid for, no more money will need to be spent in the app/game.
2) They could use the popular method of creating a free version and a paid version.
3) Have the app/game free of charge but have in-app purchases to make some money from it.
There are of course downsides to each of the options above but in my mind, the best option is 3) because it's not as easy to be able to get around the paying system. The only way around, that I can currently think of, would be by using cheat systems such as GameCih.
Whereas with the other 2 options, it's fairly easy to be able to bypass the required payment.
A perfect example of in-app purchases working is with Shadowgun Deadzone.
If the app had not been free, chances are I wouldn't have been interested in it because I couldn't test it before buying.
As the game is free, I tested the game out and because I thoroughly enjoy the game, I've since bought in game gold numerous times and will continue to do so.
I know that not everyone will have the same mentality as me but it proves, in my case, that in-app purchases work.
What are your thoughts on in-app purchases or what do you feel are the benefits of simply putting a price on the app/game?
From my experience, In App Billing is really good.
In my truck parking game, 3D Truck Parking, there are about 4 level packs for free and 1 that you have to buy with IAB. I must say that I got a lot of purchases daily!
IAB is better, you don't have to maintain two different versions, its easy to set up. Also users can't cancel an order they make through IAB & its linked to their accounts. On a normal paid app you can copy the apk and cancel the order, making it easy to steal.
When i started to work with android app i did two version free and paid. Now i'm sure that it's wrong. One free application with in-app payments is the best choise.
Question
Hi Guys!
I'm writing my academic thesis about the market of the app stores and I would like to interview some developers about the monetization, revenue models etc... If you could answer some questions please contact me at [email protected] It would be a great help! Thank you very much!
Freemium and IAB
Hi,
I believe Freemium is a good model for many apps, specially games.
And IAB is the best option to support the Freemium model, to my experience.
I tried other options such as free app with paid apk acting as an unlock key, which is a quite popular model on the Play Store, but not as powerful and flexible as IAB.
So I would really recommend IAB, specially latest version 3 which is easier to use.
Make sure you use the helper class provided by Google, but be careful, there are a few bugs in it...Look for fixes in stackoverflow !
Good luck!
Eric
I can certainly say I wish I had implemented in app purchasing instead of a free and paid version of the same app. As mentioned before, the ease of not having to maintain two versions, as well as the advantage of free app entry is a big plus. Definitely the way to go if the app is designed in a way that makes sense for that style.
In-apps are gr8, the only problem is that the app must be developed rly good (if not excelent i.e. nice in-game economy) to encurage ppl to use them. Freemium FTW!
I would love to move to IAB but I already have a paid/free app combo in the store. That would just be another app to maintain
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app
Just to say, Google Play bans ALL apps with in-app purchase here.
Besides, I can't but any apps in GP.
What a shame, Google.
F2P is here to stay
When you look at the top grossing list on both Google Play and iTunes you will see that, in fact, free-to-play titles make more money than paid titles. Of course, market for premium titles will still exist, especially for high-quality utility apps but in games F2P is dominating and, I think, this trend will continue.
As you experienced yourself, this model is super-convenient for players, you can test a game and, if interested, pay for additional items, etc. The only one thing which is tricky is keeping balance, ie. not making a game pay-to-win.
Last but not least, it's so much more exciting from a dev perspective to have 1 million of players enjoying your title than 10k Making money of them is yet another matter.
As a user I still like the idea of purchasing an app once and using it for as long as I like, but maybe I'm getting old...
I don't like the pay2play model, for example in real racing 3 you can only race a couple of rounds and then your car needs maintenance. This maintenance takes just long enough to hate it, but with in game coins you can make it happen instantly, which you can buy with real money.
The same goes for buying new cars: you don't make a lot of money racing so buying a new car takes ages (if you don't pay for quick maintenance that is) but you can again buy credits with real money to make it faster.
This probably makes for a continious money flow for the developers, but it annoys me; I would much rather just pay once and then play forever, and after that maybe pay some more for some dlc or something, but i don't like paying just to keep playing...
I don't mind what model developer choose. But I'm really disappointed by the lack of proper filters in Google Play. Free and Payed is not enough! It's cheating that demo or IAB applications are listed together with really free applications. There should be at least third category, which would gather demo, IAB etc apps - apps that aren't fully free. I would also love to have "open source" category.
Google's IAB is simple to implement in the app/game, but it has a huge disadvantage: if no server verification was implemented, then it is very easy to automatically hack IAB, there are many hacking tools available. Server verification is not an easy to implement. At least, a dedicated server is needed + experience in server programming.
IAP is good, but takes work
I have deployed apps with both IAP as well as the free/paid model.
IAP allows a single app with combined ratings and DL count (and free apps get more casual attention)
IAP takes more work - code, testing, and setup in portal
Paid apps on different app stores are easy. IAP solutions from each app store are not compatible with each other.
I plan to use IAP as the primary model on my next app (as well as ads), with no paid version. We'll see how that goes. I decided to try subscriptions, which is a tougher sell.
For a first app, however, the free/paid model may be much easier for many devs. Just hit a switch to show the no-ad layout (or whatever other features the paid version has) and dump the separate apk up on Google Play.
BTW I blog on ad networks and Android app stores at http://www.projectjourneyman.com. I created a report with charts showing my experience with a paid app as well as a free app w/IAP on Amazon and Google Play (plus paid app on Nook). Getting it signs you up to my email newsletter, but you can unsubscribe right away if you want
As a user I agree with an earlier poster that a once off fee for a full featured product is the most satisfying.
The biggest problem is IAP is that it needs to be very well implemented and generally this is not the case. More often than not it becomes a pay to win scenario which is just silly.
Too many games entice you to make a payment and then you feel you've been robbed as there was little value in the purchase.
I understand it is a good business model to get money from your hard work as a developer but personally I find it almost unethical. It becomes a little like gambling where games are addictive and require you to keep feeding in money to continue playing. This is not dissimilar to the pokie machines (aka slot machines) which are a very political issue here in Australia. I can imagine this pricing model in mobile games also becoming a political issue for similar reason if it is not self regulated by developers.
Also, hacking IAP apps is often pretty easy to do to avoid payment so this model is not immune to piracy.
Developers who depend on freemium might find their market drying up when their customers finally realize it's really a scam.
Im sorry for putting it this way but it's more honest to say so.
Freemiums are making money right now because of new smartphone owners who dont know any better.
But just like kids growing up, they will realize its better to buy outright a game than to keep throwing money into a game to get in game items just to play it well. It becomes pretty expensive later on.
The gold rush isnt going to last.
Here's my 2p's worth as a consumer, not a developer. The Freemium model is OK if its implemented correctly. Hill Climb Racing and Jetpack Joyride are two examples of what I believe to be decent titles. They're both so well made I have ended up spending real money on them both, not because I had to in order to progress or complete them (I'm looking at you Glu Games) but because I enjoyed the titles so much I wanted to play faster and support the developers. As for Real Racing 3, well I've got all the cars fully upgraded and I've never given EA a f***ing penny, nor will I.
There are limits.
I personally love the free / paid app model and almost all the tools and system apps I now use or have used were free versions I found invaluable and subsequently paid for. Hell, I've even bought 'Donate' versions that are exactly the same (Orux Maps) purely because the apps are that good.
Ultimately if people want to steal your work they'll find a way. Theft isn't going anywhere. But neither is the desire to reward decent work that is genuinely good value. I guess the way to get paid is to strive to create something of value.
bong4316 said:
Developers who depend on freemium might find their market drying up when their customers finally realize it's really a scam.
Im sorry for putting it this way but it's more honest to say so.
Freemiums are making money right now because of new smartphone owners who dont know any better.
But just like kids growing up, they will realize its better to buy outright a game than to keep throwing money into a game to get in game items just to play it well. It becomes pretty expensive later on.
The gold rush isnt going to last.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do not agree, not all games use aggressive freemium model to milk the money from the users. In-app purchases are often used to buy additional unnecessary content (for example, extra levels) or to remove ads (because all free games are supported by ads). So the game just gives users a choice: either live with ads, or convert game into ads-free version.
nishyt said:
IAB is better, you don't have to maintain two different versions, its easy to set up. Also users can't cancel an order they make through IAB & its linked to their accounts. On a normal paid app you can copy the apk and cancel the order, making it easy to steal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
totally agree! IAP is much better!
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XDA:DevDB Information
45gerdf, Device Specific App for the Acer F1
Contributors
anhquoc90
Version Information
Status: Testing
Created 2016-08-26
Last Updated 2016-08-26