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How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

penny-arcade.com

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Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#21

Post by ktsmith »

credo wrote: post #7

At first, 200,000 downloads sounded impressive, getting into the top apps lists is also impressive, but the problem is outlined in the second paragraph. >> Gasketball was released for free, with a one-time in-app purchase that unlocks the rest of the game offered for $2.99. The conversion rate to the paid version of the game sits at 0.67%. It seems like they should figure out why the conversion rate is low (e.g. perh…

The reason the conversions are so low is covered in the story. The game doesn't make the fact that there's a full version very discoverable and provides enough content that many people probably didn't think there was any more to it.

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#22

Post by Zimahl »

alanfalcon wrote: post #18
Zimahl wrote: post #10

While this is a sad story, I'm finding it hard to feel sorry for them. This is a prime example of excellent execution but poor marketing. First, I've never heard of this game an it looks pretty awesome. My wife and I loved The Incredible Machine and this seems like a great derivation on that. Second, it's iPad only so you are missing out on a ton of iPhone sales. I've bought stuff on my iPhone which I didn't on my iP…

I agree about the iPad-only choice being unfortunate. As for exposure: Surprisingly, Gabe and Tycho haven't managed to talk up themselves enough (IMO): http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pennyarcade/penny-arcade... With an hour and a half left, I'd expected this number to be three times larger than it is. Sure they "hit their goal", but when you set up that road map of stretch goals it seems like you're really hopin…

Well, as far as Penny Arcade goes, their ads were non-intrusive and actually well targeted so it didn't make sense to pay not to see them. I think that was something that prevented this from really taking off.

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#23

Post by larrik »

1) Depending on writing games for your income is foolish. Very few people make real money from games.

2) In-App Purchases come in 2 flavors: The kind that are permanent, and the kind that aren't. Apple doesn't tell you which one you are buying, which means that I just don't buy any, generally.

3) The few times I experimented with IAPs, my conversion rates were also total crap.

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#24

Post by tomku »

Sounds like they wanted to get the sales figures of the addictive IAP-dependent top-selling games, but without any of the actual psychology behind it. Doesn't work like that. The reason those other games were in the top 25 weren't just because they had IAPs - nearly every mobile game has IAPs nowadays, whether they're initially free or not. It was because they struck the "right" balance between entertaining and manipulative.

In particular, most of the games/apps I've tried that use that "upgrade from free via in-app purchase" model make it annoyingly easy to upgrade. They remind you when you finish a level. They remind you when you start the app, and when you go back to the main menu. They have buttons for full-version features that just pop up a "Sorry, you need to upgrade to do that, click here to do so!" dialog. They beat you over the head with the idea of upgrading until you submit, and going by the sales figures, it seems to work. That's how they make conversions, and if you're going to leave that out you're probably better off pursuing a different style of monetization.

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#25

Post by rom16384 »

credo wrote: post #7

At first, 200,000 downloads sounded impressive, getting into the top apps lists is also impressive, but the problem is outlined in the second paragraph. >> Gasketball was released for free, with a one-time in-app purchase that unlocks the rest of the game offered for $2.99. The conversion rate to the paid version of the game sits at 0.67%. It seems like they should figure out why the conversion rate is low (e.g. perh…

Conversion rates around 1% are typical, but in this case even if the conversion rate was 4% (which would be very good) it would only translate to ~17k

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#26

Post by ktsmith »

alanfalcon wrote: post #18
Zimahl wrote: post #10

While this is a sad story, I'm finding it hard to feel sorry for them. This is a prime example of excellent execution but poor marketing. First, I've never heard of this game an it looks pretty awesome. My wife and I loved The Incredible Machine and this seems like a great derivation on that. Second, it's iPad only so you are missing out on a ton of iPhone sales. I've bought stuff on my iPhone which I didn't on my iP…

I agree about the iPad-only choice being unfortunate. As for exposure: Surprisingly, Gabe and Tycho haven't managed to talk up themselves enough (IMO): http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pennyarcade/penny-arcade... With an hour and a half left, I'd expected this number to be three times larger than it is. Sure they "hit their goal", but when you set up that road map of stretch goals it seems like you're really hopin…

I think they talked themselves up plenty, I don't think they made very good use of kickstarter. It is possible PA would have had significantly more success if they had put up each of their project stretch goals as individual campaigns. I would probably kick in for the automata and daughters projects but not for a reality tv show. Lumping everything together made it feel like a gamble as without enough people kicking in it's not very likely the projects you as an individual care about will make the cut.

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#28

Post by smartician »

So their first game sold for $2.99 up front and earned them $20k-$40k for two years. I would call that successful. Then, for their second game, instead of sticking to what works, they made the decision to switch to a freemium model, and made the mistake of making the "free" mode too good, and neglected to advertise in-game that there even is a premium version to unlock. Many lessons to be learned here, but rather stunning that they weren't able to fix this much earlier, before becoming homeless.

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#29

Post by fijal »

I'm seriously sick with people complaining that the software they gave away for free didn't make them any money. Maybe we need a better business model for people who make other people's life better, but hey, at the point you make the decision to give away stuff for free, please don't complain.

DISCLAIMER: I'm making Open Source software and I can (sometimes) make a living out of it. I'm trying not to complain too much though

Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

#30

Post by engtech »

Shoomz wrote: post #2

It's an interesting article and I love how they're approaching app sales. There are some successes out there that are doing well with this sales model (the most recent download I've had like this is Outwitters: http://onemanleft.com/ ). It is hard to see where the app sales ecosystem is going though (and if consumers will really dictate this path).

Weird, Outwitters is listed as free on the one man left website, but iTunes has it as $0.99
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