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How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases

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31–40 of 88 posts

Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases

#31
> * If you’ve ever played Starcraft, Age of Empires or pretty much any other real-time strategy game, you’ll know the drill, and the buildings and units come off as almost painfully derivative.*

That's a strange claim. In fact, I would claim that, if you've ever played Starcraft, Age of Empires, or pretty much any other real-time strategy game, you would be aware that they have very little in common with Clash of Clans.

Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases

#32

I really hope this game model suffers the same kind of crash that felled the arcade business in the 80s. At some point I think people are going to collectively realize that they're being manipulated and burn out en masse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash... The overwhelming dominance of this kind of app in the app store has killed a lot of my enthusiasm for mobile, unfortunately. There are…

I couldn't agree more, nothing is more frustrating than getting hooked on a game only to realize that progress is essentially crippled without massive amounts of free time or a few in app purchases. I would much rather pay an up front fee (or perhaps instead of crippling the game, a one time fee to unlock the rest of the game).

Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases

#34

I really hope this game model suffers the same kind of crash that felled the arcade business in the 80s. At some point I think people are going to collectively realize that they're being manipulated and burn out en masse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash... The overwhelming dominance of this kind of app in the app store has killed a lot of my enthusiasm for mobile, unfortunately. There are…

What really annoys me is when a game that might potentially interest me chooses to go the pay2win way.

For instance, tribes:ascend. I wanted to get into it but forums were full of people saying each time they released a paid upgrade the balance went FUBAR.

What annoys me the most is there's no way to do it "the old way" and pay a bigger sum of money once and get the full game without having to upgrade for every single new weapon. That's where you realize that the microtransaction model is a scam, because if you want to buy all the upgrades at once it would cost you several hundreds of dollars.

I wish they'd go back to the older model of freeware demo + one time buy full game. I remember buying Doom that way.

Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases

#35
post #21
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LoL is horrible compared to Dota2 in this regard. You cant play every hero and with added points you get addex abilities. Dota2 micro-transactions only pay for cosmetic items that you can (mostly) also get via trading with other players or as a drop after each finished game.

On the other hand, you can't really blame Riot for needing to grab more money than Valve. Valve has deep pockets and is willing to take a small profit if it means they survive in the long run. Also, Valve's brand is strong-enough that they have players beating a path to their door no matter what they publish. Riot has none of these options. Every player they earn on the strength and reputation of the game alone. They…

Riot is now part of Tencent, which has a market cap of about $90B.

http://allthingsd.com/20110204/chinas-tencent-buys-riot-game...

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=0700.HK

Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases

#36

I really hope this game model suffers the same kind of crash that felled the arcade business in the 80s. At some point I think people are going to collectively realize that they're being manipulated and burn out en masse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash... The overwhelming dominance of this kind of app in the app store has killed a lot of my enthusiasm for mobile, unfortunately. There are…

If you look at the rankings for free (non-iap) apps, those charts are also dominated by games as well.

Fundamentally people like playing games more than using "tech demo" apps.

Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases

#37
post #32

I really hope this game model suffers the same kind of crash that felled the arcade business in the 80s. At some point I think people are going to collectively realize that they're being manipulated and burn out en masse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash... The overwhelming dominance of this kind of app in the app store has killed a lot of my enthusiasm for mobile, unfortunately. There are…

I couldn't agree more, nothing is more frustrating than getting hooked on a game only to realize that progress is essentially crippled without massive amounts of free time or a few in app purchases. I would much rather pay an up front fee (or perhaps instead of crippling the game, a one time fee to unlock the rest of the game).

That model doesn't really work for apps which are dependent on external servers for multiplayer, etc. as the vendor has on-going costs. Hence revenue needs to be recurring as well.

In practice that means ads, subscriptions or IAP.

Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases

#38
post #34

I really hope this game model suffers the same kind of crash that felled the arcade business in the 80s. At some point I think people are going to collectively realize that they're being manipulated and burn out en masse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash... The overwhelming dominance of this kind of app in the app store has killed a lot of my enthusiasm for mobile, unfortunately. There are…

What really annoys me is when a game that might potentially interest me chooses to go the pay2win way. For instance, tribes:ascend. I wanted to get into it but forums were full of people saying each time they released a paid upgrade the balance went FUBAR. What annoys me the most is there's no way to do it "the old way" and pay a bigger sum of money once and get the full game without having to upgrade for every singl…

I'm creating a strategy game right now and I'm facing this dilemma. I'd like to get $20 from each customer during game lifetime, but it seems that it would be easier to make it free to play and then charge for something in the game. And it's hard to charge for anything that would not make you advance in the game, otherwise it's cosmetics and you're not charging for the game, but almost the same as asking for a donation.

Most people would like to play for free. This model enables you to attract more users, which means a larger pool of potential customers. For example, would you pay $20 for my game (see link at the end), or would you rather play for free and then pay $1-$2 a month for some stuff that advances your gameplay?

BTW, in case you're interested the game should be out in a month. See gos.bigosaur.com/cards.html for more info.

Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases

#39
post #16
post #13

So it's the very definition of "pay2win". What I don't understand is how they get people to keep playing once they realize they don't need skill to win, but rather a valid credit card number. Certainly it must feel like using cheatcodes? The victories must feel empty and you'd get bored pretty quickly, at least I think I would.

It's called addiction. They get people addicted to the power that gems confer them. People don't care that they need no skills. They just want that high that the gems give them.

i very much agree, i played an old web-game back in college called OGame that came out before the "pay to win" model, but the basic premise was the same, the more you login the better you do. and what's best was you had to protect your stuff ( planets/fleets ) 24/7 from people from all different time zones.. it very much became an addiction...

Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases

#40
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What really annoys me is when a game that might potentially interest me chooses to go the pay2win way. For instance, tribes:ascend. I wanted to get into it but forums were full of people saying each time they released a paid upgrade the balance went FUBAR. What annoys me the most is there's no way to do it "the old way" and pay a bigger sum of money once and get the full game without having to upgrade for every singl…

I'm creating a strategy game right now and I'm facing this dilemma. I'd like to get $20 from each customer during game lifetime, but it seems that it would be easier to make it free to play and then charge for something in the game. And it's hard to charge for anything that would not make you advance in the game, otherwise it's cosmetics and you're not charging for the game, but almost the same as asking for a donati…

Guild Wars 2 is a game that charges for basically cosmetic items. You cannot buy better weapons or better armor, but you can buy costumes that make your armor look cool, or you can buy little things like 2x XP potions (30 minute limit). There is a way to make a game in which in-game purchases don't distort the game mechanics but that people are still interested in.

I believe Team Fortress 2 does something similar, selling hats and such.

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