While it would be great to be profitable from selling your software outright, it seems that many iOS developers are exploring alternative ways to make money from their apps. With the In App Purchase system it is possible to give a base app/game away for free, reach a much larger audience, and offer ways to pay for extra content or 'shortcut' purchases. When the barrier for entry is lower (or non-existant), customers are much MUCH more likely to try out an app, and with the right persuasion, will feel good about dropping a buck or two to the developer.
While my numbers are small, they still paint a pretty picture of this situation. In my first month in the App Store with quadropong at $0.99, I had roughly 30 sales and 40 promo codes used. The leaderboard on Game Center had 39 players listed, so assume that about half of the people use and sign into their game center account. Last night I dropped the price to free and posted about it on reddit, facebook, twitter and here. At the moment, there are 223 players listed on the leaderboard! I can't wait for the morning update to see how many actual downloads this translates to, but assuming from the numbers above it could be around 400. Now, this is exciting to me for two reasons. 1) More people are playing my game. I've never had an audience like this before with any programming projects I've done, and it's fun to watch the downloads climb, even if they are free ones. Which brings me to... 2) I have the opportunity to try some new pricing strategies. Now, I really want to be careful here, because there are some people who have paid for this app, and I don't want them to feel cheated. I don't want to just slap some ads on there and call it a day. So I've decided to design some kind of In App Purchase that will reward people who like the game, but won't cause any unfair advantages.
One idea was to have some powerups in the game, like slowing the ball down or making the paddles bigger for a short amount of time. These could be purchased and used during the game, sort of like the eagle in Angry Birds. The problem with this is that it would give an unfair advantage to those players who decided to pay, which would cause some skewed results on the leaderboards. Yes, I want to have integrity in scoring even in my small game. So this idea is off the table. So, how can I have something that isn't essential to the game but still gives the player incentive to buy? And how can I give payers and non-payers access to this content?
My idea is to design multiple graphical themes that can be purchased with real money or points accrued by playing the game. This adds a fun element to the game without drastically altering gameplay or giving any advantage to certain players. My idea is to keep an overall tally of the points earned during the game, and letting the player 'purchase' themes through some sort of theme browser, say at one theme for 1000 points. They also have the option to purchase a 'theme pack' for $0.99, which would include five themes at once. This way the player has the option to unlock the content quickly and support the developer, or play to unlock and enjoy the game for free.
This is a new venture for me, and an experiment as well. I will be hard at work on making these changes so my new project will have to be shelved for a bit. Oh, and in the last 2.5 paragraphs, 10 more players have showed up on the leaderboard, making the total 233 now. CRAZY!
