About a month ago, I wrote about Gondola, a dynamic pricing technology company that was looking to innovate in mobile monetization by persuading companies to shift from Static to Dynamic pricing models. Yesterday, Gondola officially announced Liftpass, an open source platform intended to enable game developers to manage and track the prices of virtual goods and IAPs. As the company stated, Liftpass goes beyond simply providing data; it also adds the “levers" for developers to begin adjusting in-game prices in real time.
Why would a company want to do that? According to Gondola, such an ability can boost player engagement and overall lifetime value. Liftpass will allow developers to test thousands of prices simultaneously and increase the amount of control they have over settting various price points for different sets of players. If the developers can experiment with different prices post-launch, they’ll be able to figure out which price points can serve which sets of players and, therefore, increase player retention and revenue.
I am intrigued by the capabilities Liftpass can offer developers, and I wonder what kind of effect, if any, might such a tool have on the industry. In my earlier article, I wondered whether Dynamic Pricing models could end up being unfair to players because of the way most games are designed as a shared-experience environment; allowing one player to become more competitive by spending less money than other players is probably not an ideal situation for most games. Still, I am all for rethinking current F2P monetization models, which aren’t subtle (to put it nicely), and I will be keeping an eye out to see Liftpass’ possible effects on the industry. Maybe my fears of an unfair gaming environment are unfounded and maybe dynamic pricing models are, indeed, the way F2P games should go. Hopefully, we’ll soon have actual evidence that will allow us to examine these ideas and possibilities even further.
