I don't know the numbers, but if they're that low (you said 200 5 lives IAP, so I guess maybe a few thousands customization), and the goal is to expand dramatically the user base in the end, maybe the best strategy would be the high road : Whichever permanent IAP a player bought before the update, and whatever the price, he gets the new infinite lives or whatever the new mid to high price IAP you'll propose. I see mostly benefits with this long term, even if it feels difficult to swallow at first. 1/ the overall numbers of players having bought a permanent IAP still being low, the missing potential revenue wouldn't be that high. -2/ giving infinite lives doesn't mean fully lost revenue as obviously a part of the players who bought customization or 5 lives wouldn't have bought a 10$ IAP anyway. 3/ you wouldn't risk to alienate or disappoint a part of your early adopters, which could translate in lower revenue for your next games. 4/ the players feeling they have been gifted something by NimbleBit and having infinite lives, will be more inclined to encourage their friends to play with them, and repay you down the way on your next games. Just my 2 cents Not saying you should do it of course, I don't have all the data, but based on what you said, it could be the more rationale long term decision, even if it doesn't appear like it at first. Anyway we all here hope you find a way to sustain the game, and continue to provide us with great games. Full disclosure : if you see a refund asked from France for 2.99 for a customization IAP, and a newly bought 5 lives IAP at 4.99, that would be me That seemed the logical trade in for me considering the game do over. Even if I'm still not interested in the infinite lives, I'd rather add some money to sustain the game this way.
If I haven't said it before, I hate to change things up on players but it is necessary for the survival of the game. To those who have purchased the customization we thank you and appreciate you. I implore anyone who feels slighted to get a refund and then see if you think the game is still worth infinite lives after the update.
We still have a record of everyone who bought the customization IAP, so we aren't ruling out doing something special for them in the future. There just wasn't time to figure anything out for this update. We had to get it out as soon as possible because it takes ~10 days to get it through review. Thanks to everyone who did purchase it, and helped support the game.
Well I for one don't mind the upcoming changes. Frankly I wish I had more lonely to support devs, and (normally) love your guys implementation of ads in game, as they don't stop you playing and watching the ad just gives you a bit of a hand. What I am not so sure about is stopping play altogether unless you buy IAP or watch an ad. That may not go down as well. What I do hope though is that it gets you the expansion in player base and revenue. Would be sad to see this game get switched off
I'd like to participate in current discussion but I have strong feeling it's quite unnecessary because it's not gonna take long and a few previous pages will be deleted. I don't appreciate what the developer did. Constant price reductions were frankly expected because the asking prices were quite unrealistic from the beginning. But it doesn't matter. I'm pretty sure the dev learned their lesson and they'll do things differently in the future. But what I wanted to say is SHAME ON ALL OF YOU attacking the dev for what they're doing. Why did you pay for customization and infinite lives in the first place? I thought it was because you wanted to support the developer and show some appreciation for such a great game. What is this whining about? How dare you ask the dev to apologize?! How dare you complain about "not getting anything in return"?! Jeez. This is exemplar developer. Being active in the game's thread, discussing stuff about the game with players, sharing future plans and details about incoming updates and changes. Instead of showing some respect and appreciation you're doing exact opposite. It just makes me sick! I'm sorry for the dev to have to read such garbage. I truly am. You don't deserve such hostility! Thank you for being here, for patience and all the responses. And please, don't mind those ungrateful jerks. It's not worthy.
Everyone is certainly entitled to their opinions. I'm certainly not trying to recruit anyone. Your post, however, is ultimately pretty reductive. Telling someone they should be ashamed when they paid money for a product and then the product changed in their hands is hardly reasonable. Most of the last few pages of text have been people trying to have a reasonable discussion with the devs about their decisions. While I don't agree with their decisions and while this will likely cause me to stop using their product, I never said I didn't appreciate the discourse. I wasn't aware that I had to agree with the devs in order to avoid my internet shaming.
You don't, but some people have been a bit disrespectful. They could've pulled a gameloft and change a premium game to freemium with no warning. But they didn't, they came in here and let us know. Also put it this way, how much have you actually lost out? I have paid more and got less many a time...
That's fair. I don't look at it as a dollar per hour value, personally. Trying to do that will drive you nuts. In the end, though, it's these kinds of pricing changes that drive people away from spending in a mobile space, communicated or not. Why purchase something when it'll be free in less than a month?
Thank you both for being straightforward and open about this game business, sorry again it's doing so poorly. Concerning the tone of the thread, I'm not sure I saw anyone being disrespectful to the devs. They are doing their own customer service, which is never easy, knowing that their paying players have also the right to be annoyed by this change. I would be more worried though about iTunes reviews of some angry customers after the automatic update download. Those will not have had the TA heads up of such a huge change to the pay model.
I bought all three IAP when they were $5, $5 and $10 in order to support a great game. Hopefully the infinite lives purchased still remains infinite with no adds for those that made this purchase.
Trolling his own game thread, brilliant Oh, wait, "brilliant" is exactly the word I needed for my next game! Btw, I thought of the secret word achievement, and have sthg I wanna try, but it won't be easy and it's not Bux either
A good solution would be an extra set of customizations for purchase in a subsequent update that you get free if you have already bought the custom pack. I like this update plan. Some people hate ads/videos no matter what, but many many more people are very happy watching ads in order to get free stuff (for example people who watch television). Getting more games started continuously should really help Capitals because the size of the pool is very important for matchmaking. In games w a decent amount of luck, and/or no learning curve it's less significant, but Capitsls is skill based to the degree that the stronger player should win most of the time. And the better players w infinite lives are always available to be matched, and just stomp new players in three rounds. But I'm surprised more serious word game players haven't found the game yet, because it improves so many things from Letterpress (which I loved but got tired of pretty quickly because of its shortcomings). They may just need more time to find out about the game. Most Nimblebit devotees are probably more in the casual camp than hardcore word game camp.
What about making custom icons free, but colors paid? Colors seem like a good IAP candidate, because you so clearly see OTHER people using it. The reminder is always there. (Or vice versa: colors free but icons paid; colors simply seem like the more "valuable" of the two, because they stand out so clearly.) Anyway... hope the experiments succeed in the end! I'd be terrified to release a game that needed servers, for this very reason--which is sad, because so many great concepts NEED a back end (beyond Apple's).
Aargh. Time to try a few others then. They said someone in the thread had already guessed it. Can't remember exactly what's been said, but I think the following have been mentioned: IPHONE NIMBLEBIT ACHIEVEMENT SECRET?
