Hey kiddo, I'm calling your mother. You're gonna get grounded if you don't pull that cord from your internets!
if it was not for the fadd i would not know of tilt to live. hell i would not of known a lot of games. so what dose the service do for me.. puts lots of developers who i may not known of into my mind and igo check out there other games.. chances are if i like one of their games ill like others.. ill like more.. so, i do not feel guilty about a free game cause i spend way more money on the app store than i get free. its all good. i can see the problem too with the service.. double edged sword just like life.. no certains, just go with the flow and enjoy the ride.. in the end life is way to short for all this bickering that seems to go on the internet.. one thing is constant. humans sure like to complain. rock on! chris.
Well, thank you! You are the first person who actually made good points to be PRO FAAD! The rest of the pro people drowned in immaturity. Still, ICS refuses to answer my questions and I don't expect them answers to come. You said you like a good discussion? Fine - when do you start participating in this?
My answer to the people complaining about games they have bought going free is: Come on, it's a dollar (in most cases)! With the exception of iBlast Moki, which I paid $1.99 for a long time ago I've missed out on picking up games I already had that I paid a measly buck for. Yea I kinda feel the sting a little bit, but really, the games are cheap enough as it is that it doesn't really bother me. I like freaking inkies and got it for a buck a while ago as well. Am I upset? No. The game is easily worth the pocket change and I can console myself with the fact that I support indie devs when they make cool games.
Even though I love the free apps I get with faad, the developers as you say are suffering. It's annoying because Tilt to live has a ridiculously low rating wen it should be high.
By and large the people here aren't complaining that the games went free or they lost money on the game. The complaints and irritations are with the method. Sales happen all the time and I don't think anyone has an app that hasn't gone free or had a sale, it's the manner in which these apps are collected that people are disagreeing with.
I think it's funny that the post was created by someone that was so stoked about the recent posts at FAAD and now the thread has turned into this catfight. Are you guys really this emotionally attached to the cause that your willing to berate eachother over it? It's the developers decision to garage sale their merchandise or to not. Period! Now everyone kiss and make up. Wait, let me grab my camera first. Oh, by the way, Trenches has never been free. Never.
Well - and next year the people are suddenly asking: "Hey - where are the cool indie games lately?". And only a few know the real answer.
I'm not really sure why most of the members here are against an app going Free or FAAD(or any other free a day site for that matters). Find me one market (not just appstores, but any real market) where you have this much competition (200000+ apps, most are crap/clones but still, thats a huge number) and still guaranteed success by just making a good product and zero marketing budget? Most of the so called Indie devs dont have a budget for ads, or arent willing to risk their money on marketing the app as their is no real guarantee that they'll even get their money back. Making an app free doesnt cost them anything. Even with the old $600 fees by FAAD, it was something most would be willing to gamble on. And with the revenue sharing model, they no longer need to risk even 600 bucks. So its a win win situation for devs. And no indie dev is going out of business by making his app free. Price drops and sales are now a part of appstore. Even the measly 99cents wont guarantee you good sales anymore. All you can hope for is that apple pick up your app and feature it for a while, but thats not something you can ever count on. Everything in this world needs marketing to sell itself, making your app free looks like the cheapest yet one of the most effective one right now.
Some of us just like to whine from behind our keyboards ok? Gosh, you just don't get me anymore! *runs off crying*
Haha well I think Glenn already jumped in a few pages back and said what I'm about to; As a developer we are entirely aware of how FAAD a works! Now I'm doubtful that games like Tilt to Live etc will get much out of it, as there already popular and in the spotlight so to speak... However a small number of our games failed to make any decent revenue simply as we didn't get the word out about them properly (largely when we were starting up last year and didn't have a marketing plan)... Now we had like an average 4 star rating on the given game... But who gives a crap when it's number 560 in racing games and no one can see it... In contrast we ran a FAAD promotion with it, and YES the rating went down to 3 stars, but it also got over 100,000 downloads in a day, got into the top 100 free and has 100,000 people now showing it to their friends etc. In this situation the number of people annoyed about it going free was very low (given the number of sales was so low)... And we then had a fairly consistent means of viral marketing... The FAAD campaign increased that particular game from generating $2/3 a day, to now generating $10 a day consistently 6 months after it's release (granted still crap money, but it's a 500% increase)... I think to put it into context it really depends on the game... If it has had some good exposure then it may not benefit to such an extent (as we found with Mirror Maze when we did a FAAD campaign with that 2 weeks ago). - It was featured in New and Noteworthy, making decent revenue, and the FAAD campaign has had limited/no impact on revenue generation... But for games that are old/ don't have any exposure, it can be a real boost. For instance Chromixa I think is a genius indy game! I have shown it to a number of friends since it was part of a FAAD campaign and they have bought it. I wouldn't have downloaded it (and generated them those additional sales through friends) if it had been number 540 in puzzle games and a paid app... So really it just depends on the game !
I agree with you here. I've discovered a lot of things I wouldn't have normally tried, and developers i'd not heard of because of promotions like this.
I don't get it either. All of the developers who sign up for any free app promotion know exactly what they're getting in to, and at this stage in the game, there are detailed developer accounts from people who saw a lot of success from the promotion and others who didn't. From there, developers can decide whether or not they want to spend the $600/$1200/profit sharing (or whatever they're charging now), drop their price to free, and see what happens. ICS Mobile isn't forcing anyone to do anything, and from developers who I've talked to that have mentioned FAAD in conversation, is very open with anyone interested in their service. As far as the ridiculous accusations as to why FAAD isn't more up front with their business practices on their web site, why should they be? That makes absolutely no sense. It's not like you can go to walmart.com and read about their corporate strategy to move in to small towns and eliminate all local businesses through rock bottom pricing that Wal-Mart is only able to offer because of how incredibly ruthless they are as a business. Why? Because things like that are completely irrelevant, both to people buying potato salad at the Super Wal-Mart and to anyone who stumbles across a free game on FAAD.
I think the problem is when a trick is being used too many times, it will slowly decrease its effectiveness. Before it was the 'one dollar sale', right now it's the 'make your app free for one day'. I'm interested to see how this turns out (and what will be the next trick). As a developer myself, I'm not planning to use the FAAD service. I'd rather do something else and not follow the crowd. A habit I've learned from the stock market
