Never played that one. We use little cutscenes for the intro and ending. Here are some, taken out of order, from the intro.
This will launch for 1.99 right? Also Kepa how's the game coming along, we still looking for a early September release?
I'm pretty sure I read that it would be 2 bucks some where. At least.. That's what I believe, hah. I'm hoping for a release next week from what I've read in my response to my post a few weeks ago.
We were hoping to submit it tomorrow, but I dunno. Depends on bug hunting tonight. After submitting it to Apple, it's 1-2 weeks before it shows up on the App Store. It'll be 1.99 bucks on release, raised to 2.99 at some arbitrary point afterward. After that, no sales. I don't think we'll ever have sales for any of our 3 dollar games, but I'm growing softer on the idea for 99 cent games. Might make Hook Worlds free at some point. It turns out that the problem with the 99 cent price tier is that if you don't sell a massive amount of copies, you may as well just make it free with IAP to support it.
A show of integrity! I lift my glass to Rocketcat. Can you tell us more about your opinions and underlying reasons for your reservation towards app store sales? I find it to be a praiseworthy position, but an unusual one in the current context. On the top of my head, I can only think of Hemispheres Games (Osmos), Mobigame (for the original Edge), and Firemint (before they got bought by EA) as successful developers who follow this kind of model.
*Super hopes it gets submitted tonight* It would be awesome to see it submitted tonight, but I definitely understand that you guys wouldn't want to put out some bug-riddled product. No worries because either way, I'm going to be buying when it shows up in the US App Store. Doesn't hurt to ever want to it come sooner, though, hah. If you changed Hook Worlds to free.. Would you be implementing ads into it with the option to buy them out? What if someone (like I did) already purchased it?
There's a few reasons, actually. 1. We're really bad businessmen. 2. I find it somewhat annoying when I buy a game and it goes on sale immediately after. I see the value of putting things on sale, and don't hold a grudge or anything when this happens, but I still see the whole constant sale situation as annoying. This is usually the explanation I give, but it's more complicated than that because I actually like Steam sales. 3. I'd say most of our games are oddly complex, at least for iOS games. This makes them niche games. If you're making a niche game, there's a limit on what max number of people you're going to reach, though these people will probably be more willing to support your current and future efforts. As such, you may as well charge a decent price. If a sale probably won't increase that ceiling of potential buyers, then it's a bad idea. 4. Misplaced sense of pride. I consider dropping the price of one of the three dollar games vaguely insulting, partly due to point 3. I wouldn't have a problem with taking a quick game that we make, and dropping it from 99 cents to free, though. Free actually seems less vaguely insulting to me than 99 cents, since the 99 cent price point is firmly established as the "make a game that appeals to the widest common denominator, play the App Store charts like it's a lottery" strategy.
What to do about the people that actually bought the game prevents us from making it free. Ideally would like to give something interesting to supporters, but also ideally wouldn't want to spend too much time on it. The danger is that we'd get into some long, involved cycle of adding content to the game as we make it free. The other problem is that there's no really good way to make Hook Worlds a game people could throw money into if they liked it. There's no store or upgrades, which would have been the easiest path to take, by far. Ads+paying to remove them is an extremely lame form of blackmail. What's left are cosmetic IAP, which only a small percentage of people buy, and requiring money to unlock levels, a practice I've always hated. So the likeliest scenario, if we ever make Hook Worlds free, is that we'd just make it free, period, but maybe add more IAP. Maybe take some of the current things that paid players get for free and make those IAP, too, so previous buyers have some bonus. I think at this point, though, we'd rather just make a new game that's designed to be free from the start.
I'm glad to learn I'm not the only one holding this opinion. Thanks for the explanation. I actually share most of your feelings, from the pov of a fussy gamer who cares about the overall "health" of the marketplace.
As a longtime supporter of rocketcatgames I (and I can probably speak for some other fans) wouldn't mind if you made Hook Worlds free, as it would get people to most likely buy the rest of the "Hook Trilogy" it's your choice though. Also I love how you do intro sales, I hate when you buy an app for 6.99 then a month later it's 0.99, and as I have stated MANY times before I'm pumped as hell for MG
These are puzzling examples to me. All 3 of the developers you've mentioned have had fairly frequent sales for their games. And Firemint has had sales long before they were ever bought by EA. The only dev that I can think of who just flat out does not have sales is Illusion Labs (there are probably others, though). Rocketcat holds strong to the "no sales" mantra too, but only post-launch since they almost always have intro sales. I remember Hook Champ being on sale one time, but that's it. I think this is kind of a strange comment too. To me, this model offers the chance for someone to get a game for free, and the dev can still make some money off of it. That gamer may have just not even tried the game at all if it wasn't free. Then, if you hate the ads, you can just pay what the game would have cost in the first place to disable them. It doesn't seem any different than having an ad-supported free version and a premium paid version of a game, except it's all in one app. I kind of think it's better to have more options for people trying your game than less.
After verifying their pricing history through AppShopper, I have to agree that my examples are not very good ones. In my defense, Edge and Osmos haven't been on sale for a while now. Firemint have done sales previously, but never reduced their pricing down to 1.99$ before, except in the case of Flight Control. Thanks for the rectification
Yeah sorry, I wasn't trying to pick on you I'd agree that all those devs are great at releasing high quality games and at least at some point have offered them for a premium price, which I think was pretty much what you were getting at anyway. As for Mage Gauntlet, it should be sold for no less than $100
The only Hook Champ sale was pretty close to the launch of the game, and wasn't as big as the release sale, if I'm remembering right. I think we did it at the same time as the first update. But yeah, that was the only one, other than that we've only done release-day sales. As for the ads, I don't like the concept for a few reasons. One is that you're not paying to get anything, you're paying to remove an annoyance. I guess that's a pretty slight distinction, because with a coin-shop setup you're pretty much paying to lessen or remove the grind. Still, I think the latter is a lot better if done right. Another reason is just bias from seeing other games with ads implement it poorly. In most cases it was a game that was cheaply made in the first place, with an Admob ad saying something like "PLAY DOODLE BALLS ADDICTING NEW GAME", splattered awkwardly at the bottom of the screen. If you can think of a game that does the whole ad+ad removal thing in a more slick manner, point it out and I'll take a look. Then there's various logistics things mostly due to not bothering with ads before. How long does it take to implement? Does it even make any money unless you have a huge base of people over multiple games, all with ads enabled? I think the implementing of ads is easier than it was before, just something I haven't checked out. Mostly, it still comes down to how I'd rather just make a new game that was free from the ground up, rather than fiddling with an old one. Also, we have our own title screen banner that tell players about previous games we've released. It's hard to say whether making Hook Worlds free would be better than just keeping it 99 cents for people that discover it due to Mage Gauntlet.
Those are some good points. I can't say I love games with ads, at all actually, it just struck me as odd to refer to ad-supported games with the ability to pay to disable them as blackmail I'd agree that most implementations of it in the App Store are shitty games with ads just slapped on them. But, the idea itself I think is fine, if done properly. I'll let you know if I come across a game that implements the model well (can't think of any off the top of my head ) Also, I wouldn't worry too much if you wanted to try out Hook Worlds as a freebie. I think the majority of people who have bought the game already feel like it was a worthy investment, and a bargain at that. I'd gladly sacrifice the dollar I paid for it if I knew that a lot more people would get to experience the game.
Words With Friends. Best implementation imo even though its not that great. Its interesting because they probably make money off the ads
