The most addicting games I've played are the ones that deviate from the segmented, level-based gameplay seen in Angry Birds and Cut the Rope. You're competing in a saturated market against companies much larger than you. If you're determined to try your luck, then focus on style. Make it extremely dark and depressing or conversely witty with faux seriousness. Do something to stand out and carve out your niche. Polish your game. And most importantly, don't insult your users by making the game only completable with in-app purchases. To them, it's like lying. Find a way to make them want to spend money instead of feeling like they're being forced to.
Could you be a bit more specific. Where would you send those marketing dollars? Ads where? Recently Flurry came out with data, I'll find the link if I need too, that suggests that discovery is not the issue in the App Store.
If that is the case, how would marketing help sales?
To me this Economics 101. If your IAP removes ads, and people like the game, they'll spend the 99 cents for that purchase. If they feel they are being hampered because they have not bought an item and therefore can't compete in a game, they'll avoid the purchase.
Give people what they WANT and they'll buy it. Force people to buy something and they'll find a cheaper route, as in playing a different game.
I agree with the frequent updates. The goal is simple:
1) Avoid the spike. Game sales the weekend after release is big, and then dies.
2) Keep the game on the phone. With 1500 new game submissions A DAY, you need to keep the attention of the player. You do that by giving them short term goals and keep'm coming.
Ah, "freemium". I've seen several games out there with the dual-currency model: normal money for day-to-day operations and "special money" for neat things / making things happen faster, a currency that you mostly get by chance.
So you hook the user with variable-reward conditioning and then encourage him to become impatient enough to pay you $$$... No; I'm not really cool with that. Worst gameplay mechanic ever.
I refuse to purchase applications with in-app purchases for this reason, it's not a business model I want to support. Recently dumped "Words with Friends" because Zynga bought them and made it about as scammy as possible. Now happy with Wordfeud.
Nope, I consider that fine. In fact I think paying to make ads go away is a fantastic business model. It doesn't matter if it's a separate app or in-app purchases in my mind.
I've found that there is a segment of people like you who would rather pay for a premium ad free experience up front, and then other people who would not, so I think the point is, if you can have separate versions of the app to address both groups, that tends to work the best.
I'm leaning towards lite and full whack app. I find freemium games far more frustrating than fun. I want to build a game I would play myself.
Re: comments on Marketing. It's not something I know much about at this stage. I have read though that game is only half the battle for a successful release. My research was really only based on what I could find directly from the games.
This list just solidifies in my mind why I don't like mobile games. As someone who enjoys pc and console games, mobile games always feel dirty to me. They feel like they've been designed to be addictive, not fun. I'll happily spend $60 on Skyrim, but spending $0.99 on a game that feels like it's been engineered to get me to spend it feels like I'm rewarding malicious behavior on the part of the developer.
I get that mobile game devs need to make money, and I support that goal. I just wish I had an answer that didn't involve what feels like unethical behavior.
I've played hundreds of mobile games and the vast majority don't hold my interest for more than a few minutes. Even the truly great ones only last a week or so. If they're trying to be addictive, they are failing miserably. The model seems to be more like "pay a dollar to satisfy your curiosity about something sort of neat looking".
These are surely the feature sets of many successful games, but they didn't all start with hundreds of achievements, hundreds of levels, and so on.
The most successful games started with an original idea. People like the game, so they keep adding and improving.
The real secret to success is keeping your player coming back for more, giving them more opportunities to talk with their friends about it, tweet it, or get seen playing it in a social or populated location.
Not all successful games share these traits. Paying to skip a level is sketchy. What if you make a level impossible to beat? How would you expect a player to tell?
