How to my monetize my company's mobile game on Google Play

Comments

• Elyaradine

  2:14pm 21 Jan 2020

  In your case, while I respect your wanting to go with a Paid game with no IAP, you end up having to work much harder for the initial sale than other games might when they're free. As is, there are a lot of free games that look really polished, with great art and such, that I imagine you'd be competing against for views. I think very few potential players would pay to try something out when they've got free alternatives that look more attractive.
  
  I'd suggest having some sort of sample part of the game that people can play for free to get an idea of what the game's like, and have a one-time IAP that unlocks the rest of the game. This way players can try it out and decide whether they like it enough to pay for the full game, rather than being put off at the start. This way you can also gauge how many downloads you're getting from free players (i.e. you aren't left guessing whether it's your pricing that's the problem), and can focus more on visibility, store aesthetics (great-looking screenshots and descriptions compared to other games), etc. Competing favourably against other games just on the store is really important (i.e. app icon, screenshots, description, etc.) if you want to have any hope of being discovered organically. Otherwise you're extremely reliant on external drivers like YouTube, reviewers, etc., and that itself is an enormous amount of work and management too.
  
  The one caveat I suppose is if you think you'd be appearing in one of the "Paid" lists on the various stores. If there's a particular category in which you might be performing particularly well, then being free might remove your visibility that way and may be worse.
  
  Mobile's a really awkward space with the race-to-the-bottom pricing, unfortunately, with monetization primarily off of annoying ads. My impression is that unless you've already made a name for yourself it's prohibitively difficult to sell well there.
  
  --
  I'd recommend working on more games, faster, even just as prototypes, just to build up a collection of neat games, and only pursuing commercial sales when players are asking you to work on the one game over the others (and tell you that they'd pay you to do so).

  Thanked by 2Tuism pieter
• iamdavidnight

  9:56am 24 Jan 2020

  Free to play with AD's is the most basic.
  
  You could combines strategy of AD's and in App purchases, like stronger guns, etc..
  
  Just be careful using googles AD services. They're notoriously bad at not offering much help when something goes wrong.
  For safety, rather don't open your own AD's unless you make sure to specify your number as a test account.
• Pixelfun812

  10:22pm 24 Jan 2020

  Hi
  Thank you for the advice. Ads have become a very popular way to monetize mobile games. I am not fond of the practice but I may implement them as the project progresses.
• konman

  6:02pm 26 Jan 2020 edited 6:28pm 26 Jan 2020

  I've made some free mobile games and released them on Google Play 'with ads'. It has been a failure in an economic sense, but a success in an 'educational' sense.
  
  Ads, and hoping someone will click an ad is not the way to go... or implementing a "dark pattern" where you trick the player into clicking the ad is just a 'no-no' and will result in failure. (AKA Placing an ad in close proximity to an essential button to progress etc)
  
  IMHO, from what I've learnt, I suggest:
  
  1) You have to make a free, fun and popular mobile game first, that on its own, has a large player base that loves it and enjoys playing it. (same as on any other platform)
  
  2) Once you are sure it is worth investing further development time in (due to interest) , pay-gate further deeper features that allows variances on game-play. I.e, In-app purchases.
  
  What point 2 means is you allow different ways to experience game-play. BTW: I am totally against pay-to-win mechanics and your player base will quickly call you out for it, if you plan to go that route too. :)
  
  So perhaps provide different ways to playing the game naturally without an advantage, but with a focus on variety. If your game is fun enough so players are willing to grind instead of pay for the additional content, then it is a win-win, because you cater for the whales (I hate that term) and the people who just enjoy grinding to get something. Cosmetics also seem to be popular with dedicated players, but that requires having a large player-base. I never 'got' the cosmetics thing, but that's just me as a person. Others obviously do add value to such material things and are willing to pay for it.
  
  These are just my general observations and are not meant to be taken as any authoritative guidance or subject matter expertise.
  I too am very interested in the subject and am just voicing my own opinion on this topic. :)
  
  Kind regards,
  K

  Thanked by 2watman critic
• Pixelfun812

  3:09pm 2 Mar 2020

  Hi K
  
  Thanks for those points and views. I have a new update I made. I allow a player to play a few of the levels and then hopefully it will "entice" them to buy the whole thing. Thanks again