This week I took a look at Monetization and how I might include it in my game "Síofra". If I was to develop this game for mobile I would 100% make it free to any user on the Apple Store or Android store. Doing this removes the possibility of making money from my game. This means I will have to find another way to monetize my game.
When researching this topic I came across these ways that I could monetize my game. I will discuss the good ones which I think I would include in my game and one or two bad ones that would be detrimental to my game.
In my research I came across this blog post written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. Sweet pricing conducted a survey of 20 popular mobile games that have over 5 million downloads in the Google Play Store. Of the games that they researched they said,
"40% of the games we looked at used both in-app purchases (IAP) and advertising together. 30% relied solely on advertising, 20% used only in-app purchases and the remaining 10% made no in-app revenue whatsoever."
It seems to be that in-app purchases is the most used way to monetize video games. I have a few mobile games on my phone at the moment and that is also the number one way that they make money from their games.
Hill Climb Racing is a game that I play a lot on my phone. The goal of the game is to drive as far across a track as possible while collecting coins to upgrade your car and purchase new cars and tracks. The way that they get monetization is by using pop up ads and also in app purchases. An example of this you can see below.
Another game that I have on my phone is Pointless. Which is based on the popular BBC TV show. On this app there are multiple "question packs". There is no way to unlock these packs, the only way to get them is by purchasing them. If you don't purchase them and use the same packs the questions start getting repetitive.
Good:
One easy way to introduce Monetization to my game would be to have a "More Games" button in the main menu of the game. This would be something that would blend seamlessly into the menu and would not distract the player from the game. The main objective for my game Síofra is to immerse someone in the world that I have created and I would be afraid to have anything too distracting on screen.
Another method would be to have a full size ad at the end of the game. This is another clever method of including something to monetize my game. Again this would be a way for my users to enjoy the game and not be distracted by advertising and pop-ups.
I would also include some kind of resource purchases or upgrades to the character. There are many ways to approach this. For example I could add a speed boost that can make my character move faster through the game.
Bad:
Banner ads would be the one element I would never include in my game. They are a feature of many mobile games that I have played myself and they really put me off playing a game. They usually take up a large portion of the screen and can sometimes be animated, brightly coloured and flashing. All these things really distract you from the game. This would be a disaster for my game when it's all about being immersed in the world of the game.
Another area of monetization I would not use would be the selling of consumer data. Even if I put something in the game to get the permission of the person I could not have it in there and have a clear conscience. I do not like the idea of a third party company having the information of all the people that play the game. I know this is used mostly for getting a gauge of how users interact with a product but I find this method to be potentially dangerous. All you have to do is look at the hack that happened a few years ago at Sony. Because they have a lot of people's information collected they were a target of hackers who found themselves suddenly with a treasure trove of people's personal information. I would never think of including this in my game.
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