6 reasons to make a freemium game

1. 6 reasons to make your next mobile game freemium by paul@bowen.fm

2. 1. Marketing bliss You almost certainly don’t get into game development to do marketing. However, if you’re making a smartphone game and want to take full advantage of the democratised D2C platforms that are available to you, one of your chief drivers of success will be how effective you are at finding the best audience for your game. A freemium game opens up a myriad of marketing options; whether you like it or not, you become an overnight direct marketer. With a low barrier to try your game (just download), there are many different sources of traffic across which you can easily optimise. Like any good direct marketer you need to have effective tracking / analytics in place to allow you to see what source of traffic you’re making your money from. A freemium game opens up scale within Affiliate, Search, Pay per install, Free app sites, Banner advertising, review sites, test and assess propositions. All of these routes can be effectively used to achieve meaningful volumes and determine what’s the most profitable source of traffic for your game.

3. 2. No barrier to experience what you’ve created Your game is free to download, and that means there are no other barriers you can control that impede a consumer from playing your game. If you’ve implemented the freemium model well, there will be plenty of content and playing time available to those users allowing you enough time to give them information about what it is you’re selling and how it will enhance their entertainment experience.

4. 3. Pricing flexibility The freemium model opens up a whole new world of pricing flexibility that never existed when a consumer was asked to pay up front for gaming content. It’s almost impossible to reduce the price of a paid app, then increase that price and earn more money. That’s possible in the world of freemium because consumers have experienced your game. If you’ve done a good job, they’ve probably grown to love it and they want and need the currency to achieve the things in the game they want to achieve - this means they’ll be more tolerant to pricing changes. So if you were selling 100 Gold Coins for $1 and thought your currency was too cheap, you could readily decrease it to 75 = $1 and make more money. If you increased the price of a paid app you’d almost certainly make less money, as it’s expected in the paid app world that you’ll reduce the price eventually. Great hooks that keep players coming back on a daily basis within a freemium game mean it’s much much harder for a consumer to play this waiting game.

5. 4. You are now a shopkeeper The worst thing you can do as a vendor of any product or service is to only have one product to sell to consumers. Because if for whatever reason, the person doesn’t want to buy the particular product or service you’re selling, you’re screwed. You need to give consumers choice of what to buy from you and freemium gives you the freedom to do that. Freemium allows you to become a shopkeeper, where you can sell any number of goods or services to someone and diversify your risk away from only selling that one product.

6. 5. Optimise content Now you’re a shop keeper you can maximise the content and therefore revenues you make from the products you have. When you only had one product, this was impossible to do, you had to accept whether people bought or sold your product. With a multitude of products that people can buy, it’s easy to see through analytics if consumers like a particular product more than another. It’s much easier this way to see what’s good an what’s not, because what people will part with money for is the best indication of what they like.

7. 6. Increased revenue Some developers and consumers see this as cynical, but I think a good freemium game is made not to exploit consumers of gaming content but to allow them a position of status or an enhanced feeling by parting with money for premium content. It’s widely reported and I’ve seen no reports to the contrary, but a freemium game almost always makes you more money than a premium game. If that doesn’t sit well with you, give the money to charity, invest it all into marketing channels to increase distribution so more people love your game, hell, I don’t care, but don’t moan that people being exploited. Game developers are vendors of entertainment. Some people want to spend $100 to watch an opera; some people want to spend $100 on a virtual city. Who are you to deprive them of either if that’s what they want to do?

8. If you want some more advice email paul@bowen.fm