p It’s been a wild week for Cloud Breaker. Apple featured it as a Best New Game, which brought lots of great exposure. I posted it to Hacker News and reached the coveted #1 spot. I haven’t left my house because Boston has been cursed with eternal winter, but I’m sure if I did I’d have to wade through a crowd of adoring fans. Really though, my biggest problem is finding new places to hide stacks of cash.

p Alas, I am a man of the people. Eventually I must descend from my lofty perch. Let’s take a look in the ol’ App Store review box.

p strong em Deleted. Don’t bother. br em 1 star by SUCKAFREEREVIEW.COM p em Interesting enough game, couldn’t believe that I had to pay when my lives were up. Not worth the money at all. Again, another dumb freemium game. Very disappointed. This game is not fun or addicting enough to warrant the in app purchases for more lives. Super simple concept, with gameplay that thinks it’s better than it is; this is a cash grab plain and simple. Don’t even bother downloading.

p Nooooooooo! My cash grab scheme! It’s been foiled! I thought it was the perfect crime!

if preview a(href=link) Read More else hr p strong em Terrible freemium model br em 1 star by Sick of guessing unused names p em Stop being able to play AT ALL until you pay? I would rather have paid .99 up front. Deleted. hr

p Well, I guess the jig is up. I’ll reveal everything.

p I give the game away for free, which is my devious plan to get people to like the game before they spend money on it. Then, when their plays run out, they can buy the unlimited version for 2.99 (or wait for their plays to refill).

p I thought it was the perfect crime, pioneered by shareware games of the mid-nineties.

p “Sick of guessing unused names” identified the honorable business model. You should ask your customers to pay before they have played the game, to make sure their decision isn’t influenced by how much they enjoy the game.

p Let’s check out another review…

p strong em Great br em 3 stars by A very sad man p em Take away paying after u run out of lives. Other than that it’s good

p Okay, time to get real.

p Although some of these reviewers are ineloquent, what they have to say is entirely helpful (and I actually appreciate them very much). If a few potential customers take the time to write an angry review about why they don’t want to pay you, there are probably many more that will simply not pay and walk away without saying anything.

p Let’s look at some numbers.

p img(src=“/img/chart.png”, width=“600px”)

p I labeled the chart with events roughly where they are in time. I say roughly because the time resolution of the X axis is low. The first full day of the Apple Feature corresponded roughly with the HN posting, so it’s hard to completely distinguish them. My best guess though, is that the feature provided most of the bump, while the HN post gave a little extra boost (which you can see tail off after a few days).

p My particular feature was a Best New Game on the App Store, which lasts a week, but the placement was someone down the list. I.e., you would have to scroll a little to see it. I suspect the better placed games get significantly more downloads, but I’m not sure.

p But regardless, many people have now played and enjoyed my game, for which I’m very grateful.

p Sales? Not great. A very small percentage of players have bought anything. I’m hoping to get into rent money territory soon. Here’s how I see the big picture…

p Back in the days of yore, people made games and sold them. Well, mostly anyway. You could also go to an arcade and pay money every time you wanted to play a game. Shocking by today’s standards, I know.

p Was this better? I’m not saying it was better or worse, but things changed. The current mobile market is a result of a few major factors:

p First some companies figured out how to make big money selling their game for $0.99. (Like Rovio and Angry Birds) p Then some companies figured out how to make big money giving away their game for free. (Like King and Candy Crush) How? By monetizing a small percentage of their players (industry term is ‘whales’), and using the free players as marketing vehicles. p Simultaneously, a huge number of good games entered the market, either from bigger companies, or smaller companies, or one man bands (like me!). Part of the reason for this is the ease of selling them (thanks to the App Store), and the other part is the ease of making them (thanks to cheap, high quality engines like Unity).

p To top it off, the game industry is different from most others because people WANT to make games. Not many people grow up wanting to sell enterprise software. So, the dream isn’t necessarily to make big $. It’s just to make a living off of it. If that’s not an argument for viewing games as art, I’m not sure what is.

p Anyway, here’s where we’re at with mobile games: Players expect games to be free. There are many many good games to choose from. So, who gets paid? Basically, the companies that know how to make money off of a market where only a small percentage of people pay. (Hint, it’s not easy to do this.)

p The (perhaps) saving grace for small developers is that a big part of the money machine that big publishers use is advertising. And the best place to advertise mobile games is in other mobile games. So smaller companies can get paid by acting as the advertising arm of the bigger companies.

p I get the feeling that this is pretty much the same lesson that other industries (television, music) have learned. Console and PC developers should watch for the same tide turning in their space.

p I am simplifying somewhat. There are paid games in the app store by small developers, but I suspect that if they’re making any money, they either tightly fill a niche, or they have a strong brand, or they’re just really incredibly awesome and impossible to ignore. None of those paths are easy, and addressing each of them could fill a blog post, if not an entire book.

p So, as for Cloud Breaker, I’m going to add in a purchaseable no-time limit mode, which a lot of people have asked for. And I’ll probably put in some ads for people that haven’t spent anything on the game. People don’t like ads, but they like paying for content even less. I can’t be too critical, because I listen to Spotify and buy way fewer albums than I used to.

p But I digress. Let’s check out one last review…

hr p strong em Boring br em 1 star by [redacted] p em Boring hr

p >:(