I am debating whether to make my game to use IAP for upgrading player abilities. Most likely, the game will be a paid app. It can be finished without buying IAP. Abilities sold in IAP will make difficult levels easier to finish.
I’ve read good and bad arguments about using IAP.
Has anyone done it and if so what kind of results are you seeing?
[import]uid: 39031 topic_id: 26090 reply_id: 326090[/import]
Are you asking about conversion rates or how it has effected ratings or balancing difficulty? [import]uid: 28736 topic_id: 26090 reply_id: 105653[/import]
I am asking how IAP is used in your app and what kind of results you are getting (i.e. are people buying?) If it’s not working as you intended, what would you change? [import]uid: 39031 topic_id: 26090 reply_id: 105716[/import]
I think our cannon cat friends could give us a rough number of people actually paying for the game. would be interesting! [import]uid: 90610 topic_id: 26090 reply_id: 105718[/import]
It really depends on how you do it and if you make your players mad… as well as what TYPE of game it is… For instance, a game where you collect resources and can pay to speed it up, those games do pretty well with IAP (think farmville) but people are starting to get peeved by them. Games where you are forced to unlock the game after a certain level, your game needs to be pretty damned good to convert people. If you offer IAP in order to advance in any way, such as the game is too hard unless you use IAP to advance, people hate that as well and you will get bad reviews. You are looking at a small percentage who actually will pay for IAP’s of your total user base. Games that cost money PLUS have IAP people, in my experience, hate. They already see IAP as evil, and you are asking them to pay for the game PLUS use IAP to advance.
In my particular instance, I have a game priced at $.99 with IAP, but the IAP is ONLY for people who want to get all the weapons without earning them or want to unlock things early. In this instance I even had a hard time convincing people that I wasn’t trying to rip them off and they are still weary. I did have a few people purchase IAP so it works, but not to the level that you might think it does.
So to not make people weary I released a FREE version of my game where you get to play one level and then optionally pay $.99 to unlock the rest of the levels along with those same IAP’s in the paid version of the game. Just to throw some numbers out there; I have had roughly 2,000 people download the game and only 4 have used IAP to purchase the full version.
What I would imagine the doods at Cannon Cat are doing (if they are really rocket scientists 
) is offering their game for free out of the gate, collecting a FEW IAP’s for the “sparks” and to build a fan-base (which is huge right now) and then in the next few weeks release levels which will probably cost money using IAP’s as well. Probably a small percentage will actually come back to the game, update it and purchase them but that small percentage is still a lot of players (out of a million). It is hard to guage their TRUE user-base because the way that they garnered their success was from various reviews on the net, PLUS having so many great reviews on the app itself, however those great reviews on the app were gotten by ingeniously coaxing the players to give the review in exchange for in-game currency. So while that helped to make the game look remarkable from the surface, it is hard to tell how many of those glowing reviews were from people who just wanted free in-game currency and from those who will actually compose the user-base of people who will download the updates, not uninstall the game and then purchase the new levels. As I said, even if the percentage is small, which I would imagine it will be, it still equals out to a large number. So they did a bold and potentially very smart thing by doing what they did. Had it not been for the Touch Arcade mention, they probably wouldn’t have been chosen as “New and Noteworthy”, and their success would have been minimal. So please do not compare yourself to their success. They made a great game, but they got lucky and hit the lottery being featured, you can’t rely on that for your game. In their instance, IAP will probably do very well for them because they are making their user-base WANT more… That’s the key.
What I’ve learned from the app market is that every little strategy must be meticulously thought out. People are very fickle with their money… People seem to complain that Apple has dictated the price of apps to be small, but it is more about the mere amount of options that are out there; prices for the apps HAVE to be small or people won’t buy multiple games, they will be even more picky and only buy a few. At $.99 Apple has created a market where you can impulse buy everything. People aren’t being cheap, they are just cautious before spending their money because there are new games that come out every day/week. Your game has to be remarkable to make a lot of money and relying on a pay app PLUS IAP might be a hard sell…
Good luck! [import]uid: 63800 topic_id: 26090 reply_id: 105736[/import]
Great write-up, Shizapp!
I have leaned toward not including IAP as I don’t see true benefits for the customers.
Still would be interesting to see how other apps that have IAP are performing though. Anyone else? [import]uid: 39031 topic_id: 26090 reply_id: 105773[/import]