Monetization

Hello everyone, I apologize for the delay in blogging, but it's been a busy last few days. I have up and moved from San Francisco to New York City where Phat Games' "head office" will be located.

Yesterday I started the process to officially make Phat Games a Limited Liability Company (this will be the 3rd time in my life I have set up a business either in the US or Canada) so I can start collecting revenue once the game is published which is a great segue into the next topic: Monetization. This is the first time I have monetized an app before. I have of course done a lot of research on the subject and reached out to a number of people for advice.

Burgal's Bounty will be using the Chart Boost API for all of it's money making needs. The monetization will be as follows:

1. Interstitial Ads between each level with the option to turn these off with a small in app purchase of 2 dollars
2. In App Purchases to buy more lives, or arrows/bombs
3. Watch video ads to get more lives, or arrows/bombs
4. Purchasing of level packs (30 levels will be available for free, with the ability to unlock 3 others also for free)

That's about it. Incentivized video ads have become a very popular and (for the time being) successful way of monetizing games. The vast majority of players are willing to watch a 15 second ad in order to get more game content (myself included). This far exceeds the accessibility of static ads or in app purchases (ads only make money if you have a million+ downloads, and IAPs tend to only get used by about 5% of the game's players).

I used to come from the old school mentality where I almost felt dirty about the montization of games like this. I liked the day when you could go and buy a game for a console for $50 or $60 dollars and that would be it. It seems that in game monetization is now the norm and really the only way to make money off your creation these days.

I'll keep everyone updated on the new developments!

- Blair