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the app economy is expect to be worth
120 billion dollars in 2019 not bad for
an industry that only existed for just
over a decade the spread of smartphones
is the reason that it took off but the
sustained growth comes from developing
markets by 2020 almost 75% of the global
population will be connected through
mobile phones and developing markets
will account for the largest share of
that growth in short the app business is
booming and it looks like it will be for
quite a while but most apps are still
free to download so where's all the
money coming from a lot of the
money-making strategies
sadly require a bit of deception get
folks invested in your game or let them
have fun with it but if they want
another try I'm gonna have to put some
more change into it to have another go
the standard advices unless you are
somehow getting people to pay upfront
you have to get your users invested and
interested in your app and then figure
out a way to charge for more of it or
for a better version of it but there are
other approaches and folks who've made a
lot of money in other ways making an app
is expensive let's figure out some ways
to avoid going broke
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my mother is a game about impossibility
and illusion that we released from all
darkness in 2014 and it was extremely
well received yeah it was like a big
surprise like I remember we were in our
studio in Shoreditch in East London and
we just thought maybe like a thousand
people would play it I mean that's
hoping yeah Wow no we just said eight
people make it I think like at this
point that and the second games about
two hundred million people so yeah crazy
there's the idea of anchoring that
people are happy to pay 50 bucks for a
console game on release day but won't
pay 99 cents for something that's on a
phone yeah what was your strategy on
sales you need to obviously the main
kind of monetization methods for mobile
games and that the game being free or
ad-supported free with in-app purchases
and or what used to be quite an
old-school way like a normal game way
which you pay for the cable for yeah no
you don't worry which which is reason
it's reasonable on every other platform
apart from this a little little so
people always ask like why do you why is
the difference between free and pony
does that influence how you make again
because it undoubtedly does on like my
best way to describe it is imagine
you've got two rooms right and the free
room and got paid room so the paid room
all I've got to do is you buy a ticket
to come in my room and then once you're
in the only thing I've got to do is make
sure you enjoy yourself you can leave up
to five minutes you can stay the night
whatever you want I'm just gonna make
sure this is an amazing experience for
you the other room is the free room you
don't have to buy a ticket to come in
but then once you're in my room my
primary objective is to keep you in that
room no matter what with distracting you
with offering you other things so it
fundamentally changes how you go outside
stuff so for us I guess respecting
people's time having something they can
finish and concentrating on the beauty
and the craft of something and showing
that that kind of entertainment has
value is chemical influence was which
brings me to piracy because I know
you've talked about that in in the the
annual posts that the company puts out
how big a problem is is at piracy on
paid stuff it's definitely a big factor
and I think there's only so much you can
do for its fight you're never gonna
and if you don't get any other piece of
media and you kind of fight against
piracy has never been won by the content
creators the only way I'd ever get
solved is by creating a business model
and offering that people find it more
painful to comparative so if you think
about music now music is come against
this subscription model where people
just can't be bothered to go and lie
open themselves up to spyware and go and
download illegal tracts and they can
just pay ten quid a month you know
before the cameras rolled you you
described Monument Valley as a unicorn
and it clearly it's it's at the end of
this kind of power law distribution that
we've gotten on how well apps will do do
you think there are lessons that smaller
developers and folks starting out now
can take from that other than make
something really really good and be
lucky I always think about you yes look
is involved in everything anyone ever
does but you can take certain steps to
kind of stack the deck in your favor so
for me it's always about not necessarily
being so introverted with the thing that
you make like don't be making something
just for yourself because that's not a
good business model like what you should
be doing it's like what does it look
like people want what is it like people
are crying out for what people
complaining about and how can i address
that they're not necessarily technical
or business things but it's like what
and what need are you addressing as
opposed to just be quiet egocentric with
creation that would be my biggest piece
of advice otherwise we'll just have
yourself play the game and then you
never keep a business open the public
has decided that they expect apps to be
free or at least close to it and the
reality is you're gonna have to work
hard to try and make any money from this
thing and you'll have to figure out
which strategy works best the app that
you've created so here your options just
charge money for it make the basic
version free but offer in-app purchases
to unlock the full thing stick adverts
in it or charge a subscription and if
you like me there is also some value in
releasing something for free because it
helps your brand for my app I'm not sure
which of those options could work if any
I could go with in-app purchases and
charge my users after the first few
facts or after the first fact of the day
or I could go within that ad
and have products or companies pay to
have their ads show up next to the facts
that's what a lot of location-based apps
do but it's a privacy nightmare or I
could go for a subscription-based model
users would subscribe to get better and
more fun facts but I don't know how well
that would work either
there isn't enough content that my app
offers to sell a subscription model well
and having all that code handling all
the overheads is expensive in itself as
soon as you have payments or
subscriptions as soon as you're taking
money your customer support becomes a
lot more complicated and a lot more
important I am tempted to just make this
thing a premium app people pay once to
download the app and then it's free to
use and just for the fun of it I could
put it on the market for $100 and see if
anyone goes for it no no eva's a joke I
cannot bring myself to do that someone
might actually buy it I just couldn't
live with that did you find when you
went to a subscription model that the
people who had bought the app what they
thought was out right at the start were
angry about that people angry whenever
you change anything to do with money
people got so angry when we went to
subscription and we were really careful
about how we did it so when we went
there we said okay if you bought the app
you're not gonna lose any content at all
like you get you get to keep everything
with you paid for and in fact for the
rest of time you're going to have a
discount on subscription for for for
content and so we thought like this is a
great deal and of course people were
really really upset because I think I
mean even now there's still a lot of
people who just viscerally don't like
the idea of the subscription they want
to own software and I think their
various reasons
that's not how software works anymore
yeah I'm getting increasingly annoyed
the point where I had to change my adobe
so if they're just buying they're buying
this week to you know every single month
something has to leave my account for
this really don't like it so I think
when you have to make a change like that
which you might think is really you know
we thought were justified and and you
know I see this all the time you just
need to be really clear
indicating the community and also we
told people look if you have a problem
just email us and I I personally like
the CEO of the company will reply and I
will tell you like what we're gonna do
about it and like and and so you know
then unless you've got like an millions
of players you can actually do this
because most people just don't care
did you find that people were cloning
the idea and not necessarily infringing
copyright or pirating it but doing the
thing where it is just a poor imitation
cheaper I used to get worried about it
yeah but now that now it's sort of
stopped happening actually now people
stopped doing it because because people
realize that the apps aren't you know
that the gold rush has kind of stopped I
have to say we just didn't really do
anything and and and that's partly
because they never became really
successful I think if they became
successful we would have to think about
do we need to do something about our
pricing do we need to you know change
our content and I think in some ways
look if there was a competitor that
people loved even more when I had a type
of gameplay or a type of sort of you
know interaction there was better than
what we had then we might have copied
that you know that's good competition
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users will pay for what they value most
about an app if it's a productivity tool
or a time saver then you might be able
to sell it as a paid app if you're
giving them a steady stream of valuable
content venule probably better with a
subscription model and if your app is
purely entertainment then advertising or
in that purchases might be the best
option and have a look of what your
competitors are doing second freemium it
is by far the most popular monetization
strategy it is very hard to compete with
apps that are free so freemium is the
most common option with this model the
app is free for users to download and
try but there are additional tiers
features or incentives within the app
that users can choose to pay for but
when I was a kid we call that shareware
but sure whatever freemium it is lastly
piracy it's an inescapable part of
publishing your app there is no real way
to stop it short of continually hunting
down pirated copies so it may be easier
to accept now that your app might be
pirated and that there will be little or
nothing that you can do about it it's
easier than it used to be at least if
your app uses cloud services you might
be able to limit the functionality in
pirated versions
next time how to make sure your app is
not
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