South Park’s Missed Monetization Optimization

After watching the South Park: Phone Destroyer announcement trailer at E3, I eagerly switched to the Canadian App Store to check out the game (as well as fellow E3 reveal Brawl Stars). From the trailer, I had assumed it was a Heroes’ Charge inspired game infused with South Park’s signature characters and irreverent humor. Within the first few minutes, it became clear that the gameplay was not another Heroes’ Charge clone, but instead a side-scrolling, […]

Making purchases present

Over the past year and a half as a monetization design consultant, one of my core tenets is to make purchasing present. Perhaps the biggest missteps I see in games with IAP is that the developer appears like they are doing everything possible to obscure the fact that a player can spend money within the game. When I get in front of audiences at GDC and other events, I coach that IAP are like banner ads: one must […]

Game Design is Business Design – GDC 2013 Edition

I presented this latest version of my game monetization lecture – Game Design is Business Design – at the 2013 Game Developer’s Conference as part of the Free to Play Design and Business Summit. In the talk, I mention some tools and templates in the lecture that you can find at the following links: Monetization Philosophy (template) Feature Brief (template) Game Treatment (template) Business Model Canvas (template)

The math of money in freemium

Last month I was struck by Going broke with success, the story of financial disaster for indie devs Mikengreg, the developers behind well regarded iPad app Gasketball. As told by the Penny Arcade Report, it is a heartbreaking story of two passionate devs dedicating two years to a project only to get completely wiped out financially despite hitting the #2 position on the iOS free charts in the US and #1 in 6 countries. Two years, a fun, polished, unique […]

Game Design is Business Design

Slides and audio from my game monetization lecture Game Design is Business Design. The most recent version of this talk was presented at GDC Euro’13. Previously, this talk has been given at the East Coast Games Conference, Game Developers Conference Europe, Game Developers Conference China as well as at companies including Epic Games and 6waves.