HI i am thinking of developing a new Flash based Online game so before starting developing i want to know that will i earn from this game

There are many games which are doing this like Farmville ,Mafia Wars etc.. but i want to know from user that

How many of you buy this items


Regards
Shubham

Sorry for posting in Wrong Forum .

Please any Mod Or Staff Member Move it to right Section i tough that Beginner Section is good for this Topic

Regards
Shubham

I buy virtual goods, but only in games I really like.


Revenue is a simple combination of numbers:

A: Active Users --- How many players you have visiting your game's online store
B: Attach Rate --- How many players bought stuff
C: ARPPU --- Average revenue per paying user

A * B * C = revenue.


Let's say you have a highly successful product. Let's assume you have a very active store with 50K daily users (variable A). If they really like your product you might get 1% of them to purchase at a given rate (variable B). Exactly how much money they spend depends on your product, but for this example let's assume they all spent $5 (variable C).

Multiply them together:

50,000 people * 0.01 attach rate * $5 per paying user = $2500 revenue.

You can change these numbers by adjusting each variable:
variable A: Drive more people to the site through better advertising.
variable B: Provide compelling content, or better advertising, or otherwise encourage people to buy
variable C: find a price point that customers are willing to purchase at, or provide multiple price points


The numbers above would represent a very successful online store. Your exact numbers will be different.

(Also, moving to Business.)

I've read several articles over the past years which reference studies (heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who knew someone that was there... ) that the majority of the spending is done by a minority of the players - more so than you would expect with the 80/20 rule . According to that, you would expect something like 95% of your players to to not buy anything, but the other 5% to make large purchases, rather than many players making small purchases.

I've read several articles over the past years which reference studies (heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who knew someone that was there... ) that the majority of the spending is done by a minority of the players - more so than you would expect with the 80/20 rule . According to that, you would expect something like 95% of your players to to not buy anything, but the other 5% to make large purchases, rather than many players making small purchases.

Yes, they are often called "whales" a term that comes from the gambling world.

They are big spenders, and often they are generally very vocal. They often turn out to be active reviewers, bloggers, and influential people.

Be very careful how you treat them.

We have three big groups:
* There are the whales who buy lots of everything, even giving copies away as gifts. Give them any new content and they will buy it.
* There are minnows who purchase occasionally spending a bit of money, and represent the bulk of our money. The trick is making them bite.
* The leeches who who play for free and never buy at all. :-) At least we get ad revenue.

Leaches represent about 98% of our user base at work, and over 99.9% of my userbase on my personal projects.

At work we often joke about how monetization and maximizing sales makes us feel dirty, but at the same time we like getting paid.

I've bought virtual goods in the past but came to the insight that the entire concept of "free with microtransactions" is not just "not at all free" (this is rather obvious, nothing is free, ever), but truly fraudulent.

To make this statement more precise, I've spent on the order of 150 Euros on virtual micro-currency to buy virtual goods within a period of about 1-2 months. This is an amount of money that I generally don't mind, but it's too much if you feel like being a complete idiot later. Also, seeing how it's about 10 times as much as a "typical, normal" subscription, the expectation is that it had better be the best experience in your life.

One of the "goods" was additional bag space, which was promptly filled not only by literally hundreds of junk items (which you can drop, no problem so far) but by quest items that are placed in your bag whether you want them or not and that you cannot drop, for quests that cannot be finished because they are not implemented -- scam.

Soon after, bag space was sold at "half normal price" because few people would buy. You'll be saying "fair enough, special offers at the vendor's discretion", but still -- fool.

Some virtual goods were potions that refill your energy. Turns out half of the community got hundreds of them for free without ever paying a dime, because hey... if you incidentially use your Facebook account as OpenID, then you get them as daily gifts. If, like me, you use a different OpenID, you're just a fool.

Another virtual good were special hats that give a small buff. No surprise, some weeks later a different kind of hat was available for the same price with a better buff. Bad luck? Fair enough. Except yet a few weeks later, the hats that I've paid real money for were given out for free to anyone. Holy crap -- big fool.

Yet some weeks later, I was on holiday for two weeks. Coming back from holidays, I found out that everyone had been given the equivalent of 30 Euros of virtual micro-currency as a freebie and bought the newest speedy hats which give a huge advantage (probably more than any other thing). Of course they didn't give me any, because I'm the gigantic fool who already paid for them.

So, after feeling like a total fool just a few times too often, that's it for me.

I realize that it costs money to develop and run a game, and I realize that people who work for a gaming company like being paid to feed their children, but that's beyond the point. I have no problem with paying for a title or paying a subscription fee. Hey, someone gotta pay for the hosting. However, there is always a "right" way and a "wrong" way of doing things, and there is a point where greed becomes an unbearable dealbreaker.

That said, I'm decided to never pay a dime to any company offering such a thing again, in my life. And, I'm actively discouraging anyone who talks to me about it.

I realize that it costs money to develop and run a game, and I realize that people who work for a gaming company like being paid to feed their children, but that's beyond the point. I have no problem with paying for a title or paying a subscription fee. Hey, someone gotta pay for the hosting. However, there is always a "right" way and a "wrong" way of doing things, and there is a point where greed becomes an unbearable dealbreaker.

That said, I'm decided to never pay a dime to any company offering such a thing again, in my life. And, I'm actively discouraging anyone who talks to me about it.

That is exactly why any game implementing microtransactions needs to be very careful about how they treat their customers, and be extra careful about how they treat 'whales'.

Too many apps treat their customers exactly as you describe, offering useless paid content or not offering continuous benefits to those who buy.

That you invested 150 Euros put you into the whale category. The fact that they treated you that way is something you rightly should shout to the world.

Fortunately word-of-mouth tends to spread about those apps and they generally die in a spectacular fireball of negative reviews.