iCombat

When I initially launched iCombat in April, I decided to wait on releasing a lite version to first see if I could manage to get up the charts without one. My fear was that a lite version would cannibalize my potential user base if I accidentally put too much of the game’s “secret sauce” out there for free. Looking back, I realize now I was so afraid to get the feature mix for the demo wrong that I irrationally avoided the option much longer than I should have.

And while part of my hesitation had to do with my optimism about iCombat’s potential and my marketing ability, it also had to do with the fact that I rarely buy full versions of games (although I do occasionally). After just launching my lite version yesterday I can say that my concerns about the lite version were misplaced and might have cost me quite a bit in lost income. Below are my main takeaways from having waited on launching the lite version and why I think too many indie iPhone developers wrongly steer clear of lite versions:

1. Know your Apps Core value and its core user: This sounds douchey but it really is harder than it sounds to have the discipline to know the profile of your core user and then choose that feature you think will resonate most.  For example, if you are making a game it is easy to think kids and adults will like it and they will all get hooked on the game play AND the graphics AND the story equally.  Odds are your app will not resonate with everyone, and one salient feature will be the hook so the sooner you figure it out and admit it to yourself the better. You may be wrong, but better to know your target than water down your strategy by pursuing too many angles.  Needless to say once you have your app’s core value outlined it will also be that much easier to design your lite version.
2. The App store is not a lemonade stand: The App store is one of the largest, most seamless content delivery platforms ever and when it comes to pricing most of us fail to understand just how fundamentally different this is from anything we have ever seen.  As a result we apply our personal conceptions of scarcity, value or what it means to transact with someone to something that is totally different.  If you have released an app you will agree that pricing decisions or the debate about a lite version are often more emotional than rational.  I am sure more than one developer has though “I don’t want to give it to someone for free when I worked 3 months on it every night after work while my wife was screaming at me because I was never around.”  That would be okay to think if you toiled on a model airplane or a painting for that period and were selling the one unit you had created, but in the App store you can divide that effort across 40MM+ people so who really cares if 5MM users get your app for free if in the end 250k of them buy it?
3. Be careful about buying into the media hype: I am not going to preach like everyone else about how little is being made on average. I don’t care about that because no one gets into App development to be average – if we didn’t all think we were working on the next Enigmo we probably wouldn’t be doing it.   I am talking more about the marketing angle.  Don’t fool yourself about how hard it is to get noticed, especially as the bigger game makers start to move to the iPhone platform.   It is getting more and more difficult to get blog coverage  so if you don’t have either a major platform to launch from or an existing fan base to leverage, your main form of exposure will be the lite version.
4. The blogosphere is like steroids (but it won’t make you #1): Many developers see Gizmodo or Techcrunch as the definitive tipping point, and it could be for an app but if your app does not deliver the viral hook no blog will save it.  As far as I can tell there haven’t been any cases of a blog breaking an app that then jumped to #1 and stayed there for a long amount of time (please correct me if wrong).  Blogs are like steroids, can help you get from 10th to 1st or from 500th to 400th, but not from 10,000th to 1st.
5. Don’t hide from App store criticism & negative ratings. Tying back to the second point, it is hard to take criticism for something you have worked hard on and so there is a natural hesitation to launching a lite app as users can be much more harsh reviewers. Again the goal is to get die hard fans to buy a copy, so it is OK if tons of people don’t like your game or review it poorly because all you need is some that really love it to spread the word. Maybe not launching a lite version allows for more control over the reviews (as there seems to be a natural bias of paying users to give better reviews) but this helps no one. This only reduces the total amount of people discovering your app and limits your earning potential.

Bottom line developers need to stop pricing their apps and deciding strategy based on vague feelings of what is value or what is deserved.  With frictionless transaction costs and so many users, your worst enemy for getting noticed may just be yourself.  So we should all stop thinking about how our 3 months of work is selling for less than a cup of coffee (or could be given away for free) and start focusing on increasing the amount of people using our apps.

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