Chillingo believes that microtransactions and the free to play model is the “best thing” to happen to the mobile gaming industry.
The free to play model, complete with its in-app purchasers has been under a lot of scrutiny in the news thanks to the large accidental purchases made by children.
However, despite those issues, Ed Rumley, General Manager of Chillingo believes the model is the fairest for consumers.
“I believe microtransactions are the best thing to happen to this industry. I’m a big believer that micro transactions are the fairest business model in the world”, said Rumley speaking to TrustedReviews. The reason I say that is that I can go buy a cinema ticket, I can pay a huge amount of money to watch a football match, or whatever the entertainment, but there’s never any guarantee of enjoyment.”
It’s all about looking at the changing market and the type of people that consume mobile games or apps. The majority of them, with a vastly varying age range, would never consider themselves gamers, but are regularly playing titles like Candy Crush.
“It’s micro transactions that have helped that. If games were still $10 or so on the App Store, then certain barriers to entry would be there. But when games are free, what’s more acceptable for the mass market?”
But, of course, there’s a big difference between using the free to play model and using it correctly, we applauded games like Plants vs Zombies 2 for their ability to be played from start to end without paying, but it’s games like Angry Birds Go, which forced you to fork out for new cars in order to progress that give micro transactions a bad name,
“It’s all about fun. When people load that game for the first time, we want that door to open up and for people to play that game. We don’t want people to feel that after 20 seconds they’ve got to start spending on a game. That’s why we’re so focused on fun. Providing we can do that, we’re delivering a good game to the market.”
“This is the way you’ve got to look at monetisation. You’ve got to look at each game in turn and decide what’s right. It’s all about the game and it’s all about the player.”
“The bottom line is that you’ve got to accept the fact that the majority of people are never going to spend. But those people are still very valuable to our organisation because they’re telling us how to improve our games, they’re telling their friends about the game. They’re as important to us as the people who do spend.”
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
