In early April 2014, Quentin Zervaas and I began our first attempt at making an iOS game — Hexiled. Quentin is a mobile app developer and I am a web designer/developer. Before Hexiled, neither of us had made a game. In case it's useful to any other developers, or of interest to those playing the game, here's the story.
Get Hexiled from the App Store on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch now in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian and Dutch.
In deciding how to offer and see any chance of financial reward for our Hexiled efforts, we had a few strategies to pick from. Here's a list of the options from which an app developer generally chooses:
Neither of us have any track record in games, so we decided that while ads aren't at all attractive and easier to avoid, options 1-2 would be risky. We also felt that we had a game which needed to be experienced more than it could be sold on screenshots or video. Screenshots can show the general idea, but not the fluid feeling of making words or the countdown to escape in true effect. A free game would allow people to try the mechanic first.
The third option was also a risk in that it might mean spending months on a game and then provide no way for even the most dedicated users to chip in somehow.
A free game with an in-app purchase made a little more sense, especially with a game that had logical unlock options in the extra modes and stats but gave nothing from the majority of people who would download a free game and not upgrade it.
Given that Hexiled's Escape mode especially provided quick replays, we figured it provided an obvious opportunity to display isolated and easily-skippable interstitial ads to generate some return on the game. An in-app purchase for the committed or appreciative players to remove ads was again a logical coupling.
With Escape being our hero mode, we used Explore (no time pressure) and Survive (another take on the timed approach) as incentives to encourage people to upgrade and/or keep playing. Players could unlock Explore mode by playing 100 games, or Survive by playing 500.
And so Hexiled launched and remains a free game for people to play and then gradually contribute income via ad views, or to accelerate their unlocking of Explore and Survive plus removal of ads via the single Unlock Everything IAP for $2-2.50 (depending on currency). We typically see paid upgrades soon after download while the advertising revenue from everyone else acts as a bit of an accumulative long tail.
We have at various points used a mixture of Chartboost, Flurry, iAd and AdMob for Hexiled's advertising, controllable by remote configuration that allows us to adjust the mix based on performance. As one example, when we received a few early reports of issues with particular and problematic Flurry ads, Quentin wound them down in favour of Chartboost. Later on, we were able to deploy iAd and AdMob and experiment with both to test fill rate and CPM on those. Chartboost remains our primary option at this point.
Our CPMs to date have been around $2 which seems inline with what people typically get in this situation. We have considered occasional short video ads as a means of pushing up the CPM slightly, but iAd's shortest video interstitial appears to be 15 seconds. While their ads are skippable, not everyone may realise and getting bad reviews is a risk. A 5-second video interstitial might be a good option for these situations if it was ever introduced.
Our IAP/upgrade percentages have also been roughly in line with other reports at 2% or so. In Australia, the upgrade percentage seems to be slightly higher which is probably attributable to friends and others keen to support a local product.
However, before we even started to see any return on the game, we still had to work on all the little things that make up that big trudge to a launch date. Next chapter coming soon.
Get Hexiled from the App Store on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch now in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian and Dutch.