Mobile Game: Monetisation

In this blog, I will be talking about my mobile game for one of my classes at university. We are required to create a mobile game in groups of three and publish it on google play. The main focus on this project will be monetisation and how to make a game successful.

There are many ways to monetise a game, but the most popular are:

In game ads

This is a thing that we see all the time in games. The developer earns revenue from the ads that come up in the game and the advertisers get a bigger audience. However, If there are too many ads or low quality ads in the game, it may become unplayable with there being every ad around the corner. the user will tend to get annoyed and end up deleting the game. There needs to be an effective number of ads for the developer to earn money, but not enough for the player to delete the game.

Reward ads

In my opinion, reward ads are much more effective than the in-game ads I mentioned in the last point. These kinds of ads make the user more inclined to watch the ad because they know they will receive something in the end. For example, in candy crush, you can watch an ad before a game and get a boost that will help you in your next game.

In game purchases

This is a very effective way to earn money if your game is fun to play and the user is able to get hooked on it enough to want to pay for the extras. It is very important to let the user know that there are in game purchases, so they know what to expect. If this information is not disclosed, the user may feel as if you have deceived them and may delete the game.

Paid Games

A very obvious way to make money from a game is to make the game paid. This is extremely effective if you have a fanbase. A good example is Minecraft, it is on the list of ‘top-grossing games in the app store’ and you have to pay for it upfront.

There is also mobile ad mediation and data monetisation.

As a team, we have spoken about a few ideas about what kind of game we would like to do. The one that stuck the most was a space themed one where you would fly around in a spaceship and catch planets or shoot planets, we haven’t decided yet! In the following week we will discuss everything and create a solid plan.

Here is a very rough sketch I have done to show my team mates a visual idea for how the proposed game could look like: