ByteClub

An interesting point was brought up by Evan on the Veiled Games blog: Don't give away a free "Lite" version of your app - it might not necessarily translate into sales of a full paid version and has a potential to diminish the quality of your product in consumers' eyes. Instead, charge a small amount for "Lite" and a higher amount for "Full" versions. (Hopefully I got the summary right).

But what about, for example, Galcon - a space strategy game? Lite version - try it, play against computer, get hooked. Full version - play against other people, it's a LOT more fun. Once you try the Lite version (and assuming that you like it even a little bit), spending the money to get the full one is an easy decision to make.

Now, it seems to me that BurnBall is a different beast. Lite version lets you play through 3 levels - you get acquainted with the game pretty well. Full version has a lot more levels to beat. Arguably, the nature of the experience doesn't change very much; some variety is added and you are able to play for longer, which is a good thing, given that the game is very addictive in a "try to beat your own score" kind of way.

In case of the full version of Galcon, I'm paying for a greater "depth" of gaming experience. Fundamentally, RTS games are just more fun to play when there is a human being on the other end of the line. This model might get tricky, though - not every game can have such easy "make it instantly better" recipes. It can be difficult to pull off.

In case of the full version of BurnBall, I'm paying for a larger "quantity" of gameplay - I like the game and want more levels/enemies; you've got a customer. IMHO, the biggest weakness of this model lies in the fact that some people might take the bite-sized gameplay in the free version and will deem it sufficient: I take my phone out for 5 minutes, play a few rounds and move on with my life. I believe Evan was referring to this exact problem: Buying your paid app begins to feel like a luxury expense, while they’ve got the OK free one still working fine.

It seems that in order to make free Lite apps more successful, you need to start with enough depth and quantity of gameplay in the full version of the game - and then cut some of it out and deem it "Lite". Just reducing the amount of gameplay might not be enough - you don't want the player to go "Well, I've seen pretty much everything, it's more of the same in the full version". But you also can't just reduce depth - it's difficult to make enough of it in the first place.

Another idea: tell a very engaging story and then make a cliffhanger ending to the Lite version - TV shows do this all the time with season finales. Problem here - making a good story is very difficult, especially if your trade is software development :-). But hey, it's worth mentioning.

Or, alternatively, find a "killer" feature that you are sure your users will be willing to pay for - Galcon did it with multiplayer. Some games might try to go backwards - free multiplayer version and you need to pay for single-player with some twist (enough users are asking for this for Scramboni that we are considering doing exactly that some day, maybe :-) ).

What other killer features could you employ, besides multiplayer? Level editor? Help me out here :-)

-- Peter Bakhyryev