Free Game Business VS Paid Game Business

Hello friends! Hope you all are doing well in this pandemic. In today’s blog, we’ll discuss about two types of game businesses. The “Free game business” and the “Paid game business”.

Mobile Games

Talking about today’s scenario, almost everyone has a smartphone. Smartphone has become a necessity for people. Everyone carries smart phones with themselves wherever they go. The games that we’ll be talking about today are the games that are available on any smartphone. If we talk about the origin of handheld games, the first handheld electronic game was marked was Mattel Electronic Auto Race. As people earlier were aware of the games played physically like Kho Kho, Kabaddi, Badminton, etc, handheld games were completely new kind of games introduced to people. After the success of the first handheld game, Nintendo, Atari, and Sega entered the race with their very private/own handheld devices. However, these games were taken to a whole new level when the preinstalled game “Snake” was released. It was released on Nokia 6110 in 1997.

Following the success of the pre-installed “Snake” game, the mobile gaming industry hit the share market developed by WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). Now, there are countless games mobile games that exist in the market like Candy Crush Saga, Clash of Clans, Among Us, etc.

Free Game Business

Mobile games are not limited to a single platform. Instead, they run on a wide variety of technologies and platforms. These platforms include Adobe Flash Lite, Symbian, Palm OS, Blackberry, Sun’s Java ME, and personification of Microsoft’s Windows phone. The most common platform used for mobile games[business games]was Java. Business games are the simulation of games used in teaching business as educational tools.

Free-to-play(F2P) games are those games that allow players to play games/access portions of the game’s contents without paying. People usually tend to play free games more than paid games. In such cases, how will the free game developers stay in the market? Hence, to survive in the gaming world, such businesses take the help of Freemium game strategy. In the freemium game strategy, some part of the game is freely available for the customer however, once the user goes on and passes a few levels, the game asks the customer to upgrade the game to the premium section to keep going.

Till that time, the customer becomes so much engaged with the game that he/she is more likely to opt for the premium version of the game and pay for it. Therefore, sometimes the games that are advertised for free are not free.

Paid Games:

In paid games, the price is already listed on the play store or the AppStore as shown in the following image. To play paid games, the customer will first have to pay the listed amount of money, and only then the customer will be able to purchase the game and play it.

Thus, just like any other business, the initial and key step towards developing a successful paid game is to create a business plan. A formal document is then created depending on the plan. Considering this formal document, investors think of investing in a particular paid game. So, to attract investors to your project, it is really important to create an effective first impression. To achieve this, the executive summary of the business plan should cover the complete overview of the idea, then, the punch line should be chosen appropriately (the one which delivers the mission of the idea clearly). The most important stage of this development is market research. As a leading company could develop the best game, but, if it is not the requirement of the society/ customers don’t accept it, it will turn into a failure.

Following are the steps that could be followed to create a successful paid game:

Step 1] Entricing model: In this step, it is decided that the game should be unique and new and should offer better features to attract buyers.

Step 2] Advanced building models: This step includes looking out for variations. This comprises of not rushing to sell your product once it is built. Instead, wait, try to add more features, textures, etc to it the game.

Step 3] Coder’s efficiency: There are tons of music that are freely available for the game developers. But, in order for the game to be unique, the coder’s efficiency and the audio loop should be checked. One should concentrate on audio assets to attract customers. Also, the coder’s efficiency should be used in order to create and use dynamic tools for the creation of games along with great ideas for new scripting assets.

Step 4] Right price for your pack: In this step usually the success of the game could be decided. Developers could invest a lot of hard work in the development of the game but, the value of the game will be considerably less in the market. The company could compare their price with other existing games in the market.

Step 5] Customer Support: If a company has to be successful, there should be active customer support for the buyers at any given point in time. One could try answering/addressing a customer’s issue within a day. A company could be available for its customers on emails, skype, Team Viewer sessions, etc. I there is any kind of bug in the game, buyers tend to provide feedback. The feedbacks should be considered and regular updates should be provided to the game.

Step 6] Reviews: Reviews play a vital role in anything available online. Buyers consider reviews before they make any purchase online. Hence, reviews play an important role in making any business successful.

Differences between Free game business and Paid game business :

1. Launch: Free games are easiest to launch but as it is insecure, it might make it difficult to enter AppStore. However, paid games are significant and they make the safest way to enter AppStore.
2. Efficiency: Free games lack in terms of efficiency. On the other hand, paid games are efficient in terms of their design.
3. Market Analysis: Free games have a stable market. But, paid games have a shaky market
4. Revenue Share: Free games share a meager portion in revenue share. However, the paid games capture the largest portion when it comes to revenue shares.
5. Productivity: Free games are usually seen to dominate in this aspect. In paid games, productivity could be dull and it all depends on the financial planning of the company.

Hope you enjoyed reading it. Take care! :)