@MostAwesomeDude I think you pointed out a major issue with social games in general, which is that across the industry, free-to-pay conversion rates are only about 2% and player only generate about $1 ARPU/month, meaning, to turn your game into a viable business, you need to have a ton of players or as you put it, "...you really want as many potential wallets as possible."<p>There are a few new monetization methods out there such as Kiip that you should check out, although I can't speak for how well they work.<p>One new monetization method that I can speak for, which is proven to work are, real-money gambling and betting mechanics, which produce monthly ARPU in the neighborhood of $300/month -- that's 300X better than the other monetization options currently available to game devs. I know the knee jerk reaction is to think you can't do that without a license and that obtaining a license is nearly impossible, both of which are true, but Betable (developers.betable.com) just launched a real-money gambling engine that hosts and operates all gambling code on behalf of a game dev, enabling them to piggy-back on Betable's licenses, so they don't have to get their own.<p>FULL DISCLOSURE, I'M THE FOUNDER OF BETABLE. Sorry for the self-promotions, but given the current state of game monetization methods available to devs, I thought it was important for me to jump into the conversation and make people aware of what else is out there. Hope this is helpful.
This is a summary of tips from TapJoy's webinar from last Wednesday. They did a great job of outlining a lot of different monetization tips, but their free-to-play tips were the best.
Do the games have to be pure chance to be legal. I thought you couldn't mix games of skill and chance?<p>Aren't there all kinds of quite specific laws about how odds are presented and stuff like that? How do you plan to police that stuff?<p>I assume because you hold the licence, you are the one hosting the games and you are essentially just paying us a commission to find your players?
Something not mentioned here, which I feel is always left out of CSP discussions: Don't ever offer paid-only content which enhances the game. If a person cannot play for free for extended periods of time and have a good experience, they are less likely to recommend the game to others, and when you live on microtransactions, you really want as many potential wallets as possible.