How making money ruined a good game

A couple of weeks ago I started playing a game on my phone called Bowling Friends. It's a game that allows you to play turn based ten pin bowling against your friends. Simple and effective idea. 

Initially the business model was one that worked: upgrades in the game. You can pay to receive more coins and gems which help you unlock better bowling balls and bowling alleys to play in. The better the bowling ball, the more your game improves and the better chance you have of beating your friends. Simple and effective.

I spent about $2 on coins and upgraded my bowling ball to a place where I was content.Then the app makers released an upgrade and all of a sudden there were adverts in the game. Everywhere. This is clearly not an innocent mistake. The adverts are post-game and force you to watch a 10 second video and you are then prompted with an advert screen allowing you to click the advert or close it.

There are also adverts every so often that cover the home screen. The reason this isn't an innocent mistake from game devs trying to make some money is because if you now go into the story you'll see a new product that allows you to remove adverts for $1.99.

This is infuriating. The game developers were onto something so simple and so great but they got greedy. They shoved banner and video ads into a seamless gaming experience and have ruined their core product offering.What they could have done was play the long game, be calm and hold their ground. There's no need to rush the money. You need to grow your user base and then monetize them. Right now I feel like I've been cheated and then forced to pay to "uncheat" my experience. I'm not the only one either. I've got friends who have stopped playing the game because of the terrible user experience now being presented.There's lesson in this for all app, web and game developers; be good at one thing. In fact, be so good at one thing that people will pay you to enjoy the experience. Don't trick your users into loving your product and then force them to watch adverts and pay you to remove them. That's called racketeering.

Be smart, be niche, be mobile

Fragmentation and fierce competition are enemies of one size fits all mobile solutions.Mobile is the not-so-new-hotness. There are many, many, many companies and people building products and apps targeting mobile first and mobile only. But there aren't many who are succeeding.The reasons for failure are often simple and obvious and easily avoidable.

Device fragmentation

Pick a device.If you choose the right device for your application, website or product and this device is relevant to your target market then you wont have to support every device under the sun upfront.Test your market with a single device or OS, just make sure you choose it wisely and own it. For example, in Africa, if you can build something for the Nokia S40 devices and it works, you'll do just fine.

Market fragmentation

Pick your market. Be it a country, city, gender, age group, creed, all off the above or none. Just pick one and go after like a you are possessed.

Country

Pick a country. You can't be everything to everyone all the time right off the bat. Conquer a single country and then consider moving on to another.

City

Maybe consider picking a city. Some cities, like Lagos, have nearly 20 million people in them. That's not a bad place to start.

Age

You cannot market a product targeting every age. That's just not realistic. A 13 year old is not looking for the same things as a 60 year old. And don't tell me that if Facebook can do it, so can you. Facebook started with a single age demographic.

Attention Deficit

Users are constantly being nagged for their attention.The product you are nagging me about needs to make me feel like I can't live without it. The applications and products that do this best for me are the ones that do a single thing amazingly well. I don't have a single app that handles photography, social, music, video and everything else all in one. That's called a mobile phone.Your app needs to do one thing and be the absolute best at that one thing to grab (and keep) my attention.

Niche, Niche, Niche

The chances are that your product, app or website is not going to compete with Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or even the local equivalents of these behemoths. Something you build may one day grow into a competitor to these players but they all started in a niche; search, photography, university.Pick your niche and go after it like there's no tomorrow for your company. Don't let anything stand in your way. Own that niche, make it yours and dig a moat that prevents anyone else from owning it. Then expand that niche little by little. This is how you build a sustainable business. 

Mentez.com, a FB app competition and ownership issues

This sort of thing is really dodgy sometimes and thanks to the Sharepointexpert I got wind of this one.The idea that Mentez.com is proposing is immediately enticing. Especially when R40 000 is up for grabs. But at a second look the terms and conditions are somewhat concerning.The competition seems to be run in rounds. First you send in an idea, then the best ideas are accepted by judges then you have until sometime in January, 2008 to develop the app. Then, simply by entering the compeition you:

11. By submitting a registration form, each Participant fully and unconditionallya. Agrees to these Terms and Conditionsb. Authorise Mentez to use their personal data for the purposes of running and promoting the Contest this year and/or in subsequent years;c. Will be deemed to have read, accepted and agree to be bound by these Contest Terms and Conditions. Participants are advised to print and keep safe these Terms and Conditions.

The full terms and conditions are available here. But let's move on.To me, the R40 000 is miniscule when considering the potential of a brilliant local FB app. IT feels like the website is asking brilliant SA developers to write these apps. Then host them with Mentez and negotiate a contract regarding the app thereafter. Hmmm... and who owns the app? The competition winner? The writer of the app? The company, Mentez, who?

15. For the applications that are selected to pass to the development phase of the contest, the participants will have to sign a development, hosting and monetization agreement with Mentez.com. This agreement is readily available for your review and is required to qualify for the second stage of the contest.

Then it seems that if you are unhappy with the outcome of the event you are not allowed to say anything:

22. Participants must not act in any way or fail to act in any way or be associated with any cause or group which would have a negative impact on the reputation of Mentez, the Contest or the Judges.

What happened to freedom of speech? We've seen this before on the local scene with the podcast competition earlier this year and others. Now can these competition people stop taking us for accepting, naive bafoons and realise that if we are going to make FB apps, we want the glory, which probably equals more than R40 000 if the app is great. Just my thoughts.I invite Mentez.com to email me and let me know their thoughts and clearly explain the terms and conditions. I am intererested to focus on the questions of hosting the app, ownership and profit share specifically.What do you think?