During Jeff Lyndon’s presentation on successfully launching and marketing your app in the Chinese market, I asked about the differences in in-app purchase promotiong and the difference between Asian and Western gamers. His answer was insightful.
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Jeff Lyndon, iDreamsky
With most publishers Jeff’s company iDreamsky will optimize the game’s source code.
The general observation being that Western developers take a fairly passive approach to monetizing their app.
For example, in Fruit Ninja (by Halfbrick Studios), the store is located two screens deep, making it difficult for gamers to find the storefront.
After tweaking by iDreamsky the store is located on the front page.
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Giving players a chance to try out purchase options
New players may not be aware that they are able to buy various blades and swords and more importantly what benefit they get from buying the blades.
So after some tweaking of the game code, they can try out the various blades, by buying a time-limited trial using free or paid currency. In this way they can try out various blades and find one that they like.
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Micropayment options
With most American game portals and platforms offering hard cash purchases in denominations like US$1, US$2, US$5 and so on, the Chinese game platforms give game developers the opportunity to provide purchase options in smaller amounts, as low as US$0.50 or even US$0.10.
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Active player reactivation
After the system recognises that a player has not been playing for a week, it proactively starts a re-engagement, re-activation process by offering a promotion, like offering a $0.10 package for items which would normally cost $3.
By converting a free player into a paid player, the process of promoting further paid upgrades becomes easier.
Also, with the micropayment options available, it gives iDreamsky a variety of tools and options to not only reactivate dormant players, but also move their status into one willing to make in-app purchases.
By using these promotions to convert free-to-play players to players willing to spend on in-app purchases, the playerbase increases in value and revenue also increases correspondingly.