Monetisation

We have come up with two main approaches to monetise our game, by using advertisements, as well as having paid items in the game.

Advertisements are highly likely to be successful, as the players do not have to pay any money themselves. Therefore they are more likely to be happy to spend their time on a short ad to gain some rewards in the game, while the game company gets rewarded real money for having players to click on the advertisement.

On the other hand, having real-money items in the game are a bit more risky as the players need to contemplate the value of the items, and decide if they are worth to be paid for. Therefore the game items must be attractive enough to make this approach work.

Firstly, the methods to achieve monetisation via playing advertisements are discussed.

Method 1: Watch an advertisement to gain an extra life after losing all lives.

As our game has been recognised as quite difficult and challenging, an obvious and easy way to monetise our game is to give the players the option to gain one extra live after losing all 7 lives, by watching a built-in advertisement. This method is commonly used in mobile games, and is relatively successful. This option shall appear in the pop up that appears after players lose, along with 'Restart' and 'Back to main' buttons. If players choose to watch the advertisement, they would be able to re-start at where they died after requiring the extra life.

Method 2: Watch an advertisement to gain a hint to proceed with character dialogues.

Another key mechanism that would make players feel like they need 'help', would be when they are selecting NPC statements and corresponding items. It is possible that players would overlook the connections between the item description and statements, and get stuck with the game play. A 'hint' icon could be presented on the screen that gives the option for players to watch an advertisement, to get a hint that corresponds to the puzzle in the room the players are in. The hint shall give some more obvious information that would lead the players to find the correct item and NPC statement pairs. For example, in the level 1 room 2, the hint could be "What is the coordinator's name?", to hint at players that the fallacy resides in the NPC names.

The following methods are also presented to monetise our game via players paying real money for game items.

Method 3: Skins and character graphical customisations to pay for.

Our game has reasonably enjoyable graphics. One place where players can pay real money to get game items is the appearance of the main characters. Currently, the characters are bare-boned, simply-designed. We can incorporate a 'Shops' button on the welcome menu where players can buy different customs for the main characters, which would require real money, e.g. $0.99 per new costume. This would be relatively easy to implement as we just need to add more graphical variations for the main characters, and setting a different sprite at runtime. The movements and controls of the characters would be the same.

Method 4: Pay to unlock different levels.

As our game has a fixed-level generation, we can monetise our game by locking further levels and make players pay for them. For example, with the current levels, level 1 can be free to play, to give players a feel of the game, and level 2 could be made into a paid-only level, e.g. $0.99 per new level. More profits could be made as more levels are developed. If more levels were developed, we could even introduce a 'bundle pack' where multiple levels can be bought once with a cheaper price than having to buy them separately. This may also require the level designs themselves to be more mature and complex, to ensure that players enjoy the levels enough to be willing to pay for them.

As our main target audience are relatively young, a permission page that approves the payment shall be used to make sure our target audience do not spend money without permission of their guardians.