Talk:Road Trip/@comment-31462314-20180405205248/@comment-28169398-20180406200012

So I started playing in 2016, but I know enough of the history where I can guess at some things.


 * First option: They weren't. A number of reasons.
 * They were taking a long term view on the Freemium model being profitable. Twitter was founded 12 years ago, went public in 2013, and only had their first profitable quarter in Q4 of 2017. There are investors, including EA, that are willing to take a long view to develop a new franchise.
 * Profits from Real Racing 2 were reinvested to transition from a pay-to-play model to a freemium model.
 * Differed licensing. Manufactures like Porsche, Ferrari, etc. agreed to defer licensing payments for a few years in order to help build the brand.
 * Second option: It took players a while to work out the strategy of the game **There were fewer assets available, so people may have been more inclined to pay to pay real money for R$ and gold so they could get to the Bugatti's etc.
 * There are plenty of people here who have admitted to spending over 1,000 dollars on the game.
 * Third Option: There were fewer legitimate options to build balances
 * Endurance Kings wasn't added to the game until June of 2014; Classic Ferrari Showdown wasn't added to the game until July of 2014. These were the first truly big payout races that could be farmed. Before that, either you were scratching out a few thousand R$ and fame points at time or you were paying for your gold with IAPs. I am not sure if ads have always been there.
 * Fourth option: Earlier players were more inclined to upgrade for series completion, then as 100% completion got further and further away, people stopped upgrading, leading for the need to find ways to incentivize upgrades.
 * Fifth option: Early adopters were more willing to buy IAPs than the later generations of players.