Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-31526827-20190420005448/@comment-29898480-20190420234712

Amrosa wrote: Denizer wrote:

Amrosa wrote: SeedSpeed wrote:

Amrosa wrote:

But what they really want are people buying IAPs... But what they are really doing is backing people off from buying IAP for years.

Only IAP that makes sense, and is valuable is VIP. They make 10x as much from IAP as they do from ads... maybe more... People on this forum, except for Powerup and Drestin, are in the minority. That doesnt mean they are maximising profit. They are leaving so much on the table. Prices make no sense at all. There should be decent value for items/packs under $20, which is about the most a regular player would want to spend. Maybe even less. The way it is today, $20 gets you 183 GC, it would not even get you one upgrade for most cars !!! So, why bother paying ?

I am guessing only new players fall into trap without noticing whats coming in later stages... They have all of the game data and business analysts looking at it.

They have regularly run different test markets to see the effects of different strategies on revenue.

This isn't some kids coding an app in Swift and throwing it up on the app store. This is a professional development house with a large, publicly traded multinational corporation behind it. That doesn't mean they can't and don't make mistakes, but to think that you or Drestin, or pretty much anyone here, even the game changers know more than they do is foolish. This is the old price elasticity of demand debate. I also used to think FM would increase revenue with lower prices, but have since come around to the view that it's likely not true. When the 21-day gold card went away (most cost-efficient option), and didn't come back, you pretty much had to assume the lowest cost option wasn't the revenue leader or that they're total idiots. And while they may be idiots, they're probably not total idiots...

I've now come to the view that committed players such as myself and pretty much anyone who posts here are an unimportant small fraction of the player universe that is not the economic driver. Just look at WTTT - roughly 300,000 players, and compare to the number of players putting up a TT time in the IMSA GTD first TT, which is just under 30,000. That's a huge discrepancy! 90% of WTTT players did not even obtain one GTD car and run the first TT!!! It's the great unwashed hordes that are likely the revenue driver, blissfully ignorant of this wiki or the various facebook groups, unaware of GC efficiency strategies, without a thought to 100% completion or 100% garages, probably playing for a little while and making some purchases and then leaving, to be replaced by some other “tourist” who'll also go for a few IAPs during their stay.

Have any of you spent some time looking at the lower tiers of WTTT? One week I did that, setting a time in each Rank, from the bottom up, and watching 5-10 ghosts in each one on the way up. Frankly, I thought they were maybe bots down there, just to juice the numbers and put all the real people into the top 1/3rd so they’d feel special. But it’s not bots down there, it’s real people too! And for them I would use the term total idiots (at least as far as racing goes). A remarkable number of them think you set up for a turn on the inside! The ghosts are a total sh*tshow. It’s a hoot to watch, really.

So currently I think this game is supported by idiot tourist players who wander in and will spring for some overpriced IAP, and that the 2 billion (or whatever it is) people with smartphones provide an essentially inexhaustible source of these tourists. We don’t matter. The masses matter.