A couple of weeks ago, I ran an interview with Com2uS' Joony Koo about micro-transactions.

The introduction read; "When it comes to mobile games companies with experience of micro-transactions, no one is better informed than Korean publishers such as Com2uS".

Technically true I still think, but it did get at least one person with experience of micro-transactions a little annoyed.

Anna Lin, the PR and marketing manager of Russian developer Dynamic Pixels got in touch concerning that company's freemium games, notably AquaPhone.

So after a brief email exchange, I decided to find out some more about the Russian experience of mobile gaming micro-transactions.

Pocket Gamer: Why did Dynamic Pixels decide to launch micro-transactional mobile games?

Anna Lin: The decision to create micro-transactions was more about necessity than the desire to be innovative and amaze the market.

When we started the company in 2004, we experienced great difficulties in selling our mobile games via the big publishers, so our ambitious intention was to start building up our own sales channel. We had no money for a sophisticated WAP shop which could process content sales however, so the only way was to distribute our games for free from our plain WAP site and do billing after a game was downloaded.

Our decision was to make the games handle billing themselves using micro-transactions. We loved this idea so much and in 2005, we developed AquaPhone [a virtual aquarium], which had a great in-game billing mechanism enabling players to buy in-game content with one click.

Yet no publisher agreed to take AquaPhone as no one believed in free distribution and the in-game payments idea. We experienced all the difficulties of being pioneers.

It was only in 2006 that one of the major Russian publishers decided to give AquaPhone a try. After two weeks we saw incredible results. Within the first two months we had 100,000 players. Soon AquaPhone was launched on every major portal in Russia and rest of the Commonwealth of Independent States [former Soviet countries].

We also have had experiences with micro-transactions for paid games. Some of our partners asked us to create a paid version of AquaPhone, but the results were many times worse than with free distribution. The obvious conclusion is that free distribution attracts more people and as a result many more people stay in the game.

How much do you charge for your micro-transactions?

In Russia and the CIS, the price of our in-game items varies from $0.01 to $2.00. Of course we adjust in-game prices to each market in which we launch our games.

What sort of figures do you see in terms of percentage of players who use micro-transactions?

It's difficult to say unambiguously: the situation in Russia is very different to that in Korea. Korea is a mature gaming market, while in Russia micro-transactions are only in their embryonic phase, despite the fact that AquaPhone was released in 2006.

Certainly, there are lots of micro-transactions games in the CIS, but micro-transactions are integrated into all games, sometimes unreasonably where they don't need to be. That's why there aren't any clearcut results that could outline a definite tendency.

For us, this demonstrates the market is in its preparatory stage, where everybody understands the micro-transactions model is a great business tool, but nobody understands how to work with it. The main reason for this is the Russian market is changing chaotically and industry players don't always pick up right tendency.

How do you design your games to encourage players to buy more items but not annoy players who don't want to buy items?

This is a trade secret ; )

But the basic thing is we give players an opportunity to spend very little money on a game but nevertheless experience enjoyable gameplay. That makes our games motivating and as a result high-yielding.

In particular, our games make players wait for change and events to happen. In AquaPhone, this is the birth of baby fish, in BioSim it's the time it takes for plants to grow. In these cases, players stay really tuned to the game.

We also add mini-games so players can satisfy their needs in a casual entertainment, which works well, as it also keeps players' attention on the main game. And we integrate the option to exchange user generated content with other players. For example, players can draw pictures of their in-game pets and use them as a desktop or send them to their friends. In MewSim, players can exchange their game characters.

Finally, we also integrate strong marketing tools in our games, which helps us to enlarge our player base. The thing is players will promote a game by themselves. People who recommend a game to their friends get free credits in their in-game bank and this works amazingly.

How does your Mobile Arena portal encourage people to keep playing?

Mobile Arena is a great socialiser and it does a lot to keep players keep playing. In Mobile Arena, players can create their own accounts, communicate, participate in online competitions, show their awards to other players, upgrade their rating. Also, one of the most important functions of Mobile Arena is players can save their AquaPhone state, so that whatever happens to their handsets, their aquariums (and all their spent money) will be safe and sound.

Soon we'll be launching new version of Mobile Arena where players will be able to chat from within games, visit each other's game spaces online and much more.

Can you explain how the micro-transaction system works for AquaPhone?

As I've already said, it's free to download. The player starts with an empty aquarium and some money. When they run out of free credits, the player has the option to deposit more credits to their in-game bank account and keep playing.

The aim of the game is to create and then to take care of a sea ecosystem and help its inhabitants live happy. Players can spend in-game credits on fish, animals, weeds, food, medicines, decorative elements for aquarium design, equipment, bigger aquariums etc. Almost everything in the aquarium can be sold too, so if players decide to completely remake their aquarium, they can easily do that.

What figures are you seeing in terms of the percentage of users who buy items in AquaPhone?

In AquaPhone, 12 percent of users buy in-game items, which equals 1.8 million players, and the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) is $8.

Our recently launched game BioSim is doing even better though, with 18 percent of users buying in-game items and an ARPU of $11.

How many different payment systems do you use?

For the moment we only use Premium SMS. Taking into consideration the dominant status of Java-enabled handsets in Russia, it's the only technically suitable and convenient payment system for players. PSMS enables billing in the game and the SMS protocol works perfectly with Java applications and it doesn't require a GPRS connection.

Do you have any plans to take such games to iPhone?

Now Apple has finally allowed micro-transactions in free games, we are making plans.

Thanks to Anna for her time and brief outrage.

You can keep in touch with Dynamic Pixels via its website or WAP portal.