#GDC 2013: F2P is the worst business model, apart from all the others, jokes Trip Hawkins
Monetisation remains a massive issue for mobile developers, and it was a subject tackled head on at GDC 2013 in a panel talk entitled Mobile Game Monetization: How Developers Can Capitalize On the Trends.
"Mobile game only generates around 2 cents per hour of entertainment for the content creator," said NativeX's co-founder Robert Weber.
Apparently internet generates 22c/hour of entertainment, magazines around 50c, and the newspaper business is over $1 per hour. Of course, in the case of the latter, these high per user numbers are the product of a declining market.
"Newspapers are tied into local business," Weber explained. "Mobile has that opportunity and it's a problem we're trying to solve. It can't get any worst."
EA and Digital Chocolate founder Trip Hawkins argued mobile was only going to become much more lucrative.
Know your audience
Some developers can treat monetisation as a dirty word, though.
Ben Vu from Battle Bears developer SkyVu spoke about who he changed his views.
"Advertising revenue is not a negative thing. It's on the same level as IAP. Games are about multiple revenue streams, but that was a hard thing for us to learn."
SkyVu's games are played by around 200,000 12-14 year-old boys every a day.
"You need to know who your target customer is," Vu said. "Males between 10 and 30 is not a target audience."
As Trip Hawkins pointed out, cross-promotion is another issue, especially in terms of building scale.
"Some developers don't want to advertise other people's games around their game, but the thing is your audience is going to leave your game anyhow," he said.
"You may as well as get something out of them leaving."
Great games monetise better
Looking more laterally, Tim Merel, MD of Digi-Capital pointed to how Chinese outfit Tencent fine tunes its games.
For example, it optimised the process and time taken for its users to select and log out to an online game server, reducing user's eye movement 10-fold.
"The more you analyse everything single aspect of your game - and focus on getting people to play longer - the better your monetisation will be," he said.
Moderator Dean Takahashi (VentureBeat) asked about the morality of free-to-play games.
"Like US democracy, it's the worst system in the world, apart from all the other ones," Hawkins joked.
Still, thats doesnt mean there isnt plenty of headroom for improvement.
Hawkins is particularly keen on integrated operator billing; something thats driving very strong revenues in locations such as Japan and China.