Monetisation company TinyLoot is looking to turn free-to-play on its head by paying consumers to continue playing and spending.
The concept is the brainchild of digital game marketing expert, Oliver Kern, and Micha von der Meer, a former IT head at Booz Allen Hamilton.
The pair started developing the TinyLoot platform after realising that too many studios are guilty of sinking money into user acqusition, as well as monetisation and psychology experts,despite receiving mixed results.
Perfect partners
According to Kern, lots of developers and publishers continue to gamble on advertising and incentivised installs by partnering with networks that simply can't offer any consistency or guarantees.
“The majority of networks couldn’t care less about the developers and very often do not deliver what they promise,” explained Kern.
“I have been working in exactly this space and have worked with many of them. Some are good, many not so good for games.”
By integrating TinyLoot - which is focused on Android - developers and publishers can spend less money than they would on ads, and, if a player likes their game, there's a good chance they'll recoup their investment, rake in more cash, and gain a new user.
Kern has explained that, so far, responses to TinyLoot's topsy turvy monetisation technique have been extremely positive
“[TinyLoot will] change the value chain in free-to-play mobile games. We are getting great feedback from players who sometimes can’t believe it’s true,” said Kern.
“This will be good for the community of free-to-play mobile-game developers who are struggling with ad networks that take and earn a lot of money without providing real value.
“Tinyloot mitigates this risk, and it delivers engaged players at a significantly lower cost if it’s a good game.”
Making friends
TinyLoot has impressed plenty of industry figures, with the firm having already raised $66,000 in seed investement.
Investors include Media Molecule co-founder Chris Lee, who has fronted some cash alongside Reinout te Brake, founder of iQU.
TinyLoot has also benefited from partnerships with IBM companies SoftLayer and Cloudant, while it has also been working closely with Microsoft and PayPal in order to create a risk free monetisation environment.
At present, the Android app is only live in the Netherlands.
[source: VentureBeat]
