Apple Design Awards and Freemium

The Apple Design Awards were just released, recognizing 12 iOS applications for their cutting edge design and style. Of those 12 apps, six are games, and none of them uses a freemium game model. Considering that over 90 of the top 100 grossing games on the app store use a freemium business model, this is either a large oversight or a deliberate move by Apple. It behooves Apple to continue making space for premium games, and avoiding some of the worst free-to-play development practices so it’s likely deliberate. There are a few especially interesting points that this drives home, however.

1. There is a big underserved area of beautiful game design in free-to-play. Though many games follow much more lean methodologies to shipping games (following the tech/startup fail fast mantra), there’s something to be said for creating visually appealing and innovative applications. The fact that none of these design award-winning games are free-to-play is as much an indictment on Apple as it is on developers.
   One recently released game that does a great job straddling that line is TwoDots — a beautifully executed game that follows the Candy Crush Saga business model that drove the huge King.com IPO.
2. Beautiful premium games are still not money makers. None of these games stayed in the top 100 grossing apps for an extended period of time, and only one is currently in the top 100. Blek is currently sitting at #52, but you could argue that it will likely fall out with the rest of the free apps as soon as it falls from being the #1 downloaded game. Here is where all of these apps ranked on 6/1, before WWDC.
   Blek: #52
   Monument Valley: #298
   Threes: #483 (US iPhone Grossing)
   Device 6: #485
   Leo’s Fortune: #1,131
   Teachley: Addimal Adventure: unranked
3. Games also mirror movies. In the film industry, the most successful box office movies are not typically big award winners. The top 5 grossing films in 2013 were Frozen, Iron Man 3, Despicable Me 2, The Hobbit 2 and Hunger Games 2. Movies that won tons of awards, such as 12 Years a Slave, Dallas Buyers Club each grossed a fraction of the amount of the top grossing films.
   While innovation and cutting edge story is often heralded by critics, we know that the same is rarely true at the box office. This is not news, and the same is true in games. Going after critical acclaim and going after box office sales, while not diametrically opposed, are certainly not highly correlated. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 sits at 53% on Rotten Tomatoes, while grossing #2 so far for 2014. So it goes for mobile games as well.

Though making a creative and visually appealing game will not inherently drive financial success in the App Store, I’d still love to see more people try. As mentioned, I think TwoDots is going in the right direction. The fact that so few beautiful and compelling games are free to play, and that so few successful free to play games are beautiful and compelling is both a shame and an area for opportunity. My company, DropForge Games, is actively trying to build innovative and creative free-to-play games, and though it’s an uphill battle, I believe it’s certainly one worth fighting.