It’s been just over 2 months since we launched Fame Trader, and after several updates it’s time for some reflection on what we have achieved as well as what the future holds for this internal project.
If you don’t know the background, Fame Trader is a celebrity trading game which we believe is the first of it’s kind in the App Store. The game includes over 200 celebrities divided into various markets, from Film Stars to Sporting Heroes. Each celebrity has a trading value representing their current level of fame, as calculated by our custom social-media driven algorithm. Players can view each celebrity’s bio and historical data (in the form of hourly/daily/weekly/monthly graphs) and buy and sell ‘stock’ in each celebrity based on how their fame is set to rise or fall. The game also includes integration with Game Center to enable competition amongst friends as well as unlocking achievements.
We knew when we started on Fame Trader that we wanted it to be free to download and monetized via in-app purchases (IAP). ‘Freemium’ apps are now generating over twice as much revenue in the App Store than paid versions. But we actually got a bit too carried-away with this area and at launch the game included 5 different IAPs, albeit each with the minimum cost of 99c (69p). Whilst conversion rates were excellent, there were a few reviews suggesting the number of IAPs required to play the game to it’s full potential was too much – and we agreed! Version 1.1 went live at the beginning of February and 4 of the IAPs became 1, with the consumable in-game currency being the other available IAP. We also made 5 out of 9 markets available from the start, versus 3 out of 9 previously.
Having already submitted 6 updates since it’s launch, Fame Trader continues to evolve. Here’s a brief summary of the most significant changes since launch:
- Added tutorial screens
- Added celebrity search facility
- Changed buying/selling mechanism to allow multiple stocks at a time (previously one stock per button press).
- Added Top 10′s (most valuable/least valuable/biggest movers).
- Fix to significant bug that stopped the game loading for a small group of players.
- Changes to IAPs as detailed above.
- Improved graphs.
- Daily bonus for playing the game.
- and more…
- Make iPad compatible (Universal app).
- Sync game stats across multiple devices.
- Notifications (when the price of a celebrity in your portfolio changes significantly, etc.).
- Add more celebrities.
- To date, Fame Trader has an average rating of 4.17 stars. This includes some early low ratings due to the bug mentioned above. Since version 1.1, all of the ratings have been 5 stars!
- The overall IAP conversion rate comes in at 7.38%. Since we combined 4 of the IAPs into a single IAP at 99c (69p), the conversion rate has been over 12%! Admittedly the sample set isn’t as large as we’d like, but these figures are still way above what we expected.
These stats seem to suggest we now have a product that is both popular and potentially profitable. We won’t be relying on a random featuring by Apple (although obviously that would be great guys!), so the marketing begins…
If you’d like more information on Fame Trader or Boluga, please contact rob at boluga dot com.
