Thus armed with the killer high concept of "Harry Potter meets FarmVille", we donned our wizard robes and repaired to our tower to brew spells and blow stuff up. We simultaneously elected to reduce scope (by focusing just on wizards, rather than the "full" role playing experience) and broaden our market beyond D&D players by appealing to fans of the most potent fantasy property of our time and also embracing the farming mechanics of Zynga's top game. Our first concept was kind of like Dungeons & Dragons meets Ravenwood Fair, but we quickly realized the idea was too big and too ill-focused for our first foray into this new genre. We were fans of games like Zombie Farm and Pocket Frogs and had spent a lot of time on Facebook with Zynga games like FarmVille, but as a studio we had never built a social-mobile game from the ground up. We needed a purpose-built social-mobile game - something innovative, fun, and with plenty of room for expansion.
Players rewarded our changeover with improved reviews and revenue, but neither game had the kind of data-driven, collecting-oriented gameplay that best takes advantage of the freemium format. Short-term, we responded by pivoting both FaceFighter and Trucks & Skulls from premium to freemium monetization, but these games were like battleships hastily converted to aircraft carriers in World War II. App Store "Top Grossing" games are freemium titles, and there's little reason to believe that trend will reverse any time soon. As of this writing, 70 percent of the U.S.
The market was speaking with its wallet - it was freemium or bust. After a strong run through the holidays, Trucks would drop out of the App Store Top 100. Trucks & Skulls launched as a premium hit that November, enjoying Apple's top banner support on iTunes, but even during that period of record earnings we knew the iOS market had shifted. Appy Entertainment committed to developing SpellCraft in late 2010.
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