Some Business talk

[ZekeORama]

TL,

I have played Farm Story for about 6 months now, have spent a fair amount on gems, and have enjoyed the game to the point of spending way too much time and energy (and real money) on it. In other words, I'm a fan. (I only play Farm; I tried some of your other games, but wasn't grabbed.) I would really like to see TL do well. I have a few ideas to pass along. You've probably heard some of this before, but this is packaged a bit differently.

Before I get to the meat of the matter, let me note that I have been in the software development business for 30 years. I know what it's like to have the success of my job rely on making my customers happy.

It's a truism in business that you make 80% of your profits from 20% of your customers. So it's PROFITABLE to do what your best customers want. Implement some version of these ideas and your income from gem sales should increase significantly.

First -- there are some heavily-sought-after features that you could charge significant sums of gems (or even real money) for, and if what I see on the forum is any indication, just doing these would increase sales quite a bit. Here goes...

The first idea is to create a "fuller" version, I'll call it Farm Story Deluxe (FSDx) for the purpose of this note. This version could be available as a gem-only "expansion" in the game or as a separate SKU in the AppStore, but the former would probably fit your model better.
With this FSdx, you could make your customers really happy but implementing some or all of the following.
1) No ads. People expect there to be a "lite" version that's free, and a full version, that costs money, but that has no ads. Yes, FS is free, although a "full" game. Give them the ability to pay a chunk of gems to banish all ads forever. (The Storm icon is still in the corner if they want it...)
2) Bigger expansions -- the ability to go to 25x25, up to 30x30 or whatever. Mind you, FSDx would not BE an expansion -- just the ability to have these expansions show up in the store. And make these larger expansions gem-only items, and charge 60, 80, 100 gems for them.
3) No "gem traps". Another way to put this is that in FSDx, every time the player wanted to spend gems, a confirmation window would pop up, saying "you really want to spend 55 gems" (or whatever nice language you want to come up with). The "FVill" game on "FBook" has this feature, for an example of how your competition has figured this out. Doing this would also reduce your expenses a bit by not having to field so many support emails about people "losing" gems to whatever-they-screwed-up-and-bought-by-mistake.
4) No gem traps would mean to eliminate the recent "tap to manage" on crops. It's been hashed over ad nauseum on the forums, so I won't repeat the vitriol here. Good customers (i.e. happy players) do not need to be tricked into spending gems; they'll spend them happily -- and often -- if they think they're getting a good benefit for their money.

You could also implement FSDx-only items in the store, such as things that have a loud (but perhaps small) following in the forums (2-hour crops and water tiles comes to mind). Have water tiles cost 1 gem each. I'd bet a paycheck that you'd sell more of them than you've sold Zen paths, for example...

And one step beyond FSDx, call it "Farm Story Ultra" (or whatever) would allow players to have multiple farms on a single device. Yes, I know that would require some changes at the architecture level, but your rabid customer/players would eat that up, even at a price. Charge $10 a farm (or whatever) for the second one. Implement whatever features make sense, like being to move inventory items from one to the other.

I like to see good ideas succeed in the marketplace. FS is a great game, but you've been ignoring your customers a bit (from my viewpoint). Pay attention to them, make them happy (make them giddy!), and they'll probably spend more than enough to pay for the infrastructure to support these ideas (or others I'm sure you've got on your drawing board).

[lylahmae]

This is great constructive feedback! TL please listen.

[pinkster73]

Interesting.

Can you maybe change it from "in the app store" to include being in Google play as well? Don't forget about us Android folks. :)

[mattyboo1]

TL,

I have played Farm Story for about 6 months now, have spent a fair amount on gems, and have enjoyed the game to the point of spending way too much time and energy (and real money) on it. In other words, I'm a fan. (I only play Farm; I tried some of your other games, but wasn't grabbed.) I would really like to see TL do well. I have a few ideas to pass along. You've probably heard some of this before, but this is packaged a bit differently.

Before I get to the meat of the matter, let me note that I have been in the software development business for 30 years. I know what it's like to have the success of my job rely on making my customers happy.

It's a truism in business that you make 80% of your profits from 20% of your customers. So it's PROFITABLE to do what your best customers want. Implement some version of these ideas and your income from gem sales should increase significantly.

First -- there are some heavily-sought-after features that you could charge significant sums of gems (or even real money) for, and if what I see on the forum is any indication, just doing these would increase sales quite a bit. Here goes...

The first idea is to create a "fuller" version, I'll call it Farm Story Deluxe (FSDx) for the purpose of this note. This version could be available as a gem-only "expansion" in the game or as a separate SKU in the AppStore, but the former would probably fit your model better.
With this FSdx, you could make your customers really happy but implementing some or all of the following.
1) No ads. People expect there to be a "lite" version that's free, and a full version, that costs money, but that has no ads. Yes, FS is free, although a "full" game. Give them the ability to pay a chunk of gems to banish all ads forever. (The Storm icon is still in the corner if they want it...)
2) Bigger expansions -- the ability to go to 25x25, up to 30x30 or whatever. Mind you, FSDx would not BE an expansion -- just the ability to have these expansions show up in the store. And make these larger expansions gem-only items, and charge 60, 80, 100 gems for them.
3) No "gem traps". Another way to put this is that in FSDx, every time the player wanted to spend gems, a confirmation window would pop up, saying "you really want to spend 55 gems" (or whatever nice language you want to come up with). The "FVill" game on "FBook" has this feature, for an example of how your competition has figured this out. Doing this would also reduce your expenses a bit by not having to field so many support emails about people "losing" gems to whatever-they-screwed-up-and-bought-by-mistake.
4) No gem traps would mean to eliminate the recent "tap to manage" on crops. It's been hashed over ad nauseum on the forums, so I won't repeat the vitriol here. Good customers (i.e. happy players) do not need to be tricked into spending gems; they'll spend them happily -- and often -- if they think they're getting a good benefit for their money.

You could also implement FSDx-only items in the store, such as things that have a loud (but perhaps small) following in the forums (2-hour crops and water tiles comes to mind). Have water tiles cost 1 gem each. I'd bet a paycheck that you'd sell more of them than you've sold Zen paths, for example...

And one step beyond FSDx, call it "Farm Story Ultra" (or whatever) would allow players to have multiple farms on a single device. Yes, I know that would require some changes at the architecture level, but your rabid customer/players would eat that up, even at a price. Charge $10 a farm (or whatever) for the second one. Implement whatever features make sense, like being to move inventory items from one to the other.

I like to see good ideas succeed in the marketplace. FS is a great game, but you've been ignoring your customers a bit (from my viewpoint). Pay attention to them, make them happy (make them giddy!), and they'll probably spend more than enough to pay for the infrastructure to support these ideas (or others I'm sure you've got on your drawing board).. Really great idea I like it also for restaurant story

[viviansmo]

Well put. Thanks, ZekeORama. Hope TL listens and responds favorably.

[yanochka]

Great job summarizing what customers have been asking for on the forums for a while now. I totally support your ideas and I am one of those super (crazy :D) spenders who will be more than happy to start spending again if I can enjoy playing. The new "tap to manage" feature really affects my day-to-day playing, so I stopped playing for now. I hope too that TL listens and responds favorably!!!

[pegasus2010]

Well spoken. I concur. Does TL read forum posts?

[sweetstuff525]

iam one of those not spenders in farm but why us not spenders will still have gem traps? penalizing us just for not being able to buy gems. i say No gem traps for everyone free of charge

[FrmrGeorge]

Wow. I'm in. Will happily buy gems for exclusivity and no adverts or traps.

[JerseyGirl068]

I have only one question... Why can't TL do all that without the $10 app charge? After all, when I first started playing this game, it was exactly how it was described in this thread... No ads, no gem traps. Let's just face it, why would TL charge a one time fee when they're making so much more off of the gem traps? I, myself am guilty of spending at least $15.00 a month. But, I am pretty much done with that now. Why buy gems when they're way too easy to loose by tapping a tree!

[ZekeORama]

Interesting.

Can you maybe change it from "in the app store" to include being in Google play as well? Don't forget about us Android folks. :)

Pinky -- sorry, I did not mean to exclude anybody. I'm using "app store" in the generic sense...like "wherever fine smartphone games are sold" :)

[ZekeORama]

I have only one question... Why can't TL do all that without the $10 app charge? After all, when I first started playing this game, it was exactly how it was described in this thread... No ads, no gem traps. ...

As far as I know the gem traps have always been there, that is, there has never been a confirmation question when a player taps something that would spend gems. And ads have always been there, at least in the 6 months I've been playing. It seems like they're more frequent sometimes, and less frequent other times, but never completely absent.


... Let's just face it, why would TL charge a one time fee when they're making so much more off of the gem traps?...

It's about making customers happy. Read the business and marketing textbooks...happy customers spend more money than reluctant customers. The old one-liner comes to mind: "We don't care; we don't have to. We're the Phone Company".

[JerseyGirl068]

As far as I know the gem traps have always been there, that is, there has never been a confirmation question when a player taps something that would spend gems. And ads have always been there, at least in the 6 months I've been playing. It seems like they're more frequent sometimes, and less frequent other times, but never completely absent.

I've been playing for over a year now, before FS hit #1 and had that 1 million dollar day in gem sales last July. After that gem traps & ads started rolling out. They used to have their games listed only on the scroll, no pop ups, no billboard. I'm not disagreeing with your ideas, I'm only saying that that's the way it used to be. I'm sure they will never roll back to that since they are clearly making more money with these traps. After all, they need to pay for that bigger building they moved into at the end of last year.



It's about making customers happy. Read the business and marketing textbooks...happy customers spend more money than reluctant customers. The old one-liner comes to mind: "We don't care; we don't have to. We're the Phone Company".

As far as marketing... That's my major. I work for a marketing company so I know... It's not about making the consumer happy... It's about making money & leading the consumer to believe their happy. TL does this very well with their cute farm buildings & deco's that cost lots of gems. The one thing they really should change is not allowing us to get dupe items when we hit that 24 gem box. But if they did that, we wouldn't keep buying gems to get what we want.

Your ideas are great, I just wish TL would listen!

[JerseyGirl068]

Whoopsy, I forgot to put an end quote between that last post, so part of my post is between yours ... Sorry ZekeORama!

[ZekeORama]

As far as marketing... That's my major. I work for a marketing company so I know... It's not about making the consumer happy... It's about making money & leading the consumer to believe their happy. TL does this very well with their cute farm buildings & deco's that cost lots of gems...!

I will happily defer to someone who knows more about this than I. Maybe it's not in the marketing books, but if not, it should be. I'm going from a memory of a number of books by Tom Somebody-or-other (can't remember his name -- he was a big deal in the 90's), a McKinsey alum who published studies about how the companies that routinely delivered service that surpassed their customers expectations were the companies that did the best financially.

[yanochka]

I will happily defer to someone who knows more about this than I. Maybe it's not in the marketing books, but if not, it should be. I'm going from a memory of a number of books by Tom Somebody-or-other (can't remember his name -- he was a big deal in the 90's), a McKinsey alum who published studies about how the companies that routinely delivered service that surpassed their customers expectations were the companies that did the best financially.

Tom Peters??? :D in this case I don't think we even need to look at studies - keeping customers happy is common sense...won't you agree? ;)

[pinkster73]

Tom Peters??? :D in this case I don't think we even need to look at studies - keeping customers happy is common sense...won't you agree? ;)

Well I would agree....... not sure about whoever makes the TL decisions.

[ZekeORama]

Tom Peters??? :D in this case I don't think we even need to look at studies - keeping customers happy is common sense...won't you agree? ;)

Yes, Tom Peters. "In Search of Excellence" and all that stuff.

You'd think it would be common sense, but as Voltaire and countless others have noted, "common sense isn't all that common".

[bobbyrae]

Well I would agree....... not sure about whoever makes the TL decisions.

I think TL has implemented a new marketing strategy hitherto unheard of in all the markting schools of thought. Treat your customers like they don't matter and this is a guaranteed way to keep them thinking they are happy and keep them spending gems.

It seems to have worked thus far. I suspect players are still buying gems.

[trace35]

I love what you have tried to do here zekeorama. Intelligent, common business sense. I've seen this before though. The less money a company makes, the more desperate measures they go to , to try to recoup losses. The more desperate measures they go to, the more unhappy customers they have etc, etc. Used to work for telemarketing companies in oz. Lots of profits for a few years then they would go out of business.

[RoseMeyer]

The less money a company makes, the more desperate measures they go to , to try to recoup losses

Like releasing game after game after game before they figure out what is causing the game to forget to add your coins in?

[pinkster73]

Like releasing game after game after game before they figure out what is causing the game to forget to add your coins in?

Exactly. Or adding them in then minusing more then was added.

[DAmanding]

If only they would listen to this wonderful voice of reason!