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Back in 2017, Electronic Arts (EA) published Star Wars Battlefront II. Very quickly, it was met by immense backlash from players about how “Pay-to-Win" it was. Loot boxes, paid progression, paid character unlocks - all this in a title that players already had to pay US$60 for. Not surprisingly, many gamers hate "Pay-to-Win" (P2W); even more so if they already had to pay upfront for the title. If a player can just buy a stronger sword and dominate the server, your game will d

Why do game stores and shops always have three or more pricing tiers, even when some of the options are clearly a terrible deal? It's not a mistake. It's Decoy Pricing. Decoy pricing involves offering one or more "decoy" options designed specifically to make another option look like a steal. If a store offers 500 gems for $5, 1000 gems for $10, and 1200 gems for $11, the $10 option is the decoy. It exists solely to make the $11 option look incredible (or at least the most val

Live Operations (Live Ops) is the heartbeat of your game. It's the new content, the events, and the offers that keep players coming back. But generic, one-size-fits-all seasonal sales are dead. The future is Hyper-Personalisation. Even before AI, games can trigger "Dynamic Bundles" tailored to a specific user's exact situation. If a player fails level 145 in Candy Crush five times in a row, the game instantly triggers a "Rescue Bundle" containing the exact boosters they need

Gacha mechanics are profitable, but they can also cause extreme player rage. If a "Whale" drops $500 and doesn't get the character they want, they might delete the app forever. Enter the Pity System. While the term "pity system" was popularised by modern gacha games, the underlying mechanic - bad luck protection that guarantees a reward after a certain threshold of spending or actions - also exists across several other monetisation models. In modern monetisation, the Pity S

If you've played a mobile RPG in the last few years, you probably know what Gacha is. Maybe you know of it as a Blind Box, or Loot Box. But do you know why it's so profitable? Gacha is a monetisation mechanic where players spend in-game currency to receive a random virtual item. Think of it like a digital capsule toy machine or a pack of baseball cards. You pay for the thrill of the pull, hoping to score a hyper-rare, 5-star character or weapon. It works because it taps direc

Since the popularisation of the Battle Pass by DOTA 2 in 2013, the Battle Pass changed gaming in a big way. It gave players a clear, high-value progression system. But nowadays, the standard $6 to $10 Battle Pass is already old news. Welcome to the Multi-Tiered Battle Pass. Top-grossing games now offer three tracks: a Free tier, a Premium tier ($10), and a Premium Elite tier ($20) that includes level skips and exclusive skins. All those on top of other in-game goodies that in

If your game, app or business only accepts credit cards (for platform payments or otherwise), you may be leaving millions of dollars on the table. Period. While credit cards rule North America, Europe, Japan, Singapore and most of the financially interconnected countries, the rest of the world plays by different rules. In most of Southeast Asia, e-wallets like Gcash, GrabPay, and Razer Gold dominate. In Latin America, Brazil's Pix is king. If you don't support these, players

Remember paying $60-$80 upfront for a video game and owning it forever? I remember ponying up a whole year’s hard earned savings of $69 for Secret of Mana on the Super Nintendo when I was 15. Yeah, those days are over. It’s not what you think. Sure, there are still premium games going from $40-$80 each that are still doing well. But do you really own it? More likely that not, you are just “renting” it till the servers go down. Factoring in inflation, the price of games has a

If you're building a game, you're building an economy. But what’s an economy without its people? Before you design a monetisation strategy, you need to know exactly who is playing your game - and how they spend. In free-to-play gaming, your audience falls into four buckets. First, the Free Players (F2P). They may comprise up to 95% of your audience, depending on the genre. They might never spend a dime, but they are the lifeblood of your game. They provide the community, the

Dennis has been blessed with an amazing mentor and many great coaches. He is passionate about the education of financial literacy, and...

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