AppNation 2011: Some incentivised players are good in the longterm; some aren't says W3i

Continuing the drip-drip approach to the Apple-Tapjoy situation, two companies with experience in that area provided additional, if slight, comment.

In a panel talk entitled The Art of Freemium: Mastering the Upsell To Drive Monetization & Customer Value, Robert Weber of W3i and Caryl Shaw from ngmoco gave measured opinions on the situation.

Shaw, an executive producer at freemium publisher ngmoco, which has previously heavily used Tapjoy incentives to gain users said;

"Obviously Apple can do whatever it wants. We're now looking forward to focus on great games with viral elements.

"There are other options such as traditional advertising to gain users, but I don't want to game the system."

'Gaming the system' is now standard industry lingo for any incentivisation scheme that encourages users to download apps and games by rewarding them with credit for games they're currently playing, which was standard practice for many game developers prior to Apple's rejection of some apps using Tapjoy last week.

Weber, co-founder of W3i, which is migrating its web incentivised distribution business to mobile, was more pointed, but only just.

"We have a multi-faceted approach. We do incentivised and non incentivised distribution," he explained.

"From our data, we see that people are using incentives to check out new games. Not all of them perform well in terms of providing lifetime revenues, but some of them do."