Mobile gamers will pay $5 or more for quality, but how do they know what's quality?

When it comes to a contentious issue such as app pricing, developers can only speak from experience.

In the view of Telltale Games - which is currently enjoying success with the $4.99 The Walking Dead on iOS - gamers will happily pay beyond 99c if the game in question is quality.

Krin Juangbhanich's Flight! on iOS, however, has recently seen its price dropped from 99c to free.

The move many only be a temporary one – publisher Armor Games currently playing things by ear – but the reason behind the price slash was simple: the game simply wasn't selling at 99c.

Yet Juangbhanich doesn't disagree with Telltale Games. Rather, his view is that, while top games can successfully retail at a higher price than most, often there's little way for the consumer to tell the wheat from the chaff.

We caught up with Krin for a further slice of his app pricing insight.

My background is in Flash games, where games were played for free, and revenue is generated from advertising. So it is sort of a comfort zone for me.

But at first I thought that if the game was free, it wouldn't be able to monetise, because it was designed to be enjoyed without the use of in-app purchases (IAPs) whatsoever - hence the 99c price tag.

So then, launch day came. Now, please bear in mind that this is my first iOS release, so I didn't know what to expect. The game was selling rather slowly. But I don't think it was because the game was bad - the people who did get it really enjoyed it! I guess it must have been the price tag.

Most people just weren't willing to give it a chance at the 99c mark. But there was a silver lining - the IAPs seemed to be doing pretty well.

At that point, we decided to go 'free' for a while and see how things would turn out.

The IAPs fortunately put us in a position to be able to do that, and the sales didn't look like they were going to improve without some action on our part.

At the very least, even if we generated the same amount of revenue from doing this - we'd end up with many times the amount of users.

The in-game currency - which is used to buy upgrades for the plane- can be bought for real-world money. That is our one and only IAP option.

The game doesn't ever 'force' the player to buy it - all the content can be unlocked by just playing normally.

In fact, that's how it was designed - to be enjoyed without IAPs. That was the intended pace of the game. I guess some people just wanted to go faster.

I think this is a complicated discussion. In short, I agree!

I'd easily pay $5 for an iOS game that I knew was good. The problem is, how do I know it's good? Maybe it's in the #1 app, or it has raving reviews. Maybe it is a brand or franchise that I recognise. Or maybe all of my friends have it and tell me how great it is.

But I think that without at least some of these factors in your favour, it would be a bit of an uphill struggle - even if the game was of really high quality.

There is one more thing I'd like to point out. A price drop - or a free promotion – for any given game is almost certain to increase the user base significantly. Whether that is financially better or worse for the game is a different story. But in our case at least, this seems to be the way to go.

I think triple-A releases are definitely in a better position to charge higher prices.

They have the advantage of high production value, an established brand or franchise, and a lot of marketing power. But that doesn't mean that other titles can't have a higher price tag either.

In the end I think it's more of a choice or a judgement call than a 'restriction.' In some cases, it's a trade-off between profit and user-base. In other cases you may get the best of both.

Yes, definitely. Simply because the freemium model has a direct influence on gameplay.

It means that the game must be designed a certain way. You know what I'm talking about - the unlockable levels or characters, the time delays found in social games, or the ability to just to get more in-game gems/gold/pixie dust.

There will always be developers who want to make games without those things, and there will always be users who want to play games without those things. Personally, my most favourite games on my iPhone are the ones I paid for.

But I do find that I'm more partial to downloading a lot of free games just to try them out.

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You can find out more about Krin's studio at KrinStudio.com.