Get Set's Matt Coombe on why incentivised actions are worth more than IAP in Mega Jump

With over 16 million downloads on iOS and over a million on Android, Mega Jump, which was released in May 2010, demonstrates the ability of small start up developers to build a large and enthusiastic community in a short period of time.

More significant from a freemium point of view, Get Set Games was one of the first studios to successfully switch from a 99c price point to free, monetising its fanbase with in-app purchases and other means.

And, it was those 'other means' that have pre-occupied the Toronto outfit in recent months, after it was one of the first developers to fall foul of Apple's banning of incentivised downloads.

However, the most recent iOS update to the game has added two new monetisation methods - Kiip's reward offers, and Flurry's incentivised videos.

We caught up with co-founder Matt Coombe to find out more about the business of running a successful mobile game and what its future plans were.

Matt Coombe: Tapjoy and its CPI offerwall had been a great revenue source for us, along with the fact that our players loved getting free in-app currency to unlock the many features in Mega Jump.

When we were required to remove the Tapjoy SDK, many of our users were really disappointed and our company lost a major source of income. Since that time we had been searching for other options to provide players with free currency and a revenue stream that could help monetise players who didn't have, or didn't want to spend real money in our freemium game.

We had a couple of important criteria for any Tapjoy replacements.

The first was that we didn't want to lower the user experience in Mega Jump by adding banner ads or interstitials. Despite the fact that it's a freemium title, we always wanted Mega Jump to have a premium paid app feel to it, so that any advertising or sponsorships would either be user-initiated or rewarded using free currency incentives.

The second criteria was again focused on user experience in that we wanted a revenue platform that was presented in a slick and high quality way with offers that would have legitimate meaning for our players. I think we fulfilled both of those with Kiip and Flurry video clips.

We had been a little spoiled with the CPI offerwall while it was available. We typically generated more revenue from the offerwall than from IAP.

While searching for a replacement, we tried to set our expectations low and hoped to generate a quarter or a half of the CPI revenue with the new revenue methods. The new offers seem extremely promising so far with the Flurry videos generating more than our IAP already - I'm interested to see if we can keep the fill rate high enough to continue that in the long term.

Kiip rewards are building momentum. I think it's early days for its platform and I'm looking forward to seeing how that works out over time.

We were testing the Zong mobile payment to see if paying through carriers was an option that our players would be interested in using as an alternative to Google Checkout.

It appears that hasn't been the case and the revenue from Zong has been quite small. I don't think this is a problem with the Zong system but on smartphones it seems players are more interested in using the OS in-app purchasing system.

Heyzap is a thirdparty SDK that adds an additional social layer to Mega Jump.

Heyzap community members can check-in to a game, which then lets their friends in the community know that they are playing and how they scored. It's a way for players to brag about their score, see what others are doing and discover other games that their friends are getting into.

For us it's another way to let our players connect with one another and make the most of the game experience with their friends. It's well established by now that the more players engage with each other as part of the gameplay experience the better.

From a revenue perspective, the most obvious difference is that iPhone players are far more likely to use in-app purchasing. Per player, iOS users spend a lot more money inside that game.

We aren't sure however if that says something about the players or more about the ease of use of the in-app purchasing system offered on each platform. In terms of gaming, both audiences seem equally dedicated and excited about what we're doing with Mega Jump.

We do currently have localised versions planned but there aren't any on the market at the moment. With many non-English markets starting to explode in size this is going to become more and more of a priority. We expect localised versions to arrive in the coming months.

We already have merchandise available through the Zazzle online store, and we currently have a plush toy of Redford - our main Mega Jump character in production. The Redford plush should be ready in a couple of months.

From the reaction to our announcement about the plush toys, our players are quite excited about getting them!

Development on Mega Run is going really well. We're getting more and more excited about the game all the time. It's a much more complex game to create than Mega Jump because it's a hybrid between auto-run games and classic platformers such as Sonic or Mario.

This has lead to all sorts of interesting game design and technical development, which takes longer, but we're really pleased with where it's heading. There are still several months of development left so I can't give you a definite answer but we'd love to release it around the holiday period.