I've always wondered how some apps get ridiculous amounts of user ratings, but now I think I know how they do it:
Reward the player with in-game tokens for bringing out a rating.
Yesterday I came across a free iOS game Move The Box. It's an okay but pretty unremarkable game. However, I saw it has more than 10.000 user ratings in the Dutch appstore alone. I checked the US appstore (open iTunes, change language in bottom right) and there it's got almost 300.000 user ratings! This is amazing because its initial v1.0 release was only last january.
The game is like a simpler version of Puzznic and you can buy hints as in-app purchases; a 4 hints pack for $1 or a 12 hints pack for $2. Or, and this is how they do it, you can get 5 free hints for rating the game. The only other way to get hints is by spending money, so this really reinforces the feeling of getting someting for free. Btw it's a very simple implementation because the app doesn't even check if you actually give a rating. You get the free hints just for clicking the "rate this game" button, but apparently that's good enough. This tactic seems to be working on the Android market as well.
What do you think of this, manipulative or pure genius?
Reward the player with in-game tokens for bringing out a rating.
Yesterday I came across a free iOS game Move The Box. It's an okay but pretty unremarkable game. However, I saw it has more than 10.000 user ratings in the Dutch appstore alone. I checked the US appstore (open iTunes, change language in bottom right) and there it's got almost 300.000 user ratings! This is amazing because its initial v1.0 release was only last january.
The game is like a simpler version of Puzznic and you can buy hints as in-app purchases; a 4 hints pack for $1 or a 12 hints pack for $2. Or, and this is how they do it, you can get 5 free hints for rating the game. The only other way to get hints is by spending money, so this really reinforces the feeling of getting someting for free. Btw it's a very simple implementation because the app doesn't even check if you actually give a rating. You get the free hints just for clicking the "rate this game" button, but apparently that's good enough. This tactic seems to be working on the Android market as well.
What do you think of this, manipulative or pure genius?