The combined effort from the all-star indie game-making trio of Vlambeer (Super Crate Box), Greg Wohlwend (Hundreds), and Zach Gage (Spelltower) is a massive hit. Ridiculous Fishing is tearing up the iOS charts, despite not being a free-to-play game, which is how most iPhone and iPad games thrive.
Why is that? After all, anyone who has played the game and is familiar with the structure could arguably state that such a model would be appropriate for the game. But the game's makers feel differently, Mostly because, they're simply not a fan of the model.
Their thoughts on the matter surfaced recently on Reddit, when the trio plus friends all participated in an IAmA. When someone asked how they feel about some who might suffer from sticker shock over their $3 pasing price, which again is contrary to how most iOS games thrive, Vlambeer (which is itself a two-man game making operation: Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman) replied with:
"We're not upset – it's just the way the market works at the moment. We do believe that developers shouldn't be scared to charge $3 for a game.
The problem is that at $0.99, you'll need to sell endless amounts of copies to be able to survive as an indie developer. Most games don't even get close to that. A direct result of the whole race-to-the-bottom in prices is the prevalance of Free to Play on iOS – it seems to be a safer bet.
But since its almost impossible to do F2P in a non-evil way and without sacrificing the elegance of your game design, we'll prefer to charge $3."
Some might take issue of referring to the free-to-play model as being evil, mostly other iOS game makers, though there’s zero question among game players that it’s a model that has been abused to death, and then some.
