I’ve only ever bought them directly on the CoG site, but I remember that the first time I was confused because the description said that I could play the first three chapter for free, but the buttons below were “Pay XXX” and “Play for Free”.
If I had skimmed that first text, I would have thought that pressing the play for free button really meant free.
It would be so much clearer if the button said “Try the first 3 chapters for free” or something like that.
@Eric_Moser @Gower how are you calculating your conversion rate? I mean where did you get exact data from? (Did you ask CoG directly?)
Was it on sale for part or much of that first month? Perhaps that could be part of it?
It may also be that the people who are already CoG/HG fans look at things when they first come out and are more likely to purchase new titles because it is a new ChoiceScript game, whereas later viewers may not already be part of the CoG/HG crowd. I’m not sure, of course; this is all just guesswork and suggestions.
I think that’s part of it! I just spoke with my wife and she said something similar. Surely you can’t both be wrong! 
I also think since it was a Christmas release, more people had gift cards for the app stores and may have been a bit more “loosey goosey” with their money than they would normally be.
I’m one of those that buy at release (so long as funds are available). The recent december releases I’ve not picked up as my circumstances don’t allow for me to do so.
I would be suprised if fans from these forums don’t snap up games within the initial sales window with the long tail then being people poking around the ios/android/chrome/steam stores over time.
The one thing this makes me remember to note is how important it is to leave reviews on whatever platform we play on.
(I guess there’s no way to leave a review if you buy directly from the site, though, is there?)
I’m going to go through my games played and see what I haven’t reviewed, and then do it. It helps so much.
I got a mate of mine to buy Community College Hero 
he is a comic book addict, so I recommended it and he loved it!
3- It takes a bit of convincing to buy C.o.Gs or H.Gs. Since I like a certain type of book/game and am in college I’m usually a little sceptic about new releases that I haven’t heard about. I’m like this because recently I’ve been burned by a few of the recent releases. However, I usually will give them a shot if they’re in the dollar to two dollar range since if it’s bad I don’t feel like I invested much. But if it’s from an author that I know of and have read their work before like Paul, Havenstone, You, or Devon, I will jump almost instantly to buy. It’d be within the realm of reason for me to spend five to fifteen dollars on C.o.Gs from authors I know will ensure quality.
4- I’d say about four to five dollars is the usual amount that I would say is good for fairly decent games. Saga of the Northwind for instance felt like it was well worth the cost. Though for a game the size of Tin Star, Safe Haven, or from an author I particularly enjoy I would pay up to fifteen dollars.
On a side note I’ve slowly been introducing C.o.Gs to my younger brother and he loves them.
CoG told me directly, a month or so after my game released.
I just went into Google’s Play Store and checked, maybe I’m blind but I can’t for the life of me find where it says “free demo” or anything along those lines outside of the player reviews commenting on the cost of the complete game either pro or con. Assuming I’m blind for the moment, If I have to hunt around for this caveat with a magnifying glass that still proves my point. The Free button on the other hand is very prominent.
@Scribblesome From the perspective of these downloaders it’s an issue of false advertising. There are a lot of people who expect Free to be…well…Free. You yourself are also free to simply declare these people unreasonable, but that won’t decrease the negative ratings for future games that go this route. If you want to cut the negative ratings being posted, then it’s a matter of being careful not to create expectations that aren’t going to be met, and that means being very clear from the beginning about it being a free demo, not a free game.
Yes I think this would be the case. Good data to look at, thanks Eric!
CoG aren’t always on the ball in this department. But how much of the iOS/Android side of things is CoG dropping the ball vs the platform dropping the ball?
While I have no way of knowing for certain, I’ll lay odds that there’s nothing that CoG can do about the “FREE” button, as that’s where the price goes. OTOH, CoG does have control over the product description which most people will read before downloading the game. So the fact that what is being offered is a demo and the complete game is purchasable in-app should be mentioned there. This way fewer people will be unpleasantly surprised by the price tag for the complete game that appears when they play the game for the first time after they’ve downloaded and installed it.
Yes, we can’t change the label on the button on the storefront.
Apple has somewhat addressed this issue, in that they now have “Pay,” “Free,” and “Get.” “Get” means it’s free-to-download, but there are in-app purchases (for whatever it’s worth).
What someone has said in this thread was interesting: the “Play now for free” button could possible by changed to “Play the demo now” or something to that effect.
And believe me, we’re just as irked as everyone else about the “why isn’t this free” reviews. At our next meeting, we’ll discuss clarifying the “free demo” in the descriptions (not that it will solve all the problems, because many people will still just base their reviews off the button, but maybe it’ll make some difference).
UnNatural has the following in the game description.
Note: You can play the first two chapters of the game for free. You can purchase the rest of the game inside the app; purchasing the rest of the game will also turn off in-game advertisements.
And it still gets reviews saying that its misleading people saying it doesn’t tell you only two chapters are free. So go figure.
I think the note being at the bottom means it gets missed. Should be big bold type at the top of the blurb.
Never underestimate how little of their screens people will read.
I hear you. You’re never going to eliminate all negative reviews, even if you could change the FREE button to “Play the demo now”, and put the words “Demo version” at the very beginning of the description in addition to the helpful note you tacked onto the end. Yes, there are unreasonable people out there. It’s mostly a matter of cutting the total number of them down so they’re easily drowned out by a far larger number of positive reviews, including defenders who point out the description clearly did say it was a demo they were getting.
There are those who will read the complete description. Those you can reach by putting the note at the end as you did. There are those who will read the beginning of the description, but will download the game without ever having reached the note at the end. Those you could reach by putting something like “Demo Version” at the beginning of the description. There are those who will buy based purely on the title and the FREE button without ever reading the description. Until Google changes the way it handles the interface for no cost downloads there is nothing to be done about that unfortunately unless you put “Demo” in the name. And finally you have the unreasonable folks whose minds must have been on a different planet at the time they downloaded the game. They’re going to complain regardless. So while I admit that it is impossible to eliminate all of the complaints, I do think it’s helpful to cut them down as much as possible, and that means bending over backwards to be so clear that only the most unreasonable people can find fault.
That’s true I suppose it’s just sad that people complain about not being told when it actually tells them in the description. I don’t mind getting. A 1 or 2 star review if they don’t like the game but to get one for something like them not reading the description is annoying.
Maybe have a free/demo version of the game and a separate paid one. Maybe that’ll stop the confusion.
At a previous job, I provided customer support for my employers custom e-commerce web app. Text input boxes had the instructions right under them advising what to put in the boxes. I mostly answered calls asking what to put in the boxes.
My first question was always “Did you read the instructions next to the box you’re asking me about?” the answer was usually “No, I just called you.”