The Monetization Technique Called "F*ck Me"

My brother and I love making games. We've been making games for over 10 years. When we first started, I was only 12 years old. My brother is Tarık, and he is the older one. I am Talha. We recently started using the name of Kayabros for our games. We both are programmers and game designers. I also make music. We introduce ourselves by saying "Tarık is the technical genius and Talha is the cry-baby." because of my weird emotional sensitivity. So now we have a studio being born in our hands, and the only way to make it breathe is to make awesome games.

Today I'll be talking about Kayabros' first released title, Into The Box. It's my brother Tarık's project, with him coding and designing. I just helped with some music and feedback. It's been a few days since the game released as my brother shared it on his facebook with these words:

"Our new game is out! Free for web and android.
It uses a great monetization technique called 'f*ck-me'."

As he puts it in his kind words, the game is completely free, and doesn't have any ads. The only thing he wants out of this game, is to show how awesome a game it is, and make the name of Kayabros more publicly known. I am also interested in making Kayabros more well-known. But is publicity the main reason we are making games? Definitely not.

All our friends call Tarık crazy because he chose to make the game free. Putting in ads is basically "free money" at this point, since the game is ready and fully featured. It's getting the attraction. It's been featured on Rock Paper Shotgun. It's getting plays. A lot of people seem to love it. Some people even donated money because they liked the game so much. (Special thanks to itch.io for bringing such a great service for developers to life)

Why did Tarık release the game for free? The game had a chance to have a few dollars of price point. It had a chance to feature ads for ad-revenue. There's only one reason: He loves his game too much. It was a project purely born out of personal interests, and he loved developing it. Adding each feature, experimenting with the infinite depth concept, tweaking the controls and patterns and colors for months and months... He loved doing it. He loved playing with it. And he just wanted people to play it, to see and feel the special experience that this game is providing. And he succeeded.

When you're playing Into The Box, you feel yourself drifting into the unknown, and losing your control. It's a psychedelic and addictive experience. Even though there are highscores and unlockables, you don't really play it for that. You play it to drift, to lose yourself into the infinity. Feel the speed, think with reflexes, challenge your body.

You can play Into The Box for free on web and Android devices.
Follow @kayabros for more.