Today we'd like to address three things we are getting feedback on our social channels from some of our Kickstarter Backers, Paypal Pre-Orders and educators. We couldn't have gotten to where we are today without you and we like to try to be as transparent as we can. We're going to address three issues in this post (1) Floors being free for a limited time (2) the progress and plans for the Education portal & (3) progress for Android players.
The first question we'd like to expand on is this: Why did we bother supporting your Kickstarter campaign if you were going to release Pixel Press as a free app?
There are a few reasons we decided to release Floors for free at our release.
First and foremost, it was always our plan to release the "Play" experience in Pixel Press Floors for free, and to make the "Create" experience paid. Rather than having 2 separate apps, we made the decision to make it one app, that would be free with in-app-purchases for various features.
From there, we decided to make the "Create" experience free for a limited time at launch because we want to get as many creators on board and creating early on and learn more about how players will use the app. Once you start to explore the app we think you will find it is a much more enjoyable experience if there are plenty of creators publishing levels to the arcade.
Once we get past this initial launch phase, we plan to make the creator feature an in-app-purchase. But we also plan to stay flexible on this plan based on how things are going, we think this important while building our community but also figuring out the best way to fund the development of Pixel Press.
We still plan to award our backers $10 in value. For more information about how we plan to award this value please visit the Kickstarter & Paypal Update page.
The other thing we'd like to scream from the top of our building here in St. Louis is that - we could not been able to build this product without you, our backers. There would be no app being released this week without your contributions last year. We needed you to make our idea a reality, and you did! We are beyond grateful and apologize if you think the app being free dilutes that.
Second question: Where is the exclusive content promised to Educators? The educators are being neglected!
Unfortunately we don't have the man power to balance getting our first app live and addressing the needs of our Educators all at the same time. We are being extremely thoughtful about the way we'd like Pixel Press to be present in classrooms and allowing ourselves to take the time to do it right. The team takes time each week to make visits to schools and after school programs in St. Louis to see how students are learning with Floors. We need some time in-market to understand the best ways to utilize this in your classrooms.
Floors has only been a truly complete product for a matter of weeks, now we need time to do more hands on testing with educators. Our small team is built of developers and business minded individuals, we still need feedback and ideas from you, our experts in the field, to give us direction on where you see value in your classroom. We hope you share those ideas on the Education Portal. It is our plan to take the summer to develop tools that are teacher and parent friendly. We apologize if this aspect of Pixel Press is not moving as quickly as your expectations in education but we are working towards it.
Third question: When are you going to be available on Android?
We plan to have Floors available on Android in Q3 of this year - we're missing a huge amount of players by not being on Android, but we also have to have time to get it right. Now that iOS is complete we can focus much more energy on getting to the Android market. We want to get the kinks and bugs out on iOS and then we should feel very good about submitting to Android. Keep an eye on our social channels for more information as we make progress.