> i have assembled the funnel-and-churn data. i've put together the reports greenlighting games because the ltv has exceeded the cost of acquisition. i've used average instead of median so our whales inflated the reports. and after all of that, i've seen their 30-day retention numbers still stagnate.

In other words, you were managing promotion. Promotion is an important part of marketing, but it's not the entirety of it [1]. If the game objectively sucked, then you failed at the "Product" piece of marketing. This is the part where you listen to your customers and make changes to your product to make it more attractive to your target market (you did identify target markets for your games, right?) Product development should be squarely a marketing function; otherwise you'll end up building a product that nobody wants (like the original author did).

> if you are a small shop where everyone has day jobs and you can endure slower, organic growth? it's not worth the money.

In other words, it's only not important if you're not running a business and don't expect your app to be successful. Otherwise, marketing sounds pretty important to everyone. "Organic growth" doesn't happen in the app economy; you need explosive growth to hit the scale at which you can even begin to start recovering your costs (I recall reading one of these where the guy bought an iPad to develop his game with, and didn't even end up covering the cost of the iPad).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_mix#McCarthy.27s_four...