2012: we Start in the AppStore
Indie developer Charilaos Kalogirou shares his own experience of the game's release for iOS.
Today in some extent is a great day because today marks exactly 60 days until I can officially call myself a published indie game developer!
3 February 2012 Mr. Pop Corny (Corn) broke in (and in fact have crept in, thanks to Apple, but more on that later) in the online store AppStore after 8 months of development and that dream became a reality.
And now, I think the time has come when I can share the experience of launching your app in the AppStore. I will try to outline the nuances that I would like to take into account the experience of other projects before starting their own.
Accession
Let's start with the technical information about Pop Corny. Pop Corny was conceived as a simple and fun casual game that requires some time, which is typical for games on mobile devices.
I funded, developed, published and launched this game as a paid app for $0.99. Later, I did it for free and monetized through IAP(In-App Purchases or in-app Purchases — ed.interpreter), but leave aside the reasons for this decision.
Below are a few more technical details about the game:
Development time: 8 months.
Number of developers: 1
For the production of sound and most of the graphics were hired performers
Assembly was performed using the Sylphis3D Game Engine
Supports all versions of iPhone, iPod touch and iPad
Source code (game code+code of the game engine, with the exception of third party libraries):
—
Language files blanks comments code
—
Lua 52 2631 1026 10415
C/C++ Header 77 1209 1111 3718
C++ 32 731 882 2552
XML 1 1 0 788
Python 9 170 136 630
Bourne Shell 13 70 167 284
Objective C 2 14 14 25
—
Total: 186 4826 3336 18412
—
The game code has 5983 rows above LUA code
Total sources reached 0.4 GB
The resulting compiled volume is 10MB
The starting price of $0.99 (50 days), then the game became free
Total sales for 2 months: ~150000
The rate of exchange IAP: ~2.0%
Rating: 4.5/5 (600 votes, 70% of which were 5 stars)
Promotion
As I said, the game was funded and published without any external assistance. On the human tongue, it just didn't have money for marketing.
So I had to find cheaper ways of showing their best side. One of the main helpers in this case was to become famous launch day.
Everyone developing for the AppStore will tell you that launch day is one of the most important events in the effective promotion of your game.
You need to do everything you can to not miss this moment. And indeed it is. I put 3 apps in the AppStore before to do this game and I know that launch day should involve — absolutely free! — the attention of thousands of eyes to your app, which on other days would cost thousands of dollars. And all this because a list of fresh apps to the AppStore.
My strategy was a combination of using this moment with the whole "social" is that I could arrange to climb as high as possible in the charts application.
And then, perhaps, some journalists writing about the games will notice it and write about the game that throw wood on the fire. To this end, I created a video trailer for the game, and a week before its launch has created an event in Facebook about "the imminent launch trailer".
I invited everyone I could and a week later (13th Jan) I did a presentation this video. That day I posted the video link on all forums on which I could. This caused a minor stir, but mostly in Greece, where he lives most of my friends.
Day of issue was appointed on the 3rd of February. I have received confirmation from Apple and have sent promo codes to journalists, writing on gaming topics.
To this end, I, just starting the development of the game, carefully made a list of the sites publishing reviews of games and built the list of journalists involved in it. I ordered them (with the Alex Rank) by type and rating games. And when I got the confirmation from Apple, I sent all 40 promo codes I had, and also contacted more than 100 journalists, without sending it.
At an early stage of development I made another major decision related to marketing. It was about support OpenFeint in addition to supporting GameCenter.
On the OpenFeint website is your list of the best games and gameplay games — all of which can attract even a little attention to your new and unknown game. I decided that the additional number of interested eyes will not be superfluous, therefore, to support both the social gaming network.
Here is a short list of what I did even before the game's release:
the
Now all I have to do is wait for the day of release and to taste the sweetness of success... or not to eat...
Apple spills milk
When everything was ready and running game in the AppStores store was automatically scheduled on 3rd Feb, 2 Feb, I started an unexpected nightmare (since we live on a globe, in New Zealand's already "tomorrow").
Of course I was looking at the new Zealand AppStore, looking forward to the emergence of Pop Corny, and he appeared. Oh! Happiness! After so many months of hard work he was there... and he had the chance!
I couldn't be more happy and at the same time excited, however, seconds of joy quickly ended as soon as I thoroughly understood the situation.
The were occupied with horror in my heart when I noticed next to the icon of the game the release date of "January 31". I rushed to check the list of new programs like a maniac looking for victims, hoping to find Pop Corny, but it was gone. What happened? If there are any app 3 days ago that I didn't notice?
However, the game does not appear in any of the other stores. I personally checked all the other AppStore... did Not work...
Still, I was optimistic — these distributed systems are updated slowly and, at first, such things can happen. However, on 3 February was coming to an end in most countries, but history repeats itself. Pop Corny was appearing as an app, released 3 days ago.
Three days is an eternity if you start in the AppStore. I disappeared from the first page before to get there. I tried to contact Apple support, but this is easier said than done.
And then I realized how I'm small and insignificant. There was no way to resolve the situation with a system that works by selection out of 15 nested categories of problems before to put you to the entry line, where you can explain your troubles.
Could not solve this problem even giving a whole day trying to get an answer, but what I received was not the same described troubles. And you can — at least — can't continue to chat, starting with the response that you received. For several days I tried again and again to rephrase your question, clearly trying to Express, but... failed.
It was almost 19.00 on U.S. time, when the day of Pop Corny all the shops were corrected on the 3rd Feb. However, it was too late. In some stores AppStores has arrived the 5th of February.
The problem also confounded the tracking system OpenFeint releases. OpenFeint, as soon as your application received confirmation that scans the AppStore on the subject of the release date of your game. I think it is for this reason Pop Corny is not included in the lists OpenFeint.
A week later I contacted them about this problem, to which they replied that the system has somehow ignored my application and they had to add it manually. They could not find the cause, but I knew...
So, I got zero exhaust due to misses in the list of new programs AppStore that resulted in zero sales. It was dangerous. Maybe Apple will give me credit, advertise my game for one or two days... I can wait.
up and go ahead
The above-described problem happened in all AppStores around the world. This led to the sale of ten copies of Pop Corny to the United States.
I know (from a list of ratings fees) shit program, who have bought many times. And it was only because no one knew about my newly issued game.
However, in Greece it was different. Here is the biggest part of my "social networking". People knew about Pop Corny and they waited for her. Some of the main blogs about iPhone written on it and the game was sold.
Less than 24 hours Pop Corny has surged to first place among paid applications. And not only for games among all applications. Began to receive the 5-star reviews and it was bliss. A couple of days at the top — and the game showed up on local television.
This contrast between Greece and other countries fine showed me what is. You have to put your game under the nose of the player. And it is not easy. This is the hardest part for a small developer. No one would look at you while you are small and unknown. Become a famous is like a dream come true in reality.
150 emails that I sent to journalists-the obzorniki, said 10 people. 8 of them gently hinted at the necessity of payment of the review, two wrote that very busy.
Admonitory download media-game pack, I saw only two found time to study with him. I understood that something here not that. I got the impression that to break through this direction is possible only with the help of dollars.
Being the number one paid app in Greece, the game was sold at about 200 copies a day (Yes, it's a small market). It is about 100 euros a day after Apple has taken their share.
Sounds good, but according to the universal law of disappearance of the AppStore (I'll talk about this below), it was not enough. At the same time in all the other AppStore app sold poorly.
I knew I was not in my power to rectify the situation, so I decided to retreat, to stop the desperate attempts of its alignment and set about catching bugs and implementing some new features in anticipation of the day when the game will be free.
The idea of the free games came to my mind during development. From the first day the game was conceived as free, but in the end, a few days before release, I decided to make her pay.
Of free I saw my second chance. It could draw more attention to the game. But I knew that the way free — the hard way. It's quite another field of activity. Free gives you a lot of sales mainly due to applications such as AppShopper.
This kind of app every day to scan the AppStore and inform the user about the apps that have become free, which leads to a large number of downloads. However, the "large number" is not enough when competing with free applications. You need a VERY large number.
There are services similar to the service OpenFeint "free game of the day" that offer you an additional opportunity to Shine in the day, when your game becomes free. They pay attention to one game a day and promote it on your web site and the iPhone app.
I contacted them, the game they liked and I put on the first available day, which fell on Thursday, March 22 (Yes, this day came Angry Birds Space, but I'm not scared). They are very well organized, the process of transmitting information about the game transparent and efficient. I handed them the texts I had nothing to do but to wait one day.
This day came and Pop Corny became free. The effect of this move was overwhelming. Pop Corny started to climb up the charts around the world with incredible speed. Some time passed and he entered the top ten in more than 20 AppStore, becoming number 1 in its category in 10 AppStore.
When you start the game checked the file .plist on my server that contained the news for the user. This allowed me to estimate the number of downloads in real time. It reached monstrous 48-downloads in a minute.
A few hours of promotion on the website 148apps.com did the trick and the number of downloads has increased again. It lasted all day (which actually lasts 48 hours to pass on the globe), and I had the opportunity to correlate peaks download news with mentions on Twitter, blog posts, etc. Very informative.
It would be foolish, once in so many charts, just make the game paid, losing a flare. In addition, income from the free version was many times more than paid. So I decided to leave it as is.
I think you did the right thing. The weekend following the promotional day, the game downloaded 70'000 times, it has received good reviews from users, and the income from the IAP continues to grow. I was completely satisfied.
Universal law of disappearance from the AppStore
One of the biggest myths that was dispelled by my experience of running Pop Corny was the myth that the level of visibility on the AppStore is ruled a ball.
The impression that all believe that the presence of your app in the top ten is the path to sales. That this position transformirovalsya in attention and sales in the exchange of impressions about the program, which will be sufficient to generate income.
You need to do to get the charts to your app sell better. For me it is now one of the biggest misconceptions concerning the AppStore.
The presence of a huge number of applications in the AppStore, as well as the daily flow of new leads to the fact that the charts are working like a capacitor. They smooth out the flaws. But most of the sales starts today AppStore outside, not inside.
People who buy your app, because it is in the charts is not enough in order to hold the position, not to mention move up.
Consequently, we have witnessed the work of "the universal law of disappearance from the AppStore", as I called it phenomenon. Sale any application, attention to which is not heated from outside the AppStore, it will be possible to describe such a schedule:
This applies to applications both paid and free. The only difference is that the absolute number of downloads, which will be more in case of free apps.
The rate of disappearance depends on the level of competition and how much your application icon and description to it will be attractive to buyers. And, of course, from your ratings.
The conclusion is that the charts are unable to maintain sales at a sufficient level in our days. Perhaps they could do it a few years ago, but not now.
And you should never think of the charts as an indicator of sales. This is an indicator of how well you're doing. The game is not on the field. Get reviews, tweets, opinions, and of course, let you will notice the Apple.
Totals
The AppStore is a difficult place to distribute apps in 2012. I didn't expect it to be easy, since Pop Corny was my first application published in this way.
However, I would be just happy not to fall under the wheels of the error on the day of release. And I at least would feel much better if I knew that can effectively solve the problem together with Apple.
In the end, I think that Pop Corny is very well advanced and will eventually move better. I learned a lot during this time, almost covered their development costs, but also got the pleasure of knowing that hundreds of thousands of people playing my game.
Based on a zero marketing budget and the fact that this is my first game, everything turned out much better than expected. I proved that you still have a chance to succeed in the AppStore without a big monetary investment in a marketing campaign. However, this is really hard to achieve.
Article based on information from habrahabr.ru
Today in some extent is a great day because today marks exactly 60 days until I can officially call myself a published indie game developer!
3 February 2012 Mr. Pop Corny (Corn) broke in (and in fact have crept in, thanks to Apple, but more on that later) in the online store AppStore after 8 months of development and that dream became a reality.
And now, I think the time has come when I can share the experience of launching your app in the AppStore. I will try to outline the nuances that I would like to take into account the experience of other projects before starting their own.
Accession
Let's start with the technical information about Pop Corny. Pop Corny was conceived as a simple and fun casual game that requires some time, which is typical for games on mobile devices.
I funded, developed, published and launched this game as a paid app for $0.99. Later, I did it for free and monetized through IAP(In-App Purchases or in-app Purchases — ed.interpreter), but leave aside the reasons for this decision.
Below are a few more technical details about the game:
Development time: 8 months.
Number of developers: 1
For the production of sound and most of the graphics were hired performers
Assembly was performed using the Sylphis3D Game Engine
Supports all versions of iPhone, iPod touch and iPad
Source code (game code+code of the game engine, with the exception of third party libraries):
—
Language files blanks comments code
—
Lua 52 2631 1026 10415
C/C++ Header 77 1209 1111 3718
C++ 32 731 882 2552
XML 1 1 0 788
Python 9 170 136 630
Bourne Shell 13 70 167 284
Objective C 2 14 14 25
—
Total: 186 4826 3336 18412
—
The game code has 5983 rows above LUA code
Total sources reached 0.4 GB
The resulting compiled volume is 10MB
The starting price of $0.99 (50 days), then the game became free
Total sales for 2 months: ~150000
The rate of exchange IAP: ~2.0%
Rating: 4.5/5 (600 votes, 70% of which were 5 stars)
Promotion
As I said, the game was funded and published without any external assistance. On the human tongue, it just didn't have money for marketing.
So I had to find cheaper ways of showing their best side. One of the main helpers in this case was to become famous launch day.
Everyone developing for the AppStore will tell you that launch day is one of the most important events in the effective promotion of your game.
You need to do everything you can to not miss this moment. And indeed it is. I put 3 apps in the AppStore before to do this game and I know that launch day should involve — absolutely free! — the attention of thousands of eyes to your app, which on other days would cost thousands of dollars. And all this because a list of fresh apps to the AppStore.
My strategy was a combination of using this moment with the whole "social" is that I could arrange to climb as high as possible in the charts application.
And then, perhaps, some journalists writing about the games will notice it and write about the game that throw wood on the fire. To this end, I created a video trailer for the game, and a week before its launch has created an event in Facebook about "the imminent launch trailer".
I invited everyone I could and a week later (13th Jan) I did a presentation this video. That day I posted the video link on all forums on which I could. This caused a minor stir, but mostly in Greece, where he lives most of my friends.
Day of issue was appointed on the 3rd of February. I have received confirmation from Apple and have sent promo codes to journalists, writing on gaming topics.
To this end, I, just starting the development of the game, carefully made a list of the sites publishing reviews of games and built the list of journalists involved in it. I ordered them (with the Alex Rank) by type and rating games. And when I got the confirmation from Apple, I sent all 40 promo codes I had, and also contacted more than 100 journalists, without sending it.
At an early stage of development I made another major decision related to marketing. It was about support OpenFeint in addition to supporting GameCenter.
On the OpenFeint website is your list of the best games and gameplay games — all of which can attract even a little attention to your new and unknown game. I decided that the additional number of interested eyes will not be superfluous, therefore, to support both the social gaming network.
Here is a short list of what I did even before the game's release:
the
-
the
- has Created a video trailer for the "soon on screen" the
- has Created game page on Facebook and Twitter the
- has Organized the event on Facebook to show video game the
- has Sent all 40 promo codes to game journalists (with all media, balls and whistles) the
- Wrote a lot of posts on the forums in the "new products" the
- have Prepared a campaign to promote the game using their previously written applications the
- Added support for OpenFeint
Now all I have to do is wait for the day of release and to taste the sweetness of success... or not to eat...
Apple spills milk
When everything was ready and running game in the AppStores store was automatically scheduled on 3rd Feb, 2 Feb, I started an unexpected nightmare (since we live on a globe, in New Zealand's already "tomorrow").
Of course I was looking at the new Zealand AppStore, looking forward to the emergence of Pop Corny, and he appeared. Oh! Happiness! After so many months of hard work he was there... and he had the chance!
I couldn't be more happy and at the same time excited, however, seconds of joy quickly ended as soon as I thoroughly understood the situation.
The were occupied with horror in my heart when I noticed next to the icon of the game the release date of "January 31". I rushed to check the list of new programs like a maniac looking for victims, hoping to find Pop Corny, but it was gone. What happened? If there are any app 3 days ago that I didn't notice?
However, the game does not appear in any of the other stores. I personally checked all the other AppStore... did Not work...
Still, I was optimistic — these distributed systems are updated slowly and, at first, such things can happen. However, on 3 February was coming to an end in most countries, but history repeats itself. Pop Corny was appearing as an app, released 3 days ago.
Three days is an eternity if you start in the AppStore. I disappeared from the first page before to get there. I tried to contact Apple support, but this is easier said than done.
And then I realized how I'm small and insignificant. There was no way to resolve the situation with a system that works by selection out of 15 nested categories of problems before to put you to the entry line, where you can explain your troubles.
Could not solve this problem even giving a whole day trying to get an answer, but what I received was not the same described troubles. And you can — at least — can't continue to chat, starting with the response that you received. For several days I tried again and again to rephrase your question, clearly trying to Express, but... failed.
It was almost 19.00 on U.S. time, when the day of Pop Corny all the shops were corrected on the 3rd Feb. However, it was too late. In some stores AppStores has arrived the 5th of February.
The problem also confounded the tracking system OpenFeint releases. OpenFeint, as soon as your application received confirmation that scans the AppStore on the subject of the release date of your game. I think it is for this reason Pop Corny is not included in the lists OpenFeint.
A week later I contacted them about this problem, to which they replied that the system has somehow ignored my application and they had to add it manually. They could not find the cause, but I knew...
So, I got zero exhaust due to misses in the list of new programs AppStore that resulted in zero sales. It was dangerous. Maybe Apple will give me credit, advertise my game for one or two days... I can wait.
up and go ahead
The above-described problem happened in all AppStores around the world. This led to the sale of ten copies of Pop Corny to the United States.
I know (from a list of ratings fees) shit program, who have bought many times. And it was only because no one knew about my newly issued game.
However, in Greece it was different. Here is the biggest part of my "social networking". People knew about Pop Corny and they waited for her. Some of the main blogs about iPhone written on it and the game was sold.
Less than 24 hours Pop Corny has surged to first place among paid applications. And not only for games among all applications. Began to receive the 5-star reviews and it was bliss. A couple of days at the top — and the game showed up on local television.
This contrast between Greece and other countries fine showed me what is. You have to put your game under the nose of the player. And it is not easy. This is the hardest part for a small developer. No one would look at you while you are small and unknown. Become a famous is like a dream come true in reality.
150 emails that I sent to journalists-the obzorniki, said 10 people. 8 of them gently hinted at the necessity of payment of the review, two wrote that very busy.
Admonitory download media-game pack, I saw only two found time to study with him. I understood that something here not that. I got the impression that to break through this direction is possible only with the help of dollars.
Being the number one paid app in Greece, the game was sold at about 200 copies a day (Yes, it's a small market). It is about 100 euros a day after Apple has taken their share.
Sounds good, but according to the universal law of disappearance of the AppStore (I'll talk about this below), it was not enough. At the same time in all the other AppStore app sold poorly.
I knew I was not in my power to rectify the situation, so I decided to retreat, to stop the desperate attempts of its alignment and set about catching bugs and implementing some new features in anticipation of the day when the game will be free.
The idea of the free games came to my mind during development. From the first day the game was conceived as free, but in the end, a few days before release, I decided to make her pay.
Of free I saw my second chance. It could draw more attention to the game. But I knew that the way free — the hard way. It's quite another field of activity. Free gives you a lot of sales mainly due to applications such as AppShopper.
This kind of app every day to scan the AppStore and inform the user about the apps that have become free, which leads to a large number of downloads. However, the "large number" is not enough when competing with free applications. You need a VERY large number.
There are services similar to the service OpenFeint "free game of the day" that offer you an additional opportunity to Shine in the day, when your game becomes free. They pay attention to one game a day and promote it on your web site and the iPhone app.
I contacted them, the game they liked and I put on the first available day, which fell on Thursday, March 22 (Yes, this day came Angry Birds Space, but I'm not scared). They are very well organized, the process of transmitting information about the game transparent and efficient. I handed them the texts I had nothing to do but to wait one day.
This day came and Pop Corny became free. The effect of this move was overwhelming. Pop Corny started to climb up the charts around the world with incredible speed. Some time passed and he entered the top ten in more than 20 AppStore, becoming number 1 in its category in 10 AppStore.
When you start the game checked the file .plist on my server that contained the news for the user. This allowed me to estimate the number of downloads in real time. It reached monstrous 48-downloads in a minute.
A few hours of promotion on the website 148apps.com did the trick and the number of downloads has increased again. It lasted all day (which actually lasts 48 hours to pass on the globe), and I had the opportunity to correlate peaks download news with mentions on Twitter, blog posts, etc. Very informative.
It would be foolish, once in so many charts, just make the game paid, losing a flare. In addition, income from the free version was many times more than paid. So I decided to leave it as is.
I think you did the right thing. The weekend following the promotional day, the game downloaded 70'000 times, it has received good reviews from users, and the income from the IAP continues to grow. I was completely satisfied.
Universal law of disappearance from the AppStore
One of the biggest myths that was dispelled by my experience of running Pop Corny was the myth that the level of visibility on the AppStore is ruled a ball.
The impression that all believe that the presence of your app in the top ten is the path to sales. That this position transformirovalsya in attention and sales in the exchange of impressions about the program, which will be sufficient to generate income.
You need to do to get the charts to your app sell better. For me it is now one of the biggest misconceptions concerning the AppStore.
The presence of a huge number of applications in the AppStore, as well as the daily flow of new leads to the fact that the charts are working like a capacitor. They smooth out the flaws. But most of the sales starts today AppStore outside, not inside.
People who buy your app, because it is in the charts is not enough in order to hold the position, not to mention move up.
Consequently, we have witnessed the work of "the universal law of disappearance from the AppStore", as I called it phenomenon. Sale any application, attention to which is not heated from outside the AppStore, it will be possible to describe such a schedule:
This applies to applications both paid and free. The only difference is that the absolute number of downloads, which will be more in case of free apps.
The rate of disappearance depends on the level of competition and how much your application icon and description to it will be attractive to buyers. And, of course, from your ratings.
The conclusion is that the charts are unable to maintain sales at a sufficient level in our days. Perhaps they could do it a few years ago, but not now.
And you should never think of the charts as an indicator of sales. This is an indicator of how well you're doing. The game is not on the field. Get reviews, tweets, opinions, and of course, let you will notice the Apple.
Totals
The AppStore is a difficult place to distribute apps in 2012. I didn't expect it to be easy, since Pop Corny was my first application published in this way.
However, I would be just happy not to fall under the wheels of the error on the day of release. And I at least would feel much better if I knew that can effectively solve the problem together with Apple.
In the end, I think that Pop Corny is very well advanced and will eventually move better. I learned a lot during this time, almost covered their development costs, but also got the pleasure of knowing that hundreds of thousands of people playing my game.
Based on a zero marketing budget and the fact that this is my first game, everything turned out much better than expected. I proved that you still have a chance to succeed in the AppStore without a big monetary investment in a marketing campaign. However, this is really hard to achieve.
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