Social Games: Earth is in danger - 2!
This is a continuation of the story about how the three of us (a classic triangle from a flasher, a unixoid and an artist) made a game for social networks. Two months have passed and I want to share the experience of finding development partners: it turns out to be quite real, thanks to Habr!
In the previous “series” of our voyage across the expanses of social networks of the runet (and not only), we came to the fact that our toy began to bring some money quite sufficient not only for swimming, but also for further development (the beginning of our story here ). The game is called “The Earth is in danger” (the game on VKontakte is a game in My World ) and it looks like this:
By itself, the toy was knocked out (and is now knocked out) from a series of similar farms to the gnashing of “farms”: in our country, players fight each other in real time, ensuring control of their side over the key cities of our Mother Earth. This difference played a lot of different jokes with us: on the one hand, the toy turned out to be something unique, which was appreciated by the players, but on the other ... On the other hand, some companies that we tried to contact to develop it further, were afraid to work with an unfamiliar type of games, with an incomprehensible "non-farm."
At the same time, the semi-annual experience of free swimming made it clear to us that without generating external traffic, normal results now unfortunately cannot be achieved. In other words, it was naive to expect a game to take off due to virus spread from the very beginning, and all that gives virality is a certain “cheapening” of traffic (i.e., every 10 active players bring one more for nothing). Here Habr came to our aid, and probably all the IT people of the country read it :) Anyway, they could hardly have paid attention to us in any other place (for example, a much more conservative audience on dtf.ru), IMHO.
')
A few days after the first article, we met with a small social publisher - the company MobMentality. After talking for a while, we were convinced that these people are quite “in the subject”: with experience and the creation and promotion of games (both purely casual and social networks), with a sufficient number of interesting (and not absurd) ideas that are openly shared information and ready to try working with us. Actually, cooperation from the very beginning turned out to be fruitful: after seeing our game, MobMentality (in particular, through the games themselves, Stefan Keish from Wheemplay, notorious in certain circles), pointed out some gross miscalculations in monetization, after which the payments immediately went up :) to monetize dodelok, we rushed to finalize the game, and after that MobMentality began to honestly supply us with traffic. The results can be judged by this screenshot of payments in the game from VKontakte:
Also with their help, we will start our game on Odnoklassniki this week, I think new tops are still ahead :) By the way, it’s impossible not to notice that Odnoklassniki improved the contract over the past two months and practically brought their API to a full-fledged form (until recently half The API wiki was full of comments that viral features are not working yet, but “soon they will be.” This “soon” has practically come!)
Another result of cooperation was a new full-fledged game, which we are currently doing (in September it will have to go out). Although in the fall they promise (according to rumors!) Strong shake-ups on the social networks of Runet for developers, I think that we will not be lost with good games.
Even during these two months we made our way on MySpace, about which I also want to say a few words. It does not have its own homegrown API, but Google's proprietary OpenSocial, so trying to unlock it, we pursued several goals at once: after all, OpenSocial works a lot where, for example, in Orkut, Bebo and other networks. Even Google gadgets support OpenSocial. We should not also forget about the upcoming social network from Google: I think there will also be OpenSocial as the basic API. At least, Google has not yet been seen to discriminate against its own technologies (unlike Microsoft, for example, IMHO).
So, MySpace turned out to be a completely hellish QA: several Indians were testing the game itself, that is, pointed out as errors things that are impossible to notice after conducting a formal test. In addition to this, there appeared, alas, zero virality. Incomprehensible combination. Apparently this is not a gaming platform so far, at least our experience says exactly that. We are waiting for social networks from Google :)
That's all for now, if you're interested, you can continue reporting on the development of our startup from the scene further :) Thank you for reading to the end!
In the previous “series” of our voyage across the expanses of social networks of the runet (and not only), we came to the fact that our toy began to bring some money quite sufficient not only for swimming, but also for further development (the beginning of our story here ). The game is called “The Earth is in danger” (the game on VKontakte is a game in My World ) and it looks like this:
    |
By itself, the toy was knocked out (and is now knocked out) from a series of similar farms to the gnashing of “farms”: in our country, players fight each other in real time, ensuring control of their side over the key cities of our Mother Earth. This difference played a lot of different jokes with us: on the one hand, the toy turned out to be something unique, which was appreciated by the players, but on the other ... On the other hand, some companies that we tried to contact to develop it further, were afraid to work with an unfamiliar type of games, with an incomprehensible "non-farm."
At the same time, the semi-annual experience of free swimming made it clear to us that without generating external traffic, normal results now unfortunately cannot be achieved. In other words, it was naive to expect a game to take off due to virus spread from the very beginning, and all that gives virality is a certain “cheapening” of traffic (i.e., every 10 active players bring one more for nothing). Here Habr came to our aid, and probably all the IT people of the country read it :) Anyway, they could hardly have paid attention to us in any other place (for example, a much more conservative audience on dtf.ru), IMHO.
')
A few days after the first article, we met with a small social publisher - the company MobMentality. After talking for a while, we were convinced that these people are quite “in the subject”: with experience and the creation and promotion of games (both purely casual and social networks), with a sufficient number of interesting (and not absurd) ideas that are openly shared information and ready to try working with us. Actually, cooperation from the very beginning turned out to be fruitful: after seeing our game, MobMentality (in particular, through the games themselves, Stefan Keish from Wheemplay, notorious in certain circles), pointed out some gross miscalculations in monetization, after which the payments immediately went up :) to monetize dodelok, we rushed to finalize the game, and after that MobMentality began to honestly supply us with traffic. The results can be judged by this screenshot of payments in the game from VKontakte:
Also with their help, we will start our game on Odnoklassniki this week, I think new tops are still ahead :) By the way, it’s impossible not to notice that Odnoklassniki improved the contract over the past two months and practically brought their API to a full-fledged form (until recently half The API wiki was full of comments that viral features are not working yet, but “soon they will be.” This “soon” has practically come!)
Another result of cooperation was a new full-fledged game, which we are currently doing (in September it will have to go out). Although in the fall they promise (according to rumors!) Strong shake-ups on the social networks of Runet for developers, I think that we will not be lost with good games.
Even during these two months we made our way on MySpace, about which I also want to say a few words. It does not have its own homegrown API, but Google's proprietary OpenSocial, so trying to unlock it, we pursued several goals at once: after all, OpenSocial works a lot where, for example, in Orkut, Bebo and other networks. Even Google gadgets support OpenSocial. We should not also forget about the upcoming social network from Google: I think there will also be OpenSocial as the basic API. At least, Google has not yet been seen to discriminate against its own technologies (unlike Microsoft, for example, IMHO).
So, MySpace turned out to be a completely hellish QA: several Indians were testing the game itself, that is, pointed out as errors things that are impossible to notice after conducting a formal test. In addition to this, there appeared, alas, zero virality. Incomprehensible combination. Apparently this is not a gaming platform so far, at least our experience says exactly that. We are waiting for social networks from Google :)
That's all for now, if you're interested, you can continue reporting on the development of our startup from the scene further :) Thank you for reading to the end!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/102420/
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