2012: We start in the AppStore
Indie developer Carilaos Kalogiru shares his own experience of releasing games for iOS.
Today is to some extent a great day, because today is exactly 60 days since I can officially call myself a published indie game developer!
On February 3, 2012, Mr. Pop Corny (Corn) broke in (and actually crawled, thanks to Apple, but more on that later) to the AppStore online store after 8 months of development and the dream became a reality.
')
And now, it seems to me, the moment has come when I can share the experience of launching my application in the AppStore. I will try to present here the nuances that I would like to take into account from the experience of other projects before launching my own.
Introduction
I’ll start with the technical information on Pop Corny. Pop Corny was conceived as a simple and fun casual game that requires a little time, which is typical for games on mobile devices.
I myself financed, developed, published and launched this game as a paid application for $ 0.99. Later, I made it free and monetized using IAP. But let us leave aside the reasons for this decision.
Below are some more technical details about the game:
Development time: 8 months.
Number of developers: 1
For the manufacture of sound and most of the graphics hired performers
The build was done using the Sylphis3D Game Engine
Supports all versions of iPhone, iPod touch and iPad
Source code (game code + game engine code, excluding third-party libraries):
-
Language files spaces 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 lines of the above LUA code
The total amount of source reached 0.4 GB
The resulting compiled volume is 10MB
The starting price is $ 0.99 (50 days), then the game is free
Total sales for 2 months: ~ 150000
IAP exchange rate: ~ 2.0%
Rating: 4.5 / 5 (out of 600 votes, 70% of which were 5 stars)
Promotion
As I said, the game was funded and published without any outside help. This translates into human language simply - there was no money for marketing.
Therefore, I had to find as cheap ways as possible to show myself from the best side. One of the main assistants in this matter was to be the famous launch day.
Every person who has designed for the AppStore will tell you that the launch day is one of the most important events in effectively promoting your game.
You need to do everything that you can to not miss this moment. And indeed it is. I placed 3 applications in the AppStore before I started this game and I know that the launch day should attract - absolutely free! - the attention of thousands of eyes to your application that on other days will cost thousands of dollars. And all this thanks to the list of fresh applications for the AppStore.
My strategy was to combine the use of this moment with all the “social” advertising that I could organize to climb as high as possible in the application charts.
And then, perhaps, some journalists writing about the games will notice this and write about the game, which will throw firewood into the fire. To this end, I created a video trailer for the game, and a week before its launch, I created an event on Facebook about the “soon launch of the trailer”.
I invited everyone I could and a week later (January 13th) I made a presentation of this video . That day I posted a link to the video in all thematic forums where I could. This caused a slight stir, but mostly in Greece, where most of my friends live.
The day of release was set for February 3rd. I have already received confirmation from Apple and sent promo codes to reporters writing on gaming topics.
To this end, I just started the development of the game, carefully compiled a list of sites that publish reviews of games, and also compiled a list of journalists involved in this. I ordered them (using Alex Rank ) by game type and rating. And when I received confirmation from Apple, I sent all 40 promo codes that I had and also contacted more than 100 journalists without sending it.
In the early stages of development, I made another major decision regarding marketing. It related to OpenFeint support in addition to GameCenter support.
The OpenFeint website has its own list of the best games, as well as a review of the latest games - all this may attract a little more attention to your new and unknown game. I decided that the additional number of interested eyes would not be superfluous to me, therefore I began to support both social gaming networks.
Here is a brief list of what I did before the game was released:
Now all I had to do was wait for the day of the game and taste the sweetness of success ... or not taste ...
Apple spills milk
When everything was ready and the launch of the game in the AppStores store was automatically scheduled for February 3rd, an unforeseen nightmare started for me on February 2 (since we live on the ball, New Zealand already came tomorrow).
Of course, I looked through the New Zealand AppStore, looking forward to the appearance of Pop Corny and it appeared. ABOUT! Happiness! After so many months of hard work, he was there ... and he had a chance!
I could not be happier and at the same time overexcited, but the seconds of joy quickly ended, as soon as I carefully figured out the situation.
The horror struck my heart when I noticed the January 31 release date next to the game icon. I rushed to check the list of new programs like a maniac in search of a victim, hoping to find Pop Corny, but it was not there anywhere. What happened? Did the application appear 3 days ago, which I did not notice?
However, the game did not appear in any of the other stores. I personally checked all the rest of the AppStore ... It did not work out ...
Still, I was optimistic - these distributed systems are slowly updating and at first such things can happen. However, February 3 was nearing the end in most countries, but the story was repeated. Pop Corny was displayed as an application released 3 days ago.
Three days is an eternity if you start in the AppStore. I disappeared from the first page before getting there. I tried to contact Apple using the help desk, but this is easier said than done.
And then I realized how small and insignificant I am. There was no way to resolve this situation with a system that works by choosing from 15 nested categories of problems before putting you to the input line, in which you can state your troubles.
It did not work out to solve this problem even if I gave all day to attempts to get an answer, and what I received did not correspond to the trouble I described. And you can - at least - not be able to continue to communicate, starting with the answer you received. For several days I tried to rephrase my question again and again, trying to explain it more clearly, but ... I was defeated.
It was almost 7:00 p.m. U.S. when the day when Pop Corny was released in all stores corrected on the 3rd of February. However, it was too late. Some AppStores stores have already arrived on February 5th.
The last straw was the response from Apple to my pleas, which said that they did not see any problem with the date, since it was already installed on February 3rd. What irony!
The problem also confused the OpenFeint release tracking system. OpenFeint, as soon as your application received confirmation, scans the AppStore for the release date of your game. I think for this very reason Pop Corny did not make it to the OpenFeint lists.
A week later, I contacted them about this problem, to which they replied that the system 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 missing the list of new programs in the AppStore, which led to zero sales. It was dangerous. Maybe Apple will give me credit after all by advertising my game for one or two days ... I can wait.
We rise and move on
The above described problem occurred in all AppStores around the world. This led to the sale of ten copies of Pop Corny in the United States.
I know (from the list of payment ratings) shit programs that have been bought more times. And so it was only because no one found out about my freshly released game.
However, in Greece, everything was different. Here is the largest part of my “social network”. People knew about Pop Corny and they waited for her. Several major blogs about the iPhone wrote about it and the game began to sell.
In less than 24 hours, Pop Corny took the first place among paid apps. And not only among the games - among all applications. 5-star reviews began to appear and it was bliss. A couple of days in the top - and the game lit up on local television.
Such a contrast between Greece and the rest of the countries showed me perfectly what advertising is. You have to put your game under the player’s nose. And it is not easy. This is the hardest part for a small developer. No one will look at you while you are small and unknown. Becoming famous is like a dream come true.
On 150 letters by e-mail, which I sent to journalists, reviewers, answered 10 people. 8 of them gently hinted at the need to pay for the review, two wrote that they were very busy.
Having monitored the download of the game's media package, I saw that only two took the time to familiarize themselves with it. I realized that something was wrong. I got the impression that it is possible to break through this direction only with the help of dollars.
Being number one among paid apps in Greece, the game sold at about 200 copies per day (yes, this is a small market). This is about 100 euros per day after Apple took away its share.
It sounds good, but, according to the universal disappearance law of the AppStore (I will tell about it below), this was clearly not enough. At the same time, in all other AppStore stores, the application sold poorly.
I knew that it was not in my power to rectify the situation, so I decided to retreat, stop desperate attempts at leveling it, and took up catching mistakes and implementing some new features in anticipation of the day when the game would become free.
The idea of ​​a free game came to my mind even during development. From the first day the game was conceived as free, but in the end, a few days before the release, I decided to make it paid.
In free I saw my second chance. This could attract more attention to the game. But I knew that the free path was not the easy way. This is a completely different field of activity. Free gives you a lot of sales mainly due to applications such as AppShopper.
These kinds of applications scan the AppStore every day and inform the user about those applications that have become free, which leads to a large number of downloads. However, a “large number” is not enough when competing with free apps. You need a VERY large number.
There are services similar to the OpenFeint “Free Game of the Day” service, which offer you an additional opportunity to catch up on the day when your game becomes free. They focus on one game per day and promote it on their website and iPhone application.
I contacted them, they liked the game and they wrote me on the very first available day, which fell on Thursday, March 22 (yes, Angry Birds Space came out that day, but I wasn't afraid). They are very well organized, the process of transferring information about the game is transparent and efficient. I handed over the relevant banners and texts and I had nothing to do except wait for one day.
That day came and Pop Corny became free. The effect of such a move was overwhelming. Pop Corny began climbing up charts around the world at an incredible speed. It took some time and he entered the top ten in more than 20 AppStore, becoming number 1 in its category in 10 AppStore stores.
When launching, the game checked the .plist file on my server, which contained news for the user. This allowed me to estimate the number of downloads in real time. It reached a monstrous 48-minute downloads per minute.
A few hours of promotion on the site 148apps.com have done their job and the number of downloads has increased again. It lasted all day (which actually lasts 48 hours to go around the globe), and I had the opportunity to correlate the peaks of downloading a news file with references on Twitter, blog posts, etc. Very informative experience.
It would be stupid, hitting so many charts, just to make the game paid again, losing such exposure. In addition, the income from the free version was much higher than from the paid one. Therefore, I decided to leave everything as it is.
I think I did the right thing. On the weekend following the advertising day, the game was downloaded 70'000 times, it received good feedback from users, and revenues from IAP continued to grow. I was completely satisfied.
The universal law of extinction from the AppStore
One of the biggest myths that was dispelled by my experience with Pop Corny was the myth that visibility on the AppStore rules the ball.
It seems that everyone believes that having your application in the top ten is the way to sales. The fact that this position is transformed into attention and sales in the process of exchange of impressions about the program, which will be enough to generate income.
You must do everything to get into the charts in order to make your application sell better. For me, this is now one of the biggest misconceptions regarding the AppStore.
The presence of a huge number of applications in the AppStore, as well as the daily flow of more and more new leads to the fact that the charts work as a capacitor. They smooth the flaws. But most sales today start outside the AppStore, not inside.
People who buy your application, because it is in the charts, are not enough to keep the position, not to mention moving up.
Consequently, we witnessed the work of the “universal law of extinction from the AppStore,” as I called this phenomenon. Sales of any application, attention to which is not heated from outside the AppStore, can be described with the following schedule:
This applies to both paid and free applications. The only difference is the absolute number of downloads, which will be more in the case of a free application.
The rate of extinction depends on the level of competition, as well as on how much your application icon and description are attractive to buyers. And, of course, from your ratings.
The conclusion is that the charts cannot keep sales at a sufficient level these days. Perhaps they could do this a few years ago, but not now.
And you should never think of a place in the charts as a sales indicator. This is an indicator of how well you work. The game is not on the field. Take reviews, tweets, opinions, and of course, let Apple notice you.
Results
The AppStore is a tough place to distribute the application in 2012. I didn’t expect it to be easy, since Pop Corny was my first app published this way.
However, I would just be happy not to fall under the wheels of that mistake on the day the game was released. And at least I would feel much better if I knew that I could effectively solve the problem with Apple.
In the end, I think Pop Corny has progressed very well and will progress even better over time. I learned a lot during this time, almost covered my development costs, and also enjoyed the realization that hundreds of thousands of people were playing my game.
Taking into account the zero budget for marketing 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 achieve success in the AppStore without large investments in the marketing campaign. However, this is really hard to achieve.
Today is to some extent a great day, because today is exactly 60 days since I can officially call myself a published indie game developer!
On February 3, 2012, Mr. Pop Corny (Corn) broke in (and actually crawled, thanks to Apple, but more on that later) to the AppStore online store after 8 months of development and the dream became a reality.
')
And now, it seems to me, the moment has come when I can share the experience of launching my application in the AppStore. I will try to present here the nuances that I would like to take into account from the experience of other projects before launching my own.
Introduction
I’ll start with the technical information on Pop Corny. Pop Corny was conceived as a simple and fun casual game that requires a little time, which is typical for games on mobile devices.
I myself financed, developed, published and launched this game as a paid application for $ 0.99. Later, I made it free and monetized using IAP. But let us leave aside the reasons for this decision.
Below are some more technical details about the game:
Development time: 8 months.
Number of developers: 1
For the manufacture of sound and most of the graphics hired performers
The build was done using the Sylphis3D Game Engine
Supports all versions of iPhone, iPod touch and iPad
Source code (game code + game engine code, excluding third-party libraries):
-
Language files spaces 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 lines of the above LUA code
The total amount of source reached 0.4 GB
The resulting compiled volume is 10MB
The starting price is $ 0.99 (50 days), then the game is free
Total sales for 2 months: ~ 150000
IAP exchange rate: ~ 2.0%
Rating: 4.5 / 5 (out of 600 votes, 70% of which were 5 stars)
Promotion
As I said, the game was funded and published without any outside help. This translates into human language simply - there was no money for marketing.
Therefore, I had to find as cheap ways as possible to show myself from the best side. One of the main assistants in this matter was to be the famous launch day.
Every person who has designed for the AppStore will tell you that the launch day is one of the most important events in effectively promoting your game.
You need to do everything that you can to not miss this moment. And indeed it is. I placed 3 applications in the AppStore before I started this game and I know that the launch day should attract - absolutely free! - the attention of thousands of eyes to your application that on other days will cost thousands of dollars. And all this thanks to the list of fresh applications for the AppStore.
My strategy was to combine the use of this moment with all the “social” advertising that I could organize to climb as high as possible in the application charts.
And then, perhaps, some journalists writing about the games will notice this and write about the game, which will throw firewood into the fire. To this end, I created a video trailer for the game, and a week before its launch, I created an event on Facebook about the “soon launch of the trailer”.
I invited everyone I could and a week later (January 13th) I made a presentation of this video . That day I posted a link to the video in all thematic forums where I could. This caused a slight stir, but mostly in Greece, where most of my friends live.
The day of release was set for February 3rd. I have already received confirmation from Apple and sent promo codes to reporters writing on gaming topics.
To this end, I just started the development of the game, carefully compiled a list of sites that publish reviews of games, and also compiled a list of journalists involved in this. I ordered them (using Alex Rank ) by game type and rating. And when I received confirmation from Apple, I sent all 40 promo codes that I had and also contacted more than 100 journalists without sending it.
In the early stages of development, I made another major decision regarding marketing. It related to OpenFeint support in addition to GameCenter support.
The OpenFeint website has its own list of the best games, as well as a review of the latest games - all this may attract a little more attention to your new and unknown game. I decided that the additional number of interested eyes would not be superfluous to me, therefore I began to support both social gaming networks.
Here is a brief list of what I did before the game was released:
- Created a video trailer "soon on screen"
- Created a game page on Facebook and Twitter
- Organized an event on Facebook for the purpose of playing video
- Sent all 40 promo codes to game journalists (with all media, balls and whistles)
- Posted a lot of posts on the forums in the sections "new products"
- Prepared a promotion to promote the game with the help of his previously written applications.
- Added support for OpenFeint
Now all I had to do was wait for the day of the game and taste the sweetness of success ... or not taste ...
Apple spills milk
When everything was ready and the launch of the game in the AppStores store was automatically scheduled for February 3rd, an unforeseen nightmare started for me on February 2 (since we live on the ball, New Zealand already came tomorrow).
Of course, I looked through the New Zealand AppStore, looking forward to the appearance of Pop Corny and it appeared. ABOUT! Happiness! After so many months of hard work, he was there ... and he had a chance!
I could not be happier and at the same time overexcited, but the seconds of joy quickly ended, as soon as I carefully figured out the situation.
The horror struck my heart when I noticed the January 31 release date next to the game icon. I rushed to check the list of new programs like a maniac in search of a victim, hoping to find Pop Corny, but it was not there anywhere. What happened? Did the application appear 3 days ago, which I did not notice?
However, the game did not appear in any of the other stores. I personally checked all the rest of the AppStore ... It did not work out ...
Still, I was optimistic - these distributed systems are slowly updating and at first such things can happen. However, February 3 was nearing the end in most countries, but the story was repeated. Pop Corny was displayed as an application released 3 days ago.
Three days is an eternity if you start in the AppStore. I disappeared from the first page before getting there. I tried to contact Apple using the help desk, but this is easier said than done.
And then I realized how small and insignificant I am. There was no way to resolve this situation with a system that works by choosing from 15 nested categories of problems before putting you to the input line, in which you can state your troubles.
It did not work out to solve this problem even if I gave all day to attempts to get an answer, and what I received did not correspond to the trouble I described. And you can - at least - not be able to continue to communicate, starting with the answer you received. For several days I tried to rephrase my question again and again, trying to explain it more clearly, but ... I was defeated.
It was almost 7:00 p.m. U.S. when the day when Pop Corny was released in all stores corrected on the 3rd of February. However, it was too late. Some AppStores stores have already arrived on February 5th.
The last straw was the response from Apple to my pleas, which said that they did not see any problem with the date, since it was already installed on February 3rd. What irony!
The problem also confused the OpenFeint release tracking system. OpenFeint, as soon as your application received confirmation, scans the AppStore for the release date of your game. I think for this very reason Pop Corny did not make it to the OpenFeint lists.
A week later, I contacted them about this problem, to which they replied that the system 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 missing the list of new programs in the AppStore, which led to zero sales. It was dangerous. Maybe Apple will give me credit after all by advertising my game for one or two days ... I can wait.
We rise and move on
The above described problem occurred in all AppStores around the world. This led to the sale of ten copies of Pop Corny in the United States.
I know (from the list of payment ratings) shit programs that have been bought more times. And so it was only because no one found out about my freshly released game.
However, in Greece, everything was different. Here is the largest part of my “social network”. People knew about Pop Corny and they waited for her. Several major blogs about the iPhone wrote about it and the game began to sell.
In less than 24 hours, Pop Corny took the first place among paid apps. And not only among the games - among all applications. 5-star reviews began to appear and it was bliss. A couple of days in the top - and the game lit up on local television.
Such a contrast between Greece and the rest of the countries showed me perfectly what advertising is. You have to put your game under the player’s nose. And it is not easy. This is the hardest part for a small developer. No one will look at you while you are small and unknown. Becoming famous is like a dream come true.
On 150 letters by e-mail, which I sent to journalists, reviewers, answered 10 people. 8 of them gently hinted at the need to pay for the review, two wrote that they were very busy.
Having monitored the download of the game's media package, I saw that only two took the time to familiarize themselves with it. I realized that something was wrong. I got the impression that it is possible to break through this direction only with the help of dollars.
Being number one among paid apps in Greece, the game sold at about 200 copies per day (yes, this is a small market). This is about 100 euros per day after Apple took away its share.
It sounds good, but, according to the universal disappearance law of the AppStore (I will tell about it below), this was clearly not enough. At the same time, in all other AppStore stores, the application sold poorly.
I knew that it was not in my power to rectify the situation, so I decided to retreat, stop desperate attempts at leveling it, and took up catching mistakes and implementing some new features in anticipation of the day when the game would become free.
The idea of ​​a free game came to my mind even during development. From the first day the game was conceived as free, but in the end, a few days before the release, I decided to make it paid.
In free I saw my second chance. This could attract more attention to the game. But I knew that the free path was not the easy way. This is a completely different field of activity. Free gives you a lot of sales mainly due to applications such as AppShopper.
These kinds of applications scan the AppStore every day and inform the user about those applications that have become free, which leads to a large number of downloads. However, a “large number” is not enough when competing with free apps. You need a VERY large number.
There are services similar to the OpenFeint “Free Game of the Day” service, which offer you an additional opportunity to catch up on the day when your game becomes free. They focus on one game per day and promote it on their website and iPhone application.
I contacted them, they liked the game and they wrote me on the very first available day, which fell on Thursday, March 22 (yes, Angry Birds Space came out that day, but I wasn't afraid). They are very well organized, the process of transferring information about the game is transparent and efficient. I handed over the relevant banners and texts and I had nothing to do except wait for one day.
That day came and Pop Corny became free. The effect of such a move was overwhelming. Pop Corny began climbing up charts around the world at an incredible speed. It took some time and he entered the top ten in more than 20 AppStore, becoming number 1 in its category in 10 AppStore stores.
When launching, the game checked the .plist file on my server, which contained news for the user. This allowed me to estimate the number of downloads in real time. It reached a monstrous 48-minute downloads per minute.
A few hours of promotion on the site 148apps.com have done their job and the number of downloads has increased again. It lasted all day (which actually lasts 48 hours to go around the globe), and I had the opportunity to correlate the peaks of downloading a news file with references on Twitter, blog posts, etc. Very informative experience.
It would be stupid, hitting so many charts, just to make the game paid again, losing such exposure. In addition, the income from the free version was much higher than from the paid one. Therefore, I decided to leave everything as it is.
I think I did the right thing. On the weekend following the advertising day, the game was downloaded 70'000 times, it received good feedback from users, and revenues from IAP continued to grow. I was completely satisfied.
The universal law of extinction from the AppStore
One of the biggest myths that was dispelled by my experience with Pop Corny was the myth that visibility on the AppStore rules the ball.
It seems that everyone believes that having your application in the top ten is the way to sales. The fact that this position is transformed into attention and sales in the process of exchange of impressions about the program, which will be enough to generate income.
You must do everything to get into the charts in order to make your application sell better. For me, this is now one of the biggest misconceptions regarding the AppStore.
The presence of a huge number of applications in the AppStore, as well as the daily flow of more and more new leads to the fact that the charts work as a capacitor. They smooth the flaws. But most sales today start outside the AppStore, not inside.
People who buy your application, because it is in the charts, are not enough to keep the position, not to mention moving up.
Consequently, we witnessed the work of the “universal law of extinction from the AppStore,” as I called this phenomenon. Sales of any application, attention to which is not heated from outside the AppStore, can be described with the following schedule:
This applies to both paid and free applications. The only difference is the absolute number of downloads, which will be more in the case of a free application.
The rate of extinction depends on the level of competition, as well as on how much your application icon and description are attractive to buyers. And, of course, from your ratings.
The conclusion is that the charts cannot keep sales at a sufficient level these days. Perhaps they could do this a few years ago, but not now.
And you should never think of a place in the charts as a sales indicator. This is an indicator of how well you work. The game is not on the field. Take reviews, tweets, opinions, and of course, let Apple notice you.
Results
The AppStore is a tough place to distribute the application in 2012. I didn’t expect it to be easy, since Pop Corny was my first app published this way.
However, I would just be happy not to fall under the wheels of that mistake on the day the game was released. And at least I would feel much better if I knew that I could effectively solve the problem with Apple.
In the end, I think Pop Corny has progressed very well and will progress even better over time. I learned a lot during this time, almost covered my development costs, and also enjoyed the realization that hundreds of thousands of people were playing my game.
Taking into account the zero budget for marketing 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 achieve success in the AppStore without large investments in the marketing campaign. However, this is really hard to achieve.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/142368/
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