Targeted collection and analysis of the rake in the development of games for social networks

This article is actually a continuation of the first , which clearly explains how to screw it up before reaching the publishers. The current one is a little more serious and is designed for the fact that you have a minimal understanding of the development process.

Having taken myself and my friends in an armful, I made another leap of faith - and developed another game for social networks, based on the experience gained earlier. At the moment, the project is frozen for an indefinite period, after which I caught my breath and am glad to tell you what else I had learned. If you are developing or want to develop computer games (in particular - social or mobile) in today's conditions - you are here. And do not lie that you do not want! We all went to learn from programmers for this.


As it turned out, you will have to learn and learn a lot. I really hope that my rake will help someone in the future.

Milestones are vital
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And it's not about self-reporting, but about goal-setting and prioritization. Let's just say, for the last three and a half months I have been living, knowing that three hundred bugs have been found in the game. If I were a programmer with burning eyes, I would rush to correct them, no matter what. And I feel that I have come to the same thing as with my past project described in the article above.

It is impossible to engage in simultaneously the promotion of the game, thinking through future plans, searching for game designers, collecting statistics and writing offers to publishers. At any one time you are doing something alone. Milestone "To issue to the first number first playable" says that the player should not have problems with loading, that the payment should work, that the basic mechanisms will be implemented. In this case, the player will not get a full story, his experience will be fragmented, they will forget about promotion. And this leads us to the next item.

Priorities are more important than ideal

Resources are limited, stop scolding yourself and your work for imperfection. There is a very implicit perfectionism trap associated with the fact that people always do something better than something else. In the previous project, when a question appeared that required a solution, and which I did not understand, I allowed myself to say to myself, “Hey, well, okay, somehow it will be resolved! Let's better fix all the bugs, and better introduce another functional! ”. Time passed, the bugs were fixed, the chips were screwed, the question was not solved. At the same time, I felt some anxiety, but I could not formulate any claim to myself. Indeed, it is done, what else could be the problem?

I hear the objection from the second row: do what you like! I agree, that's fine. But to do what you do not like, you need in two cases:

- When we have not yet understood the question, we simply do not know how to get pleasure from this business.
- When no one else decides this question. If you are an independent game developer, you are in this situation. But there is a life hack! Look for those people who want to do just that. This is also a solution to the issue, and not silence through other work.

Do not write to info@publisher.com

Sooner or later you find a company with which you want to establish mutually beneficial relationships. In my case these were publishers. First, of course, it is useful to know what the company is doing, and under what conditions it is ready to cooperate. Based on this, you formulate your proposal in a letter - and send it by mail, specified in the "contacts". The answer does not come. Call every other day asking them to clarify whether they even received your letter. No, did not receive.

And here it turns out that writing to faceless open mails is pointless. A letter with statistics, a business plan, market analysis and everything is lost forever in spam.

What to do? Send the same offers to specific people, and, importantly, warn them about it. By people I mean those with whom you will continue to communicate - with the head of the department for working with partners, with producers, with directors.
The easiest way to do this is to write to people on Facebook. Social network is a working tool, and do not neglect it. True, you can just ignore, but to prevent this from happening - I highlighted the following paragraph.

Communication is cool. Ask for help / advice too

Usually, when people talk about connections, the following images come to mind:
- Aunt Zina, a dentist from the USSR, who has worked all her life in the district clinic, is not very professional, but has treated someone a couple of times, therefore she has CONNECTIONS
- Some semi-criminal images, imposed by the media and TV shows from the nineties, when someone is roofing someone
- A typical case of cronyism, when someone gets a job / to the institute through relatives and friends

Therefore, I understand people to whom connections seem to be something amoral and dirty. But in this article we are talking about other connections - contacts that a person has acquired during his life, both business and personal.

Elementary, at work, you communicate with people with whom you share a passion for a common cause. And of course, you never guess with what person fate can bring you during off-hours - keeping your eyes and ears open is very useful.

Inspired by my failure, I wrote my first article on Habré and promised to adhere to the rules that I formulated in it. Not to keep the project a secret, to communicate with friendly former colleagues is really very useful and productive. They can give the contacts of the right people to whom you can always write “Hello, Igor advised you to me ...”

Coworking help

Dismissal of a hired job usually has a very specific plus for itself: “It's all mine now!”. As time goes on, work is being done from home, and then the next problem comes up - you literally live at work. And I would like to go home after a twelve-hour working day, but I have nowhere to go.
It is quite a natural way out in this case, places where you can work without bothering yourself with the organization of the office: cafe and coworking. Ordinary cafes were rejected as absolutely unproductive: the feeling that you are here on bird's rights with a laptop and you can’t get headlong into work - destroys any undertakings. Constantly chewing something to justify being in a cafe is a direct path to obesity.

I tried several time-cafes, the atmosphere is perfect for any creative acts, but not for the planned implementation of the planned (which is more in game development).

But coworking - exactly what you need. People work there alone or in small groups - and literally feel that they are paying for the opportunity to work there. This additionally motivates not to be distracted by trifles, concentrate on the fulfillment of the weekly plan and stop procrastination before it appears. For myself, I chose the daily pay - it allows you to more flexible plan your time.

By the way, it was the coworking atmosphere that led to the following error. Fortunately, it was quite easy to recognize it.

Developing a game is not a startup!
What is usually meant by a startup? Some innovative solution to the problem, which over time will bring money.

So:

Games do not solve problems. Games are not innovative. Games do not scale. If yours is decisive, innovative and scalable, then this is something else and you can skip the paragraph.

This question was worth examining at least in order to understand why venture investors - the second facet of startups - are not interested in investing in games. They want to buy out a stake in a beginning, but promising business, make it profitable or even more promising - and resell their stake to investors in the next round. Your cool game will not have billions in profits this year or ten years from now. So if someone invests in you, resale will not be necessary, it is better to receive dividends. However, the question here is rather in terms of potential profit: serious markets simply are not interested in small markets, and there is more trouble.
So if you need money to develop the game - earn it yourself, borrow from FFF or take a loan. Hoping for investors is not worth it. Where it is more realistic to rely on the publishers - they are needed to publish games, don't they? Well, there are nuances ...

Publishers give you traffic. Do not wait for more - nerves will be more whole

They do not quite what is entitled. Well, or you have not exactly those expectations. In relation to mobile phones and social programs.
No matter from what year the idea stuck in my head, they say, this is how the work is done: the developers are going to make a prototype. Go to serious people in gray jackets with lapels. They say "We need n time, and then we will m m profit!". They beat their hands, solemnly returned to the office on unicorns.

For one reason or another, this scheme does not work for several years. That is, in general - no one will give you money for development. Even for a month of polishing and bringing to mind. Is there a product that can be poured onto Facebook, which today will blow up the tops due to the inhuman combination of virality and retension? Here you have traffic. No - not our problems.

Write it down for yourself - no one will invest in development. If you are currently developing in the hope of this - make a U-turn before it is too late.

Rest is important

Some entrepreneurs do not fully understand that they should force themselves and their colleagues to rest. And at all levels: take five-minute breaks every hour, do not work around the clock, two days a week and at least a couple of weeks a year.
Yes, it is hard to understand by intuition, but experience speaks for itself. There is no more productive week than after a vacation, and no more stupid working hours than the fourteenth in a row.

Your mood, your energy - this is the most important thing in your life! In the end, depending on the current state, you either force yourself to go to seemingly favorite work, or enthusiastically deal with any tasks, or get annoyed with your beloved people, or ironically let the problems through you. You yourself - this is important. Your well-being is important. Your mood is important. If you feel that you are slipping or working through power, ask how long you have been on vacation and how many hours you have been working. The same applies to your colleagues: let them work at their own pace, but you can always remind a person that he has been in the office for fourteen hours - and there will be more sense from him tomorrow morning.

The main reason for procrastination

If you just sparkle with energy, and she goes nowhere, here is a moment of introversion. Let's just say, I do not believe in such a struggle: “Hey, I, well, close Vkontakte, do not engage in procrastination!” Your brain needs reasons to do something or not to do it. He will say "OK, I will close VK." And prompts you to open Facebook.

At such times it is very important to understand that you can ask something from your brain to do something. Usually, after the next mailstone last weekend, I sat down at the computer and, in a stern voice, demanded that I stop being distracted, to work at the end. He motivated, scolded, treated with sweets and music, until he received a reasonable question: “And what should I do? It is clear that you have a priority project, but what do you need to do in it? ” Chew your goals. Use the brain to understand what you demand from yourself. You will have to do the most energy-intensive activities that our smart organisms try to avoid - to think.

The main reason for procrastination is a fuzzy, immeasurable or unreachable goal. While there is no crystal clear goal with clear criteria and an understandable way to achieve it, you should work it out in more detail. Actually the first item of any plan is the identification and concretization of the meaning and amount of work. If you're stuck right now, make a note of yourself. This preparatory work will help you to conquer procrastination simultaneously and, believe me, will save a lot of time in the future.

In the gaming industry, development is not everything.
Returning to where the article began: there is much to learn if you are interested in doing and releasing your games. To assess the scale of ignorance, here is a good article describing what you need to know: Many clever letters from an intelligent person .

Do not pay attention, that there is about Growth Hacking, it seems to me a temporary phenomenon. It is better to note that the purely technical skills to which inexperienced developers like to reduce game development are practically not mentioned in the article. And at once, some sadness wakes up when you hear someone's plans, “We made a prototype with balls on a unit, left textures to be pulled, a menu to be made and put on the Apple Store.”

Resulting paragraph

From the side it may seem that everything is very bad. I will not judge, because I am inside the system. For me, more important is the direction of movement, changes in relation to previous experience. And they are very, very positive. This time the project is not closed, but only frozen - we agreed with the team to return to it as soon as possible. So the next article will already combine the description of the rake collection and the success story. We will work on it!