My experience placing games on the App Store

Hi, Habrahabr!

In this topic, I would like to talk about my first experience of posting and promoting the game in the App Store. I can’t call it successful, but at least experience in itself, stuffed cones and conclusions made is already a plus. I have been engaged in the development of Android games for quite a long time, so this will also be a look from the Android developer, who I hope will also be interesting to someone.

The idea of ​​porting part of their games to iOS, as they say, was in the air. But as usual, the lack of time, the need to learn new technologies, and sometimes just laziness - did their dirty work. And so, some time ago, I met a wonderful developer who took over the entire technical part (for which many thanks to him!). Without hesitation, we decided to make the port of my very very Android hit Shooting Club 2 (about 9 million downloads for today). This is a little arcade sniper simulator where the player needs to hit all the targets with limited ammo. At the same time, the game has some kind of real ballistics (of course, exaggerated for the sake of arcade), when the distance, the wind (which must also be determined by examining the level) and the pulse affect the trajectory of the bullet. In general, such a shooting gallery with its features.
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About the process of porting, nothing special to tell. Everything went pretty quickly and smoothly. Initially, the game was made without using any engines on the Canvas. The port for iOS, in turn, is already written on Unity (with a further aim, make a build under Windows Phone).

Moving on to the main part of my topic, everything starts, of course, from the application page in iTunes. The most important thing to prepare for here after Google Play is the inability to make any changes quickly. Whether it is an extension of the functional, or the correction of a critical bug, or even a grammatical error in the description - everything will most likely require at least 2 weeks. Previously, I was sure that pre-moderation, when you are just not allowed in the App Store, while explaining the essence of the errors (and making it possible to correct them), is much better than post-moderation, when the whole account is banned to hell based on incomprehensible criteria, an incomprehensible Google algorithm . Now, “having experienced the hard way,” I honestly say, I doubted which of the evils is less.



I will not talk about obvious things, such as the importance of the icon, but rather focus on the differences from Google Play. Here, the first screenshot is no less important than the icon, since it is displayed directly in the search results (on the iPad). Keywords can be officially indicated in a special field, and not smeared according to the description, constantly being afraid not to overdo it. This field has a limit of 100 characters, keywords are comma-separated without spaces. As I understand it, do not use composite keys (of several words), they are ignored. Localization of descriptions and screenshots increases the number of downloads in a natural way - everything is the same as in the Play Store.

Not without incidents when placing the application. Reject came to the first version due to non-compliance of the age rating indicated by me (12+) and the one that should be considered by the review team (18+). I, unfortunately, did not save the answer text, but in my own words the meaning is as follows: the presence of firearms in the game implies putting a “often encountered realistic violence” checkbox and, as a result, a rating of 18+. It seemed to me a bit unfair, considering that there is no violence here and there is no trace (we shoot only at targets!). But at that time, I decided that such a rule works for everyone in the App Store, so the game was started up with an age rating of 18+. Obviously, an overestimated rating will have a negative effect on downloads, so after studying this question more closely, I turned to support, gave examples of similar games and asked to lower the age rating to a more suitable one. After some time, the answer came that the game really fits the 12+ rating (where have you been before?), But the support cannot change this rating, you need to download a new build. Well, it is necessary, it is necessary, downloaded. As a result, after about 3 weeks of waiting, an even stranger refusal comes:

Reasons
3.6: apps with icons, screenshots, and previews for age 4+ age rating will be rejected
Specifically, it would be necessary to remove or revise attached screenshots.

And all three of my screenshots are attached. It is clear that the images of weapons and ammunition are not suitable for a rating of 4+, but how to make screenshots without weapons in a game about weapons? Unsuccessfully breaking my head over this issue, I wrote an appeal in the spirit of “could you explain what exactly needs to be changed in the screenshots and how can I depict something different on them from what is in the game?” And about a miracle! After that, the game was approved!

From this, I made one important conclusion: for any strange refusals on the part of Apple, you must boldly appeal. Apparently, at the first stage, verification is purely formal, without taking into account the practice and context of the application. And arguments to common sense, here it can work quite well, unlike Google.

Pro promotion. To start, I decided to look for free ways to tell the world about my game. Googling and re-reading a bunch of articles on the promotion in the App Store, I see that almost no one likes to talk specifics, with links, contacts, and so on. In order not to make another “sea of ​​water” out of this topic, below are all the links that I included in my TODO list for free promotion. Of course, much more voluminous bases can be found on the Internet, but here everything is checked by me personally for validity, resources that explicitly claim to publish only paid reviews are filtered, resources with inappropriate subjects are filtered out (applications only, or only children's games, for example).




In addition, of course, do not forget about social media. What I usually do:

- post in personal blog
- Google+ posting and YouTube videos (I have some subscribers, but still)
- tweets in twitter (be sure to use the correct hashtags)
- work with FB (we add to the appropriate groups, write requests for reviews, post news on the “wall”, etc. In general, everything is exactly the same, only within the same site, if Facebook can be called that)
- please vote in the game
- sharing of achievements

What else? If the subject allows, you can try to look for your player on non-game, but relevant resources. For example, returning to the Shooting Club, I posted a few topics on the weapons, sniper (there are such) forums. Not that it would give any noticeable effect, but it seems to me that marketing is such a thing, in which you should not miss any opportunities.



As I said at the very beginning, there is no success at all. In the near future, there are thoughts to buy a couple of reviews and invest some money in advertising, perhaps. In general, recently, I increasingly come to the idea that for us, indie, nothing but the virality of the game does not matter. We can’t afford large advertising companies with more or less guaranteed results. All we can do is try to give the game an initial impetus and hope that further, the game itself will be something to catch the players. And this, in general, is right and good! Well, if Shooting Club 2 succeeds in at least a little bit to repeat its success on iOS, time will tell.