Dream job or a small history of mobile development

Chapter 1. In search of treasure

Sometimes the process of developing a mobile game can be compared with a treasure hunt. You work hard, day after day, month after month, make plans and your expectations are based on them. Dreaming. Of course. You dream a lot that one day the very day will come when your search will end and all your dreams will come true. It can be money, fame or respect from millions. But dreams for romantics, but in real life everything goes on. Search. Development.

But, what will happen if you make a game about finding those very treasures? We do not have an answer for this yet, but at least we tried. We found something. A treasure or not, a question for you, dear reader.


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If you are reading this article, it means that we survived after the development of the third mobile game in a row and released it. During development, I opened the cherished icon of the habr many times in order to see another story from developers who share their experience and impressions. Unfortunately, many developers miss a lot of subtleties and nuances, especially when it comes to the budget and promotion of their game, but in vain.

Game history or puzzles again

Historically, we developed complex projects. No, do not think that it is complex in terms of technical tasks, technologies and the overall development process. From this point of view, our games are not supernatural. The problem is different - they have too intricate mechanics. After creating the second game (rethinking the mathematical Game of Gale), we realized that puzzles are very difficult to develop a genre, especially if you are indie. It turns out either too complex gameplay, from which the player begins to shake in an epileptic seizure, or - boring and monotonous. Our last game is exactly the second option.

Idea. Our main game designer, Arthur, once came to work with a very interesting idea. Says: “imagine the classic“ rolling cubes ”mechanics, where you need to move the cube from the starting platform to the finishing one. But the trick is that at the cube one face is occupied by some object, for example, a precious stone, respectively, it cannot become on it and it remains to maneuver on the five remaining faces to move. In addition, various objects can appear on the playing field, which will interfere with or help the cube to get to the desired finish. You can move the cube with the swipe towards the desired cell.

Arthur is well done. He was so involved with his idea that he immediately ran into 3ds Max to make a prototype. Naturally, the team was skeptical, because we, like you, also wondered: did the puzzles again?



But, fortunately, our surprise knew no bounds when we looked at the early prototypes. The picture looked juicy, fresh and attractive, and the story of Arthur really convinced.

The game shone with the original mechanics, but this time, it was not so intricate. At least, we imagined it that way, we believed in it and set appropriate goals for ourselves.

So the idea of ​​an elegant puzzle was born. And after a while, treasures appeared. The Treasures of Empires.

Goals

Concept Our game is not a breakthrough in the industry. Yes, the mechanics of moving the cube are relatively original, but it does not claim to be a revolution, and we understood that perfectly. Therefore, we decided to inject several chips into the game in order to make a combination of gaming advantages.

First, we wanted to create an atmosphere of ancient treasure hunting in the game. For this, the style of the ancient civilizations was to be realized in the game, and the setting of the Aztec Empire was taken as a basis. From the very beginning, we designed the game so that later on we could make the following episodes about other civilizations.

Secondly, the Aztecs are a very rich in history civilization, so we decided to make an informative and historical story that in an unobtrusive way describes the history of the birth and death of one of the most powerful civilizations of the American continent. Any game, besides fun, should benefit in one form or another, right? Well, at least we think so. Historians, of course, our story does not surprise, but if an ordinary user finds out something new for himself, I think our story will justify itself.


(Venice of the New World, Aztec Capital, Tenochtitlan)

Thirdly, physics. We tried to do all our mechanics on realistic physics, so that the player could go through clever puzzles more clearly and make it easier to comprehend what can be done and what cannot. Clear control in puzzles is a decisive factor.

In the end, what we get at the concept stage? In six words - this is an adventure puzzle about the treasures of ancient civilizations. The test name is “Treasures of the World’s Nations”, but in reality simply “cubes”. With a clear understanding of what we can do within our budget, before we started designing, we noted the following points for ourselves.

Play

• The game should not be too difficult, because this is the main problem of indie puzzles (it is better to over-salt than over-salt);
• The game must constantly bring the player something new: levels, modes, obstacles, etc. (this will add passion to the game);
• The game should be accessible to users of any age, especially if these users almost do not play.

Marketing

• Exit to the top 20 RU App Store (why so? More details in the "marketing strategy" section);
• Get Apple features at Best New Games, at least in the CIS region;
• 100,000 active users by the end of the second month after release.

Are common

• Beat off project costs and make a profit;
• Make a high-quality polished game that will bring us a good reputation;
• Make a game with universal rules so that later you can make a sequel in different styles (Egypt, Roman Empire, Ancient Greece, etc.).

Have you come up with a brilliant idea and hurry to implement it? Think again. And then another and another. After all, now you want to implement in your game both cool mechanics, and realistic 3D models, and make unsurpassed animations, and even Jessica Alba on the key art to attach. You are so involved with the idea, or rather, with a multitude of ideas, that you, of course, do not have time to sit at your computer and document all the important points. It happened in our case. Well, almost like that. We did not manage to recruit Jessica Alba, but it also worked out well with Anechka.



Our main mistake at this stage is haste with the realization of the idea. Instead of composing the first dizdok, we only briefly described the core mechanics, history, and interface elements. Immediately after that, we sat down to write the code, and our designer began to draw and model. As a result, much later, after a few months, we quickly began to add functionality, features and implement new ideas. Unfortunately, our foundation was not ready for this, and the whole house began to crumble like a paper one. In the code, bugs came out, and the game map and UI / UX were not at all suitable for the new, yeast-growing functionality.

Chapter 2. Weekday Development

So, the project was done on Unity 4.6 by the efforts of 6 people, including the sound engineer, server side, and one marketer throughout the year. Honestly, the Pareto rule played a cruel joke on us, because our initial development plan was designed for two months. Imagine how bad our understanding of the work ahead was.

Fortunately, for our motivation, we were not alone.

Design

In order to help programmers and designers make a good product, you first need to provide them with a clear prototype. Since the mechanics work for us only in 3d, and even limited to the playing field, we decided to get down to business seriously and made a real "live" layout of the game, for nothing, from cardboard.



The designer drew blueprints, then a printout and some “skillful pens” lessons. We made figures of all the main game objects: a field from 3x3 to 7x7, a cube, a finish cell, all obstacles and even the main symbolic totem.

Well, then we had fun, creating a lot of tricky levels, and then we watched how our colleagues tried to master them. There was plenty of variety too, because the size of the playing field changed the complexity, and the combination of various dynamic and static obstacles made each new level unique.

I was very pleased with the fact that the mechanics work and bring pleasure from the game at such an early stage, because you cannot be completely sure how the audience will perceive your game.



Sandbox. At this stage of development we have an interesting idea. At first, we just wanted to make an adventure game with progress and storyline. But what will happen if we allow future players to be in a situation like we are playing now, in the desktop version? That is, create your own levels and share them, using the full game functionality, as if they were the developers themselves.

The team perked up, the controversy began. The idea was quite laborious, but it drastically increased the functionality and, ultimately, the gaming experience. Its laboriousness consisted in the fact that it was necessary, in addition to the level editor itself, to make a global base in which these levels themselves would be stored. Consequently, you need to write your server or use third-party solutions.

Resolved! We write our server, and do the level editor advanced, so that later we can create campaign levels ourselves on a mobile device, and not in code. This decision gave a specific direction to the development.

Design

From the point of view of design, the entire game world should look like the ruins of the ancient Aztec constructions, with its unique architecture, bas-reliefs and materials inherent in the scene.

Not a lot of materials. These are mainly stones and wood. It so happened that in the variety of colors we were deprived, which at the beginning of the development made our game slightly dull. Some of these problems were solved by the introduction of various effects, such as burning torches, magic or day and night on the playing field. A few more bright colors and the game acquired a more pronounced shape, inspiring us to make even greater efforts to develop.



Modeling. We approached the creation of three-dimensional models by a simple principle: the minimum number of vertices and polygons, the production of scans inside the 3D editor without using additional conversions, the merging of textures into the least amount of atlases. This allowed us, even before optimization, to achieve good performance, both performance and autonomy.

Interface. Yes, in our case it was, perhaps, the most labor-intensive process. The task was not only to make a beautiful presentation, but also to link all the elements into a single and, most importantly, understandable for the player system. The design with all its submenus, buttons, shop and registration windows, had to be created by the whole team, reworking it more than once.

Endless searches for optimal sizes for windows and buttons sometimes led to delays in the office. Often until the morning.

Universal version. We drew all the windows of the game for screens with a 16x9 ratio, but at the same time so that they looked adequately on other devices, for example, tablets. This was done in order to fill in the AppStore one version of the game, both for the iPhone and for the iPad. What ultimately simplified the process of moving the game.

Font. The font brought us a serious headache, because it must contain not only Cyrillic and Latin letters, but also symbols associated with the peculiarity of writing such languages ​​as German or Spanish. For example, Ö (o-umlaut) or ß (escet).



Therefore, using the FontCreator program, all the necessary letters were created and added. The work is not difficult, but it requires a lot of time and attention. Choose your font wisely. Think ahead what languages ​​you want to see in the final version of the game.

Server

During the design, we came up with a functional that was supposed to be implemented on the server:

• Global base levels. Any player can create his own level and fill it into the base, from where all willing users can play.
• Smart URL. Perhaps the most interesting feature. A player, having created his level, can send it to his friends through social networks, for example. Just click on this link from your mobile device and the level will start from the game.
• A service that will allow transferring hard currency accumulated or purchased in this game to our next projects.

Redis. We decided to use Redis No-SQL repository. Put Redis on separate instans and each server sent there and received data from there. Redis is powerful and fast, but not without drawbacks. A lot of limitations with data processing.

By the way, Redis allows you to create a listening channel. When all the data comes to one server, we record it in Redis and drop it onto the channel. They wrote code that reads these channels and gets information from them.

Now, the expansion was not worth fear, because all of our servers will work as one.

Plot

The player is an experienced treasure hunter who arrived in Mexico to search for the legendary treasures of Montezuma. On some levels, ancient scrolls are placed, which ultimately must be the key to the puzzle of the whereabouts of the lost Aztec gold.

To compile the plot, we spent quite a lot of time on the thematic forums, reviewed more than a dozen films.

In a text document, our story covers 9,000 characters, localized in 8 languages. It is difficult to say now how effective this approach is. After all, it may be that this story will skipat 99% of players, respectively, you ask, why such costs?

The answer is: trying to grab a great news story. We thought for a long time why it would be interesting to write about our game to the press, and most importantly, how to make this very press evaluate our game.



In our game, we have identified several news events: “The Adventure game about the Aztec treasures”, “Global puzzle constructor”, “Adventure game in the Treasure of Empire”. Every journalist is special, therefore, the more games have a variety of news topics, the more chances there will be for publication.

Chapter 3. The economy should be economical

So, the development ends, the game starts to look every day more beautiful, and the developers begin to think about progress. In order to understand how to promote the game, you need to build on your marketing objectives.

Monetization. I will not advise you to make a free or paid game. There are many paid mobile games that sell very well and bring worldwide fame to developers. It is worth noting that Apple loves quality paid indie games, respectively, you have more chances to get featured.



We decided that we would be able to earn more on the in-game purchases plus advertising. We didn’t want to sell progress and functionality, which means we had to look for other ways to monetize players.

Attempt # 1 - energy. We opened all the functionality of the game, but limited the game session. For each attempt to pass the level of the player energy is removed. Energy is renewed with time and for viewing video ads. With the expansion of its stock is also no problem.



Attempt number 2 - tips. Developed several tips for different players and situations. I did not want the player to give up the game on the first more or less difficult level. Tips can be won in a variety of situations. We thought that even the toughest “pay-to-win” hint has a right to exist.

Attempt number 3 - advertising. For all its existence, we tested a lot of different ad networks. Withdrawing money from Chartboost and UnityAds, both are good. In this project, they decided to focus on “rewarded video”. Connect UnityAds + Vungle + Chartboost. By the way, UnityAds withdraws money through SWIFT much faster than it promises. It's nice.

On these three pillars keeps our monetization. Compulsory advertising is shown very rarely (Chartboost + Admob) and, besides, it is allowed to scroll.

Balance. In order to make a balance between a paying and not paying player, we have developed a game roulette. There you can win everything that is sold in the store, spending a soft currency for scrolling. Very often, scrolling takes place over video ads. This allowed us to give the non-paying player what he wants, but does not have a chance to buy.



The result is LTV. Podbivaya results of any monetization should be said about the LTV-indicator. In short, this is an average check per customer. So you, very, very roughly, can count how much the game will earn you. Let's count on our example. On average, a paying player can spend about $ 3.99 in our game. So much cost 2 mega-packs that turn off advertising, include unlimited energy and in addition give a few tips.

Mediocre hospital. Sometimes the paying player will spend more, sometimes less.

Now, you can safely multiply this indicator by the number of paying players. Planning 100,000 installations? Take from them 1% and find out how many paying users you will have. (This percentage is influenced by many different factors, but if you count it very roughly - take 1%).

Total - out of 100,000 installations, you get 4000 $ profit, without deducting taxes. Net profit - $ 2800. Not thick, right? Here, as they say, what you sow, you will reap. Do not make illusions that you will have a percentage of players paying more than 1%. Most likely just the opposite.

There may be several solutions. Work on progress extensively or intensively. Extensively - make as many high-quality installations as possible, until the budget for marketing ends. Intensively - increase LTV, by improving monetization, upgrades and new content. After all, in fact, you can double the profit through new 100,000 installations, or through new content for existing paying players.

Both options work only if you yourself truly believe in your product.

Marketing strategy

After the development of monetization and balance, you can safely move on to a marketing plan.

The main marketing strategy is to output the application to the cherished top to get the mass of organic plants. Now developers are striving for this, because, in fact, they are not sure of their monetization.



The main thing is not to forget that you can fly out of the stamp very quickly and not get any result. Here it is necessary to highlight several factors.

First, the installation. Analyzing the latest information, we can say that to get into the Top-10 RU overall, you need about 16-17 tis. installations per day. It all depends on the competitors, so you shouldn’t plan release on the day when Asphalt 9 is released. We’re afraid of the Clash Royale from Supercell in March.

Secondly, reviews. The quality of the game affects the player's feedback, and the feedback affects the ranking in the top. Think about it. We used a non-clever screening system for bad reviews. If a player likes the game and he clicks on the “good rating,” then he is redirected to the AppStore. If the opposite - to the post. Do not forget, one unit will block eight fives, so that connect friends.

Thirdly, the first day is decisive. It is difficult to get from the first shot in the top ten. But this is not necessary. We spent software launch in Spain to check the monetization, balance, bugs. $ 250-300 is enough to buy, for example in Chartboost, 500 installations. Plus another $ 100 to negotiate with several videoblogers. The result - you have over a thousand installations of the highest quality in order to get feedback, make an update that will correct errors. We have been in the software since October, and so, but this is already beyond the scope of this article.

Fourth, Apple features. Platform Holder is the best friend of the developer. If you have a game of excellent quality, invent a good story about its development and write to Apple. No dreams.

The good news is that getting to the top is not as difficult as it seems. The bad is hard to resist.



Target region for us is Russia. Platform - Apple. To pay back the project you need about 1,000,000 installations. The strategy includes several options. If we get a feature, then we abandon Android and Windows, launch the game exclusively on iOS. If we don’t get it, we launch the worldwide project on three platforms: iOS, Android, WP8.

Promotional tools

To achieve such a number of installations, you need to use all possible tools for promotion, both paid and free, the most effective and not very. We work without a publisher, so all the responsibility and work in this direction on our own shoulders.



Budget. Without a budget for advertising that meets your goals can not do. Our first advertising budget was $ 1,500. For you to understand, a review from appleinsider costs $ 450. One review from a major site (there are several such in the runet), can bring from 500 to 2-3 thousand installations. We will talk further about the reviews, but we have expanded the budget to the maximum amount acceptable for us - $ 5000. Million installations for $ 5000 you ask? Exactly!

There are a lot of means of mobile game promotion. This topic is beyond the scope of this article, so I will briefly talk about what we used:

- ASO. Optimization of title, keywords, screenshots. All that can increase the conversion to the installation, as well as increase the organic installation of the search queries. It took a lot of time. For a long time could not be determined with the name of the game. As a result, it turned out like this: “Treasures of Empires”, “Treasure of Empire”. Screenshots in the market did 2 months with 4 iterations.

SensorTower helped with keywords . The service allows you to track the keywords of your closest competitors. Plus, it helps translate keywords into all the right languages.

You need to localize everything. We turned to friends about this, and not to the agency. The quality was the same, the terms were delayed, but it turned out to save. As a result, the game was translated into 8 languages: EN, RU, UA, ES, GE, PT, TR, ITA. For example, the translation into German, cost us 2400rub.

- Reviews. Well, it's probably no secret that reviews work best. There are about 10 top mobile referral sites in Russia that browse games and applications. If you want to count on a serious boom in the top, you need to get at least 5 publications.



Some of these sites publish stories from developers. The effect is approximately as after a review, but for free.We divided all sites into 3 ranks by priority. Need to write to all. Especially if you have no money for a classic review. In addition, do not miss the opportunity to negotiate with less eminent sites.

- Videobloggers. We began to negotiate with video bloggers even before we downloaded the game in the AppStore. Many did not want to disclose the price issue until they looked at the game. Pay attention to the activity of the channels. Likes and views can be screwed up, and comments are unlikely. We focused specifically on iOS reviewers, and this is a rather limited tool.

And one more thing - beat down the price. Many video bloggers consider the “production value” of their video and ask them for $ 200-300 in space. Quality interests us much less than the installation in the end, so argue the result and shoot down the price. Sometimes, the price for the installation of some bloggers reaches a ridiculous 2.5 rubles.

- Groups in VK. It's simple.Look for the first public on Apple topics, then the rest. Games for the most part, the product is massive, so many publics do not exist. It is easy to negotiate with administrators, but for the money. No one will do anything here for free, but because of the coverage, the price in most of the publics is adequate. We agreed directly, without an exchange.

As with textual reviews, there are about 10 top communities of our subject. To say that we need them as air is to say nothing. It should be noted that the final effectiveness (CPI) is better in public with up to 500 thousand participants.

- Targeted advertising.VK mobile ads works, and works, by the way, well. The price for the installation sometimes reached 10 rubles, which is good news. Conversion from viewing to click - about 1.8%. After the tests, we identified 2 main targeting groups: men 16-21 years old; men 27-32 years old. The second - more expensive, but more solvent.

Well, women, as they say, do not understand the mind. Conversion per view / click - a measly 0.6%. Wait, wait, the price for the installation - 250 rubles. These are the expensive women sitting Vkontakte.

There are many free resources to help you get the necessary settings. For example, pikabu and trashbox, will be able to bring you up to 300 installations on the first day. Not much, but free. Do not disdain forums and own promotion channels. Get Twitter, blog and website without fail. The group in the VC also does not hurt. Make a press release and create a press kit. Write more than 10-15 unique reviews of your game, journalists are very busy.

For a million installations, besides a good budget, two things are not enough. Quality games and a little luck. Unfortunately, marketing does not help with this.

Chapter 4 - Never Give Up

What can summarize all of the above? The game was worthy, original and colorful. Unfortunately, we could not realize everything exactly as we wanted and imagined. Sometimes we lacked knowledge, sometimes we had patience. One fine moment, after 8 months of development, we realized that in order to implement all the things we had planned, we still need to at least double the development timeframe. This we could not afford.

This game is like a young girl, with her own character and sense of humor. Not everyone can understand it. But those who tried, gave her their patience and time (and maybe even money), will not be able to come off.

For us, this is no longer a working draft, or even a game. You can not do a year project, spending day and night at work. In this case, something unusual is born, and colleagues become best friends. For us, this is a dream. We sincerely hope that you will be able to feel the love that we gave on the way to this dream. Dream called, The Treasure of the Empire.

Finish this story until it works. I still want to say a lot, but it's not so easy to fit into the article format. We will be very happy if this story is useful to you. If the community supports her, I pledge to write the second part about how we maneuvered on the way to the top. I will reveal more technical aspects, and most importantly, I will answer the question: “have we earned our first million, million installations?”.