Experience creating the first mobile game. Beginners Marketing

Retrospective-analytical assessment of their first experience with a touch of irony

A post about how to make games and software young teams on personal experience. Experienced - to read and remember: how it all began. Beginners - read what rakes you probably will collect in the near future. Yes, collect. Everybody does it. Read, and then go and stuff cones.



So, you decided to do something interesting, modern and at the same time earn a lot of money? Read more than one success story? You know how many earn a few top developers? You probably think that you have a brilliant idea that the world is just waiting.

How was it with us

I decided that I want a business without limits, freedom, money and pleasure from the process. At the same time, I am not able to produce anything (program, draw, write, ..). I collect a team of enthusiasts and those who can pay very little: a programmer with no experience in salary, a designer-student (without experience absolutely) on piecework, a game designer (without experience and time) for the idea. Such a dream. The smartphone at that time was just me and the programmer.
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Idea. What to do?

The idea was born quickly. What to do and where to go, we did not know, and market research is not a royal business. We needed to produce something rather. We decided that the game - what we need. Money just in the industry - hens do not peck. And the articles about the fabulous incomes of strange kazualok only added fuel to the fire.
The idea did not come immediately, but rather quickly. Like all brilliant. We decided to “digitize” one desktop-intellectual game for the company. TIK-TAK-BOOM - an arbitrary timer in the form of a bomb is turned on and the company at the table calls the words according to the conditions on the cards. Answer for answer, the bomb goes in a circle and at some point explodes. That's the whole game. Success is guaranteed.

Description

To do something, it would be nice to describe it. Team, yourself, the press, designers.
Only not in our case. We already know: we are making a bomb! Everything.

Lecture hall

Who did we make the game for? But whoever downloads - let him play! We did not bother with such trifles as compliance of tasks, design, game design and preferences of a potential audience.

Visual style

Design idea? Design - is it ryushechki and flowers?
We had no style and idea, but the production of “design” itself was not subject to any predictions and wishes. “Something” was done and the best of the worst was chosen after dozens of reincarnations of the same thing.

Budget

The budget is at the large and rich companies. And we just make a game, why should we consider how much development will cost?

Monetization

This item is even more covered in mystery. It’s not clear where the money will come from, but it’s not important. The main game to do, and there everything happens by itself. In addition, why consider how much you earn, if you did not count how much you spend? Everything that earned is all yours. Profit!

Promotion

Many will not believe. You probably already think that I'm writing some kind of fiction? I am writing as it is and our team is not unique in this regard.
Promotion happens like this: you make a game, you write to friends and you post it on the market. Then comes a miracle, fame, world fame, money. Against this background, we were much more concerned about the question of the claim of the copyright holder of the tick-to-boom trademark than how he would learn about us.

Announcement, release

The launch was timed to the Children's Day and wrote about it on the site. Yes, we created a site for the game, groups in social networks. They even created a website "studio". How could we release such a hit from the brand's know-how?
Do I have to say that the people did not appear on these resources?

Promo, press, community

There was an idea to make a video about the game process. Nobody wanted to act.
The press is also not for us, it is for others. Themselves will learn about us and write.
Communication with the players and the community was also not part of our plans. In the end, it began to look like responses to reviews and comments in Google Play.

Analytics

What is analytics, metrics and analysis, we also did not think. As a result, all our knowledge about the success of the product is limited to data from the "store". Accordingly, we do not know what problems players face, how long they play, how often. We do not know anything.
At the very beginning of the way we did not intend to know this.

What happened?

A couple of months of development blindly, about 60 thousand rubles of direct costs and zero rubles of return.

What happened can be evaluated in different ways.

At that moment we were happy - we created our game! Became part of the global system, the developers! This kind of fad great lifted the spirit, and the world was already different. It seemed: now we can all!
Hopes for enrichment, fame and success, melted away very quickly. A couple of weeks was enough to understand - something is wrong.

After 10 months, I conclude that everything was not so bad for the first time. A nice bonus was the New Year holidays, on the eve of which the game suddenly began to download more. Surprisingly, the download volume has not decreased. Today, the idea arose to pay attention to those 5 thousand active players and make a good update for them. In addition, today from 60 to 100 people download the game daily, and in just 10 months already more than 12,000 downloads. It also motivates to improve the product.

findings

Only now, I made conclusions on the account of fellow travelers without experience, people “for the idea” and their own superficial attitude to their product. Today my team is: already an experienced programmer, a good remote designer with excellent taste and portfolio, and I am immersed in the “industry” with my head.

The plan is simple : to consistently and accurately answer all the questions from the list above (“what to do?”, “Description”, “audience”, ..), make a competent task. To release an update that will appeal to our players and give them what they like in this game. Instead add some paid content and advertising.

Ps I believe that the first projects, like the first pancakes can be lumpy. It is inevitable and it is useful. I wish all beginners patience and faith! Over time, everything will turn out.

Ps.2 My personal discovery, an invaluable source of knowledge for those who are going to “make games” is a free book by Sergey Galenkin galyonkin.com/book “Marketing of games”. Recomend for everybody!