Two million downloads later - or what Voxel Rush taught me

A great article from indie developer Rafal Wilinski, which in a sense returns from heaven to earth and overthrows some of the stereotypes that have emerged among application developers. On the other hand, this article confirms many truths about product management.

Before that, I only talked about technology and programming, but today I would like to dwell on something fundamentally different, talk about what most Indie developers hate.


Marketing.
And other minor things not related to programming.
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After my games have been downloaded millions of times, I think I’m already a little on the subject, so I decided to create a list of myths, thoughts, and my own experience. Some of them can be very controversial, but remember that this is just my point of view. Feel free to argue with me in the comments section.

Let's start with ...

Neither your first nor second, not even your twentieth game will never succeed

Nonsense.

This is what I constantly see on forums like Indie Game Developers. I was 17 years old when I released Voxel Rush, it was my first game, and my desire was to gain 1000 downloads over time. I made a lot of mistakes, but despite this, everything went (was) pretty good. And I will tell you why - I have been tweaking my game over and over and it was re-released three times.

The first attempt was an independent release, the controls in the game were broken, it had a “wooden” interface, and it was too complicated. I have collected over a thousand weekly downloads with an average rating of 2.88 with zero press coverage, and poor description and cataloging. My dream came true, but not exactly as I wanted it. It was a complete disaster. After this “accident”, I deleted all the source code and started working on the same concept. Before releasing the game, I also decided to go to Vivid Games, where I hoped to find a publisher. I had a great conversation with their co-director, but it’s obvious that they had to refuse my offer, because the game was just awful. After that, I had only one thought on my mind: “Well, wait a minute.”

Here’s how it looks today from the point of view of the developer console:

Today's statistics, 33 live copies!

The second attempt - 5 months later , with much more experience and knowledge in the field of programming, along with feedback from players and friends, I had a complete and polished insight into the game. And again, I independently released (released) the game, in which everything was greatly improved, and it became a little easier to play. I just wrote about it in some forums, such as AndroidCentral or XdaDevelopers, and after 2 or 3 days, when I saw that the game was going in the right direction (positive feedback, 5/5 reviews), I decided that it would be great to advertise somewhere else, so I started spamming other forums. Looking back from the height of the experience I have now, what I did, in a sense, can be called a very short “soft-touch”.


Today's statistics, people still play it?

The third attempt - another 5 months later, after I received more than 200 thousand downloads, and was really proud of myself, the 17-year-old Indy the Game Developer, unknown to anyone. Once I kind of vanished as the London publisher of mobile games, Hyperbees. Fortunately, they spoke Polish so that we could communicate freely. The contract was rather complicated and was not written in my native language, so for a month we discussed only my concerns.

After countless talks on Skype and mail, I decided to work with them, and I do not regret it. The publisher really helps you with advertising, promo, website development, press whales, etc.

Remember that even if your game does not become successful, there is a huge variety of additional bonuses, besides money and downloads. I’m talking about industry get-togethers, exclusive advertising deals, campaigns that are perfect for your game, a much wider audience reach, and in my case unforgettable impressions and individual English lessons.

Focus on the first 30 days
It is very important. During the first 30 days, your game can be found in the “New Releases” section. Getting a good position in this chart is much easier simply because there are much fewer games here. If you use this opportunity wisely, you can create a snowball lasting much more than 30 days.

But this is a double-edged sword.
During our third attempt at releasing (releasing) the game, we decided to start from the very beginning, instead of rebinding the application to another developer account, and this was one of our worst decisions. We had so much hope for these 30 days that we deleted an application that collected more than 2,000 downloads daily; we mistakenly thought that these 30 days would give us more resonance (wider audience coverage).


We removed the game, which collected more than 2,000 downloads daily ... an irreparable loss. Returning to these indicators in the new catalog took us more than 6 months.

In addition, if your game does not receive 10,000 downloads during this time period, then it will be much more difficult later, and perhaps it’s just not good enough, and you should find the reasons for this.

Self-release of the game is a disaster, and you hardly get any number of downloads.

Big stuff

My case shows the exact opposite in terms of downloads. Let's compare my second and third release in terms of downloads:

150 days after the second and third launch (release)

This graph shows the “Total number of installations per device” in the first 150 days after launch. As you can see, on some points, I was significantly superior to my publisher, but in the end it seemed like it was worth working with them.

But wait, there is something else! Look at the following, “slightly” exaggerated schedule:

The money I earned by myself against that earned with the publisher

Before I started working with Hyperbees, it looked like a charity. There was no advertising in the game, there were no sales inside the application (in-app) and ZERO third-party SDK. Well, I was very young and stupid. Another bonus available to the publisher is that they also take care of taxes and all other bureaucracies and you can focus on the product.

The press is very useful.

In my case, this was not the case.

Thanks to Tom Mleko and Hyperbees, our game won the Big Indie Pitch on Apps World, and it was very cool; we won VIP tickets to the PocketGamer event in London, people finally heard about VR, and we had the opportunity to talk with some influential people. But guess what was the result in sales / downloads? Zero.
In another case, we were the organizers of the “Platform Wars” event along with Nvidia, which was a huge success, but a few days before there was really long press coverage in the Chicago Tribune, one of the top 10 newspapers in the United States. Have we received additional downloads? Only within the limits of statistical error.

My game was also featured on numerous Polish technology websites and conversion was minimal.

Keep up to date with AppOfTheDay and similar programs.
This is a huge push, but the greater the strength, the greater the responsibility. Thanks to AppTurbo and AppOfTheDay, we managed to get over 100,000 downloads in just one day. Here is the result:


Source: AppAnnie

And peak downloads:

Source: Developer Console

There are pluses, but there are undeniable minuses. Here is how our rating went down:


We went down from 4.83, which at the time was one of the highest ratings on the market, to 4.07. Even after 18 months we could not recover from this and now we are stuck at a 4.25 rating. There are two reasons for this negative effect:
1) You get random traffic that is not interested in your game. People download the game only because it is the “application of the day” and ultimately it will not be interesting. Your game should be very addicting from the first moment if you want them to remain your users.
2) The version with the critical error was in production. More than 60,000 downloads were affected by this error, where during the first game you were immortal and hitting obstacles did not lead to anything. This was the main reason for these 1-star ratings.

Here is a conclusion from this - just test the game again.

It is my fault and that of my publishers that we sent this version to production, but I fully understand why this happened. We are all tired of working in such a hurry at a crucial moment, and here’s a lesson from this: take your time.

Game development also involves getting fun for us, the Triple-I developers ( “Triple-I” ). It is not shameful to delay the release of your game in order to make it better and polish it a little. Even AAA studios do this, look at The Witcher 3, for example. CD Projekt decided to release the title later, but because of this, they managed to make such a beautiful masterpiece that for me it is still one of the best games I've ever played.

In addition, try to do a stress test of your internal server before such events. Our servers really ran into big problems trying to cope with 1000 one-time players; we had to disable some endpoints and we still didn’t get all the data that caused massive “memory leaks” in the database.

Dating on offline events is very important.
As I said before, we won VIP tickets to the PocketGamer Connects event. We had a great time there, ate delicious food, drank delicious wine and met amazing people. One of these guys was from google play. We had a chance to impart our game for him and, despite the fact that during the presentation our brainchild fell (!) And he was not impressed, a few months later thanks to this meeting, our game was finished on Google Play worldwide . Nevertheless, maybe this happened because we prepared a special, more intense version, filled with events, complex obstacles and set it up so that the game was much faster.

Google's Powering Feature
So during the week, VR was featured on Google Play in the “Best Games” and “New and Improved” categories in some countries. Feature is probably the best thing that can happen to your game; you get a boost to a huge amount of downloads and from our experience, unlike programs (App of the Day) App of the Day you really attract players who are more likely to stay in your game and give you their money. In addition, this “peak downloads” will resonate over time, so there is less chance that your servers will DDoS a huge number of players, and you will also have more time to react. It is also worth noting that Google’s features are simply more efficient.


Left: Google Play feature, right: App of the Day

OK, but how can I be overfished? Here's how you can increase your chances of fichering:

• “Just” make a great game, lol
• Integrate Google Play services with your newest features like real-time multiplayer, quests, gifts, etc., and show them very clearly in the game.
• Try to win or simply enlist in several contests, such as Big Indie Pitch or <any other game contest>, and you can be noticed by them.
• Meet at events, in our time communication is as important as money or a great product.
• Do something unique. Our selling point was an event called Platform Wars, where Android players fought against IOS players in a world war.

Stay in touch with the players
This may be obvious, but that's the point. Nowadays, almost every game has its own fan page on Facebook, Twitter, etc. The problem is that if I, as a player, wanted to give you feedback, I would have to stop playing, exit the application, start the Facebook / Twitter application, find the developer / game page, and then post something. Running with obstacles.

The player needs a way to immediately provide feedback. In Voxel Rush, we decided to add the button “Help me!” In the lower right corner of the main menu, which opens an email message in which the basic information is already filled out. Through this button, we received a huge number of letters with valuable feedback, complaints, error indications, etc. etc.

If you don’t like it, try adding social redirecting icons to your page, but please, for God's sake, don’t use facebook.com <profile_page_here> as a URI redirect. This leads to the opening of the default browser, and not the actual application, which is terrible. Make an effort and use facebook: // or twitter: // protocols (and first check if these applications are installed on the user's device).

Try to minimize the number of SDK
From our SDK experience, are the main cause of the game’s downfalls. They also increase the size of the game and managing them sometimes causes too much trouble, especially on Android, where you have to take care of AndroidManifest and duplicate classes / methods. Third-party SDKs are also the main cause of production delays, forced updates, and my own frustration. My advice is to set the minimum number of SDKs as possible. Your game should be in perfect order with Game Center / Play Services, AdMob, UnityAds, and some analytic systems.

Devtodev comment:
This article confirms the statements that we frequently repeat to our clients and are voiced in webinars:
1. You need to focus on the first days of the life of the application. These days you receive the cleanest and fair feedback from users. Plus you are in new releases.
2. Do not rush, it is better to check the application again, and then again. It will only get better.
3. You need to be on a short leg (in touch) with users, they love it, they react to it.
4. Fichering from Google Play - this is what everyone should strive for. This is a fair reward for the developer’s work.
5. The main thing you need to do is a cool product. The truth is so simple, and you should always remember it.

Well, the case about how AppOfTheDay increases downloads, but lowers the rating is very interesting. We will use in the future as an example.