Development of profitable Android games by two students
In this article I want to tell you about the experience of developing one simple game for Android, which has paid off many times during the development stage!
We started developing the game in the 10th grade. Prior to this, we had no experience in the development and promotion of mobile games. There were only basic knowledge of Java and little experience in creating websites. And that's it!
')
It was December 2015 in the yard. The idea to create the game came absolutely suddenly: when we dined in the school canteen during the break, we freely swallowed the sausages we had just bought in the dough and, as usual, talked enthusiastically about the meaning of life, machine learning, and the rapid pace of development of AI. Gradually, our conversation touched on the development of mobile games. We talked about the complexity of creating popular games, their commercial advantage, and so on. And here we were visited by the bold idea of ​​creating your own game for Android. Having quickly finished your lunch, we began to discuss this with great enthusiasm.
We started to play all the top games at that time in our head: such as Flappy Bird, Crossy Road, etc., because we wanted to create something similar that would make people stick to our game.
Also, we both understood that there is a high probability of not completing the project and simply abandon its development somewhere in the middle, as it happens in most cases with novice developers. Therefore, it was decided to create something as simple and simple as possible, so that the development was the fastest.
After some deliberation, it was decided to choose the clicker game genre. He bribed us with seeming simplicity of development, although we understood that even at the time of the creation of the game this genre was already obsolete, and no commercial success could be expected.
After choosing a genre, the problem of choosing a subject arose. I don’t remember why already, but we decided to choose the “rocking” theme. Perhaps at the moment it looks funny, but at the time it seemed to us quite an original decision.
In general, our thoughts were already unstoppable, and we, being completely distracted by the conversation, were late for the lesson’s floor. And in the evening the project was created and the first line of code was written.
We didn’t bother with the name and came up with it on the same day. My sore mind betrayed such a strange phrase: “Pump up Pouch.” The fact that it is simply illiterate and contradicts all the norms of the Russian language, we learned only in the second year of game development, but this name became so boring for us, and it became so familiar that we didn’t want to redo it. So left as they are.
We understood what an ordinary clicker should do in 2015, even if it is not an unusual topic. And we decided that if we develop a game in this genre, then we need to bring at least a few new and original gaming solutions to it.
1) We decided to introduce such a game mode as a joint game with a friend. The screen is divided into 2 parts and the player can fight with his friend in the speed of "pressing the dumbbell." It seemed to us a very good idea, since we had never met such a thing before. Also, this idea is good with the word of mouth effect, since the player can drag his friend into the game, and he will also download our application for himself.
2) The second feature was the decision to introduce a model of pitching, whose muscles will increase as you progress. The interest of the player is to find out what will become of him at the end of the game, who will he turn into? This feature was designed to keep the player in the game and keep the application installed as long as possible on the phone.
After the formation of the concept, the problem of the design of the game arose - it simply did not exist.
Without thinking twice, we decided to introduce familiar artists to our work, but, unfortunately, as we later realized, this was a disastrous idea. Due to their young age, our friends were not very experienced in the development of games and design, as they were our peers, whose skills left much to be desired.
After many unsuccessful variants of the game design, we decided to hire a professional freelance artist. We chose a suitable designer for a long time, carefully looked through a huge number of profiles, read the reviews and so on.
Finally, with a collegial decision, we chose the artist we liked with an impressive portfolio and vast experience. Without thinking twice, we decided to write to him.
It was a very exciting moment. We thought that this was our only chance to get a cool design, and we cannot miss it. I turned our dialogue around in my head, thought over our communication five messages ahead. Finally, gathering strength, I sent him the first message. The answer was not long in coming. The artist responded in just half an hour.
In total, he wanted to work not a lot $ 5000-8000 ...
That day we faced the realities of this world. We had no such money at all. The maximum that we could provide was about 30 thousand rubles. This is all the money that we have earned by hard work from breakfast.
We immediately dropped hands. We began to argue that the idea of ​​creating the game was stupid, began to argue over who suggested it at all. About a week we went in a depressed mood and almost did not talk about the game.
But in the end, we decided to try again. After the second long search, we found an artist who painted much simpler, in a cartoon style, but her prices did not bite.
We decided that we must take! In total, we paid about 20 thousand rubles for the whole design.
It was a heavy material loss, but we coped with it.
The development of the entire design took about 2-3 weeks. As a result, we don’t like it very much, but it was not bad.
So, the design was ready! It is time to develop!
A lot can be said about development. I will highlight only some key points. Also sign for the surprises with which we met, and that we were truly struck.
Total development took about two years. The game is written in native Android and consists of approximately 20 thousand lines of code, not including libraries.
At the very beginning there was nothing but this dumbbell on the Activity. At the beginning of development, the understanding of the graphical interface was the most difficult, all of these layouts, widgets and their ilk ... Further, as we developed the game, we learned about asynchrony in android, advanced widgets, watched a huge number of different libraries and tried to figure out what it is written, and how it works. After one year of communication with android, we already had an idea about the basics of development. The old code gradually corresponded, since after growing up skills it already seemed too crutchy and ill-conceived.
During the development of the game, we realized that we were in a hurry, having ordered the entire design at once - we had to redraw a lot of things ourselves, adjust them for interfaces, it took too much time.
In addition, as the game was developed, the application gained weight very much, and we didn’t want the user to download about 50mb for such a game, taking into account that there would be half of the unused resources, and we started to understand how to divide resources by device dpi , to reduce the size of the final application.
Now we are shipping 5 versions of the application to Google Play (4 versions with resource sharing and 1 version without sharing), which saves some users about 18 megabytes of weight.
In general, the project that we planned to complete in 3-4 months stretched out for such a long time.
After at least some functionality appeared in the game, we began to think about ways to monetize. We tried many different advertisers, including StartApp, ChartBoost, and so on. But we decided to leave the choice on Appodeal, which seemed to us the most adequate network, despite the large size of the SDK and the need to use multidex.
I also liked the work of support, the answers were always prompt and clear.
There are quite a lot of advertisements in the game: from simple small banners on different Activities to their full-screen views. Also, the game has video ads that the user can view if he wants to speed up the walkthrough.
Immediately after the introduction of the advertising network, the income from the game frankly saddened. It was no more than $ 0.1 a day, since there were very few views, due to the small number of players.
Over time, the schedule is very slowly but surely growing up. For half a year, the game began to bring about $ 1 per day.
Everything changed after we realized that the game has a terrible icon and a silly description. We decided to change them.
And then the income from the game went up sharply exponentially! Already in the first week, the income from the game exceeded $ 5 a day, and at the moment the total income from embedded advertising and purchases is a little over $ 100 a day.
The number of user installations per day also jumped sharply up:
With the proviso that this was the simplest clicker, and the development was carried out very hard, we realized our main mistake: we completely misjudged our strength. I planned to finish the development in 3-4 months, well, in a maximum of 6, but it turned out that even after 2 years the game does not have all the features that we planned to introduce into it.
For myself, I realized that if you are planning to make a project and estimate the time that will be spent on development, then this result can be safely multiplied by 3, or even 4.
The second mistake was the lack of a clear plan of action.
The development was carried out quite spontaneously, and many game solutions and chips were thought out on the go, many moments in the game were altered. Because of this, a large amount of strength and energy has gone to empty. For ourselves, we learned that before developing a game, it is necessary to make a detailed concept of what one wants to see at the end.
At the time of this writing, the game was released from public beta to release as early as 3 days ago. So far, there have been very few public reviews, and we didn’t notice any special increase in downloads after the game’s release, but at the moment the game has hit the TOP of new ones and is in 280th place, although we haven’t given practically any advertising.
As a result, after the advertising campaign, we plan to increase income per day at least 2, or even 3 times. But we are already happy by the ears, since even by current standards 120 thousand rubles a month for two, even the former schoolchildren, very well.
With current perspectives, we now plan to create something truly worthwhile, something original and much more thoughtful!
Prehistory
We started developing the game in the 10th grade. Prior to this, we had no experience in the development and promotion of mobile games. There were only basic knowledge of Java and little experience in creating websites. And that's it!
')
Idea
It was December 2015 in the yard. The idea to create the game came absolutely suddenly: when we dined in the school canteen during the break, we freely swallowed the sausages we had just bought in the dough and, as usual, talked enthusiastically about the meaning of life, machine learning, and the rapid pace of development of AI. Gradually, our conversation touched on the development of mobile games. We talked about the complexity of creating popular games, their commercial advantage, and so on. And here we were visited by the bold idea of ​​creating your own game for Android. Having quickly finished your lunch, we began to discuss this with great enthusiasm.
We started to play all the top games at that time in our head: such as Flappy Bird, Crossy Road, etc., because we wanted to create something similar that would make people stick to our game.
Also, we both understood that there is a high probability of not completing the project and simply abandon its development somewhere in the middle, as it happens in most cases with novice developers. Therefore, it was decided to create something as simple and simple as possible, so that the development was the fastest.
After some deliberation, it was decided to choose the clicker game genre. He bribed us with seeming simplicity of development, although we understood that even at the time of the creation of the game this genre was already obsolete, and no commercial success could be expected.
After choosing a genre, the problem of choosing a subject arose. I don’t remember why already, but we decided to choose the “rocking” theme. Perhaps at the moment it looks funny, but at the time it seemed to us quite an original decision.
In general, our thoughts were already unstoppable, and we, being completely distracted by the conversation, were late for the lesson’s floor. And in the evening the project was created and the first line of code was written.
Naming
We didn’t bother with the name and came up with it on the same day. My sore mind betrayed such a strange phrase: “Pump up Pouch.” The fact that it is simply illiterate and contradicts all the norms of the Russian language, we learned only in the second year of game development, but this name became so boring for us, and it became so familiar that we didn’t want to redo it. So left as they are.
Features
We understood what an ordinary clicker should do in 2015, even if it is not an unusual topic. And we decided that if we develop a game in this genre, then we need to bring at least a few new and original gaming solutions to it.
We came up with 2 main features:
1) We decided to introduce such a game mode as a joint game with a friend. The screen is divided into 2 parts and the player can fight with his friend in the speed of "pressing the dumbbell." It seemed to us a very good idea, since we had never met such a thing before. Also, this idea is good with the word of mouth effect, since the player can drag his friend into the game, and he will also download our application for himself.
2) The second feature was the decision to introduce a model of pitching, whose muscles will increase as you progress. The interest of the player is to find out what will become of him at the end of the game, who will he turn into? This feature was designed to keep the player in the game and keep the application installed as long as possible on the phone.
Design
After the formation of the concept, the problem of the design of the game arose - it simply did not exist.
Without thinking twice, we decided to introduce familiar artists to our work, but, unfortunately, as we later realized, this was a disastrous idea. Due to their young age, our friends were not very experienced in the development of games and design, as they were our peers, whose skills left much to be desired.
After many unsuccessful variants of the game design, we decided to hire a professional freelance artist. We chose a suitable designer for a long time, carefully looked through a huge number of profiles, read the reviews and so on.
Finally, with a collegial decision, we chose the artist we liked with an impressive portfolio and vast experience. Without thinking twice, we decided to write to him.
It was a very exciting moment. We thought that this was our only chance to get a cool design, and we cannot miss it. I turned our dialogue around in my head, thought over our communication five messages ahead. Finally, gathering strength, I sent him the first message. The answer was not long in coming. The artist responded in just half an hour.
In total, he wanted to work not a lot $ 5000-8000 ...
That day we faced the realities of this world. We had no such money at all. The maximum that we could provide was about 30 thousand rubles. This is all the money that we have earned by hard work from breakfast.
We immediately dropped hands. We began to argue that the idea of ​​creating the game was stupid, began to argue over who suggested it at all. About a week we went in a depressed mood and almost did not talk about the game.
But in the end, we decided to try again. After the second long search, we found an artist who painted much simpler, in a cartoon style, but her prices did not bite.
We decided that we must take! In total, we paid about 20 thousand rubles for the whole design.
It was a heavy material loss, but we coped with it.
The development of the entire design took about 2-3 weeks. As a result, we don’t like it very much, but it was not bad.
So, the design was ready! It is time to develop!
Development
A lot can be said about development. I will highlight only some key points. Also sign for the surprises with which we met, and that we were truly struck.
Total development took about two years. The game is written in native Android and consists of approximately 20 thousand lines of code, not including libraries.
At the very beginning there was nothing but this dumbbell on the Activity. At the beginning of development, the understanding of the graphical interface was the most difficult, all of these layouts, widgets and their ilk ... Further, as we developed the game, we learned about asynchrony in android, advanced widgets, watched a huge number of different libraries and tried to figure out what it is written, and how it works. After one year of communication with android, we already had an idea about the basics of development. The old code gradually corresponded, since after growing up skills it already seemed too crutchy and ill-conceived.
During the development of the game, we realized that we were in a hurry, having ordered the entire design at once - we had to redraw a lot of things ourselves, adjust them for interfaces, it took too much time.
In addition, as the game was developed, the application gained weight very much, and we didn’t want the user to download about 50mb for such a game, taking into account that there would be half of the unused resources, and we started to understand how to divide resources by device dpi , to reduce the size of the final application.
Now we are shipping 5 versions of the application to Google Play (4 versions with resource sharing and 1 version without sharing), which saves some users about 18 megabytes of weight.
In general, the project that we planned to complete in 3-4 months stretched out for such a long time.
Monetization
After at least some functionality appeared in the game, we began to think about ways to monetize. We tried many different advertisers, including StartApp, ChartBoost, and so on. But we decided to leave the choice on Appodeal, which seemed to us the most adequate network, despite the large size of the SDK and the need to use multidex.
I also liked the work of support, the answers were always prompt and clear.
There are quite a lot of advertisements in the game: from simple small banners on different Activities to their full-screen views. Also, the game has video ads that the user can view if he wants to speed up the walkthrough.
Immediately after the introduction of the advertising network, the income from the game frankly saddened. It was no more than $ 0.1 a day, since there were very few views, due to the small number of players.
Over time, the schedule is very slowly but surely growing up. For half a year, the game began to bring about $ 1 per day.
Everything changed after we realized that the game has a terrible icon and a silly description. We decided to change them.
Old and new game icons:
And then the income from the game went up sharply exponentially! Already in the first week, the income from the game exceeded $ 5 a day, and at the moment the total income from embedded advertising and purchases is a little over $ 100 a day.
The number of user installations per day also jumped sharply up:
Errors
With the proviso that this was the simplest clicker, and the development was carried out very hard, we realized our main mistake: we completely misjudged our strength. I planned to finish the development in 3-4 months, well, in a maximum of 6, but it turned out that even after 2 years the game does not have all the features that we planned to introduce into it.
For myself, I realized that if you are planning to make a project and estimate the time that will be spent on development, then this result can be safely multiplied by 3, or even 4.
The second mistake was the lack of a clear plan of action.
The development was carried out quite spontaneously, and many game solutions and chips were thought out on the go, many moments in the game were altered. Because of this, a large amount of strength and energy has gone to empty. For ourselves, we learned that before developing a game, it is necessary to make a detailed concept of what one wants to see at the end.
Results
At the time of this writing, the game was released from public beta to release as early as 3 days ago. So far, there have been very few public reviews, and we didn’t notice any special increase in downloads after the game’s release, but at the moment the game has hit the TOP of new ones and is in 280th place, although we haven’t given practically any advertising.
As a result, after the advertising campaign, we plan to increase income per day at least 2, or even 3 times. But we are already happy by the ears, since even by current standards 120 thousand rubles a month for two, even the former schoolchildren, very well.
With current perspectives, we now plan to create something truly worthwhile, something original and much more thoughtful!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/338596/
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