Godville on the iPhone - as it were
In this article I would like to talk about our experience in creating and promoting an iPhone-client for the Godville browser game. The game itself is a text-entertaining-parody self-match and has already been covered in the pages of Habr. Actually, it was Habra who owes her existence , for which we once again heartily thank and bow to the belt.
Godville has been developed for more than two years, so he managed to acquire a lot of interesting things. But the browser everywhere with you will not take, and sometimes you want to visit the hero right here and now. We needed a mobile client, and we, having read success-stories about success at Appstore, decided to do something for the iPhone. We already had iPod and Mac, however, as well as registration with the iPhone Developer Program. It remained for the small - to write.
They began to write a team of two and a half people: one worked directly on the client (seeing MacOS and Objective-C for the first time in his life), the second worked on the server API, and the author of this article pushed brilliant ideas and in the other way interfered with the process. Having begun work in September of last year, we planned to get the first viable version by the beginning of November, which could be put to the people and observe the effect. The client and the game are free, and the development had to pay off and bring millions at the expense of those who want to buy in-game currency.
One of the key features of the game is the hero who lives on the server, who independently gets into adventures at unpredictable times. Therefore, the client really wanted to organize a data update close to realtime, so that the possible news came to the player as quickly as possible. We got the first experience with such things last year, adding Comet in the main version, so it was a sin not to use existing developments in the native client, having got rid of the browser crutches. The basic idea here is very simple - the client keeps a constant socket connection to the server, and the client in turn sends updates exactly when they are, while trying their best to save traffic. As a safety option, there is a regular polling along with a tricky mechanism for switching from it to push and back. In aggregate, all this provides a transparent for the user mechanism for the fastest possible updates.
')
Convenience to the client and the interface was also given special attention. Take the registration window as an example. The screenshot of the original version was not preserved, but initially it looked more or less as a standard registration form for six fields (two names, the motto of the hero, a password with confirmation and mail). It seems to be nothing fatal, besides in the appstore we often stumbled upon similar forms. But after the release of the first version, we found that many players are trying to register with 6-8 (so many times the form was sent to the server to return with an error from the category "this name is already taken"), and some, apparently, just left, unable to register immediately. It was necessary to simplify - a real-time validation of the entered names was added, optional fields were transferred to the profile, and the hash from the device id began to be used as the default password, which generally saved the player from having to enter it. It took about two weeks to do everything, but then the registration window began to please the eye and whistle through even the most lazy user (in the video below you can watch it live).
Finally, one of our favorite inventions, the “bottom box”, was transferred from the browser version to the client. It is a built-in form for various types of feedbacks, directly sent to our table. Generally speaking, the lack of contact between developers and users is a big problem with appstore (until recently, developers really could not even read the reviews, not to mention the answers). A direct contact with the players through a convenient form allows you to significantly improve the client, which is confirmed by five updates since the initial release.
The release date of the client was constantly postponed due to the desire to “fasten this useful thing as well”, so instead of initially two or three months assumed (3-4 hours per day), we spent almost four. At the end of December, by a strong-willed decision, they somehow somehow put an end to it and finally sent the application for review to Appstore, having previously read about the horrors of reviewing and waiting for failure for some wild reason after two weeks of leisurely consideration. However, the review passed from the first attempt and surprisingly quickly - in just two days. It is time to reap the benefits of work.
The initial idea was a quick start due to the owners of iPhones already registered in the game , getting into the overall Top-100 Games and the subsequent ploping there in the 50th position with a small steady influx of new players. But here we missed a lot, overestimating the number of iPhones in our community. Less than a hundred downloads on the first day and on the strength of a dozen in the next ones brought the application to the local Top-100 RPG Games, but potential players could not see it there. The updates and the topic on the developers forum did not help, and there was simply no one to evaluate the months of hard work.
The option with advertising was not even considered. Firstly, we did not have sufficient funds for any significant advertising campaign. Secondly, Godville himself has never been advertised anywhere either, and our only moves in the direction of promotion were the two aforementioned posts on Habré — the word of mouth continued to work. Breaking a good tradition and luring people with banners was not interesting.
The last chance was the publication on some popular and themed iPhone-portal, and here the developer review contest held on www.iphones.ru turned up very well. They approached the case in detail - it took several days to create a video review, a couple of days the text itself was written and licked. Finally, the review was published on the main page of iphones.ru, where it was read by a relatively small number of people for the site - about 3 thousand. About a thousand of them installed the application and registered with the game by viewing this video review:
And then an unexpected event happened to us. Such a sharp wave of free application installations brought it to the main page of the Russian appstore, where it stuck in third place in the global Top-10. People threw shoals - about 1200-1500 downloads per day. Strangely enough, at the same time nothing fell and, with the exception of a couple of minor minor bugs, no particular problems were observed. Every day we went to Appstore, to look at our offspring on the main page with tears of emotion and enjoy ourselves. But after five days, the number of downloads began to decrease (there was a steady feeling that all interested visitors of the appstore had already downloaded the game, and the people simply ended, although who knows, maybe the name, description, or icon is to blame?), And gradually we fell out of the Top 10, and then from Top-100. Now the picture looks like this (the fat points are client updates, the peak in the center is the very rise):
Despite the return to almost the original positions, things are now much more fun - a couple of thousands of regular players from the iPhone are still there, so it would be bad to complain about life. But for us it remains a mystery what exactly keeps some applications in the top for months. It is clear why Opera or Yandex.Maps are there - but often frank trash with a rating of one and a half stars hangs at the top for weeks, and what can it hold there? Apparently, “nothing good, but everyone wants to make sure of it personally” (c).
And finally - about these very ratings. After the first release, we found a powerful plug in the estimates: the points were completely polar for the application, which happens quite rarely. The explanation is simple: the game, generally speaking, is not for everyone and requires some tension to get used to, so the unresponsive rocking player with anger removes it with a minimum score, and players who break through the unusual and seized the essence usually score the highest score. Everything would be fine, but the ingenious feature of iPhoneOS offers to rate the application only when it is deleted (and what score can we expect?), But if it is installed and actively used, then there is no easy way to evaluate it. Having decided to correct the injustice, in the latest version we added to the client a quick link to the review page in the appstore, as well as a one-time request to give it an assessment after a week of the game. The result is enchanting and is shown in the figure below. Not that the rating of the application had a special meaning (unlike the paid versions, the free audience has a lot more and rarely knows what it wants), but 90% of the five-point reviews pleasantly warm the soul.
We summarize. The first experience of crawling on a mobile platform with some stretch can be considered successful. Players go on the sly, reviews are collected, millions are piling up, the client is updated regularly (another version with a bunch of new amenities is scheduled for release next week). Along the way, a full-fledged API was born out of this whole undertaking, with the help of which especially advanced players make clients for other platforms. Well, in the meantime, we continue to carry out plans for world domination.
Godville has been developed for more than two years, so he managed to acquire a lot of interesting things. But the browser everywhere with you will not take, and sometimes you want to visit the hero right here and now. We needed a mobile client, and we, having read success-stories about success at Appstore, decided to do something for the iPhone. We already had iPod and Mac, however, as well as registration with the iPhone Developer Program. It remained for the small - to write.
They began to write a team of two and a half people: one worked directly on the client (seeing MacOS and Objective-C for the first time in his life), the second worked on the server API, and the author of this article pushed brilliant ideas and in the other way interfered with the process. Having begun work in September of last year, we planned to get the first viable version by the beginning of November, which could be put to the people and observe the effect. The client and the game are free, and the development had to pay off and bring millions at the expense of those who want to buy in-game currency.
One of the key features of the game is the hero who lives on the server, who independently gets into adventures at unpredictable times. Therefore, the client really wanted to organize a data update close to realtime, so that the possible news came to the player as quickly as possible. We got the first experience with such things last year, adding Comet in the main version, so it was a sin not to use existing developments in the native client, having got rid of the browser crutches. The basic idea here is very simple - the client keeps a constant socket connection to the server, and the client in turn sends updates exactly when they are, while trying their best to save traffic. As a safety option, there is a regular polling along with a tricky mechanism for switching from it to push and back. In aggregate, all this provides a transparent for the user mechanism for the fastest possible updates.
')
Convenience to the client and the interface was also given special attention. Take the registration window as an example. The screenshot of the original version was not preserved, but initially it looked more or less as a standard registration form for six fields (two names, the motto of the hero, a password with confirmation and mail). It seems to be nothing fatal, besides in the appstore we often stumbled upon similar forms. But after the release of the first version, we found that many players are trying to register with 6-8 (so many times the form was sent to the server to return with an error from the category "this name is already taken"), and some, apparently, just left, unable to register immediately. It was necessary to simplify - a real-time validation of the entered names was added, optional fields were transferred to the profile, and the hash from the device id began to be used as the default password, which generally saved the player from having to enter it. It took about two weeks to do everything, but then the registration window began to please the eye and whistle through even the most lazy user (in the video below you can watch it live).
Finally, one of our favorite inventions, the “bottom box”, was transferred from the browser version to the client. It is a built-in form for various types of feedbacks, directly sent to our table. Generally speaking, the lack of contact between developers and users is a big problem with appstore (until recently, developers really could not even read the reviews, not to mention the answers). A direct contact with the players through a convenient form allows you to significantly improve the client, which is confirmed by five updates since the initial release.
The release date of the client was constantly postponed due to the desire to “fasten this useful thing as well”, so instead of initially two or three months assumed (3-4 hours per day), we spent almost four. At the end of December, by a strong-willed decision, they somehow somehow put an end to it and finally sent the application for review to Appstore, having previously read about the horrors of reviewing and waiting for failure for some wild reason after two weeks of leisurely consideration. However, the review passed from the first attempt and surprisingly quickly - in just two days. It is time to reap the benefits of work.
The initial idea was a quick start due to the owners of iPhones already registered in the game , getting into the overall Top-100 Games and the subsequent ploping there in the 50th position with a small steady influx of new players. But here we missed a lot, overestimating the number of iPhones in our community. Less than a hundred downloads on the first day and on the strength of a dozen in the next ones brought the application to the local Top-100 RPG Games, but potential players could not see it there. The updates and the topic on the developers forum did not help, and there was simply no one to evaluate the months of hard work.
The option with advertising was not even considered. Firstly, we did not have sufficient funds for any significant advertising campaign. Secondly, Godville himself has never been advertised anywhere either, and our only moves in the direction of promotion were the two aforementioned posts on Habré — the word of mouth continued to work. Breaking a good tradition and luring people with banners was not interesting.
The last chance was the publication on some popular and themed iPhone-portal, and here the developer review contest held on www.iphones.ru turned up very well. They approached the case in detail - it took several days to create a video review, a couple of days the text itself was written and licked. Finally, the review was published on the main page of iphones.ru, where it was read by a relatively small number of people for the site - about 3 thousand. About a thousand of them installed the application and registered with the game by viewing this video review:
And then an unexpected event happened to us. Such a sharp wave of free application installations brought it to the main page of the Russian appstore, where it stuck in third place in the global Top-10. People threw shoals - about 1200-1500 downloads per day. Strangely enough, at the same time nothing fell and, with the exception of a couple of minor minor bugs, no particular problems were observed. Every day we went to Appstore, to look at our offspring on the main page with tears of emotion and enjoy ourselves. But after five days, the number of downloads began to decrease (there was a steady feeling that all interested visitors of the appstore had already downloaded the game, and the people simply ended, although who knows, maybe the name, description, or icon is to blame?), And gradually we fell out of the Top 10, and then from Top-100. Now the picture looks like this (the fat points are client updates, the peak in the center is the very rise):
Despite the return to almost the original positions, things are now much more fun - a couple of thousands of regular players from the iPhone are still there, so it would be bad to complain about life. But for us it remains a mystery what exactly keeps some applications in the top for months. It is clear why Opera or Yandex.Maps are there - but often frank trash with a rating of one and a half stars hangs at the top for weeks, and what can it hold there? Apparently, “nothing good, but everyone wants to make sure of it personally” (c).
And finally - about these very ratings. After the first release, we found a powerful plug in the estimates: the points were completely polar for the application, which happens quite rarely. The explanation is simple: the game, generally speaking, is not for everyone and requires some tension to get used to, so the unresponsive rocking player with anger removes it with a minimum score, and players who break through the unusual and seized the essence usually score the highest score. Everything would be fine, but the ingenious feature of iPhoneOS offers to rate the application only when it is deleted (and what score can we expect?), But if it is installed and actively used, then there is no easy way to evaluate it. Having decided to correct the injustice, in the latest version we added to the client a quick link to the review page in the appstore, as well as a one-time request to give it an assessment after a week of the game. The result is enchanting and is shown in the figure below. Not that the rating of the application had a special meaning (unlike the paid versions, the free audience has a lot more and rarely knows what it wants), but 90% of the five-point reviews pleasantly warm the soul.
We summarize. The first experience of crawling on a mobile platform with some stretch can be considered successful. Players go on the sly, reviews are collected, millions are piling up, the client is updated regularly (another version with a bunch of new amenities is scheduled for release next week). Along the way, a full-fledged API was born out of this whole undertaking, with the help of which especially advanced players make clients for other platforms. Well, in the meantime, we continue to carry out plans for world domination.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/92987/
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