Behind the success of Monument Valley | Hacker News Reader

Behind the success of Monument Valley

medium.com

54 pointsingve16 comments

I wished the article spent some time on how the game was marketed. For example, its appearance in House of Cards surely raised awareness for some consumers. Yes, the design is well thought out and fun to play but there are so many apps in each store that the more interesting challenge is rising above the crowd. Was it all organic? Did they pay for downloads? Do they know someone at Apple who put them on a featured list? Does the game factor into Frank Underwood's grand ambitions in the next season?

I might be misremembering but I think one of the developers said there was no marketing budget. At least at first, it was all organic.

They got a shitload of press on the day they launched and they were on the App Store featured games/editors choice (not sure which) list on that day or close to (and the update was again on an App Store banner on launch day). They had a tumblr to collect fan art, they were actively promoting on twitter, there are quotes from people on launch day saying "I've been looking forward to this for months" - so I don't know what the definition of 'organic' is but they definitely put effort into marketing well before release, although it's possible that just involved getting it in front of people and having them all run with it.

their 'the launch went great' blog post: http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2014/4/7/on-top-of-t...

Monument Valley was a phenomenal game for me. I'm just really sad that with the iOS age some really great games are easily rendered inaccessible by succeeding iOS updates, iDevice obsolescence, or developer account shutdowns. In sharp contrast to traditional gaming, I can easily delve through my stack for particlar cartridges, GameCube disc or comb through eBay for a particular PlayStation One disc. The great old days of 'Published Once. Play Plenty'.

It had an Android release, so an old version of bluestacks/equivalent and a pirated .apk should (hopefully) last forever.

I think you're right about iOS though.

Never heard of Bluestacks till now, I'll give it a spin. Thanks for the recommendation!

> "gamers aren’t just teenage boys in their basement being anti-social."

Currently reading a book that makes a compelling argument that this is part of the process of boys turning into men/adults, so not sure this stereotype is entirely warranted.

What's the book?

Participatory Culture in a Networked Era by Henrey Jenkins, Mizuko Ito, and Danah Boyd:

http://www.amazon.com/Participatory-Culture-Networked-Era-Co...

It's actually pretty interesting so far. The premise is basically back in the 90s many/most early adopters of the Internet (including myself) thought it was going to bring all sorts of beneficial changes to society. This obviously hasn't entirely happened, so it's looking at the state of what's changed, what hasn't, why, what's likely to happen in the future, etc. And it's written as a conversation between the three authors on various questions, which is interesting because each has a slightly different research speciality -- henry is most famous for his work on participatory culture, mimi is most famous for her ethnography of japan, and danah probably most famous for her work on social software and subcultures/outgroups.

A lot of the book is looking at community culture vs corporate culture vs internet culture, and specifically how the web got corporatized or whatever. It's also looking at youth use of social software, especially in the context of the U.S. where kids have very little in the way of autonomy, rights, or freedom to participate in public organizations. (This is where the video gaming stuff comes in.)

"Monument Valley disrupts the traditional game design paradigm in a number of ways"

Seems like a statement by someone who doesn't really play computer games (or only plays triple-A FPS console titles). Although cool and well-designed, Monument Valley is hardly unique among video games for being calm and contemplative. Cf. Journey (2012), The Endless Forest (2005), Ico (2001), Shadow of the Colossus (2005), etc.

If you want to go down the rabbit hole of the really disruptive (to the point of almost outright hostile) approach to making video games, I have always loved the work of increpare[0], who is sort of the John Waters of indie video games.

[0]: http://www.increpare.com/

I rarely buy games on iOS but this one hooked me and left me wanting more and more. Highly recommend if you haven't played this

This is my three-year-old's favorite game. (He only gets iPad time on the weekends.)

He currently can complete a half dozen levels or so by himself. I suspect a lot of it is rote memorization, but I hope the game is helping to develop problem solving skills. He's also fan of Lumino, but the puzzles in that one are a bit beyond him at the moment (e.g. in the first sequence, he does everything except place the lemons on the proper pegs).

And he has kids games that he enjoys (e.g. the Dr Panda ones, and some sorting/matching games that he played when he was younger).

There are only 8 levels or did they add more?

Checking I see they list 10 levels but the first 2 are really short

It's a lovely game, but yeah, it's short. When it originally came out, I compensated by only allowing myself one level per night at bedtime.

The original game is 10 levels. Later, there was an in app purchase for an additional 8 levels called "forgotten shores". And there was another IAP during the "Project (red)" campaign called "Ida's (red) dream", I think it was one long level. One or more of these may be included in the base game now.

8 people x 10 months, 2.2M copies, $6M in revenue

(That's from the actual talk, the article got the revenue wrong.)

I wish this had been titled "Behind the success of the video game Monument Valley". I thought I was about to read some cool history about how the park has been revitalized or drawing more visitors. Oh well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com