Our Failure In the App Store May Help You | Hacker News Reader

Our Failure In the App Store May Help You

makeitbigingames.com

28 pointsjtunnell27 comments

This is unscientific, anecdotal and subjective, but personally I have found I become loyal to indies and companies once I feel they aren't just trying to squeeze money out of me at every opportunity. I am only a casual gamer, but Kairosoft are one company that offer a very straight-forward proposition with all their games, and I have become a fan of theirs because of it. Their proposition seems to respect all parties; you can download a limited free trial with ads to see if you like the game, and if you do you can go buy a full unlocked version for $5 with no ads. I have bought several of their games now because I really appreciate this simple and honest model. There are no 'gems' or 'coins' to buy, you don't need to 'unlock' items, everything is included in the game it is down to skill to get items and progress. Their games all follow a similar mechanic, but they are all fun and individual enough that I am left happy not feeling like I have been gamed psychologically. I am also not anti in-app purchase, however I will only consider it where it is something significant like unlocking a full version or getting rid of ads, if I am asked to buy a virtual 'chest of gems' or whatever I will uninstall the game in seconds and add that company to the 'never download anything' list. EA, Gameloft, King, Imangi, Zynga and more are all on that list when it comes to games specifically. My advice, which as I repeat is completely anecdotal and subjective, would be to make the best damn game or app you can, release a limited trial so users can see if it works, and then price the full version at something you are happy with and do a full version or an in-app purchase to unlock it. I feel if you are proud of your work, you respect your customers, you will build a fanbase and word of mouth will kick in.

discovery problems in the app stores are making life hard for small Indie developers.

I'm concluding any reliance on App Store promotion is a non-starter. Get out and advertise the app! For months I drove past a big Road Ninja app billboard. Our company's app (granted it's more of a service than just the iOS app) is being promoted to success with zero App Store visibility - requiring a substantial sales/marketing team. With over a half-million apps available, there's just no sense in expecting the App Store will make it easy to find yours. Don't just put it there and hope it sells, get out and advertise it!

Most Indies cannot afford to advertise and market like that. Of course, you have to figure out some form of marketing to find your audience. I do not expect app stores to market games, and I have even written articles about that. My contention is that app discovery is so broken that you can barely find an app even if you know what you are looking for. BTW, we did plenty of advertising on iOS, but, like I said, most Indies cannot afford that.

I'm not trying to be mean but this game is just not fun enough to be a hit. It has no virality and it's very repetitive. The art is solid and the tech seems good, but you guys just need to do more market research and figure out what kind of game to make before investing so much time in a game that has no chance of ever making it into the top 100 grossing list.

I said that in the article. It was intended to be a simple free game. Anywhere I mention the game in the article I say that we didn't make a game that is good enough. The point of the article was to go through the things that we did right and, mostly, wrong so others won't make the same mistakes.

We actually do know how to make hits. I have been making them all of my career. Our last game was Social City on Facebook. It has 3MM DAU, and was a top 1o game.

If you're an independent software developer, how does the App Store do anything other than help you? Yes, you still have to build a standout piece of software and somehow let people know about it, but you no longer have to worry about payment processing or downloads — and if you're lucky, Apple might give you an extra bit of marketing push.

The only thing I see changing is that there are now too many apps in the App Store to rely on in-store marketing alone. But I fail to see how the situation is any worse than it was for a lone programmer working on a text editor or RSS reader in the 90s or 00s. Assuming you find a similar unfulfilled niche, write excellent software, and talk about it on relevant forums/mailing lists/whatever, isn't it likely that you'll be a whole lot more successful than you could have hoped for a decade ago?

This is why I'm surprised when people say "don't play the App Store lottery". I understand where they're coming from, but isn't that tantamount to saying "don't be an independent software developer"? Or am I missing something?

Right now, the app store is very much a lottery. There are 126 game per day entering the store, yet there are only 100-200 slots the players actually look at. Beyond that, it is hard to find games. The situation is way worse than the Internet as a whole. Discovery there is much better via better search algorithms, SEO, and even ads and ad networks that are available.

The ad networks on mobile devices move the same batch of users around that are looking to get hard currencies for games like Puzzle and Dragons that they are engaged in.

As the market moves more and more to mobile, talking up your app on an Internet based forum is not going to work. Plus, I don't think that relying on getting a buzz going on Reddit is a very repeatable marketing strategy.

I am certainly not saying "don't be an Indie game developer. There is still a lot more opportunity now than when we started GarageGames in 1999 and Indies were called Shareware developers. But, that does not mean that we should not call for Apple and Google, two of the most valuable companies in the world, to make their stores better. Indies are pouring their lives into these games and they deserve the best market possible. There are things that could make them much better. For instance, fixing Search, giving us analytics for the store listings, allowing A/B test on the listing, opening up the stores to additional front ends so people passionate about a subject could sell games there, etc.

Hi Jeff, how would better search have helped you? Are there people who actually search for certain kinds of games on the App Store?

"As the market moves more and more to mobile, talking up your app on an Internet based forum is not going to work. Plus, I don't think that relying on getting a buzz going on Reddit is a very repeatable marketing strategy."

If I understand you correctly, you seem to be implying that people will do most of their app discovery directly through the App Store in the future, not via other sources like forums, word of mouth, blogs, podcasts, review sites, etc. Why do you think this is going to change? It's not like people are going to stop browsing the web just because they get their software directly from Apple. As I see it, the App Store is nothing more than a glorified download manager.

(CAVEAT: Yes, Angry Birds is going to get thousands of downloads when it shows up in the top 10, and if your app is even remotely similar it probably won't compete. Similarly, if there's an app in the listings that fixes a common problem -- text editing, calculator, whatever -- your similar app will probably get less hits. But if you make software to solve new problems or provide new experiences, then I don't see how the listings would detract from your sales.)

Up until recently I worked at a large mobile publisher and we spent out-of-this-world sums of money to advertise games once the LTV was modeled and we had a high confidence level they would be profitable.

Ironically, App Store distribution is becoming nearly as difficult and cost prohibitive as pre-internet game retailing. Everyone is competing for the same limited shelf space and end caps. Once a network of games is built cross promotion is helpful, but entering the market is extremely expensive. You either need to win the featuring lottery, have something that is organically viral, or know your LTV and spend tons on marketing.

Unfortunately it seems the most surefire way to build a top 100 mobile game nowadays is to partner with a big publisher in order to leverage their marketing dollars and cross promo network. Hopefully some of the early indie link sharing cross promo networks will do some good to change that.

Thanks for this comment. Many people do not understand what I am trying to say (I'm probably not saying it well), but you have described the problem nicely. I would love to hear from you directly on my blog so we can hook up on Twitter or G+.

> Ironically, App Store distribution is becoming nearly as difficult and cost prohibitive as pre-internet game retailing.

The only reason that this is true is that game development is essentially a game of madlibs. As soon as I say "rail shooter" or "turn-based strategy" you instantly know how to play, because it is exactly the same as the last four games of that type you played with different artwork.

I don't play a lot of games these days, but the last game I played that was mildly innovative was Portal. Big-box success, right? No. It was a student design project that had actual dead-tree mainstream press coverage[1] before it got bought by Valve.

Imagine for a moment if all the spreadsheet software that was written were Excel clones with slightly different menus. Success would all come down to the marketing lottery, no? But take a look at the world that we actually live in [2] [3] [4] [5]. It is easy to stand out if you are doing something legitimately different than the other entrants in the space.

And there are plenty of people making innovative games. I've compiled this list in five minutes: LiquidSketch, Fez, Amnesia, Monaco, Gish, Darwinia... I don't see these guys worried about standing out in the App Store.

I played the game in TFA and it is literally 1 drag and tap per game. During the two games I played, I got four different upsells and confused the ads with the user interface at least twice. If there is any innovation in this title, it revolves around delivering the least amount of game per ad/upsell than anything I have ever played before.

[1] http://www.jeepbarnett.com/gallery2/v/scrapbook/narbaculardr...

[2] http://getpermanent.com

[3] http://grid.binarythumb.com

[4] http://www.lumina.com/uploads/technology/Whats%20wrong%20wit...

[5] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/glimpse/id423562777?mt=8

Our Beta submission of Quick Shooter to the Canadian Apple app store took NINE DAYS for rejection because we missed a checkbox

Pray tell, what checkbox?

It was the hidden one for IAP's. Oops!

I am not the OP, but I recently posted a hobby project of mine to the Mac App Store and went through a similar experience. The app was waiting for review for about 9 days (7 business days) then got rejected because the reviewer found a small (but legitimate) issue with some menuitem text. I fixed it and then it sat in the queue for another 8 days or so.

I can't imagine being commercially dependent on that kind of process.

Been there.

Android App Store's zero delay publishing is really attractive.

The author mentioned spending $1k to get 50k installs. What ad network? I've found that this is off by a factor of 10 at least of what I'm able to pull off.

Might be relevant, but an old version was using leadbolt according to my data.

I just came here to ask the same thing. We've just started trying out Chartboost and their minimum is $0.50 per install

Yeah, that just doesn't sound right. Perhaps he's also counting additional organic installs, which he attributes to the increase in rank he got from the paid installs?

This is how installs are sold, after all - 'yes, X per install sounds like a lot, but if you buy enough you'll top the leaderboard and get many many more, so you'll really only be paying X/10 per install...'

I should have explained this a little better in the article. The ads boosted the game enough to get us onto some of the lesser Android featured areas, so most of those installs were organic.

This was a great post. Having seen several apps deployed in the app store myself, it seems to me OP is right on that discovery is bad (beyond editors' features, search and recommendation systems are terrible). It makes it really hard to gain traction through word of mouth. Nowadays, especially for a game, you need to plan on having a large UA budget.

Google Play seems better than the App Store right now in terms of both search and recommendations (though both are still bad). Still, it is brutal out there and you need not just hefty UA budget, but a real operation around this stuff.

OP had great thoughts on solving this. App Store / Play APIs would be awesome. Wonder if AMZN will do (or already has done?) this and set the pace.

Thanks for writing and sharing this article, Jeff. It is great to be able to learn from your experience, and the candid and humble approach is appreciated!

'Create a Social Backend'. Wait, ANOTHER one?

On Apple products, we already have Facebook and the Game Center, you can advertise that feature all you want, but you're not going to sell me on signing up for another stupid network that no one I know will be on to socialize with in the first place.

My 2c as somebody outside of the game development scene:

- it seems weird to spend time developing a "social backend" when you could have bootstraped using OpenFeint or Game Center and saved development time which seemed to be an issue for you

- it also seems to be a huge lack of focus to first try developing 3 games instead of 1, then start a PC game and before that one is even released, restart yet another one with a different strategy.

OF is gone. We are cross platform, so GC alone will not work. We used contractors and internal resources to develop our products. I have done very well in the games business, so our company is well funded.

All I have tried to do here is to explain things that we have done so it can help other people in the future. Of course, we did not do everything or even the majority of things right on this game, but I have pointed those things out in the article.

I also making indie Games and the discovery problem is huge. Now I've come to the conclusion that the only way to make my games visible is to pay for advertisement and try to be featured on game reviews site. Nevertheless, I found it quite hard to believe how you got 50k installs with only 1100$. How come? we are not getting more than 2000 installs with that same amount.

You talk about go PC first, but not about how better was this in terms of $$$ or anything else...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com