The new Face of David Zobrist’s Youtube Channel

The official David Zobrist Youtube Channel has a set of new sections and videos.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9B2G9dYd4dIbQtyy9SczAQ

david zobrist youtube

There is now a section which contains all game creation gameplay trailers.
The second one shows insights and a set of smaller and longer talks about the current situation, in other words a diary. On top of that there is a „Let’s Plays“ section for the own games and one for mobile games in general.

The content for the last two channels is created in cooperation with Jon Poischen a good friend of mine and a natural talent for crazy videos.

Cutting down Social Media Work

So far I tried various social media channels to promote /announce my new games.
Overall I do not have the impression that most of them give back a valuable result compared to time invested to post and keep them up to date.

So I gonna cut off:
Tumbler ( 20 Followers)
Pinterest ( 85 Followers)
Facebook ( 68 Followers)

These are definitely the weakest, Facebook is specially disappointing since the reduced page reach was introduced to cash in. Facebook is useless now.

I gonna build up and maintain:
Wordpress (excellent SEO with google)
Youtube ( 90 subs)
Google + (636 connections)
Twitter (4600 followers)
Deviantart (excellent SEO with google)
IndieDB (excellent SEO with google + indie community)

I probably soon also gonna cut off some of the last once so I can focus more on games again.
All created content pages that are getting cut off will remain there but will not be updated further.

Cheers,
David

The Struggle of an Indie Developer

Overall I do this now full time since one year and Three Points was my 20th app. So far none of the apps made really noticeable money. But I see em as learnings and progress, its just a matter of keep on doing it.

This month was the first profitable. iAd made 800 usd and chartboost (late implementation -3 weeks to late) made 200 usd this week my artist/partner Sabba Keynejad made a deal with a guy from California we made em a clone of four points for 2000 usd which was good money.

So this month was around 3000 usd which I split 50% with Sabba because he made my concept big and helped form em into perfect simple versions.

I just think its an extreme hard business and I would suggest no one to start with games that take to long and rather go for a lot of quick learnings until you know what the crowd thinks is a good game and not your own Ego. I still sometimes struggle with that and end up shipping small games that feel really fun to work on but once I shipped and some time passed I realize that they are not as awesome as it felt to build em and they are way to inaccessible for the crowd.

Some People now start to clone my best games but this whole cloning doesn’t bother me too much, since I don’t think that there is something like the ultimate idea or concept, there is an endless amount of ideas that want to be expressed, no reason to be locked in to a specific.

The only wish I really have is that I can keep on doing and stop worrying about money. Thats the dream…

Got roughly money left until March 2015. So back to work.

Curvy a game inspired by the second digital game ever

Curvy hits the iTunes store this Sunday. What is it? It’s a small game inspired by the second ever created video game, Tennis for Two.

„Tennis For Two was an electronic game developed in 1958 on a Donner Model 30 analog computer, which simulates a game of tennis or ping pong on an oscilloscope. Created by American physicist William Higinbotham for visitors at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, it is important in the history of video games as one of the first electronic games to use a graphical display.“

Tennis for Two David Zobrist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_for_Two

So what is curvy? When I saw this simple and beautiful first steps of video games I knew I have to make a small game honoring it. So I created this game called „Curvy“. As with my latest game Three Points I kept things simple but elegant.

Curvy Three Points David Zobrist iphone 5 David Zobrist Curvy iPhone Curvy Three Points

You play it with a simple tap which changes the direction of the ball. The ball reacts physically like a real ball so you will have to find right timing to get the control properly.
Your goal is to guide the ball towards the randomly appearing green balls, to score. If the Ball drops out of the screen you lose.

More about it tomorrow evening!

Good night,
Dave

PS: Since its Sunday now here the link:
https://itunes.apple.com/nz/app/curvy/id914261017?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D2

Three points update is broken

So I am sorry I just read a lot player comments in the App Store on my newest app Three Points:

„Broken by MentalMoon Latest version doesn’t work at all.“

„Freezes by #Kevin If your app freezes uninstall the app and redownload“

„Great app, terrible update! by celab74 App is really good and the ‚less is more‘ cliche is very appropriate! However after the last update I am unable to see my previous high-score nor am I able to actually play the game, I hope this issue will be addressed swiftly.“

I invested into the issue and can’t find any reason, my best guess is that I manipulated the save array to add the new premium state. And now the game tries to load the array but the new entries confuse the old version of the game.
So it freezes right after the loading screen.

This problem should only happen to players who already had the game.
Not to new players. A really bad mistake I hope you give the game a second chance.

I will be aware of that issue in future.

Best wishes,
David Zobrist

iPhone 6 – More elegance and quality

david zobrist itunes

Apple is just about to announce the new iPhone 6.
What does that mean for us developers?

New resolution – Go High Resolution
So first of all its really cool they left the same Screen ratio. So there will not be any black bars on your existing apps when played with the shiny new device.
But all our current apps will be devalued, since they look low res, unless you create a „HD“ new iPhone 6 version of it. Which for me would mean to update 20 apps..

Update SDK’s of partners
Also if you use external services like Chartboost Advertising, you will have to get the newest SDK and update ALL of your games with it installed, again 20 apps (+20 apps on amazon).

More Quality – Less Crap
Apple has plenty of apps in their store by now. So they are not interested in any new App and reserve their right to reject apps, the ones which do not deliver any new value or just look crap.
That’s good there was a lot of crap.
But also it will it make it more frustrating and harder for new people to join the app game.
I’m happy I started doing this in the good old days, 1 Year ago.

David Zobrist App Developer

The iTunes Connect Account looks now much cleaner too, I like it a lot. Waiting desperately for the new iPhone 6 now!
Gonna make some great stuff for it!

Cheers,
Dave