Today I micro-dosed the magic mushroom 0.25g played heroes of the storm and feed my pet bird. Here I ramble about that and my game development past and future.
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Cheers David
Schlagwort-Archive: apps
Apple allowing to Ad-block within Apps
Apple just decided to quit their own Banner Advertising Service called iAD.
At the same moment allowing Ad-blocking apps to appear in the iTunes store.
Of course that lead to a lot of conversation specially between Indie game developers.
And the question if a free Ad monetised app is still a viable way to go.
A strong side of more established indies kind of seem to like the idea of going back to premium games, pay for the game upfront and no further purchases within the app.
Which I think to be illusive, a pay wall I see as a bad thing specially for us indies.
It will work if you get your premium game featured or already have thousands of waiting fans, but how many of us can count on that?
Of course Games can still be free and sell in-apps just as clash of clans or candy crush do without any additional advertising. But these in-app purchase sales are much less likely to happen for us indies too, specially consumables.
In an indie game you mostly do not have that server structure keeping all the players account data saved, there for buying something consumable that can not be re-gained in case of losing the mobile phone or just mistakenly deleting the app will be not a good selling point for the player.
Ads are enabling the small man to make a living of this craft as it lowered the wall to test out an indie game for a consumer. Allowing to block ads might be nice for apple and the consumer but does hurt the flexibility and opportunity to try out smaller alternative things as an indie developer.
On the other hand you could ad block on google play since „ever“ and my main ad revenue always came from google play. So the impact might not be to much of a big deal at all.
Advertising my app with Chartboost
Some update its good but I really wanna see if i can reach the cpi of 0.50
somehow.
Also I see direct impact on charts.
The first day I did geo sweden and switzerland it even reached top 100 in sweden from being unranked before. I stopped the geo after 2 days and focused on another country, poland and the same effect reached top 100 in role playing
I think the already existing good ratings of the app make it easier to score with less downloads higher in the rankings. And it seems to consider % increase downloads to last week/days.
Geo 1 (2 days) Switzerland and Sweden
Geo 2 (2 days) Poland
Chartboost Advertising my App via CPI
GOAL: Drive installs to Orcs as it is my highest ARPU game right now
So I just use this post as a small update about how my advertising test went.
Terminology:
CPI= Cost per Install
I pay to get a user to play my game and hope to make a profit after that fee.
ARPU= Average revenue per user
How much money your app makes on average per user.
Installs/Total Revenue within same time frame= ARPU
My ARPU’S (iOS)
iOS tends to have 30% higher ARPU with my Apps compared to the android versions.
Orcs ARPU $0.24
Three Points ARPU $0.03
Steps 1:
Testing video ads:
I setup chartboost video ads to drive installs to my game.
Which works NOT with CPI but rather you pay for each completed video view.
It should be ending up cheap than CPI but of course it is not guaranteed to generate an install.
The video ads didn’t create an impression or install at all, regarding to Chartboost I just bet to less to be shown, even with raising it to $0.30 even tough it says the minimum is $0.01.
Also they kept referring that an install right now costs around $2.50 instead telling me why my impression NO CPI campaign doesn’t start rolling.
Also started testing it with $0.50
No installs generated or paid.
Steps: 2
Testing Interstital pop up ads:
I took the remaining $100 and created another campaign an interstitial one this time.
Bidding $0.50 for an install right now. Definitely again way above the minimum price ($0.25). But way below the suggested bid. I just wanna see if I can get a download here and there for that price range.
If that all doesn’t work I might just go big play and pay the $2.50 for an install since I did not find a way to transfer the $100 back to my main balance. And I also wonder how much impact such installs have, how much can bring me a „quality user“, would it effect my ARPU calculation or is it the same.
Steps: 3
After 1.5 days with no result I increased the CPI to $2, the suggest bid is $1.65 to $2.50 here.
Awaiting a result soon..
Fact:
Your app just needs a very solid ARPU to be able to play in the league.
Key factors for having a great ARPU:
+Well selling In-apps (with solid range $1.99 to $10+)
+Re-play value or/and a lot of Content / Player Progression
+Banner ad
+Chartboost ads
+Right niche where advertiser pay more to get installs (popular section)
if you can manage to achieve $1 ARPU your already playing well.
Of course your ARPU is also effected by how popular your game is and the with it coming „meaning“/“importance“/“relevance“ which:
+increases the likely hood to sell an in-app
+increases the play sessions
+increases the value of your shown ads as they start competing to be shown in your app
Great Article: Why Mobile Games Still Suck at Most Genres
Let’s shine a light on the fact that almost every title in the top 50 Grossing Apps (gaming) on both Android and iOS in the United States fit under one of three umbrellas: strategy, puzzle or casino..
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-mobile-games-still-suck-most-genres-nick-huggett
Found it today, liked it, thought some of you also would like -shared it
Chartboost Statistics 2015 – David Zobrist Indie Mobile Game Developer
So 2.5 Years as one man Indie Mobile Game Developer here is my most recent Statistic update.
I am kind of struggling for the reason that the money pretty much remained the same even tough the Downloads increased massively within the last couple months. It could be related to an overall lower eCPM or that the variety of shown ads isn’t that high at the moment so players are less likely to be interested and interact with the Ad Units. I also switched on interstitial videos instead just pop ups roughly in the middle of the year which co-created the newest highest peak of around $250 in one Day mostly 85% by the game Orcs. A number I would have liked to see more often 😛 But still it felt pretty exciting.
The Daily New Installs / New Players
A lot of them go to the Game PewDiePug which unfortunately isn’t the one with the highest ARPU.
The actually daily Money generated through the Chartboost interstitial pop ups and videos
Since I assumed the videos my reduce the amount of Boot ups since they are so hardly annoyed and this could be another reason for the not linearly rising daily income. But it isn’t also the Boot up look good compared to new Installs and history.
The survivors of the darwinistic app portfolio management
Out of 40 apps these are the survivors, two of them have still chances to drop the rest is perfect fine and reflects my currently best work.
Deleted 25 Apps in total within one Week
So since the last post (2 posts below) I kept on looking at my app portfolio. And kept deleting the weakest apps day by day.
Until I reached the point where there where only quality apps left but still some of them do not generate the downloads or money I could expect of apps I can create now. So with a hard feeling I also deleted good apps like:
-2014 Goal Keeper
-Curvy
-Darkslide
-Three Levels
-All points
-1 Power
-redDot Tap
-Ben Bear
-Kittys Wonderland
It will help to keep the focus on what works best and not be distracted with this small side ideas, because I know I will delete them. The weakest have to go.
Kids Pet Clicker Games on the way :)
3 weeks of work, 10 apps for iOS and Android, lets see how the kids will like them. Launch 30.7
Increasing the Quality of my App Portfolio
I reached my 40th launched app within under 2 years, a lot of learnings have been made since the first titles. And some of them do not longer stand the quality that I want to represent and also don’t perform significant enough to leave em within my app portfolio. So its time to delete some apps in order to improve the overall quality of what my name (David Zobrist) stands for.
The first Apps which will be permanently removed are:
The Sha Man
2013: My very first launched app as indie game developer
The Sha Cat
2013: The Rpg game I put months of love into it..it did not work out..its time to say goodbye
Stone Age – Survival Hunter
2013: One of my earliest arcade games
1 Cruise
2013: Geometric endless runner game
Fresh Road
2014: A childish reaction on the big success of my apple featured app Three Points
Bubbels
2014: A simple reaction game
Long Tongue
2014: Simple snap the flies arcade game
23 Points
2014: A reaction based math game
A Turtle Race
2014: Funny idea but kind of crappy excuted
Lebkuchen/Shroomy
2014: Trippy Stuff
Booze Tower
2014: Tapping shooting something..
Six Points
2014: Color Matching with geometric shapes, Three Points is the big one so this one can go
Four Points
2014: Same.
Five Points
2014: Same.
Alpha Breaker
2014: Graphics nice gameplay not excited well enough
Ace Tennis
2014: Second collaboration with Sabba Keynejad, who I made Pewdiepug and Three Points with
Soar to new heights
2014: A cooperation with Jon Poischen for a game salad competition. We have another game, Human Harvest which has a lot of potential this one tough can go..
Rest in Peace.
David Zobrist 