Schlagwort-Archive: Games

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Februar 10, 2014

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Private me - Insights and Thoughts

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Flappy Bird and its shitty copies

Flappy Bird is a Mobile game made by one developer in a few days, it breaks all download records and does a lot of money. Lucky Guy and he deserves it.
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But same as with Angry Birds or Cut the rope an army of clone copies arrive behind, to get a piece of the cake. Calling their games „tribute’s“.

They aren’t a „tribute“ or how ever you phrase it. It is an attempt to get at least a small portion of the success – finical success. Such success stories, like flappy bird, are a double bladed sword. On one side the game loving but insecure developer get’s motivation and an idol. On the other side we have a bunch of guys just trying to make some money by copying popular titles, flooding the game market with crap copy attempts, or „tributes“.

This creates a layer of shit in the App Store, through this layer every unique self crafted title has to break through and it becomes more and more impossible because so many people are „tributing“.

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November 24, 2013

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Game Projects

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Ditched

„Ditched! This sweet puzzle game is coming soon to your iPhone!“
Screen Shot 2013-11-24 at 12.37.42

Production history
Since a little over a year I have been working with two friends of mine on a puzzle game for a younger audience. It stars a cute sheep and squirrel in a sugary world. We worked on it in our private time after our regular jobs, so it took a while, but it is now coming close to being released.

Software
The game has been built in Construct 2, not in Gamesalad which I do my games with…

scirra_construct_2_review

…and for one very good reason:
It has a polygon editor for your 2d Graphics, which lets you paint in the bounding box with single points and achieve a much more complex and accurate collision model than with Gamesalad.
visualeditors2
But I also have to mention that the community and the tutorial material around Construct 2 is very weak compared to that of Gamesalad. Also, it seems much more difficult to actually release the game to the app store, which we can hopefully manage to figure out.

The Game
The goal of the game is to get the sheep out of different ditches which he repeatedly falls into every level. For this challenge you have the control over a mechanical claw, which you can move through varying ditches with different gameplay puzzles and timing challenges: Magnets that make you stuck or repel you away, grumpy crabs that will cut the sheep or the claw’s wires, and even magical firebreathers which will burn you if you’re not careful!

There are 3 different worlds, each with a bunch of levels to play:
– Bubblegum Barn
– Sugar Shore
– Cupcake Castle
bubblegumbutton-sheet0sugarshorebutton-sheet1world-select-button_cupcake-castle

My Role in the Team
Initially I was supporting the concept phase of Ditched, but slowly I slipped more into the business-, PR and marketing roles. I also helped drive the development forward by mentally supporting the developer with his work.

Facebook Link:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ditched/589214191115118

Have a nice Sunday!
David

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November 22, 2013

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Indie Full price Game – With no History or Fan Base = 0 Chance

Hey guys.
Here a Statistic directly out of my iTunes Connect Account showing the Amount of Downloads.
Note this is my Release Week.
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In total around 30 Downloads. 18 Paid 12 through Promo Codes (for free).

Conclusion: Thats pretty poor but nice too know. So what can I learn here…

Theres a few Reason I can come up with:

1.) 250 Games get released per Day accordingly a statistic from October this Year.
Specialy as close to Christmas as now their are much more Releases as normal. All kind of Marketing Channels are affected through that, since they have an Overload on Work to do and are more likely to ignore the little Indie Developers Apps.

2.) The Name „The Sha Man“ auto-corrects to „The aha man“ and is a pain in the Ass to search for.
Additionally this removes the random Chance to get found since it will always auto-correct them away from my App. Something to check before the next App.

3.) I did start with the Marketing too late. I basically started with it on the release Day, definitely to late. If possible I will try to achieve a little hype before my next App.

4.) The Price. The pure Fact that it has one, seem to be a no go. There is no more Chance to sell Full Price Apps without having a Fan base behind you that waits for it. People want them Free and Pay a lot of Money for In-App purchases. That’s nothing new, I knew it but didn’t put this Business-model into Place because I wanted my first Title to be as easy to publish as possible. To learn about the whole Process first.

Result: Since Players can’t try and they don’t know the Brand it will be coldly ignored by the Users. The next Game will be free to play with in-app purchases so I get at least more Downloads and reach a bigger Audience before I block my Content by Prices.

Have a nice Weekend everyone!