I am indie game developer here, what about u?

[waigo21]

Well, I started to develop iPhone game 2 months ago. I do this in my part time.
During the game development, you have to deal with tons of issues.

Now the game has become ready for sale. The big problem is, I have no idea how to spread it. Just keep replying posts here?

I tried to submitted the app to some app review sites, however, soonly got a response like: If you pay $20 then we will finish the review immediately. Hell.

Any indie game developers here? How about your game?

[RookieStudio]

Hi there I am an indie developer too. My impression of iPhone biz is it is quite tough and competitive, I think I need to put in more hardwork for my next few releases before I can succeed.

My shoe string budget make it difficult for paid ads marketing.

[Mike_011972]

Hello,
Yeah, I released my first game Solitaire Siege about a month ago. It’s had really nice reviews from the smaller sites and everyone that plays it, seems to like it (one site even re-reviewed it again due to people complaining about the review not been good enough, so the game definitely has it fans) but our big, big mistake was that we didn’t start to promote the game before it was already out and even then I’m not really a sales man and I always like to play things down which is not the way to be when your trying to get people to look at your game.

Sales are really poor, much worse then I expected to be honest. They did pick up a bit after releasing the free version (saying that I only think the free version has been downloaded 2000+ times), but without a lot of buzz behind your game your not going to get seen in the App store. So I guess doing well on the iPhone comes down to 40% game and 60% marketing, if not more so on the marketing side.

The way I look at it is that I’ve made a really good game which people really enjoy and I had fun making and it’s been a huge learning experience for my next game. All I need to do next time is try to make people aware of my game before hand and to get people to try it.

I personally think that if your game is fun to play and doesn’t rely on just pretty gf/x then it still stands a good chance of sell for a long time, so don’t give up and keep trying to promote your game as much as you can.

With that in mind, here’s the links to various things for my game :D


Solitaire Siege Intro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PrALCxAeGM
Solitaire Siege Weapons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9-vydhISV0
Solitaire Siege Game Play
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dmQc97iYvw

App Store Links:
Full
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=326694249&mt=8
LITE
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=329619033&mt=8

Thanks,
Mike Moore.
BadBumble.com
App Store Link: (http://bit.ly/sjdue)
Solitaire Siege Game Page (http://www.badbumble.com/Badbumble_Solitaire_Siege.html)
Follow me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/badbumble)

[The Game Reaper]

: If you pay $20 then we will finish the review immediately. Hell.

Which review sites?

[PocketMonkey]

Well, I started to develop iPhone game 2 months ago. I do this in my part time.
During the game development, you have to deal with tons of issues.

Now the game has become ready for sale. The big problem is, I have no idea how to spread it. Just keep replying posts here?

I tried to submitted the app to some app review sites, however, soonly got a response like: If you pay $20 then we will finish the review immediately. Hell.

Any indie game developers here? How about your game?

You are definitely going to the wrong review sites with that kind of scheme.

[Stroffolino]

Yikes! This game does look interesting, but man, you really took a brave gamble by mashing up these themes.

Cookie Bonus Solitaire had a good run, because its name invites people to click on it and find out just what the heck it is. "Solitaire Siege" sounds like an obscure solitaire variant. I suspect most of the folk clicking on Solitaire Siege are people interested in traditional card games that end up being turned off by the war theme.

Hello,
Yeah, I released my first game Solitaire Siege about a month ago. It’s had really nice reviews from the smaller sites and everyone that plays it, seems to like it (one site even re-reviewed it again due to people complaining about the review not been good enough, so the game definitely has it fans) but our big, big mistake was that we didn’t start to promote the game before it was already out and even then I’m not really a sales man and I always like to play things down which is not the way to be when your trying to get people to look at your game.

Sales are really poor, much worse then I expected to be honest. They did pick up a bit after releasing the free version (saying that I only think the free version has been downloaded 2000+ times), but without a lot of buzz behind your game your not going to get seen in the App store. So I guess doing well on the iPhone comes down to 40% game and 60% marketing, if not more so on the marketing side.

The way I look at it is that I’ve made a really good game which people really enjoy and I had fun making and it’s been a huge learning experience for my next game. All I need to do next time is try to make people aware of my game before hand and to get people to try it.

I personally think that if your game is fun to play and doesn’t rely on just pretty gf/x then it still stands a good chance of sell for a long time, so don’t give up and keep trying to promote your game as much as you can.

With that in mind, here’s the links to various things for my game :D


Solitaire Siege Intro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PrALCxAeGM
Solitaire Siege Weapons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9-vydhISV0
Solitaire Siege Game Play
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dmQc97iYvw

App Store Links:
Full
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=326694249&mt=8
LITE
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=329619033&mt=8

Thanks,
Mike Moore.
BadBumble.com
App Store Link: (http://bit.ly/sjdue)
Solitaire Siege Game Page (http://www.badbumble.com/Badbumble_Solitaire_Siege.html)
Follow me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/badbumble)

[Mike_011972]

@Stroffolino
Yeah, I thought about that, but I didn't want to make anything to sweet and the update will has normal playing cards in it, and to be honest, I guessed that out of the millions of iPods out there, it would still get a decent amount of downloads and then bank on word of mouth for the other sales.

It's a learning experience I guess for everyone and my last attempt to get some sales is to try throwing some money at some web adverts and see if that helps.

Thanks,
Mike Moore.
App Store Link: (http://bit.ly/sjdue)
Solitaire Siege Game Page (http://www.badbumble.com/Badbumble_Solitaire_Siege.html)
Follow me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/badbumble)

[xenoclone]

Well I'm the owner of Cascadia Games (http://www.cascadiagames.com). We launched in April more or less dedicated to the iPlatform. Since then we've released five games (http://www.cascadiagames.com/games.html) and one developer kit (http://www.cascadiagames.com/kit_tgbkart.html). Nobody's getting rich but we're just getting warmed up. :)

We've launched games at $0.99, $1.99, and $2.99. And in all honesty the more expensive games make the most money, surprise surprise. Going on sale is a nice way of getting a little bit of extra attention due to all the sales-monitoring sites out there. But I wouldn't put anything on sale longer than a week personally, as the returns diminish after the first couple of days. And I tend to only do a temporary price drop if sales have really tanked for a certain app (for reasons unknown).

I agree with most folks here that time is the biggest risk. Hence why I tend to do a lot of iteration. We've got the 4 "mini chess" games running from the same basic template. Xeno Sola (http://www.cascadiagames.com/game_xenosola.html), our Carcassonne-style game, may also get a twin project. And I'm currently pushing hard to develop a Halloween kart racing game, built off the TGB Kart Kit (http://www.cascadiagames.com/kit_tgbkart.html), which I developed.

Honestly I don't know how to market either. I have one ad currently running. It sits on a very targeted website. Though now that I think about the banner, it doesn't do a good job telling customers what the game is! I tend to just blog, talk on forums, etc... whatever marketing is free. I don't like to pay for anything that I don't have to!

[micah]

Which review sites?

For me, a lot of the autoresponder emails when I sent sites my game said that they also had advertising opportunities. Some said that you'll get reviewed sooner if you pay them. None actually said that you would get a _good_ review if you paid them though. I can't dig through all my email now, but here's some of the responses.

I got this from iPhone Footprint. I didn't pay them, and they did, eventually, review my game (one of the 2 sites that did, actually, and I sent promo codes to about 35 sites).

We just received your app review request at iphonefootprint, and wanted to let you know that we’re working on it. We usually get more requests than we can handle, so it might be some time before we can actually review the app.

But if you want the review done quickly, try our expedited review offer at just $20. That doesn’t guarantee a positive review , but it does help get the word out there, tells our regular readers about your app, and hey, it pays some of the the bills for us!

I got this from AppCraver (who never reviewed my game):


We have several other additional options for you to make sure your app gets
seen by AppCraver readers.

We can provide an expedited review for a $100 fee. This will get your app
reviewed within 6 business days. Paying to expedite your review does not
guarantee a positive review. However, we will contact you prior to
publishing a review that scores lower than 5/10.

[yarri]

Hi, passing this along... haven't tried their services but got an email blast from them:

Apalon Studios iPhone Marketing Program
http://www.apalon.com/iphone_marketing.html

$399 and up for a managed campaign, including key words and they seem to help with art work?

--yarri

[lynardo]

No answers from me. Only theories.

Without a concerted marketing campaign, there's a short window of exposure.

That means having a great app icon and excellent screenshots (and a memorable name doesn't hurt). I think I failed on all 3 of those points upon launch :)

Luckily Apple allows us to change all 3.

After the initial launch, I'm thinking of raising the price and adding new features. I'm also launching a limited feature, ad supported lite version so people who don't get what the game is about in can give it a try. The reception of that will tell me if I have a dud on my hand or not.

[Intruder_qcc]

Well well...

I am also an indie developer like you guys and still working on my TBA iPhone game :), also one of my friend just released a few weeks ago his first game called Cubic Match.

But he had suffered from the same faith as several of you, he didnt really promote his apps before the release. And looking at what happen I think this has hurt a lot :(. Especially the first release was thrown in page 6 of the new release due that the release date wasnt set at the right date on time.

Then he also like you tried to get reviews, but it is not easy as several of you notice. Since they are so many new games/apps getting released each day, review site cant review all of them. They have to choose which one are worth for their readers, which I can understand, so its up to us to convince them by making an astouding apps that they cant refuse :cool:.

My friend also got those email response suggesting to pay $$$ to get reviewed. But you dont even know if by paying $100 if it will really improve sales.

Cubic Match got a very nice review on AppSmile which you can read here, and according to my friend the bump in the sales were marginal and the download too.

http://www.appsmile.com/2009/09/11/iphone-game-reviews-cubic-match-surprises-as-simple-impressive-3d-puzzler/

But what we found out was that by putting an additional sub-category (kids in this case), it has make a big visibility when the update has it the AppStore during the week-end. The game even reach several top 100 in different country for the lite version and in 2 country for the paid version.

Oh but we also got another disapointment... getting ranked #45 in kids in Ireland doesnt mean you had a lot of download. Typically most top 100 were in the single digit download for most country and even toward the 0. So dont get you hope too high when you see you are #50 in Guatemala in some sub-category. Afaik it seems only in US does high ranking mean something and sadly we didnt break into it.

[GavinBowman]

My friend also got those email response suggesting to pay $$$ to get reviewed. But you dont even know if by paying $100 if it will really improve sales.

The review sites that can make a major impact to your sales won't charge you. They have good traffic and a passion for games, and they can use that to make their money in other ways, the last thing they would want to do is shake down some poor indie developer.

[waigo21]

Yeah, thank you guys for replying me.
My first game, Fight Desert (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=331009606&mt=8), was available two days ago. I didn't promote it before, casue I'm not sure when will Apple's approval come.

Few paid download in the past two days, much lower than I expected. I think I must be more patient, as someone said: we make games of love, not for money.

[nickcaveman]

ehm, i work as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer and i made a game with a friend and will do some other ones in the future, so i am some kind of independent dev.

but i don`t think, that we will ever earned enough money with that, so we make this as a "hobby".

it`s better this way, because we mustn`t care about what the people wants and can make the stuff, we like to. (oh, this doesn`t mean, that we don`t want any suggestions from our customers…but we didn´t make anything, just for the numbers of sales.)

if some of the projects becomes a succeess, no problem.
but this isn`t our main motivation.

so, me and the progger are some kind of independent underground punkrock devs (have a look at the other apps of the progger "chain face" and "waist of time"… not really mainstream ^^).

we just make, what we like and i think, that this is th best way.
but i`m really old and i was a punkrocker in my youth (and still hate the society ;) ), so maybe i`m a little bit different to the other iphone devs. ^^

[FlagellumDei]

Without marketing the success depends only on luck. The problem is that most of us indie developers are very bad at marketing. We know how to make a decent game, but when it comes to promotion... our knowledge stops here :(

We did press releases for each game we released, but that haven't made a big impact. Also, a few reviews didn't made either. For example we got positive reviews for My Squares! Here & Now! (AppStore Link:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=322928156&mt=8) a strategy turn based board game, but without any positive impact on the sales.

So, I would be very pleased to hear ideas for good (free) promotions.

If anyone interested, we at Rapid Turtle Games have created a platform for advertising iPhone games and apps for FREE. The ads are selected and displayed at random. It's free for every developer to create an account and to submit games or apps. Statistics for impressions and clicks are viewable. This is an additional chance for developers to increase the visibility of their games and apps.

Please submit your game or app here: http://www.rapidturtlegames.com/rapidadserve/

[Black Hive Media]

My wife and I have recently started doing stuff, starting with our comic series Chibi Chaingun. Sales were slow despite our efforts to pimp it out to sites from iPhone sites to comic book sites, a custom iPhone mobile site w/ Twitter and Facebook links. We released a variety of just small apps to see how they sold. We've submitted our first game for the Halloween/Fall season, should be up soon. We recently had 2 apps approved in one week. We are still currently trying to see what sells the best for small apps. BTW - in-game advertising is a joke w/ admob. Just a joke. We had a free app that was at one point getting downloaded 250 times in a day, and we had like 2 clicks on the ad support link that day which is like... 10 cents. lol

Anyways, we've made enough to recoup the cost of our initial investment of a Mac, SDK, and iPhones. Luckily this is just a side gig for now. :) I actually work at a game studio full-time... which is now starting to focus on iPhone games as well, hehe. It's a pretty exciting little platform to dev on.

[EssentialParadox]

That's interesting, BlackHive, thanks for sharing your experiences.

I've personally wondered about ad-supported apps. The thing is, I believe iPod touch owners are are rarely connected to the internet, and so the ad-supported system, basically, becomes useless.

I think there was a time when iPhone devs were trying to outbid each other for customers and trying to do 99 cent apps, free apps, advertising apps, new business models etc., but now the store is so saturated, I think the customers are more willing to pay for the quality app, or the quality game.

[designxtek]

I'm also an Indie Developer. My game Leaf Bound (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=320965550&mt=8) was featured by Apple after a week being in the app store.

Being featured is the key or else you won't get much exposure. I had over a thousand sales in one day when it was featured. I also had a lite version that was released a few days after that had just as much downloads.

I had posted up some video previews of my game during development and a forum member on Touch Arcade saw it and posted a thread on it. I started following up on it and it had chatter.

When the lite version was out we had front page coverage on touch arcade "lites to try".

So I think Apple pays attention to whats going on on this site and picks who should be featured.

Other than that it is hard to get a lot of sales.

With review sites they all contact you when you are featured. It is hard to get a review the other way around.

It has been since July and i'm still getting sales from it.

I'm working on my next title which is a 3D game. :D

[Mike_011972]

To be honest I was starting to think about the ad-supported game idea myself, but every time I’ve downloaded an app that does this, it just annoyed me and I would end up either deleting the app or if I really liked the game, I would buy the full version, which would be rare as most of the times the ads would put me off the game so I would just go for the straight lite / free version. I have never clicked on an advert in a game ever. I get enough sale phone calls when I’m at home nagging me to buy stuff I don’t want, I don’t want them in my games as well.
I’m currently looking at the web banner adverts to see if that will help sales. The TA ones didn’t really do that much for me (excellent service and the amount of traffic that has seen my banner is HUGE), but I think that’s more down to picking the right style of site for your app as I’m guessing the majority of people who come to this site are not into card games (I could be totally wrong about this, but the click through was averaging about 400-500 views to 1 click and then it was around 150-200 clicks to a sale).
It could also be that I’m not selling my game in the right way as the people that have bought my game (Solitaire Siege) seem to rave about it. I’ve also noticed that the Americans are a lot more likely to post iTune reviews about your game, which I think really helps the sales, (thank you so much if you did post a review).
I’m now spreading my adverts across a lot of the smaller sites to see if that will help any as the way I see it, with it been my first game I’ve published by myself, it’s all a learning experience for me.
One other thing I did notice was that on the second day, I raised the price from $1 to $2 and it didn’t effect the sales at all, so I’m going to assume that the people that where interested in my game were willing to pay above $1 mark. I changed back down to $1 and it didn’t make any difference to the number of sales.

@designxtek
Wasn’t Leaf Bound build using Unity? How do you rate it? I’ve got it myself, but I really need to learn Java first before I can real use it. Currently using iTGB and it really sucks and the support you get from them is next to nothing (good job the people on the forums are so helpful).

Mike Moore
Solitaire Siege (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=326694249&mt=8)
Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/badbumble)

[EssentialParadox]

designxtek, may I be so bold as to ask what happened to the game's sales after you were no longer featured on the store?

Have they stayed consistent at around 1k sales, or did they drop considerably to just a handful of sales per day, or maybe it's somewhere in-between? Or maybe sales grew??


PS I look forward to your next game. :)

[EssentialParadox]

To be honest I was starting to think about the ad-supported game idea myself, but every time I’ve downloaded an app that does this, it just annoyed me and I would end up either deleting the app or if I really liked the game, I would buy the full version, which would be rare as most of the times the ads would put me off the game so I would just go for the straight lite / free version. I have never clicked on an advert in a game ever. I get enough sale phone calls when I’m at home nagging me to buy stuff I don’t want, I don’t want them in my games as well.
I’m currently looking at the web banner adverts to see if that will help sales. The TA ones didn’t really do that much for me (excellent service and the amount of traffic that has seen my banner is HUGE), but I think that’s more down to picking the right style of site for your app as I’m guessing the majority of people who come to this site are not into card games (I could be totally wrong about this, but the click through was averaging about 400-500 views to 1 click and then it was around 150-200 clicks to a sale).
It could also be that I’m not selling my game in the right way as the people that have bought my game (Solitaire Siege) seem to rave about it. I’ve also noticed that the Americans are a lot more likely to post iTune reviews about your game, which I think really helps the sales, (thank you so much if you did post a review).
I’m now spreading my adverts across a lot of the smaller sites to see if that will help any as the way I see it, with it been my first game I’ve published by myself, it’s all a learning experience for me.
One other thing I did notice was that on the second day, I raised the price from $1 to $2 and it didn’t effect the sales at all, so I’m going to assume that the people that where interested in my game were willing to pay above $1 mark. I changed back down to $1 and it didn’t make any difference to the number of sales.

@designxtek
Wasn’t Leaf Bound build using Unity? How do you rate it? I’ve got it myself, but I really need to learn Java first before I can real use it. Currently using iTGB and it really sucks and the support you get from them is next to nothing (good job the people on the forums are so helpful).

Mike Moore
Solitaire Siege (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=326694249&mt=8)
Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/badbumble)
Mike, I've seen your banner for Solitaire Siege. I'm not really into card games, so my advice is likely limited, but I do think there's a few things you can do to optimize clickthrough-rate and sales. I can't remember your banner off the top of my head, but if you think you might find it useful to post it here, I would be happy to give you some suggestions on some changes I think would boost the clicks. (I have a bit of a background in web marketing.)

[designxtek]

I had my experiences with iTGB and automatically dropped it. It was a lot of headache trying to get the engine to work. So I switched to Unity. Great engine. You can build in C#, Java, etc The people on the forum there are very helpful.

[designxtek]

designxtek, may I be so bold as to ask what happened to the game's sales after you were no longer featured on the store?

Have they stayed consistent at around 1k sales, or did they drop considerably to just a handful of sales per day, or maybe it's somewhere in-between? Or maybe sales grew??


PS I look forward to your next game. :)

It didn't stay consistent. There was a downhill slop of about 50 to 100 per day. Sometimes it would sustain over the course of a few days and drop. When you get featured it stays there for a month. I believe you have up to 4 pages of feature. So the first week is 1st page then 2nd page then 3rd etc

But yeah just follow me on twitter as I will be announcing progress on the second game :D

[Mike_011972]

Hi,
Here's the current banner. I don't think it was the one I used on TA (I had to knock that banner up in under an hour as I was already paying for the advert).
http://nodpad.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/solitaireseige.png

Any advice / comments are always welcome.

I hope this is not against any forum rules. If it is, please take it down straight away.

Thanks,
Mike Moore.

[Mike_011972]

Yeah, that seems to be the same experiance I have with it. Unity goes seem a much more solid platform to use just from the short amount of time I've had to play with it. Time to get the JAva books out and start learning to program again. At least I've got a couple of simple game designs to work towards.


Thanks,
Mike.

[designxtek]

Hi,
Here's the current banner. I don't think it was the one I used on TA (I had to knock that banner up in under an hour as I was already paying for the advert).
http://nodpad.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/solitaireseige.png

Any advice / comments are always welcome.

I hope this is not against any forum rules. If it is, please take it down straight away.

Thanks,
Mike Moore.

For that banner it looks really busy. Sometimes less is more. Try with more photo screen shots of your game. Capture interesting photos or maybe give the banner more of a background art. Use less text. People usually skim text. I weight photos more over text.

Web users are usually good at ignoring banner ads. If it looks too much like one then they'll zip right over it.

The best way to get a good idea of how effective a certain banner ad design can be is by going to different gaming sites and seeing which stands out. If you go to ign.com browse around on there and see how different banner ads impact you visually. Does it make you want to click through?

[simplymuzik3]

My app also got featured on iTunes last week. My sales increased a lot, and now it's the second week of being featured (now page 2). My sales have dropped to 1/5 of last week, but they are holding steady so far. Even though they dropped by 5 times, they are still higher than what my sales were before being featured. I will update you guys next week when my app will be on it's 3rd week in featured.

[designxtek]

My app also got featured on iTunes last week. My sales increased a lot, and now it's the second week of being featured (now page 2). My sales have dropped to 1/5 of last week, but they are holding steady so far. Even though they dropped by 5 times, they are still higher than what my sales were before being featured. I will update you guys next week when my app will be on it's 3rd week in featured.

Congrats on getting featured. In the new iTunes9 it is harder to see new games coming out and featured games. Since the app store menu is at the top and usually people just click once to get to where they need to go.

I was looking for your game in the featured section but it was only featured within the games section. I had to click and hold on the App Store tab and navigate down to games.

It is really annoying setup.

[simplymuzik3]

Congrats on getting featured. In the new iTunes9 it is harder to see new games coming out and featured games. Since the app store menu is at the top and usually people just click once to get to where they need to go.

I was looking for your game in the featured section but it was only featured within the games section. I had to click and hold on the App Store tab and navigate down to games.

It is really annoying setup.

Yeah, I know. I wish it was featured before iTunes 9 was released. I probably would have gotten a lot more exposure that way. Im not complaining though, I know how hard it is to get featured on iTunes in the first place!

[fwish]

Yeah, I know. I wish it was featured before iTunes 9 was released. I probably would have gotten a lot more exposure that way. Im not complaining though, I know how hard it is to get featured on iTunes in the first place!

my game was featured before itunes 9,but guess what, just 3 weeks,then itunes 9 came.then there was no such thing called "featured",so my sales drop from 50 to 2,one week later,apple got featured page back......

[EssentialParadox]

Hi,
Here's the current banner. I don't think it was the one I used on TA (I had to knock that banner up in under an hour as I was already paying for the advert).
http://nodpad.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/solitaireseige.png

Any advice / comments are always welcome.

I hope this is not against any forum rules. If it is, please take it down straight away.

Thanks,
Mike Moore.
Hi Mike. Thanks for letting us analyze your banner, and hopefully some other developers might find my suggestions useful for their own advertising too. In no way am I saying these are the be-all and end-all rules; feel free to pick and choose which advice you want to incorporate.

I definitely saw your banner before on here. Designxtek has already mentioned a lot of the things I would've said, but I'll try and expand a little more:

1) It's very full and busy. It's not like you haven't tried to get your money's worth, though! But it might be working against you. Most web users nowadays scan banner ads in fractions of a second, so you need to get them to look longer. Unconventionally, the best way to get visitors to stop and look is to make it as simple and clean as possible. That old adage still applies – Less is More.

2) You've tried to put some screenshots, but then overlaid a lot of text, which is never a good idea in banners. It works best to have one single feature; either one image or one single line of text, of just a few words. Having too much text and too many shapes in your banner ad, as you have, just overloads that fraction of a second the person looks at the banner and many are probably glossing over it.

3) You've made the game's title a prominent feature in the banner, with very large text and right in the middle. It may seem an obvious thing to do, but while it does give your game more brand recognition, showing them the name isn't enticing them to actually go and check it out. You don't actually need the title anywhere in your ad, and going with the, "less is more" approach, I would take it out.

4) Similar to the title, you've got the developer logo in there too. Generally it isn't going to do much unless you have a very established brand such as Gameloft or EA. But you can keep it there if you like, though I would make it about a third of its current size and put it right down in the corner.

5) You've got two quotes… they're pretty good quotes, but you should pick one of them. I'd lean more toward the, "Very creative twist on a classic solitaire game." as the other is a bit generic, and as sexist as it seems, 'AppGirl reviews' might be turning off some male customers from checking out the game, and I think that is your primary audience for this game.

6) I would recommend against screenshots unless you've got a really gorgeous-looking game. If you can get across the concept of the game without screenshots, that will make much more of a difference, because visitors will imagine the game in their head (and their imagination can live up to way more than anything we can show them in a screenshot) and they'll be curious to view how it looks and will hopefully interest more viewers to click through the banner. Piquing their interest with a little mystery is probably one of the most important tools to get them to stop and look at the banner a little longer.

7) It's a static ad. This might be a condition of adverts on TA but if it's not, animated banners can be very useful, and will stand out much more to viewers. It can be simple animation.

I'll give a couple of examples how I would redesign the banner taking in my points above…

[1] If you wanted to go the text route, you could, for example, ask a very simple question in the ad: "Solitaire? You've never seen it like this before…" against a completely black background. You could even add a small grenade leaning on the end of the sentence. If you wanted to add a little movement to the ad, I'd have the little grenade occasionally shaking, like it's close to bursting.

[2] This one is a bit more visual. Similar to above, a black background, but this time nothing but a small playing card, ace of diamonds … then a fighter jet could come along and drop a bomb on it making it explode. Then you could fade into the, "Solitaire? You've never seen it like this before…" text, or you could even fade into the quote I picked earlier. This would work well for syndication because you could expand to a series of ads, with tanks shooting the playing card, or a soldier, etc.


I can't be sure if these ideas would be appropriate for the game, you'll know better than me at that, but hopefully you've been inspired a bit. You don't need to take the ideas exactly. You could even go further and be really dramatic with a black banner with only a small grenade beside a playing card and nothing else but the App store logo.

Mike, what I would suggest to you, if you can, is to create one or two banners now and then put these on different sites, as well as your older banner on a third site, and see what gets the biggest view:click ratio. That will allow you to optimize your hits to perfection.

Anyway, I wish you the best of luck! And hopefully some others have found this useful to have started to see a contrast between what can sometimes make an ad stand out more from the crowd.

[Mike_011972]

Hi Guys,
Thanks for your comments. Very useful in deed, I knew it was a bit busy, but at the same time I wanted to get all the information in there, but I guess a bit of mystery may have done me more good for the clicks at least and I’ve taken your suggestions on board for the next adverts.
Right need to go look for an e-card Wedding Anniversary card for the wife ;)

Thanks again for your help and suggestions.
All the best,
Mike.

[designxtek]

Solitaire Siege has front page coverage on Touch Arcade. No Banner needed lol. :D

[Mike_011972]

Hello,
I know, I was amazed at that! I didn’t expect to get a review on Touch Arcade, but boy, it has really helped the game jump up the charts. It’s amazing how much power Touch Arcade seems to have.
I’ve also been told that I’m on the “What We’re Playing” on the US App Store, which I’ll check it out tonight as my Internet connection is going really slowly at the moment.
I really hope it keeps up for a while. To be honest, my wife wasn’t really that happy with me when I told her that I was giving the game away for free on our wedding anniversary until I explained that one of the main reasons for doing the game was to try to help us to be together and if it wasn’t going to happen, then I would sooner at least get a few people to try the game and enjoy it. I’m just hoping that I will at least break even on what I’ve paid out on everything to make the game (which has really dented my visa card =/ )
In the end, I think I’ve made a fun little game, it was never going to set the world on fire, but it is a game that you will keep coming back to, to play again for a while in short bursts and hopefully after today, and the sudden jump in downloads, other people will think the same.
It’s now just a case of getting other people to buy it so I can clear my visa cards off and have any hope of moving to Canada.

Thanks,
Mike Moore.
App Store Link: (http://bit.ly/sjdue)
Solitaire Siege Game Page (http://www.badbumble.com/Badbumble_Solitaire_Siege.html)
Follow me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/badbumble)

[designxtek]

I hope the front page coverage turns out well for you. It is a tough market and also a new type of market. I am very excited to see where this new era of mobile gaming will go.

[Mike_011972]

Thanks.
I'm amazed at how low the sales are when you don't get coverage from the big sites. I wasn't expecting much, but 0-4 sales a day! I was at least expecting 10-20 sales a day.
Solitaire Siege has really been a huge learning curve for me and I've actually altered what games I had planned on making / releasing next due to this experience.

I don't think there's any way you could release a high AAA game on the iPod / iPhone now simply due to the expected selling price. Just looking at some of the comments I've seen about Solitaire Siege about not knowing if they should download it while it's currently free just totally baffled me and I don't know how you get around that kind of thinking.

I've got a couple of games that I know will play really well, but may not sell that well, but should only take a couple of months to do and again I guess getting seen comes down to been featured on the big sites. So I may try me hand at a couple of really quick, funny little games and see how they do as the top sellers seem to be that style of game.

I really don't like marketing and trying to push my goods into peoples faces, I'm a pretty shy person, so marketing goes against the grain with me. Just another thing to learn I guess.

Sorry for rambling on there (it's getting late and I'm getting old:rolleyes:)

Thanks,
Mike Moore.
App Store Link: (http://bit.ly/sjdue)
Solitaire Siege Game Page (http://www.badbumble.com/Badbumble_Solitaire_Siege.html)
Follow me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/badbumble)

[designxtek]

Well marketing is part of it. No matter how good your product is no one will know about it unless you put your word out there.

Picture a boulevard full of shops with no windows. Thousands of people are walking up and down that street. You have the best shop in town. Your doors are closed. The guy across the street has his door open waving everyone in there. His shop isn't as great as yours but he has people walking in.

;)

But yeah with your game it is a niche market. I'm not really big on card games. I've had a handful of people requesting that I make a card game but it will only cater to a small number of people.

But you can't satisfy everyone out there.

[lynardo]

Thanks.
I'm amazed at how low the sales are when you don't get coverage from the big sites. I wasn't expecting much, but 0-4 sales a day! I was at least expecting 10-20 sales a day.
Solitaire Siege has really been a huge learning curve for me and I've actually altered what games I had planned on making / releasing next due to this experience.


It's a credibility / exposure thing. Users have plenty of apps to choose from, free and paid. Why pick yours (or mine) if they've never heard of you? That's the reason why I'm doing 0-1 sales/day :)

As soon as you're seen, it'll give people a reason to check you out.

[xenoclone]

I agree that it's definitely hard to get attention. Plus, you don't want to lose more money on ads than you make. I've been pretty conservative with Xeno Sola (http://www.cascadiagames.com/game_xenosola.html). I mean if you're only making $0.70 to $2.10 per game, the math is hard to justify an expensive ad campaign.

Let's say you pay $300 for 300,000 impressions. Click-thrus tend to be sub-1% even when the ad is well targeted, in my experience. At 1% click-thru that's 3,000 visitors (or 10 cents a click, which is actually cheap). The next thing you need to factor is how many of those are going to buy the game. At $0.70, you'll need 430 sales to profit; at $1.4 you need 215; at $2.10 you need 143. That means in an ideal scenario you're going to need at least 5% of visitors to by your game at $3 or 15% of visitors at $1. That would have to be one darn convincing web page!

Now one theory I tried was to put a game on sale (XS) and advertise in hopes that sales jump up enough to put the game in the top 100. For boardgames, I'm fairly sure this needs an average of at least 30 a day. Best sale day for me was 27 copies and I ended up falling short. The question stands: if I do a bigger campaign plus a sale, can I crack the top 100 again and see the boost?

[Mike_011972]

Well if it's of any use to any one, my sales for yesterday (the game was free for that day), it was downloaded about 5000 times +/- 100 or so. That's going from the daily iTunes report and it got to no#5 in the UK for the card game section and number 8 in the US (Card Game section again) and if I remember correctly I think the US downloaded it 3500+, followed by the UK 500+ and then it trails off with a couple of 100 here and there.

As of today, APPlyer is showing me at 36 in the UK and 93 in the USA for the Card game section. Now I don't know if it's because I stuck the price back to $1 again, it rest my position back to the bottom or there was just a sudden stop to people downloading the game when they saw it was no longer free, but in the morning when I checked, the game was down in the 200+ range (so I'm guessing the price change must rest the ranking of your game). Uno must making a small fortune =)

For me I think it was all down to getting a review on Touch Arcade (there were other sites which also mention what I was doing of course I thank them:D). After advertising on here, I've seen the amount of traffic the front page gets and your can just keep hitting the refresh button on your browser and it's constantly going up (the number of views on the page). If you can get a review or preview on here, it really stands you in good stead.

I'm hoping our other games we have planned may get more attention now, but I really don't know which way to go now. We have a couple of quick little games we could make and then we have a couple of 3-4 months games we want to do, but is it worth our time / can we afford to do the longer development games? The business part of this is much harder then making the games:(

Any way I hope this is of some use to you guys.

Thanks,
Mike Moore.
App Store Link: (http://bit.ly/sjdue)
Solitaire Siege Game Page (http://www.badbumble.com/Badbumble_Solitaire_Siege.html)
Follow me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/badbumble)

[designxtek]

Thanks for the info Mike. My first game was testing the market to see how things flow. I'm about half way through (guessing) on my second game. I'm going to try out some different things and see the results.

I would think the best way is to try out different things to see what kind of result you get and keep doing it.

You'll get a better metric for different combination of things you try.

After a lot of tries you'll get a better idea of what to do for the future game titles. Then again the App Store is still new and we are on a new frontier. :D

[dogmeat]

Not an indie developer here but I sure would like to hook up with one to create some games. I used to work in the biz as lead on a few mobile games ( back before the iphone came out ) and I have about 10 years experience with pixel art and computer aided illustration. I used to also flesh out game concept documents and work in marketing.

Anyway, if any devs out there are looking for someone who can pretty much do everything except for programming, feel me out, let me know what your idea is and where I could fit in. I'd love to work on something.

These days all I do is review games, I've been thinking I want to help devs market their games better with youtube "commercials", proper banner ads, etc..

We'll see ;)

[DGH94]

I'm not a dev, but boy do I want to be!!! I'm a Beta Tester, and I'm good at thinking of ideas for apps and updates. So if anybody needs ideas for free, or someone to Beta, just PM me. :D

[Mike_011972]

Have you guys tried looking at Game Salad? It might be worth a couple of nights of playing around with it and see if you take to it, and it doesn't cost anything (I think) so the only thing your going to lose is your own time. Even if it's only to get rough prototypes / ideas down to see if they are actually fun, it could be worth while and attract other people to your idea?
Right it's Friday night and I'm off to draw some grass for the new game! My life is exciting :rolleyes::p

Have a good weekend guys.

Thanks,
Mike Moore.
App Store Link: (http://bit.ly/sjdue)
Solitaire Siege Game Page (http://www.badbumble.com/Badbumble_Solitaire_Siege.html)
Follow me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/badbumble)

[designxtek]

LOL have fun with the grass making. I've been sleeping at 4am in the morning programming and building 3D assets. I'm trying to get my regular schedule back to normal.

I'm relying on iPhone games and web development from home to pay the bills. :D

[Mike_011972]

LOL have fun with the grass making. I've been sleeping at 4am in the morning programming and building 3D assets. I'm trying to get my regular schedule back to normal.

I'm relying on iPhone games and web development from home to pay the bills. :D

:eek:I'm glad I don't have to rely on the money coming from Solitaire Siege to live on or I would be out on the streets by now;)

I've got the next 3 days off, so I want to get enough of the gf/x done for a prototype for the next game while Isaac finishes off the update for Solitaire Siege. Biggest hassle for us is the engine (iTGB really sucks), but there's so many games ideas which will work in it as long as the memory leak can get sorted out and for all my other ideas I'm going to use Unity.

If I'm to stand any chance of moving to Canada I really need to be able to make a living from doing iPhone games and to make it worse my wife loses here job in a month. Life wouldn't be any fun if it was easy I guess :confused:

Can you e-mail or DM me when you get a chance please.

Thanks,
Mike Moore.
App Store Link: (http://bit.ly/sjdue)
Solitaire Siege Game Page (http://www.badbumble.com/Badbumble_Solitaire_Siege.html)
Follow me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/badbumble)

[lynardo]

Not an indie developer here but I sure would like to hook up with one to create some games. I used to work in the biz as lead on a few mobile games ( back before the iphone came out ) and I have about 10 years experience with pixel art and computer aided illustration. I used to also flesh out game concept documents and work in marketing.

Anyway, if any devs out there are looking for someone who can pretty much do everything except for programming, feel me out, let me know what your idea is and where I could fit in. I'd love to work on something.

These days all I do is review games, I've been thinking I want to help devs market their games better with youtube "commercials", proper banner ads, etc..

We'll see ;)

I'm a dev that wants an artistic buddy to work with :) Desperately so.

[made-up software]

Just thought I'd add some comments from my experience with my puzzle game Connected (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=318523038&mt=8).

I found that having reviews on the App Store as soon as possible after launch is crucial. In the UK, where I'm from, I got reviews early from friends which made a real difference. (I asked for honest reviews only of course, but friends are much more likely to take the time to actually leave a review, so I guess there is a little bias in there).

Anyway sales in the UK really took off and we eventually peaked at number 4 in board games, 12 in puzzles. In other countries where the reviews came in later they didn't have as much effect and we didn't do nearly as well anywhere else.

I think this is where some pre-release promotion on places like touch arcade can really help. Not so much to generate raw sales but to hopefully increase the chances of getting reviews up early. I think people really don't like buying an unreviewed app.

I'd also be interested in peoples opinions of what else makes a good first impression on the App store. If anyone fancies taking a look at my page and letting me know what they think .. Connected App Store Link (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=318523038&mt=8) it would be interesting to know what people thought.

Apple don't give you any stats about how many people visit your app store page so it's really hard to know if your description / images are doing a good job of selling your app.

[Real Racing Fan]

I'm a dev that wants an artistic buddy to work with :) Desperately so.

But your app IS artistic!

[EssentialParadox]

It’s now just a case of getting other people to buy it so I can clear my visa cards off and have any hope of moving to Canada.

Thanks,
Mike Moore.

I should've known :rolleyes:

[Mike_011972]

I should've known :rolleyes:

Yeah, it sucks. Been married for just over two years now (wife lives in Canada) and only been together for 5 weeks out of all that time and then I spent a week of that time in hospital followed by having to go back into hospital every 8 hours for injections for the next two weeks. Trust me this kind of long distance relationship sucks big time :(

Bought all my development kit (hardware, engines, software upgrade, iPod and iPhone, web advertising) on visa card and trust me this all adds up to well over $6,000 and I think I've made about $250 back so far and Solitaire Siege is the top 50 of the card game section in most places (top 25 in a few places). Keep in mind that what ever is made is also split between the team as well. Also keep in mind that I only ever pay the minimum off my Visa each time (yeah, I know I'm an idiot) so I'll be paying this off for a long time unless I get a lump sum in from the iPhone games.

Just because you hear stories of games making $100,000's, the vast majority won't break even, it's not possible simply due to the huge amount of apps that get released and the low prices of games.

So the next time you hear people complain about a game been $2-$3 to buy, just think about how much they had to spend to make that game in the first place (not to mention all the time involved).;)

The thing is, after reading all the above, you get such a good buzz knowing that people from all over the world are actually playing your game. IS it worth $6000, probably not :D but if money is your only concern when making a game, your never going to make a fun game, you have to do it because you have fun doing it.

Sorry for the rant, on a bit of a sugar rush at the moment ;)

Thanks,
Mike Moore.
App Store Link: (http://bit.ly/sjdue)
Solitaire Siege Game Page (http://www.badbumble.com/Badbumble_Solitaire_Siege.html)
Follow me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/badbumble)

[pharmx]

Hey Mike, I don't think you got his joke. Google your name ;)

[Mike_011972]

Hey Mike, I don't think you got his joke. Google your name ;)

DUH!!!!:o
To be honest, I thought it was from an old mate I use to work with (I was talking to last night) who always took the mickey out of me about me hammering my visa, buying crap that I didn’t need. It was actually just a bit of banter aimed at him. Sorry if you are not Chris :o, I wasn’t having a go at you, it was aimed at a mate. No hard feels??

Thanks,

[designxtek]

Hey Mike, I don't think you got his joke. Google your name ;)

haha that one totally slipped past me

[EssentialParadox]

Hey Mike, if you think a bit differently about your $6k as more of a long-term investment it might make it easier to swallow. You don't need to claim back all that $6k on your first app, because you now won't need to make any further major investments into future titles, you can just whack them out and hopefully get that $6k over time, and hopefully after one of your apps becomes a hit!

[Mike_011972]

To be honest, the way I'm looking at it is that I would of gone out to the pub a lot more if I wasn't doing this, which would of cost me a fair bit any way (and destroyed what little is left of my brain), so at least I've got something to show from it and when all is said and done, I've really enjoyed it, even when I've been stuck and couldn't get things to work. The end results where worth it I think :)
Thanks,
Mike.

[GlennX]

I would say I'm an Indie developer even though I've been working in games for 22 years. I've been focused on this project for almost a year and the work is 90%+ mine. I'm going to be releasing it under my own name. Most of that other 10% was done by my own kids (aged 12 and 14) who provided some of the levels, graphics and testing. Maybe I've taken a crazy risk but it's been a long time since I've been able to work on a game that's truly mine and it's been a lot of hard work but also a lot of fun.

It's been very exciting to be handling all sides of the game again after all those years on teams. I have learned a lot from people I've met online.

for anyone interested, there's a thread on this site about my project: Ground Effect Thread (http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=12713)

Coming very soon: -=< Ground Effect >=- (http://www.glenncorpes.com) -=<Twitter>= (http://twitter.com/GC_GroundEffect)

[Mike_011972]

HI Glenn,
Your game looks good mate from the video. Seems like you have the control system and speed sorted out already. I hope you are going to add a couple of particle effects for the dust clouds and water spray for when you get near to the ground.
I'm sure it will do well for you. I'll be buying it at least.

Cheers,
Mike.

[GlennX]

Thanks Mike.
That video is very old. There are particles for the trails and sparks when the craft hits the landscape. I wasn't going to take them much further because they are always off the screen in a few frames but since I added the replay cameras, I'm seriously thinking adding more. Feature creep...


Coming very soon: -=< Ground Effect >=- (http://www.glenncorpes.com) -=<Twitter>= (http://twitter.com/GC_GroundEffect)

[designxtek]

I just checked out the video. Looks pretty good. I like that long jump in the video.

Feature creep happens. Games aren't really good if you planned everything in the beginning and stick with it to the letter from beginning to end. Most of the creativity happens during the process. I always welcome feature creep if it's worth it ;)

[pharmx]

I just checked out the video. Looks pretty good. I like that long jump in the video.

Feature creep happens. Games aren't really good if you planned everything in the beginning and stick with it to the letter from beginning to end. Most of the creativity happens during the process. I always welcome feature creep if it's worth it ;)

Ha! Feature creep is great if you can afford it....time is money after all! ;)