Hi, I wonder if anybody could possibly give me some advice. I have just released a comedy game, Mister Smith And His Adventures, which features stories with decisions to be made along the way. I wrote the app as I'm a wannabe comedy writer in the UK (a few meetings with producers, and one pitch for BBC radio, but no champagne moment as of yet) and I want people to read my comedy, and hopefully kickstart that potential comedy career. The game is a labour of love, although money would be great, as I would like to fund a self-made comedy movie. I only dabbled with coding as a kid and app creation is new to me (I wrote a test percentage calculator last year to test if I could code) so, in an effort to do everything to the best of my abilities, I have left marketing until now. I know, pretty stupid, but I wanted to concentrate on doing things well and I have no design/development experience, and it's all my own work so far. So, again, my comedy won't have an audience if I don't get the word out I wonder if anybody could possibly give me any pointers, possible things I am doing right and what I am doing wrong. I could do with all the help that I could get. I have started to email websites today, and I am trying to tell my story as well as promote the app. The iTunes link is https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mister-smith-his-adventures/id934443002?ls=1&mt=8 All the best, Steven www.iammistersmith.com
Well no marketing + paid + text only = low reach and low sales. If you want to get exposure you need to set it free.
Details like the way you change the capitalization scheme in the text bubbles of your screenshots immediately turn me off. It's a small thing, but when I see that I wonder how many more small things will I run into in the app.
So basically the marketing cycle for an mobile game has 4 basic stages, these are my own labels, and there might be more to add. So anyone else feel free to chip in: The stages are: Exposure -> Conversion -> Play -> Share 1. Exposure - how are people going to actually see your game, and know it even exists. This one is the one most new developers totally forget about. They put their game on the app store and then just expect it to sell. But if you created a website, and put it on the internet, how is anyone going to ever find it? The main ways apps get knows is: featured by apple; through the top 100 charts; searched for in the app store; paid advertising; or external forces like reviews, social media, or friends sharing it with you. The first two in this list you cannot really control, unless you are a big developer. Advertising is very expensive, so hard. Which basically means, the only ways the new guy gets seen is search, reviews or their twitter account. Unless you have a very large twitter following, this doesn't help much (but I would encourage you to try and grow a twitter following using every game you release). Reviews are actually not very effective, unless its a big site, and the app really stands out, but again their is so many high quality games coming out that its very hard to get a review unless you have something really special. Basically, you are just left with search. And so the name of your app becomes more important than what it actually does. So if you call your game "A funny game with lots of comedy" you will probably get more downloads than "Mister Smith And His Adventures" simply because there are probably people who are searching for "a funny game" or "comedy game". 2. Conversion - So this is all about how your game looks in the app store. It has to draw people in and actually make them want your game. This is really important for a paid game. In your case I think you have taken the wrong direction. Your game is a story game with a lot of text. You should have started to tell the story in the screen shots and description. Give people an actual taste for the game, and then if they are hooked on the story they can pay to continue. If you watch trailers for games its all about drawing you into the game world, and then demonstrating the features as they do it. 3. Play - goes without saying your game has to be good. Especially if you want the share stage to happen. Also I am pretty sure that google and apple use the frequency a game is played to help search rankings. 4. Share - so if it is a good game, people what to share it with their friends. The easier you make it for them to do this, the more likely it is that they will. So you can put things in the actual game to help share it. But not just that, its also about the name, is it easy to remember, and if they search for it does it come up first. Some games the game play actually improves when shared with friends, not just like share and get some coins, but like say words with friends, or draw something. These had the sharing aspect actually tied into the game, which causes them to grow really fast. I would also add, that developers need some way of remaining connected to their existing players. Such as a twitter account, then you reward people in your game for following you on twitter, or cross promotion popups in your game. This allows you to grow, making each existing game help your next new game.
Thanks for the feedback @Destined I certainly don't disagree but, not trying to go all Taylor Swift, I have to put a value on my writing @Blackharon Thanks for noticing that. I can't tell you how many times I checked the app with my other half. The screenshots, well that's a different matter ... @OnlyJoe Super! Will start my twitter campaign to get things started.
Doesn't mean you don't value it or shouldn't find ways to monetise it (IAP or ads) but I personally think that even with advertising based on the app + screenshots you would be lucky to even make a handful of downloads.
If you want to get some info to advertise on Google and what are the results. I am doing a toe test with one of my games. The forum link is http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=248890
1: Sorry, Agent Smith (I do hope you get the playful Matrix reference because to me you are a digital man that lives in my phone), I believe Destined and the others are correct. It is important to value one's writing and themselves, but I also believe it's important to lower the threshold to getting people into the theater before the act begins. It's like proving yourself to others before you can start charging admission.
2: Sometimes you have to push out a lot of good free stuff before people will start to see you as something they want to support.
3: AND unfortunately your app is one among a sea of millions, many of which are free and require far less brain power and have things like boobs and giant robots to attract people (your "game" also falls within the realm of printed words which means your audience is unfortunately also very likely to be finding tomes and reams of free things on Kindle, Nook, and iBooks, also full of people who try to lure other people in with free "penny dreadfuls" before closing the noose and demanding they pay or go they rest of your life without buying the other two parts of the trilogy and ever knowing if the butler did it or if it was indeed Wendy, the only woman the protagonist so far has seemed to have any meaningful contact with since Prisillica died in that tragic gasoline fight accident, and if being a ugly-faced but beautifully limbed hand model will ever work out for him or if he'll have to go back to being a replacement mannequin at the clothing factory, which for the purpose of this narrative only makes mittens... ugly mittens... But mother and father were always right, weren't they? You'll never make it in the real world, you should have placed your hands into the pyre and murdered those beautiful metacarpals in their crib before they drag you further into the depths of madness.
5: Does anyone know where he could look for info on,or how he could go about, adding in-app purchases for future stories or ad removal or a donation button (sadly, ads are, I believe, how most people make money in this app game (see also newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations),anyways, again, you have the potential to hit a lot of people who add up and eventually, viola, a whole dollar richer (well hopefully more but if that doesn't pay out you'll still be getting more exposure than being behind a $2 paywall, and it'll all be more fodder for a stand-up bit, or even just a thing people can enjoy after the show). - that's my 2 cents, best of luck!
Sorry, for some reason, I couldn't put the entire multi-paragraphed comment into one (in fact I've had to leave one paragraph out because it kept giving me an "SQL injection error" and now I've lost the paragraph completely due to an iPhone being a very poor choice for text editing and not having an undo command or button!) Sorry for the inconvenience...
