Does anyone have any good ideas to market a game? Other than the obvious ones always put out there i.e. facebook/twitter, contacting review sites, youtube etc... My game Word Warfare has been out for about a week now and to say the least the amount of downloads I have had are ridiculously low for what I was hoping. So far the downloads have been like so: Day 1: 43 Day 2: 47 Day 3: 36 Day 4: 21 Day 5: 20 Day 6: 19 Day 7: 17 Day 8: 7 The game is free and I have gotten positive feedback from the players I have talked to on it. I really don't have much of a marketing budget so paid ad campaigns really aren't going to happen. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Hey, first of all, I would put Screenshot 4 in first place. To me it looks the most interesting. Other than that, did you do any research on your keywords? If not that really helped my downloads. Any gameplay videos?
You need to fix your game graphics. I think there are 97,502 different fonts in view on those screenies, but I'll admit that's a slight exaggeration. Looking at it, it won't cost much at all to give it a makeover. The icon is great, as is the victory screen, but the game itself looks tame. Well, the icon is great in that it's nicely drawn. But it doesn't say "word game" at all. This stuff is important.
Your downloads do seem low, I did notice that the game is only iOS 6. I know a lot of iPod touch users have stayed with iOS 5 as they say it seems quicker. There is a small chance that may effect things. I don't know if this will be easy to change for you if your using iOS 6 features for multiplayer but if it's an easy change it might be worth it. The second thing is that the download size is 59 mb if you could squease it down to under 50 you may get a slight boost from impulse downloads on 3G networks as it would be below the limit. Some people have said this is a big factor although when we updated with a below 50mb version it was not a great diffence but I think it helped. Is there a YouTube trailer for this game, I could not see one on your website
Hey Brandon, I'm pretty much in the same boat as you with my app. It took me over a year to finish the app and I spent alot of time on it. Although its only been out for 4 days, I see a huge decrease in downloads. Yesterday, I made only $1 I do plan on spending money on marketing soon and I have a couple of websites that will review my game next week so I'm hoping all goes well. The problem with my game is that its 375MB which is pretty large but these days, alot of games are larger than 50MB. Your type of game should definitely be lower than 50MB. That way, smartphone users can download the app anywhere without connecting to wifi.
I'm happy to help promote your games at very reasonable rates too. I have a great site and high traffic on Youtube come visit me
What's your budget? Do you want to buy players? Have you tried any of cross promotion methods? Maybe check this, however you need be more specific with your options, especially how much you can spent.
Brandon, check out PRninja - it's a free-to-download PR and Marketing guide for game developers. I hope you will find some useful ideas there.
It's impossible to say why your downloads have been so low, but that icon is definitely not helping. It looks like an icon for a shootemup or thrid person action game or something. So you're basically turning off anyone who is actually looking for a word game and anyone who is looking for an action game. No one is going to be pleasantly surprised that it's a hybrid. Why not mix up the genres in the icon in the same way you're doing it in the game? for example the bombs seem to be very prominent in your game so maybe a ticking time bomb with letter tiles on it that spell "WORD WARFARE" would work? Or something along those lines. Good luck!
I agree with this a lot. Your game icon but looking awesome does not at all match the product. This could result in a lot of looks with no downloads. I really wish we could find out page views v downloads for something like this (so you know if people are looking and just not downloading, or if people not looking at all).
Hi all! Appstore is a very competitive place indeed! One of the way how to get new users cheap is to use App Discovery Service focusing on a single day boost. Such a burst catapults your game high enough in charts to receive organic traffic. And that's exactly why we created such a service called AppDown. Please check https://appdown.me/front/developers We currently offer the service completely free of charge (but hurry up - only limited amount of spots!) So don't hesitate to contact me!
Just posted this in another thread but it seems relevant to you as well. Check out the Big List of Youtubers. I know you mentioned Youtube as one of your existing marketing channels, but hopefully this supplements your marketing efforts a bit!
I have found that explaining how to play the game in the screen shots helps a lot. I think people follow a very simple process when choosing games. 1. Icon looks good, click 2. Screen shots look good, can see what it is. Download. So really the communication with the users is 200% icon, 80% screen shots, 1% description. So all my future games I try to make the icon and screens shots communicate what the game is and how to play it. For example, my latest game: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/trim-the-fat/id719287254?ls=1&mt=8
Hi Brandon! Would it be within reason for you to revisit the way your game is skinned? It's a tough call sometimes on whether or not to recommend someone rethink their game's look once it's already so far along, but in this case it might be worthwhile to reach out to an experienced graphic artist for a revamp. The details of the user interface are just as important as the flashy event graphics, if not more so in a game like this. Good hunting my friend!
Since you do have a following and the game is free, why not try to get your existing players to help you spread the word. To be more precise, instead of asking for money for certain powerups, ask for shares, reviews, invites. Having a larger player base, even if not a paying one can also lead to the possibility of doing cross promotion. Hope it helps
I just ran this by my designer and he thinks there is no UI/UX that would really please a user. (SORRY for being honest). Think of draw something and this might help. But this is my suggestion.
We just launched Games TV (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/games-tv/id741293775?mt=8) to promote all iOS games (we offer a free plan with no guarantee of volume). More info in this thread http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=210588