After building quite a few games and putting them on the app store there are a bunch of lessons I have learned. These apply to the store as it currently stands. 1. Spend no more than two days max developing any game or entertainment app. If it takes more than two days you are likely spending way more than you will ever make. 2. Game play, the game has to be coded so that a 3 yr old can beat the first two levels if not you will get beat up in reviews. 3. Accelerometer controls are great but you will get beat up for implementing them because the vast majority of users cannot figure it out. 4. 3d games are cool but the device does not have enough juice to run complicated scenes and you will get beat up for not having 50K poly high resolution graphics. 5. Farts and Pee and other bodily functions pay anything else good luck with it. 6. Ignore the review system there are a ton of malicious idiots that think they are going to get a clone of "WOW" for 99 cents. The people that do like your game will not review it. 7. Promo codes you might get 1 or two reviews max for every 50 you give out. 8. Paying customers give better reviews, make it free and you get beat up. I have no idea why this is but it is a fact. 9 Lite versions have no impact on sales any longer in fact we have found that they only hurt sales. 10 If you make the code easy to port to another platform it is a good idea because you can probably make more money with ad supported games. Be prepared to make less money than you would if you where begging on the street corner. Like a idiot I will keep developing for the platform in hopes that someday apple will fix the store. The way it works now is completely broken and encourages junk apps. Any more things to add to this list?
Everything you have said we have found is false... In the end it comes down to 1)making good games and 2)luck
Felt kinda bad, d/l teeter now, if I like it I'll buy your other game and review both. In the end it's bad luck sometimes
Actually some of your review stats support at least some of my points. Bounce on for instance how many 1 star reviews? I have played it great game also by the way, anyone rating it a 1 star needs to be hit up along side the head.
I also think a successful game/app also comes down to building a good brand. If you consistently put out good games, build good partnerships and play the branding game well (consistent messaging, great logo, visibility) you will be more inclined to win. Making iPhone apps/games is like any other business. People want to spend their money on something reliable and you may have the best game in the world, but if the consumer doesn't trust you they won't buy it (generally). The tricky part is building brand awareness takes time, consistency and talent. When us developers are not making a dime its tough, but on the bright side, investors do understand this component of building a company and they are willing to listen to the right pitch.
I would like to agree with you but searching through stuff 1000 and less in rankings I see some really great stuff down there that will never see the light of day.
Actually the problem is with Apple.. it automatically rates a game 1 star when you delete a game.. alot of people leave reviews saying they like the game and then rate it 1 star.. It should automatically be 3 stars if anything at all. Of course people that delete a game won't like it as much as people that keep it on their iPhone/iPod.
There's no way you can make a decent app in two days. (Well, maybe a ~2% chance.) The best you can hope for with this is to be a DSEffects, who I assume are profitable because they still exist. Maybe that's just the way things are if you want the best chance of making money.. Isn't this is what killed videogames before the NES, tho? Developers spammed cheap '99c' games, no one noticed there was any good games anymore among all the crap, industry crashed.
I disagree. Take the time to do it right. I spent around four months making my first game, and made six figures and counting. Or provide excellent instructions, that they are forced to read during the first launch. See #2. I don't make 3D games, but I've seen enough to know it's plenty capable. They're fads. Fads die quickly. Real apps win in the end. I disagree completely. I disagree completely. Absolutely agree. Kids get the free stuff, and review accordingly. Disagree completely. My Lite versions bring in tons of sales. Ad supported games revenue fades quickly, according to studies. Don't make two day apps. Spend time on them, and make them little things of beauty. If you hit upon something good, people will buy it. But you must also market yourself, as nothing will just sell because it's there anymore.
^Little White Bear Studios makes some good points here, I think the OP is frustrated because he expects to be able to make a whole bunch of money off the app store without putting in any effort. Put the effort in (in making the game, marketing it, and keeping the people who buy it/will buy it happy with things like good updates, etc.) and add in a dash of luck and you will be rewarded. Spend 2 days on an app that conforms to the stereotypes of the app store and really has nothing new to offer and you shouldn't be supprised when you get crappy sales.
Accelerometer controls are mostly a gimmick. They're not hard to understand. But most of the time, they're just annoying to use and, frankly, look a bit silly to use out in public. Scoops, Sky Burger and Doodle Jump etc. work because they are implemented in a straight forward way. As in, the point of the game relies on the accelerometer. Do I need accelerometer controls for a mini golf game? No! A good rule of thumb might be to ask yourself, "does this game benefit from accelerometer based controls?". I find that, most often, the answer is no. Just because you CAN do it, doesn't mean you always should. Sorry, I just had to comment on this because unnecessary and exclusive accelerometer based controls are a pet peeve of mine in the App Store. Anyway, LWBS addressed everything else pretty well. For the record, I enjoyed Teeter Blox and I'm sorry the reviews have been poor. I absolutely hate how making games free nearly ALWAYS destroys a game's average star rating.
I'm quit new to the iPhone development but I have a lot of experience in other markets. For me SSJGohan3972 posting sounds a little bit frustrated because the app is not going well...for whatever reason. I'm currrently developing my first iPhone game, spent already 2 month and x.xxx$ and will spent for sure another month or two and some more bucks. I will do anything to supply a high quality app, which means I will outsource all the stuff that I cant do at all or not in the quality I have in mind. For sure this costs money, sometimes a lot, but thats a business, right? I dont think it is possible to create an entertaining game in 2 days or even in a week with all the polish it needs, great graphics, music and sound effects, youtube videos, press material and so on. In other words: do the best you can (it takes as long as it takes) and outsource all the work you are not qualified in. Just my opinion.
I spent about a 3 months on my first 2 games, [app]Upsi Runner[/app] and [app]Upsi Looper[/app], and about 2 months total on [app]GumDrops[/app] and [app]Billionaire[/app]. I get about $3 combined sales a day, and after 5 months of selling on the store, I have yet to receive my first paycheck from Apple. During that time, I've giving out hundreds of promo codes, run contests, tried to drum up interest in the forums, send promo codes for review to about 30 sites, done interviews for web sites, all to get sales to where they are today. Of course it is possible to have a success story, but with so many games coming out every day, most games get lost in the mix. I am now working with a company that is going to be able to do some serious marketing of the games we make from now on, and hopefully that will have more success. If you can't market the heck out of your games, then realize that you are just playing the lottery. You might make a lot of money, but more likely you will get nothing or very little back for the hard work you put in. At least if you only spend 2 days making a game, you will find out if it is a winner or a loser much faster, and be able to react accordingly.
The Importance of Updating the Availability Date I think there's enough evidence accumulated now to safely say that the App Store is not a meritocracy. So assuming your app has sales potential, regardless of whether you spent 2 days or 2 months on it, its success hinges on visibility. And for most apps, the greatest visibility the app will ever have is when it is released or updated. It's extremely important to remember to adjust your availability date as soon as the update is approved. We hadn't been doing this for our games Bang and BangLite until we saw a thread here on the subject. The next time we updated we followed the advice and saw a 20x increase in downloads over the last update.
Congrats! - TanZen is an excellent example of how to make money in the App Store. If I remember correctly, you were the first tangrams app. Being the first quality app in a space never hurts. We put a built-in tutorial into ColorTouch, yet our sister app ColorTilt (without tutorial) is still more popular. However, agreed that few will read the instructions unless forced to do so. An intuitive interface will help to avoid negative reviews. Let's all hope so. I sometimes wake up to nightmares where every app in the top-100 of every category is a 'fad' app. On the flip side, fad app development is the ultimate lottery ticket play - spend a few days on an idea and make 6 figures. As long as this is possible, there will be fad apps on the app store. The lower the price, the higher the sales and the higher percentage of impulse purchasing. The higher percentage of impulse purchases, the higher percentage of dissatisfied customers. The net result is lower prices result in lower ratings - all other things being equal. I would say it depends on the app whether a free lite version will make difference. For a $4.99+ app of excellent quality, a free lite version that doesn't completely satisfy the customer will probably help sales. Otherwise, results may be mixed. Agree. Unless your active user base is going to be steadily growing over time (e.g. with a social networking app), then charging for the app up front is likely better. I would be interested to hear anyone's first hand experience in this area. So true! Having 3 of 500 apps when the store opened virtually assured success. Now, success is much harder to come by. Unless you have a big marketing budget, a brand name app, or an army of friendly bloggers, then you must make it onto one of the top-100 lists for at least one category/sub-category. You must adjust your release date (as mentioned) upon release/update to have a reasonable chance of getting into the top 100. And, of course, you should have a nice icon, description, set of screenshots, YouTube demo, and website. Finally, if your app is ultimately rejected by the market - which you will know because of poor sales and few positive reviews, you must listen and adjust accordingly (which may mean moving on to a different app).
I'm having a hard time with this statement. I spent 8 months on the first version of Anomaly that hit the app store. We had a nicely crafted letter we sent out with promo codes, a trailer and two gameplay video's on youtube (granted those could be higher quality), a nice web site, good screenies and within hours we were literally buried on the app store. With 30 some promo codes sent out to various review sites - only about 10 were used (so far ~ 2 weeks). It seems to me that all "unknowns" like us are going to face this problem. You will get buried without being given a fair shot - not because your game isn't any good but because soooo many other "independantly made" games aren't any good. For me... I'm looking into marketing options but my next game will definately be shopped around to various publishers (who seem to be able to get the front pages/headlines at will)
The same thing happened with our first game, Serpents. I feel your pain. Games are a tough category to play in. Hopefully, you learned a lot developing Anomaly. Use that knowledge to create Anomaly 2, or something completely different. Also, don't give up on Anomaly yet. Release an update. Drop the price. Consider a free version. If not too difficult, address any user concerns (like adding landscape mode). Be wary of spending too much time on it. You need to focus on your next big thing, which should be a 3.0-feature enabled app that is available the day 3.0 is.
Thanks! Yes, TanZen was the first tangram app, followed closely by another one about a week later. Yeah, with TanZen, I gave the option to watch the tutorial on first launch, and I got tons of email from people who obviously never watched it, even though there was even a tutorial button right next to the email button in the game. I think I've answered how to move/rotate/flip/get hints about 3,000 times in the last ten months. With Zentomino, I don't give them the option. They have to view the rules page on first launch. My email has been significantly lighter for that game. I just can't bring myself to making one. Maybe when I'm starving for cash. I think the age of the consumer plays into it as well. The maturity level of my tech support emails and reviews for my Lite version are significantly lower than my paid version. I get a lot of random cursing emails in the Lite. Agreed. The trick is to get them hooked, and then provide an easy path to get the paid version. Of course it will fail miserably if the app sucks in the first place. Exactly. I believe TanZen was 1 of 700. Whole different world now. It takes consistent work to make money now.
