Hello everyone. Some of you on this forum know about our arcade puzzle game "DownToZero", which has been available for over a month now in the App Store. We've been disappointed with the sales for the game, so we've decided to do a little experiment. Looking at the sales graph for the game you can see that we get a spike in sales every time we release an update to the game. This is because we get a short window where the game shows up on the "Release Date" lists when browsing the App Store on the iPhone / iPod Touch. looking at this, it's our conclusion that most people buying stuff on the App Store are using their device to browse the App Store, and finding apps and games that are in the lists there (Featured, Top Paid / Free / Release Date, Top 25). Since reviews have been very positive for DownToZero, we also think that most people are not clicking through to see the App Description page for DTZ, even if they see it in the list. Which leads us to the conclusion that the Name and Icon for our game are not grabbing people's attention -- they're skipping right over it. The Experiment We're going to change only 2 things: the game Name, and Icon, and submit a new update to the App Store, and compare the spike to the previous ones, to see just how important an app Name and Icon are to getting sales. We'd like everyone's help in choosing a new name for the game that is more likely to grab people's attention, and also communicate something about the game at the same time, enticing them to click onto the description page to learn more. Here are the ideas that we have so far, let us know your favorites, or if you have even better ideas! Zero Sum Flash Drop Drop Down Touch Down Smarter than Numbers Flash Math Drop Factor Countdown Count it Down Hikizan Hayabiki Drop Drop Reflex
# Flash Drop # Drop Down # Touch Down Nothing to do with math or numbers in the game name. I'm sure people (most) are not interested in a math game or having to think/count while determining if they will go into the app description or not. I know people who simply skip over things like this because they don't want to give it a chance based on their "fear" of numbers stuff outside of school kind of thing. And yes icon is a big seller point. Need a very interesting icon to get attention. Anything I download onto my girlfriends ipod is deleted within 5 seconds based on what the icon looks like. Very annoying. But true.
zero sum or sum of zero but def change your icon turned me off but i bought it because i knew it was good
hmm, i haven't heard of your game before and if i wasn't someone to check out many many games/descriptions, i'd probably have flipped over your game, because i think that the icon is not really anything that stands out. I personally think that the name is not too bad, but as Zincous said, don't take a new name that would lead people to think it's a pure math game. Surely there is math involved here, but it is not like a learning game or something and that is what would keep people away from the game imo... I don't know what apple allows in the namefield, but what about a really short name like "v20"? last of all, good luck from me too.
Thanks for the input so far. We had another idea for a name this morning: "Equilibrium" any one else have thoughts?
This is a tough one. Usually I like an icon to represent the art style used in the game. Yours definitely does that, but while it looks nice and retro in the game it doesn't make for the most amazing icon. The other problem is numbers, as someone said... math games can turn a lot of people off, especially the kids, even though the game itself might be quite fun. The best solution would probably be to either use your new name in the icon, make it look bright and flashy and just accept that it doesn't represent the art style very well (at least it's eye-catching, right?)... ...or, to create a new splash screen/title screen for the game that includes some pretty graphic and use part of that as the logo. A decent example might be something like Prism, their title screen looks like this: ...and they have that graphic on the "I" in Prism as their icon (it actually looks pretty crappy on the store at the moment cause they've plastered their version number over it, but on the iDevice itself it looks great).
Regarding the names, I like Zero Sum and Drop Factor... on the basis that "Zero" and "Factor" are cool words. How about Zero Factor? Bit of a play on words when you consider what it actually means, but it sounds good!
I look everyday the new games in the App Store list with my iPhone. When an icon is interesting or beautiful, I always look at the game page. In second, I look the ratings and watch the 4-5 stars. So with your icon, if there is an update, I won't look at your game (sorry) except if the ratings are amazing. Icons are as screenshots : if they are boring or if they "shot eyes", you don't want to try the game. For the name, I never choose a game because of it But if you change it, think about that there is an alphabetical order in the New Games page so a game with a name in "A" to "C" is in the first 25 new games, others are in the next pages. So "Zero Sum" is really a BAD idea
On the other hand, it's only in the New Games section for a while... a catchy name should last forever.
Yes, of course, but it's for the experiment too (and the spikes are with the updates, so with the New Games section) Anyway, this experiment is a great (and very interesting) idea, as we don't know well why a game has good sells or not. I hope to see the results after the release
My favs are: Drop Factor - although this doesn't really fit with the game's actual play Countdown - I really like this, it is what the game is about ...or how about "Sub-Zero" since your subtracting down to zero??? ...yes, I think your logo needs some sprucing up, it's like a mini commercial for your app...when I browse appshopper for new releases, I will often click on a new app just because it's got an interesting logo, then i will read the text to see what it's about
Icon is very important. I hate the ones with the black backgrounds so it blends with your idevice. But I love Star Hogs lol
This is unfortunate but true. Apple approves things in larger and larger batches and sorts them alphabetically The second half of the alphabet is pretty much buried immediately, especially if you're unlucky and some a-hole app spammer gets a dozen approvals at the same time. I played around with the icon and name of my novelty app Flux for a bit. It was released mainly to experiment with pricing/naming and I found that a more descriptive name definitely makes a difference. I now call it "Flux (Liquid Fire)" in the store but it still installs as plain "Flux" on the device. I suspect this isn't as important in the games sections as things are categorized much better from the get-go, but the app name is also considered for searches, so a couple extra keywords doesn't hurt.
That's a good point about the alphabetical listing in the New Release section. It also depends on what time of day you get the approval email from apple. If you get approved in the evening, your app can get pushed down by other apps that are approved the next morning pretty quickly... The timing of when the list of apps refreshes also comes into play. I think for the experiment we should try to pick a name in the first few letters of the alphabet (to maximize the possible time on the first 2 pages of new games), and possibly add a descriptor to the game's title (on the store only) as well, as mentioned by Frank above. Perhaps something like "Countdown - Quick Reflex Puzzle" or something? We will narrow down the potential titles in the next day or so, and then create a bunch of icon mock-ups that we can all look at and decide which might work the best. If the icon looks drastically different than the in-game graphics, we can also consider re-skinning the game to match. Luckily the simple game design means that re-skinning the graphics is not a ton of work.
If you have the descriptor before the name, then you can choose any name you like as long as the descriptor is an early letter. Then the game will still have your chosen name on people's phones. It probably doesn't even matter much what you write... if you put "Amazing Zero Sum" or something then just tell people it's Zero Sum for short.
Here are some quick first ideas at new icons. All of these icons would not require any change to the in-game graphics-- they are all supposed to communicate the "retro game" feel, while hopefully being more compelling than the current logo. Please keep in mind that these are just quick mock-ups, so we could improve on the design if we like any of them. Currently we're leaning towards the following names: Countdown Drop Factor ICON IDEAS: "Countdown" -- icon theme "timer" (this is probably the worst of the group) "Countdown" -- icon theme "pixel art" "Drop Factor" -- icon theme "dropping block" Not sure if any of these are significantly better than the current icon... any suggestions/ comments?
