Hey Guys, This is Ryan with Unique Apps. We're actually getting ready to release our first iPhone game, and I wanted to know if any other developers on this forum are using Canada as a test market before going live internationally. I know ngmoco is doing this with We Rule, but wanted to know if any others are doing testing in other markets. If so ... what are your thoughts? Thanks for the help, Ryan
Ooops ... sorry for posting in the wrong category. I'm new to this forum, but plan on contributing a lot. Sorry for posting in the wrong section ... ;-) Thanks, Ryan
well, the only reason ngmcoc are doing beta in canada is because that's where they're based. that's it. no other reason.
No, they're based in San Francisco. After hearing some of their talks at GDC, they do it because: 1) It's an (mostly) English speaking country 2) It represents about 5% of the global app market 3) Canadian taste in apps is very similar to US tastes so it makes a good surrogate.
Yeah ... I was at GDC as well, and I've never thought of using Canada as a test market. Just didn't know if any other devs were doing it.
It seems like a great place to do a test market for the reasons stated already, I wonder though: What exactly are they testing/reacting to? Is it just to basically find any bugs or things people hate and then fix them before the US release? I guess that must be it. I'm used to test markets being more for marketing... you see how a certain marketing strategy works before shelling out big money to use it all over, that sort of thing. Doesn't seem that applicable in the case of an app like this. So it's just bugs you'd be looking to fix and maybe some gameplay issues , etc?
As a gamer/tester, its quite sad to be misinformed. if your going to release an open beta, im all for it. But, mark it as an open beta, not as a new game thats going to Canada for a few tests. Plus, you have to have somewhere inside the app where people can easily report having troubles, no one likes having to pay .99c to test your game, then having to do so many things to give feedback
It would probably be best just to set up a thread asking for Open Beta testing, that way it's more controlled. Possibly open a new thread entitled "Need Beta Testers For [INSERT GAME HERE]" And then for the content ask for email addresses, past experience with beta testing, UDID's and all the usual stuff. A good thread for an example of this would be here. Best of luck on your future game release! I would gladly beta test for your game if you want.
Advantages of Canada were already listed, plus, kinda like wide scale beta testing, but not too many 1 star reviews if big bug.
The question that might need to be asked first is 'what are they testing'. They may be putting all there testing efforts towards the back-end servers, so in this case they have no need for having a button in the app to submit errors. As has been mentioned previously, Canada is probably a good market as its one of the larger ones so there will be large numbers of people 'playing the game' as well as the time zones are the same so there will be staff on hand to monitor these servers and database load handling. So far the games that are being 'tested' in Canada (that I've noticed) are all free (well Freemium) so it's not like people are paying to test (yet!... I don't put it past any company to charge though).
I thought the main thing ngmoco tested in their Canadian releases was the server load on their online games. In which case, I don't think many developers need to worry about that, do they?
Piano Cats Free is usually ranked in the mid-teens in Canada (music category), but can't get any traction in the US. For me, Canada is acting more like Europe in terms of reception.
