Defying the odds: Prospectors - Nature's Slot Machine

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by Digidiam, Dec 14, 2013.

  1. Digidiam

    Digidiam Member

    Dec 14, 2013
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    Hi everyone,

    My name is Simon, I'm the owner of Digidiam Game Studio. Against the advice of numerous friends and loving family, I decided to leave a 15-year professional marketing career selling retail petroleum equipment and solutions at a multi-national corporation in order to pursue a deep passion of mine: creating and producing games. On Sep 21 this year, after more than 6 months of intense design and development work and collaboration with an outstanding Swiss-based software and graphics company, I launched my very first mobile game for iPads called "Prospectors".

    Here's the download link:
    https://itunes.apple.com/app/prospectors/id690029587

    With no marketing push pre-launch, we secured approximately 1,000 downloads the first week of the game's launch. This was probably due to a small feature by the U.S. AppStore in the simulation games category and a mention of the game on Appshopper.com. The downloads quickly deteriorated to approximately 30 downloads/day from different parts of the world which was not unexpected. My plan to postpone advertising activities until 30 days after launch was deliberate, concerned that we may have missed severity 1 bugs during QAT that would lead to major crashes or data loss and give a bad first impressions to hard-to-come-by users. Sure enough, a range of iOS 7 issues surfaced but we quickly squared them away with updates.

    Starting late October, we revved up the marketing machine - deploying a range of promotional tactics including, but not limited to, game review site advertising, cross-promotions with gold prospecting hobbyist sites, Facebook and Twitter advertising. As of today, here are some of the results and the trends for key metrics look promising.

    1. >25,000 downloads in 60 countries around the world after 11 weeks (not bad for iPad only devices I've been told)
    2. Active daily and weekly users respectively: ~3,000 and ~10,000
    3. Revenue per download: $.37 gross
    4. Daily sales: $200-600 gross, excluding iAds sales of approx. $35/day
    5. 36 ratings with 4.5 star average in AppStore (these are all real ratings)

    Note that there are significant user acquisition cost that currently would still translate into a net loss, but interest and momentum seems to be strong and profitable sales could be around the corner.

    The point of this thread is not to gloat - the game is well short of anything newsworthy. However, I believe Prospectors has potential and seems to have gained market traction. I need constructive feedback and actionable ideas how to build on the progress that has been made and believe many forum members here can provide invaluable input if willing. I want to prove that Indies like me can defy the odds. We need to be innovative, resourceful, bold, and diligent to carve out and cultivate a niche in this huge competitive mobile gaming market.

    Last, I want to thank all the people who have and are supporting our vision. Monies generated are being entirely reinvested back into the game to develop engaging mini-games and feature enhancements or to help build the user base scale that is required to make this a viable business.

    Warm regards!
    Simon
     
  2. Destined

    Destined Well-Known Member

    Aug 11, 2013
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    Are you making $35 a day with ads on 3K daily users?
     
  3. Digidiam

    Digidiam Member

    Dec 14, 2013
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    Yes. This is based on 20-30k impressions served per day. ECPM ranges from $1.11-1.73. Is this good, average, bad?

    I have screen captures of my iTunes account showing iAds revenues and impressions and eCPM for this past week but can't seem to be able to upload them using the manage attachment function. Perhaps some posting restrictions with new TA membership?
     
  4. Digidiam

    Digidiam Member

    Dec 14, 2013
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    Here's the iAd revenue screen capture. Still problems uploading the others...
     

    Attached Files:

  5. Destined

    Destined Well-Known Member

    Aug 11, 2013
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    Those numbers seem solid to me.

    If you can sustain that it is a nice little income stream.
     
  6. Digidiam

    Digidiam Member

    Dec 14, 2013
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    Unfortunately, I'd say a great deal of the iAd and IAP sales numbers are floated by the costly marketing push that has helped acquire new users. Believe there will be substantial attrition in revenues when promotional activities subside.

    Have you or anyone else here had chance to play Prospectors? Have ideas how to improve - what do you like and don't like?

    We received strong negative ratings and reviews regarding specific design mechanics in our game that happen to be critical monetization mechanisms (i.e. Hard to find gold when user doesn't upgrade this respective ability and the probability of cutting failures on valuable diamonds without purchasing cut guarantees). We estimate that we'd see a 40-80% decrease in IAP sales if we relaxed these constraining points. So far we haven't been able to think of any good ways to countermeasure this dissatisfaction without unraveling our ability to make money and pay for development costs and expenses. Any good ideas from the forum members as to what we might be able to do to create win-win situation?

    Also, what's a good way to get more in-depth input and feedback from users? In my previous life we conducted face-to-face interviews, focus groups, and behavioral studies. We're trying to get a FB fan page started to garner user more robust input but the data points and depth of insight are not actionable at this stage. AppStore reviews are important but again it's very difficult to not have a more interactive exchange with users to make sure we're not making wrong assumptions or overlooking better options.
     
  7. Destined

    Destined Well-Known Member

    Aug 11, 2013
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    flurry is good to record user interactions.

    If you are making $35 a day I would focus on keeping your userbase. Perhaps instead of buying those things in the app offer ways to get it free by sharing.
     
  8. Digidiam

    Digidiam Member

    Dec 14, 2013
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    #8 Digidiam, Dec 15, 2013
    Last edited: Dec 15, 2013
    Yeah, we're using flurry but what the underlying usage and retention drivers are remain hazy after combing through the large amounts of analytical data.

    In terms of addressing users unhappy with our monetization methods, your steer is sensible. We're throwing around some concepts to give incentives to users to help spread the word about the game. Frontrunner idea is something we are calling "bless my diamond" where a user can invite up to five Facebook friends to "bless their diamond" before cutting so as to reduce cutting failure all the way down to zero. Kind of a spin on candy crush's social mechanism - the limited feedback we've gotten is mixed however, some like it while others think it's gimmicky. One group prefers to have our resources dedicated on developing some fun mini-games that will allow loyal players to fully appreciate the merits of owning virtual diamonds. That is, they really hope we strengthen the justification around "why I should care about virtual diamonds?" and "what can I do with virtual diamonds that I can't do with real ones?"

    Customer voices are many and diverse while design and development resources are so few - lol.
     
  9. Destined

    Destined Well-Known Member

    Aug 11, 2013
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    My next game will just be ads, + 0.99 or 1.99 for remove ads + level unlock, so hearing you made that made me feel at least a little hopeful. I just make games for fun so really in the end I just want people to play them :)
     
  10. Wayne Oleski

    Wayne Oleski New Member

    Jan 17, 2014
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    Suggestions For Prospectors - Nature's Slot Machine

    1. Allow an option to sell diamonds for gold.
    2. Add bonus locations to guarantee a certain one pan gold recovery.
    3. Increase the loop length for sound effects. Same sounds repeat to frequently.
     
  11. ryansumo

    ryansumo Well-Known Member

    Feb 1, 2012
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    Freelance artist
    Manila
    What an intriguing game! I haven't had a chance to play it yet but will do so now and share if I have any suggestions.
     
  12. ryansumo

    ryansumo Well-Known Member

    Feb 1, 2012
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    Freelance artist
    Manila
    Hey just played the game and here are my thoughts:

    Generally speaking I do quite like it! Here are my thoughts:

    On probability of cutting failure:
    I see two things you can do with this.

    First, extend the cutting time by showing a progress bar of some sort (maybe with a cutting tool animation). Because it's so instant it can feel to people like their money was just taken away all of a sudden. By making it look like a process you keep them on the edge of their seats, hoping that things will turn out all right.

    Second, you've already got a popup that asks people if they want to get a 100% cut BEFORE they cut the diamond. I think this is misplaced. Before they press the button everyone thinks they have a shot at getting a good cut. Regret only comes afterwards. Why not have the button pop up AFTER a bad cut and offer people the chance to save their diamond, either through real money or tons of gold? This may not be realistic, but you can bend the rules a little bit in the game. you could say something like "Take the diamond to a master cutter to save it?" or something like that.

    UI:
    Your UI is really dull and tiny. I get that you are trying to go for a more professional look, but if I have to squint to see how much money I have on a tablet's screen, I think you have a problem. There's nothing wrong with a splash of color here and there.

    Why just diamonds?
    I understand you've built this entire system around diamonds, but they're not the only precious stones around. I once found a ruby and thought it was silly that I simply discarded it, when good rubies can pull a decent price on the market. Consider adding stones like emeralds, sapphires, and rubies (I'm no minerologist) to make your marketplace and people's collections more interesting.

    "Purchases"
    Your iAP store is called "Purchases" which doesn't really explain itself very well. I get that you dont want to use "Store" again since you use it in the main menu, but I do wonder if people simply gloss over this because of the wording.

    I have some more thoughts but I think this should do for now. Good luck, I really do like your game but it could definitely use some tweaking before you promote it heavily.
     
  13. JasonS

    JasonS Well-Known Member

    Mar 4, 2010
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    Game Dev @ Fun Mob Games
    Australia
    ^ +10 great ideas.
     
  14. Robbin

    Robbin New Member

    Mar 15, 2014
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    Hi there! Love love love the game but twice it has crashed after paying 4.99 for a guaranteed cut and the stone is still not cut. It's still sitting in my "uncut stones" cabinet....what can I do? I do not want to pay again and get nothing, the first stone I paid to cut went seamlessly, but following that one all others have crashed the site, taken my money and not given me a cut stone. Please advise. I would like to continue to play and I'm happy to support your game by buying things....thanks! :)
     
  15. jamescam

    jamescam Well-Known Member

    Mar 4, 2014
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    Interesting game but I agree with two previous comments. UI is a little dull and you should consider sprucing it up, same comment about some of the screen shots since. Saving the diamond after a bad cut is a great idea because it's a lose/lose to pay before - if you pay before ensuring a win, the player wonders if they would have won anyway. if you don't pay before and lose, the player has had a negative experience with the game not necessarily their choice.

    Would you mind giving some more details on the marketing investment you made? You mentioned that the total you have spent on user acquisition would result in a net loss, would you give more details to share what you felt worked/didn't work? Thanks.
     

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