In our attempt to bring Flickitty to the users for free for a day, the app store ended up locking out the game entirely. While Flickitty remained in the App Store, it could not be purchased nor downloaded for 24 hours. Our sales stats the following day (Nov 26) dropped 75%+ worldwide, with zero free downloads. Our ranking dropped off sharply. But this is not what I intend to write about. Yesterday, our total sales worldwide were ONE, which was expected. The game was previously locked up, and in between the time it took to reset the App Store and finally set it free, a sale crept in. Worldwide, we saw 2064 FREE downloads in 12 hours. 1418 of those were from the USA. What does that tell us? Well the numbers alone tell us a few things. Even on a perfect day we could never sell 2000+ in a single day. Our numbers simply aren't there, and we aren't reaching enough people. Second, most games would be extremely lucky to sell to 10% of their target audience (some are higher, some are lower). If you have a free/lite version, you can almost determine how many people have expressed an interest in your game, although this isn't 100% accurate. When you release an update you can keep track of how many people still have the game on their device by the upgrade downloads. Flickitty Free has been available for a couple months, and we have seen 51%+ upgrades- which means over half the people still have the free version on their device. Out of all this, one important factor has been the positive user response (I mean, who doesn't like FREE after all?). It also opens our eyes to a HUGE problem: a lot of users have proclaimed that the Flickitty is VERY different than from what they expected. Most common misconceptions are that Flickitty is another sheep launcher, a childs/girls game or just a platformer. In order to reach a broader audience, we need to better define the game. Flickitty is at about #53 Top Free Adventure, which is lower than Flickitty Free was previously. However, we probably need 3 days in order to get a proper standing. Overall, these are Flickitty's highest stats in the App Store: #6 Top Paid Adventure #57 All Top Paid Games #103 All Top Paid Apps I expect todays downloads to be substantially lower, and I will be back to report those tomorrow.
Very interesting. Thanks for posting your experience. Our Tap-Fu lite is averaging about 1300 to 1700 downloads per day, around the world, the last few days. We're somewhere on the Adventure list (maybe 30s?) It's interesting that some games/apps do extremely well for relatively little marketing, while others can market heavily and not have any significant impact. From all that we learned, we feel that no other marketing is as good as either a good lite version or a feature from Apple. Curious though, what motivated you to make your game free for a day?
Just a quick comment from a non-developer--> the whole Flickitty "is it free or ain't it?" app store fiasco really caught my attention, and I'm sure others' as well. I had never heard of Flickitty-- since so many games are released every day-- but I was glued to the Flickitty thread to see what was going on! It was probably the best thing that could have happened, in terms of publicity. It kept the thread active for much longer than it would have been had the game simply appeared as "free" when it was supposed to!
I don't understand what you mean here. I keep most games that I download on my computer, and track upgrades and download new versions via iTunes.
He just means that if you've sold 1000 copies of your game, and then you release an update, and 600 download the update, then there are 400 people that didn't download it for some reason. That reason is most likely that they don't have your game on their device anymore. In my case, however, I have purchased many, many games, and then removed them from my iPhone, but I still always just click the "Get All Free Updates" button in iTunes, so I may be skewing stats for some developers.
Even though this is sort of non-related to what you're saying, i'd like to give you a little motivation. I downloaded Flickitty for free yesterday and I must say. Very good job at the game. I would have been happy to buy it.
I don't remember what our Lite Version was getting daily- I can actually look those up to see how Flickitty and Flickitty Free compare when they are both free. Globally, Flickitty Free was in was in the thousands downloads daily, but distributed widely across the world. For a few days we saw 4000 downloads a day from Russia alone. What motivated us to make it free for a day? Thats pretty simple- we want Flickitty to be as accessable as possible. It is a game, and if it isn't getting played, then it is worthless as far as a game goes. Its is like the toy nobody likes to play with. We knew we would get buried in the rubble of Black Friday, since our game was already $0.99 and we had no other price reduction available and no other promotional value. Marketing Flickitty is impossibly difficult because it doesn't fit into any single genre- most everyone thinks it is a kids/girls game, or a sheep launcher or a normal platformer.
Hi! Just curious, by how much does being featured on the App Store (e.g. What We're Playing, New and Noteworthy, etc.) affect the volume of downloads? And is there a correlation/relationship between game sales and the number of App Reviews (e.g. more reviews = higher sales?)? Thank you! On another note, Flickitty is a really great game. Fun , gorgeous and one of a kind.
It's kind of difficult to say how much the 'What's Hot' Feature affected us. We had been in the App Store less than a week, and we were still rising because were listed under New Apps. So everything kind of hit at once: the 'What's Hot' Feature, a few reviews and New App listing. 'What's Hot' accelerated things as far as placement goes, but not so much with actual sales. Our sales increased about 3-4 fold from the previous week. I'm not complaining about the increase, but it wasn't as much as I would have expected. As far as the reviews go, I'm not going to say more is better. Reviews can be bought via direct payment or advertising, and many sites and developers do not see a problem with this exchange. I have a problem with it. We have a total of 7 reviews of varying length and depth. These reviews may have had an impact on our sales, but it is difficult to gauge since we were Featured at the same time. Personally, I love seeing reviews. All of our reviews show a personal side of the reviewer as they spent paragraphs explaining the tiniest details of motion, emotion, control, animation, and physical traits. There was nothing cookie cutter about any of our reviews. Seeing a new review is like opening a Christmas present; it is one of the things I really look forward to. As a developer, we don't get a huge amount of feedback, so reviews kind of fill that void.
You are correct- ads don't generate nor drive new sales. Ads are a method of branding, which requires an already established presence. It is product recognition and repetition. However, new or inexperienced developers don't know this, and will blindly buy ads because that is what they are told to do. The only person that makes money is the website with the ad. Many sites prey on these developers, and they don't even feel bad about it. I'm not saying that developers should avoid ads completely. If they have an established user base, lots of reviews/articles and a significant presence in the App Store, then an ad is appropriate.
Interesting comment about the "worthless if no one is buying statement". I don't think I agree with it though. I been watching the store since it launched and I have noticed some interesting things. For example, both iShoot and Blocked launched last year with very little success, if any at all. It wasn't until iShoot released a Lite months later, and Blocked got feature many months later that they both rocketed up the charts. Both games were pretty much clones and had many competitors as well. But they both got lucky after a while. What this shows to me is that the store is all about visibility and less about quality. For sure, quality matters and can drive the game very well but even that is tough to maintain without Apple (feature) or something helping to keep pushing it (Lite version). The TA podcast with David from Critical Though Games (geoDefense) also backs up this when he says that geoDefense originally was going into oblivion until he hired a PR firm. As for making your game for free, as long as it helps you out that's great. Right now though, I feel like just forgetting about the store for a while until all these sales are over and pass by. Seems like way too much noise out there at this time.
Actually, I didn't say that. What I said was: 'It is a game, and if it isn't getting PLAYED, then it is worthless as far as a game goes.' I think there is a substantial difference. We created a game to be played. We wanted accessibility (globally). The fact that it can make any money at all is a benefit. This is my personal viewpoint for Flickitty, and it doesn't apply to any other developer nor any other game.
Opps I apologize. For some reason I equated playing = buying. That is a really cool view to have though: caring more about others enjoying the game than making money off it. I wish you success on that path.
Well that's the funny thing- even making the game totally free has proven difficult to get people to download it. I realize our game isn't perfect, but we can't really improve it until we get feedback and people playing it. Our reviews and user feedback have provided us with direction, and we want to continue that.
That icon makes me think its a kiddie game, but the screenshots are beautiful. Maybe try a new icon (if you haven't)? Just a suggestion.
We may try a new icon. That would explain why it would rise to a certain point in the App Store and then stop- it doesn't really fit in with the games nor game types surrounding it. There was a point where there were just a few apps ahead of us in Adventure- and ALL of them were big studios with 80% of those being franchises, ports or big names. We really didn't fit in.
I agree re: the relationship between reviewers and devs - especially when the review comes out on an influential site. Your opinion is it's hard to gauge the impact of reviews on app sales of Flickitty, since it coincided with the right? I'd love to hear your thoughts about the FTC revised rules requiring bloggers to disclose their 'relationship' with the advertiser when it comes to 'endorsing' products, goods and services. Apparently the FTC is trying to regulate bloggers who review all sorts of things and are compensated in one way or another - whether it's via a redeem code in the App Store, direct payment or other freebies - on the assumption that bloggers can and do drive sales. A lot of bloggers are really furious about these new and overbroad rules.
