If you missed the pre-game buzz opportunity

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by Amelia, Jan 1, 2010.

  1. Amelia

    Amelia Well-Known Member

    Jan 1, 2010
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    Hi all!

    I am new to this board, but I have been reading a lot over the past week. My partner, Psionic, just had his game released over Christmas, sooner than we'd expected. I am working with him to help promote his new game: Running With Scissors: Preseason.

    It seems that we had fallen into a familiar developers trap, in that we missed a great opportunity to generate a lot of buzz around the game. Apple released the game for sale on teh 22nd, but it didn't show up in the "new releases" section until the 29th, which made things a little awkward on our end.

    I have read in many of the posts that a big thing to do is generate BUZZ around your app, in teh forums, in review sites etc. Because my partner and I both have full time commitments (him more than me as he works full time and programs this project in his "spare" time) we didn't get around to doing much of the "pre" stuff. Which was silly, and uninformed, but there you go.

    My question now is: what are some good strategies to get things moving? We have submitted to review sites and chosen to buy advertising on toucharcade (more for "brand recognition" than anything else).

    Thanks so much! I look forward to "meeting" and learning from you.
     
  2. KGameLover1

    KGameLover1 Well-Known Member

    Dec 27, 2009
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    I love this game!

    I think when you get Plus+ you should pay for ads on there too - and purchase space on AdMob.

    And talk to Apple about advertising as well.
     
  3. Amelia

    Amelia Well-Known Member

    Jan 1, 2010
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    Wow! Glad to hear you like it. I've been lurking on the main thread, and was always glad to see your enthusiasm.
    Are you familiar with what kind of advertising Apple provides?
     
  4. jxjja

    jxjja Well-Known Member

    Sep 22, 2009
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    I think that you should contact a reviewer like appvee and give him a code so he reviews your app, many people watch his reviews in youtube so that is a big plus. Also you can make a contest for an itunes gift card so people get more interested in your game.

    Those are some ideas. :)
     
  5. Amelia

    Amelia Well-Known Member

    Jan 1, 2010
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    cool, I believe we have/are going to submit one to appvee. We're working on a new, not lame, video before we submit it to more reviewers. :p

    I have about 15 places that I'm going to submit it to...

    hmmmm... a contest eh? well, we'll see about that. We just did a contest for a week to give away promo codes (i believe you were a winner?) what would be the difference?
     
  6. bravetarget

    bravetarget Well-Known Member

    Sep 14, 2009
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    iphonedist.com
     
  7. henrykong

    henrykong Well-Known Member

    Apr 6, 2009
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    i'm an end user and also reviews apps for fun and laughter
    over the course of time, i have purchased over 1,000 apps
    unless it is a game or conversion i am looking forward too
    my honest opinion that i wont pay more than 99cents to try out a new game like yours
    anything more than that, i'll just let it pass
     
  8. Glad to see that missing the pre-release "buzz" hasn't dampened your spirits for pushing your game - pre-release isn't the be-all and end-all of your marketing push. It can certainly help, but by its own definition it obviously isn't sustainable and should only be a part of a larger plan.

    Something I see many other developers neglect is that there are media sources outside of the 'iPhone game' circles that may be interested in your projects. Kid-friendly games can look at family-oriented publications. Music games can try genre-based communities. Even local news editors might be interested in your story from a local angle if you can offer them something interesting.

    You certainly won't get the same percentage of interested hits as you would from the more targeted source (ie. iPhone app sites), but it can help bring in a few extra eyes that you would have missed. Given that you're low on spare time however, this may not be the most efficient route for you.

    More more more! With RocketFuse, my initial list of websites to contact on release was over thirty, out of which I only got two hits. We got more with later pushes, but by then my contact spreadsheet was huge. =)

    Good luck!
     
  9. EssentialParadox

    EssentialParadox Well-Known Member

    Sep 21, 2009
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    I know my question is a bit off-topic from what you were asking, but I'm curious… When you said the app was approved on the 22nd but didn't go into 'new releases' until the 29th, was it put right at the front of the new releases or a few pages back? Do you have any idea why it wasn't put there on the 22nd?
     
  10. jclardy

    jclardy Well-Known Member

    Dec 10, 2008
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    It was probably the same thing that happened to my game, AquaWars. We got the approval email on the 22nd but the link didn't show up till the 23rd. The iTunes team then froze the release lists so the games that were released the 22nd/early 23rd stayed on top until the 28th. Then on the 28th they started the release lists back up so games with a date of the 23rd showed up for about an hour on top before being pushed back by the 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th and 28th.
     
  11. M of IMAK

    M of IMAK Well-Known Member

    May 26, 2009
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    Austin, TX
    I can give one reference point. Our That Ain't It! Movie Trivia was released Dec 23rd (submitted 12/20). Had we named it "Ain't It! Movie Trivia", we probably would have been in 'new releases' over the holidays. As it were, we ended up on page 2 on the 29th. Then, a kind soul at Apple felt sorry for our little app and changed the release date to 12/24, giving us a few hours on one of the 'new releases' page. During the holidays, I sent out promo codes to review websites, held a promo code contest on touchArcade, and added advertising to the high score boards in our other That Ain't It! trivia games. Who knows if any of this worked. We didn't see any 'bumps' in sales, but got enough sales (20-30/day) for That Ain't It! Movie to make it near the top 50 of trivia games. We saw a 'half-day bump' when listed on 'new releases' (i.e. sales in the 40s for 1 day), which was enough to move it into the top 50. Currently, it sits at #44 right behind our That Ain't It! Trivia (released in Apr '09) which is at #43. For those who like to calculate ranking algorithms, yesterday sales were 33 and 15, respectively, and the prices for each are $1.99 and $2.99, respectively.
     
  12. Amelia

    Amelia Well-Known Member

    Jan 1, 2010
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    When it was released on the "new releases" it was one the bottom of the front page. only stayed there for a couple of hours. No response from Apple as to why this happened, or what they could do about it. I figure it wasn't put there on the 22nd, because it got approved later in the night (10-11 pm it went live I think), and then the App store closed on the 23rd. I feel like there were probably a lot of cases like this. We were really excited for it to be on the "new releases" all through Christmas, and then it wasn't. We were disappointed to say the least, but that's what happened, so we're rolling with it.

    I wish we had found a kind soul... who did you contact?

    As per the ".99" comment. I know that is a sentiment of a lot of people, but when you put 500+ hours into something and plan on investing more into it, you're not going to sell yourself short. I think it's a tragedy that so many developers, who make real quality apps feel their only option to generate sales is to drop the price point to $.99. I feel that it's only respectful to our piece of work that it gets sold for more. I personally feel that even $4.99 is low, but with the "race to the bottom" that's the way it is.
    And, of course, that's your choice to miss out on some really good quality apps because you're not willing to pay for the quality.

    I have actually written a press release for the local newspaper (I am already a columnist on freelance there...) and have been doing as much guerilla marketing as possible (every time I see someone with an iPhone I pull mine out and show them). I even plug it to the people I buy food from at the farmer's market, which has generated amazing leads, one woman who worked in advertising/sales for Disney for 4 years, and has lots of contacts she wants to spread the word to. My thought about advertising is that anyone "could" be your target market, if they own an iPhone. It's amazing how many people are interested in buying it just because they met the developer and can show it off to their friends.

    Thanks for the ideas. Keep the coming.
     
  13. M of IMAK

    M of IMAK Well-Known Member

    May 26, 2009
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    iPhone App Developer
    Austin, TX
    I only imagine a kind soul. We didn't contact anyone - just thought it was interesting that the date changed. We never changed anything.

    Games are a really tough category and pricing is a really tough decision. For pre-game buzz, I think Blacksmith games did an excellent job starting it seems like 6 months ago. I really liked their 'follow our twitter to determine the price' promotion. It allowed them to determine a price based on pre-game interest in the game. Ingenious!

    I can't advise on pricing, but you may want to consider what you put into the first two lines of your description because of how the description is now displayed in iTunes.

    I wish you the best of luck, and a nice feature by Apple to make up for keeping you in limbo over the holidays :)

    Most good games do eventually get noticed, so keep up the promotions.
     
  14. Amelia

    Amelia Well-Known Member

    Jan 1, 2010
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    Thanks for the advice! I'll look into our description. When it was subimtted, there was a pretty lame description (my partner is not a wordsmith - he's a developer, and didn't ask me - the wordsmith - for my advice until it was submitted. lol!) and that ended up getting posted a lot of places. I changed it, but it might still not be the most "attractive" thing going. No big "punch line" to grab folks. I'll work on it.

    Good luck to you too!
     
  15. YmirMobile

    YmirMobile Active Member

    We got lucky with our first Game Ringo as it got featured in the New&Noteworthy Section of the AppStore. That gave our Sales quite a nice increase. We sent out loads of Press-Releases and Promo-Codes and have not had extremely much feedback from that, seems like the review-pages are as overflooded with review-requests as the AppStore.
    It was also interesting to see that reviews and our game mentioned on iPhone websites did not seem to do very much for the Sales (other developers have told us that they have experienced the same).
    We have had some nice cross-promotional effects as we have also published a Travelguide for Reykjavik (called Mobioeguide Iceland). Over New Years many people travelled to iceland and downloaded the Mobileguide and that seems to have resulted in an increase of our Ringo Downloads.
    Not to mention the awesome New Years App Blowout!
    Good Luck with your efforts...
     
  16. Amelia

    Amelia Well-Known Member

    Jan 1, 2010
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    any idea what got you on new and noteworthy? Is there any equation that = new and noteworthy? that anyone has noticed, or is it all just luck of the draw?
     
  17. Quorlan

    Quorlan Well-Known Member

    Sep 5, 2009
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    Georgia
    This is merely an observational opinion, but over the past few months I've been keeping an eye on what generates the most thread traffic here at TA and what shows up in various places on the app store feature sections and there's enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that Apple watches these forums pretty closely. When individual game threads here hover around the first page of their respective forums for a couple of days they seem to eventually wind up somehow being featured by Apple somewhere in one of the various types of featured lists on the app store.

    And it makes a certain amount of sense. This is one of the single most active iDevice gaming communities on the net. What gets people interested and discussing here generates attention from Apple as well.

    Like I said, just based on what I've observed and my own opinions. Take it with a large grain of salt.

    Q
     
  18. bravetarget

    bravetarget Well-Known Member

    Sep 14, 2009
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    So, let me get this straight...a forum that has ~200 viewers at any given time is responsible for qualifying an app into a section that gets ~100,000 viewers at any given time? Sounds odd to me
     
  19. DaveMc99

    DaveMc99 Well-Known Member

    Mar 1, 2009
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    Seattle, WA USA
  20. Quorlan

    Quorlan Well-Known Member

    Sep 5, 2009
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    Game Designer
    Georgia
    You're talking about at any given moment in time. I'm talking about traffic over time not just an isolated moment. When threads here get 50+ or 100+ page views per day, or the number of pages in the thread about an individual app grows beyond 2 or 3 (i.e. many responses per day), it tends to indicate interest from the "iDevice gaming community". The more prolific the thread/app the more likely it will appear on New and Noteworthy, Hot New Games, What We're Playing, etc.

    And that ~200 viewers at any given time translates to something like 200,000 - 300,000 UNIQUE vistiors to TA per month. That's a LOT of eyeballs. Like I said, just my own opinions based on observations I've made.
     

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