People with FAAD experience

depressing thread

But an important read and every "little indie developer" should go through it and take it to heart. This is where things are now and where they have been for awhile. The big companies are the only ones who can make money in this arena now, the established studios. Even partnering with a publisher promises you nothing. As for buying ads on websites, it's long been known that it is a waste of time. Twitter and Facebook might still be useful but the days of getting meaningful use out of them (unless you truly are a marketing guru) are either way past or not to come for awhile.

What to do? I still say, experiment, work very hard to socialize and find alternative ways to monetize. Explore other platforms beside iPhone. Even getting front page coverage on TouchArcade is no guarantee of success anymore (for a long time now)

This is the scene that we the devs have crafted ("race to the bottom") and you cannot argue with the expectations of the average mobile gamer, regardless of how ludicrous it might seem. There's simply too much oversaturation of hi-quality product, and more to come.

 

That's why I always say, the biggest failure from apple was to allow every 14 years old to release apps on the appstore.

If they would have gone for quality instead of quantity from the first moment, the whole situation would be better.

They should have allowed only registered companies to sign up, but even if they would have allow everybody, they should have had make the registration fee at least 500-1000 bucks. Anybody, who can and is willing to afford so much money, will take it rather serious and will not release crapapps.

Noiw we would have maybe half of the apps on the store, but they would be quality apps and when you are a company, you know the price you have to ask for.

A 14 years old doesn't care, so he can easily make anything 0.99. A serious company would never do that if there were no pressure.

Thank you Apple again.

The sad thibg is, that the iPohone is still the best platform to develop for. Everything else is just hopeless from a business point of view.

 

The race to the bottom was definatly not caused by indie devs but by the big publishers.. So accusing young developers who put out less then mediocre stuff out is just barking up the wrong tree..

Gaining visibility nowerdays is harder because quality goes up not down.. But at the same time prices does not go up aswell

 

Maybe you are right, but not the big publishers spammed the appstore with the fart apps.

 

well the indies started it ("the race") but the bigger devs sure helped sustain it. Who can compete with those .99 EA "special deals?"

 

can you back up this claim? ...


and hodapp has a point... the "bottom feeder" apps we call "junk" does not take away your chance of being featured or in the spotlight of the public.. they just add to the gigantic mass of crapware thats deep down in the iOS ocean..

we don't have a shelf we need to share with "thoose" since the shelf is filled by apple.. the rest of the apps is in the huge "grab box"

if an app does not run.. well move one to the next.. makes no sense to hold on to an dead horse.. the iOS market is so fast and daily released flood the users with new opportunities of 5 minute fun.. why should they bother with "old" stuff..

as for EA sales.. or any other sales.. why should you compete with them..
that silly and ridiculous.. if you have millions to back you up to create high quality games and throw the money into advertising you will never be able to compete with them..


there will always be an "holiday" sale.. which will push down everyone.. even long time seller like angry birds &co because expensive apps with known ips get cheap.. but thoose events only last a short time and then they sink back down when they turn to their original price..

here is an interesting (but short) article on fishlabs opinion on how to "counter" such sales

http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Fishlabs+News/news.asp?c=31115

which makes sense if you have a quality product.. your sales numbers may crumble down but your raised price compensates this to an extend (in their case made even a plus) ...

 

For the sake of completeness, here's the second half of the article, as reported by Gamesindustry.biz

"But Natural Motion's Torsten Reil told GamesIndustry.biz that it's also possible to pull the same trick by following the lead of the bigger players.

"Just to add a slightly different data point to that argument," Reil interjected, "when EA dropped all the prices over Christmas, we did the same and dropped ours. We stayed in the top 20 and we got seven times our sales."

Whilst both tactics can prove successful, both Reil and Schade agreed that it was likely the result of the two companies' different audiences.

"I think you have a larger audience," Schade told Reil. "Backbreaker was 7.5 million? Galaxy on Fire was 2.5."

Reil agreed that Natural Motions Backbreaker was aimed at a more casual audience than Galaxy on Fire's core space sim mechanics. That core audience will enable Fishlabs to take a different approach to future iterations of its flagship game.

"Actually," Schade continued, "for upcoming versions of Galaxy on Fire we will take a pricing approach that's more similar to a PC digital download game. You can say, I don't care what others do on iOS - if you want to play Galaxy on Fire, you're part of our core fanbase, that's our price."

(From: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-06-30-michael-schade-when-ea-drops-its-ios-prices-you-raise-yours - sorry, I think you need to subscribe to read it here).

What this suggests to me is that even the bigger studio are feeling their way in the dark.

 

thats more than true.. only difference is they have the ressources to create a few commercial flops.. and hit a few walls in the dark

like gameloft tried the free + iap route for starfront & sacred odyssey and failed with it.. then paddles back to "ordinary" release strategies..

 

When I see big name games like Street Fighter available for 99¢, it sets the tone. Why pay more than tier-1 for an app when typically the game will eventually be at that price anyway? I can wait for the next major holiday to show up... The Fourth of July... Valentine's Day... Apple releases a new iOS device... whenever there's a significant event, the prices drop. That's why I try to avoid holiday launches.

The weirdest is seeing games given away for free. As a developer, I don't like the Free App A Day site. It means there's a large group of people out there, just waiting for popular apps to go free.

 

The developers are basically conditioning the players to wait. Because they know eventually all games will go free or drop to 99¢. Just look at the price drop forums.

I gave my game away for free for a few days but I will never do it again.

I don't have issue with freemium games. Based on the data from flurry and what we see, it's definitely a good idea to focus a bit of game design towards finding a way to incorporate microtransactions.

 

I did 40k DL in one day with a poker app (not the most mainstream type) because I was picked up by the french "FAAD" site. Pulled like a 1000 DL from other countries overall. When I switched back to paying, it went back to the same old poor sales.

So, the whole FAAD stuff is worth with a good iAP or ad system, else it's just a short time of hope. Either you have a killer app, or a good freemium model, the rest just doesn't survive, in my experience.

 

Its because games that dont sell well might use FAAD because it makes game more popular and boost downloads. I know a few apps in the top 50 in a genre that was free. And people still buy them. and before they werent free and they were unknown

 

I know how you geet faad to put it on for free.

You know theres a My Wish section. Why not abuse it then FAAD will ask u to put your game free