TA Forums Game of the Week! (18/Aug)

I'm pretty sure that you, or a moderator can check votes, and users who voted.

 

Thank you triggywiggy for run this contest, and everyone who voted in the poll. And first of all congrats to the winner!

Second place is great too!

And BTW, The Train episode 02 is currently featured by Apple under main games N&N, and it's quite popular

Cheers,
Marcin,
The Moonwalls.

 

Moonwalls folk were actively calling for votes in the adventure game thread and elsewhere (which is fine), while Moki's developers weren't, but still, I honestly don't think I would have pegged The Train as being viewed anywhere near that highly, at least not compared to iBM.

That said, unless it is revealed that a bunch of 1-post accounts were voting for The Train, it's probably just a case of PR in action. ^_^

 

I think that PR is the most important thing in success in the AppStore.
I've seen many great games, which, with lack of a good marketing campaign, disappear in the crowd of medium and poor games.

With great, and well known games (iBlast Moki, Chillingo titles, Gameloft games, Rolando, etc.), it's hard to compete (for us - small indie devs), without a good PR, and straight marketing.

 

I think the point was more that if you're actively posting in multiple threads specifically pushing for votes for one of these "Game of the Week" polls, and another developer isn't, you're more likely to get votes from people otherwise uninterested in or unaware of the poll who just think, "Sure, why not support this guy," and click without actually caring what they're voting for, and that kind of defeats the purpose.

Perhaps after the final polling opens, the rest of the process should be required to take its course without developer intervention.

 

It depends on the point of view.

You can take a look on my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TheTrainGame

I have 127 fans (most of them are users of TouchArcade - I know this, because they started to click Like It, after I made a topic in TA forums).
I think that most of them played The Train 01 and 02, and many of them like my games. I asked for votes also on FB.
So, 36 votes from the poll, are just a little part of the whole fans community

 

Although I'm not really on the Dev and their 'PR' things side here, I honestly think this whole game of the week process is fatally flawed pretty much from the ground up. But I didn't really wanna say to much just in case I get dumped with the responsibility of improving it. But since the poll is for the most part pretty meaningless (but still a great way to find the newest and greatest games) you can take most of the problems with a grain of salt. If this was a truly important poll though, I'd honestly say you'd need a redesign.

 

Its a tricky one ... I see nothing wrong with a dev actively seeking votes from its facebook fan page or its forums it uses. As we know, the app store is soo competitive, how does one get noticed? Especially when you do a poll like this and you stick an indie dev up against big name brands? The small guy will need to actively ask its small percentage of followers to help, it cant rely on reputation alone the same way house hold names can. Maybe you should set some clear rules ahead of the next one. i.e. A dev can ask its followers to vote, otherwise whats the point in putting them up against EA and things like that?

 

Rules are great, but how'd you stop or deter Dev's doing it? You'd have to watch them across the internet, making sure they hadn't done anything. In turn treating them like criminals before they've done anything.

 

Hmmm very true ... I dont know, but you cant go accusing people of cheating because they've used their initiative to ask their followers for votes so they can at least stand toe to toe with the big names and compete.

 

i agree with beefyclyro. if a dev wants to push marketing for their app then props to them.

 

Although imagine if the big name people did it as well. This already unbalanced, flawed system would break under its own weight,