Yes, I do believe that. Because I've lived it. I have had my own brushes with fame over my long career, and let me tell you when people got nasty I was very much ready to quit, and I wasn't even under anywhere near as much scrutiny as he was. It wasn't just "tweets" for him, either. The press were camped out around his house! In my own case, I've had people stake out my P.O. Box to try to meet me! I've had fans tackle me in the street and pick me up over their heads. I've had fans get so nervous they reflexively PUNCHED me in the stomach. Death threats from total strangers who randomly decided I was evil. Don't try and tell me that the Flappy Bird guy, who reached a level of fame astronomically greater than my own, did not experience anything similar.
Later in that article he says this "I was originally planning to focus on the December/January Flappy Bird reviews I thought itd be fun to prove that they were most likely bots. After loading the reviews into pandas and playing around with the data, though, it became pretty clear those had little to nothing to do with the success of Flappy Bird." So even a guy who set out to prove Flappy Bird cheated thinks that the interest in Flappy Bird grew organically.
I guess that there must be some magic powder in these Asian apps then. Since don't step white tile is exhibiting the same traits flappy bird did and coincidentally took the top charts right after flappy bird, I suppose this organic growth is all coincidental. Yup clearly white tile is a ground breaker and it too has a frenzy of people histerically posting reviews there too. It's almost like an army of drones has just decided Asian apps that look like a 1 year old out them together is the next best thing. Clearly. Thanks for shedding light on that because I was getting worried. Clearly I missed the memo that millions of people now actually love to download bad apps and post straight 5 star reviews on them. My bad.
Yet still thinks it started with bots and he doesn't even provide data beyond the quantity of reviews, so we cannot understand how he reached his conclusion. At no point he even considers that the reviews might have been dramatically boosted by another and more powerful bot system. Plus he gets a total of 68,000 reviews from what board exactly? He covers the whole life of this app since he mentions the pulling down. He's quite below App Annie's count.
According to you menus and ui along with decent graphics no longer matters in the us market. Nice icon? Ah screw it. Make it in Japanese. Nice screenshots? Eh for what! That's what sells. We all got it wrong. 2048? Yea that's the new batman...the new halo...the new gta5. Yup. That's what people REALLY think! Those must be accurate and genuine reviews posted by people who think it's hysterical!
I don't understand why you continue to take such a mocking and abrasive tone. It's like you don't really want to discuss this at all. Why even start the thread then?
Glorkbot, thing is, even if you were to find proof that people enjoyed posting BS reviews about an app, it would not even prove that they had downloaded the game and played it at any length to form any legitimate opinion. You don't even need to download the game to talk about it. I'm sorry to hear that (assuming it's true). Thing is, the emotional side of it isn't really relevant. Funnily, if this was happening in Asia, you'd be hard pressed to hear or even read about it in the occidental side of the internet.
I think maybe the lesson might be "don't make your game free". The paid charts are not filled with crap like the free charts.
2048 isn't a bad game at all, although I much prefer the more polished Threes... because it's actually pretty and cute.
The emotional side is relevant to why the Flappy Bird guy quit. Balloon Loons said it was obvious that he took down Flappy Bird because he was caught cheating. The emotional side shows that it's likely that he took down the app because the fame was too intense.
May I ask you guys where you get your total number of Flappy Bird reviews from? Someone said ~500,000 I think. Was it on iOS, Android, or both?
Interesting. In the game for 15 years and you don't see the possible harm that having an App Store manipulated by a new method of spamming (let's call this what it is). I suppose you think competition is good for markets even when the competition is distributing counterfeit goods? Counterfeit goods must be good for business. That's also a very interesting way of seeing things. Either way. I'm done arguing with you. You cherry pick what you want to answer and your arguments just don't make logical sense. You're defending cheating? That's insane to me. This thread is meant to be productive in regards to discussing a problem and how to fix it. Not to argue about wether or not there is a problem because there clearly is.
This is the number i last saw before the app was shut down. It was actually a bit over but I'm rounding off to the lowest. Wasn't EXACTLY 500k
As I said, I think the simplest way to fix it is to not release your game for free. Then you are not in competition with people who cheat. Unless you think the paid app charts are filled with cheaters too.
I'm not sure how that fixes the problem by avoiding an entire possibly lucrative section of the App Store entirely because cheaters are messing with it. In other words let's let the cheaters have their way with the free section because we can just easily not make games for it? Not to mention that most discovery for no name developers actually takes place from free apps. Why not just stop making apps all together at that point.
This was the question posed in your very first post. One solution truly is to NOT compete with them. Market your app in a different way. If you strongly believe that you can't compete with people who you suspect are cheating on the free-apps chart, then compete with people on the paid-app charts instead. There may be other solutions too. Get creative in your marketing.
You may be thinking of the problem in the wrong way. The problem isn't really whether or not other people are cheating. The problem would be that you are having trouble gaining traction in the marketplace. The solutions would be to invent some way to get noticed (honestly it just takes a lot of time to build a brand, it's unlikely to happen with the very first thing you create) and/or to look for a way to expand into different marketplaces.
Hey look. What a surprise. Another app making it's way up the charts. Don't tap the white tile by hu wen zeng. Check out those reviews. People apparently love tapping black tiles. I would have never thought. Shocker. Eh must be just another coincidence. Seems Asian apps are indeed the new gangham style here in the us. I bet if I release the same exact app it would never make it up those charts. Shall I try?
The question is actually why is apple allowing cheating to begin with? Are you saying cheaters deserve to be up there because they cheated instead of making something good? You're missing the whole point of this post. The point is that if this is allowed to continue (this method is NEW) eventually I can market till I'm blue in the face and it won't matter because there is no way to compete with this. Eventually the cheaters will take over all the top spots. Even if real people aren't downloading, they will continue maintaining their top spots by just generating more downloads. That leaves no room for non cheaters to take these spots.
