Yep they just turn the "helping indie" concept into a "turn it into gold". Like everyone else, I was really excited when they sent me an offer to feature one of my app. The whole conversation was great until a price tag was dropped on me. Stupid for me to realize that a little shine of luck only turn out to be a mass forwarded marketing email.
If it's such a "horrible scheme" then why are such studios like, SkyVu Pictures and Little White Bear Studios (which both doing currently fine in the App Store) Participating. It's been a while since this discussion has started and I bet both developers have read through this thread. So Why do they still put their applications on FAAD?
Well for a start, as Flickitty mentioned, those are some of the slightly more successful devs. Their apps are pretty well-known, they're not the ones who really need the help, they're just the ones who can afford it. The guys who are really struggling are still being left out in the cold.
this post is a few days old, and what im posting has probably been said since there are alot of posts lol. wow that is ridiculous! That much money to post your game on their site calendar for 30days??? Omg you would have to be a waterhead to pay that lol http://appshopper.com/ is a really good website that in a way advertises games. You dont even need to sign up, contact them or anything lol. Anytime a new game comes out/games prices change/it hits top 100/get updated, they post it on their site. With a page that shows basically whats on the itunes page with a link to itunes download page. So in a way the more people that check/know about that site, the more advertising you would get. Id say promote that site and your game in signature/facebook ect. would be far superior to paying them.
How do you know they didn't get their fee waived since they are more well known and lend a certain legitimacy to the site?
AppShopper is basically the AppStore online. I use it daily to scout for new stuff in Hope that it catches my eye. Whenever the AppStore updates, so does AppShopper. I don't, but wouldn't it be interesting to know?
Since our geoFighter is today's FreeAppADay I would like to state that: We did not pay a dime for it. We have been informed that the usual fee is 1200$ but since we are small, they would waive it. I am not going to comment on the 1200$ policy, as the way our "negotiations" went were completely different than what have been described in this thread. Other than the information about waiving the fee, there was no mention of money at any point
I understand that you may need to charge some to keep the site up, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't cost $30,000 a month. You're already advertising your own game constantly for free
It blows my mind this thread actually has reached this size. I cannot understand why some of you care so much. Clearly this man has thought up and great business model. No one is forcing these devs to participate in it. Do you honestly think anyone cares besides you guys? Everyday I go to the site, as does my cousin who I showed the site, and we download our free games. I can care less if the devs were robbed paying for the advertisement. Maybe if there game wasn't such a mess it would not need advertising. And let us be honest, if your game is struggling for sales it is because it is utter crap and there are better alternatives. There is a reason Doodlejump clones do not sell well. And that is because Doodlejump is clearly superior. Same with Pocket God. All the Pocket God rip offs feel like they just cut and pasted the core game and changed the skins. We do not need a million Tetris or Bejeweled clones, or 5 different Farmville games and so on. It was nice to see good games the last two days on freeCRAPaday.com. Battle Bears and GeoWars are two great games (kudos to both the devs) who I imagine will probably get an increase in sales after this. But most of the Indie devs really need to just go out of business. If you cannot find a creative niche in the market, stop filling it with crap. I do not like Swords and Poker, but at least I recognize it is a fantastic endeavor in trying something new, so good job to them. There is a huge shortage of good RPGs and FPS on the iPhone, but we seldom see any of those released by Indie devs because those require actual effort to make a good game, where as they can easily pop out a crap game, for .99 nonetheless, and sit back and piss and moan they get no profits. Games like Ravensword show what a dedicated Indie team can do. Games like The Infinity Project, well...they get an A for effort. At least they tried. I would rather play NOVA or GTA CW any day over most of this dribble we are being fed. The good games are being overshadowed by the bad games because everyone is just out to dump their clone of some other successful game on the market on the App Store, then they come here and complain they make no money. If your game has no new ideas or no unique premise then guess what? It will fail. Your only chance when copying a game is to make it more polished than the original, but these Indie devs basically just copy it exactly and thats that, no new features or anything good. And then don't get me started on the games that are heavily advertised, like Plushed. The Appvent Calendar was basically a giant advertisement for that game and my God was it subpar at best. The new update makes it more tolerable but c'mon, the update came how far after? Typically most people stop playing a game within a week if its not to their tastes. This isn't a $60 Xbox game, I don't feel forced to complete it if I do not like it. If I drop $1.99 on your mediocre adventure game, I will stop playing it if it is crap. Furthermore, I do not like Minigore. Feel free to hate.
really? there are tons of great games that are struggling for sales because there are 140,000 apps on the store. You are such a narrow minded idiot. Jet Car Stunts, Minisquadron, Rogue Planet, Starball, Zombie Pizza, Depict, Spider, compression. Those apps are sadly all low on lists right now and they are all great games. And those are just ones i have, there are plenty others.
I have all those games you listed. Only Spider is worthy of any sort of praise. That game is utterly incredible. The rest are garbaje. Thats Spanish for garbage. Stop buying crap.
i think you nailed it on the head. mobile 1up was founded on bringing game and watch games to the iphone - and when we did, we were one of the first to do it right! (i think; there was one similar version out - which we didn't know until later). now - there are a bunch of them, and they are clouding the market.. crazy.. but, thats life. if you are going to a game - be original!
After reading the first few pages I noticed a lot of people that know nearly nothing about business, yet are commenting on it. First off $600 does sound steep, but it definately markets your app well if they have as much traffic as they say they do. The whole thing about the app store that boosts your sales is exposure, the more people that know you, the better your sales do. Freeapaday is helping devs get that exposure they need for a cost, it's business, and business is about making money. I'll give you an example, had I not heard about battle bears through freeappaday I would have missed out on one of the best games on the app store (in my oppinion). But now that I've gotten to DL it, I will most definitely be keeping an eye on that developers next creations. Unless you hear it from the devs that have used that site themselves that it is a bad deal, don't go assuming it didn't work for them.
The fact that people do care shows the system isn't perfect. The fact you don't just makes you look arrogant and greedy. Not every indie dev can come up with a new idea right off the bat. If they give up now there's a good chance they'll never get to stage where they actually have the chance to develop the innovative and imaginative game you clamor for. Rockstar started off with side-scrolling shooters which the market was already full of, it didn't take them too long to move on from that and come up with Lemmings and GTA. If they'd followed your "advice" they may never have gotten that far. I stopped reading this paragraph at NOVA. The fact you rate this soulless clone of a game at all is just contradicting everything you've said so far. Uh, yeah? That's why they're priced that way. If they were making $60 Xbox games they wouldn't be here, they'd be off making $60 Xbox games. Good call Sherlock. Although it is interesting that the cost of a game will force you to play something you don't enjoy right to the end... tool much?
You mean, helping rich devs get exposure. The scheme initially claimed to be helping out the little guys, now we know it's only helping out those with enough money to whore themselves out a little. We may not all be marketing geniuses, but there are people in this topic who know about indie game development, and it's those people this website is apparently centered around. Battle Bears has been reviewed on TA, so lots of people knew about it. I'm betting that review cost them absolutely nothing and when you compare the sales boosts provided by TA front page articles and freeappaday.com, I'd be willing to bet TA turned out to be the better deal. It seems there already several more websites popping up offering the same kind of promotion as freeappaday.com but for a lot less money, so it'll be interesting to see if those can achieve popularity and slam the final nail in freeappaday.com's coffin.
Advertising has and always will cost a lot of money, I don't know why all of you people freak out when you hear that it costs $600 (I'm guessing because most of the members are kids). It's like making money is prohibited or looked down upon, $600 dollars isn't that much even for a small dev (I'm guessing), unless they don't have a job and/or are living in their parents basement or are just too young (under 18). Besides, it doesn't compare to the 600+ downloads they'll get and I'm sure the profits will earn well over what they spent. If not, it's the content that's lacking not the advertisements, crap just doesn't sell well.
Maybe already asked, but... Does anyone know what rates are charged by TouchArcade for banner ads? Let's compare advertising to advertising, and not put this assumed burden of altruism on FreeAppADay. Both sites are just doing business. Unless we believe that T.Arcade should also give special free ad space to indie companies.
Exactly, no one is attacking toucharcade for it's ad banners, yet I'm sure those are payed for as well and there's nothing wrong with it either. Look at this: I would say that is most definitely not a rip off.
Alright we have 4 promoted FAAD Games in the top 100 in the entire App Store among them iBomber #3!!! Visibility is a big issue in the App Store and Traffic is a commodity! We provide traffic and if any other site can provide the same amount of traffic for cheaper devs should go for it! FAAD is a centralized location for gamers and app enthusiast where they can pick up GOOD apps ( good is of course relative for us it's at least 3 stars with 20reviews +positive reviews from site such as TA, theappera etc...). The system works for tones of reason but the main requirement at FAAD is that we need GOOD rated apps otherwise people would not be coming back to the site if we had one or two stars apps posted! That's why the site is gaining so much popularity. They are 120k+ apps out there and we are trying to do our best to screen them as well as give a chance to small devs with good apps to post on FAAD at no cost (Geofighter got in for free well before the pricing controversy erupted) We're closing in on 5000 twitter followers and again we drive traffic and if you use traffic efficiently it can translate into cash or customer aquistion or whatever you want it to be.. I gave a path and it's up to the devs to use it efficiently, I gave some pointers a bunch of our devs achieved their respective goals for instance iBomber:customer acquisition, cocoto kart: revenue http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Cocoto+Kart+Online+(iPhone)/news.asp?c=18003 etc...it's all layed out here http://freeappaday.com/dev_blog.html Again FAAD provides traffic what devs want to do with the traffic it it's up to them! but with 120k apps out there traffic is a commodity! But devs can always try to set there own app for free and compare the impact with a FAAD campaign But our figures also shows that new visitors actually buys app from the site itself once they become paid apps and since we do some screening people have a good chance to get a good app and again the app icons are available on the site for a full month (sliding calendar)! for $600 you get a full month of advertisement!!! Please go check other site with similar traffic (FAAD will reach 1 million visitors in a day or two!)who offer such a deal?!?! The app store does not have 20k apps anymore, you need a marketing strategy to survive and FAAD is just one strategy out of many, but it's I believe a very cost effective alternative you get a lot of bang for the buck and other sites such as the appera or slidetoplay or even toucharcade post stories/reviews about the free app of the day which further enhances the app's exposure. Also Devs get a new userbase of 50k to 150k+ it's like having your own broacasting channel that you can instantly reach through game updates! How much would it cost a dev to achieve the same results with any other medium? I think that it would be a lot more than $600! But again you do not have to use FAAD at all!!
