Indie Apps Alliance will be opening soon - beta testers needed

Registered,
Was thinking of something similar myself, as would be good; if we can get a group of developers and try to always have something featured with cross-product advertising then it'll be great for everyone.

Adam.

 

I want to involve myself with this alliance, but there is one issue I have.

Yes, I consider my apps good quality, though, I'm not currently suffering from an overcrowded App Store.

My question is: If I'm getting a good amount of sales, and receiving decent exposure, can I still qualify as part of the IAA?

 

boasting?

i doubt any alliance is going to make a different - unless apple advertises it from within itunes. i would predict that barely 5% of iphone/ipod touch users are aware of websites like TA and they solely do their shopping / application discovery via the app store icon on the device itself.

the question is how to get your applications into the hands of people who dont know how to look / use websites to get such info. facebook/twitter are good examples; as it is viral marketing on its own.

 

Playhaven~

Playhaven.com has a system like this in the works as well which would allow any independent game developers to form an alliance (they used the exact same word) and cross-promote through the playhaven platform in games and in their community around some theme (it looks like yours is just one alliance built on broad, overall high quality applications?) with the hopes of achieving a recognizable, reliable brand system.

The idea of combating the big name companies is definitely an appealing one. Hoping to see these ideas come to fruition soon!

 

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but unless there was some hidden subliminal message that I missed, that has got to be the most useless promotional video I've ever seen. Why bother making it, or asking us to watch it?

Also, just to get this straight… your ultimate goal is to "create a label of quality," to "stand out from the mass of crappy apps that are overwhelming the app stores," and so, to achieve this goal, you're making the system "open to everybody!" ?

I don't see how it's going to work.

But good luck with it all the same, maybe I'll be proven wrong.

 

To an extent I have to agree. There shouldn't be a cap of $100,000 USD as it means that those games that are successful cant be included; which gurantees it will not work; as surley the idea is the games which are a success can be bolstered to benefit the others...?

In addittion having it open to everyone means you'll get all the same crap joining the "alliance".

I would reccomend; no cap on revenue... And some form of quality control; as the open-ness as that is the exact reason the App store is over-saturated...

 

I put in my e-mail, just curious to see how it goes/what it does. So who is going to be the judge of quality?

 

I also signed up. It's not very clear how any of this is intended to work, but I do like the idea of getting together with other developers and sharing ideas and PR and such.

 

Not sure how you can say that since playhaven hasn't announced how their alliance program will work yet. I was involved in their recent phone meeting, so I know what direction they are heading in, and I don't see much difference with what you are proposing.

$100,000 is basically nothing for an indie development company working on apps/games full time. It's barely enough for a team of two to live off of, let alone be able to afford expensive marketing campaigns.

$200,000 to $250,000 might be a more reasonable limit.

 

So basically 99.9% of developers on the AppStore will qualify to join.

I think you are going to need to be more selective than that in order to maintain any level of quality in your games.

A label or brand can't afford to have a couple of great games, and dozens or hundreds of crappy games. People need to know that the Indie Alliance (or whatever name you end up with) is a reliable source of high-quality games or there is no point is forming an alliance.

 

Something similar to what you're describing has been tried before under the banner of "app treasures." I'd be curious if any of them could comment on how successful this has been.

http://www.apptreasures.com/

 

As I said, playhaven has NOT ANNOUNCED their plans for alliances publicly yet, but there are A LOT of new online features and tools coming that will enable developers to create and manage their own alliances, and decide what games and developers are allowed in a given alliance.

There are also several marketing and PR ideas in the works at playhaven that are organized around alliances.

You might even end up using playhaven as a basis for your alliance.

 

The reason for app treasures' success is because it was very selective to high quality games, and a label that shared similar styles of game — in fact, to date it's only 8 developers in the group — and like pierotofy said above, they're restrictive and don't allow 'just anyone' to join.

These are the reasons why it was successful, I can't help but wonder how having a "more open" structure will work… Are you going to allow just anyone to join (which is what it seems at the moment) , or you planning to have some form of restricted membership and quality control?

I don't wanna be overly negative — I think it's really good you're working on something, but it seems like you might be wasting your time if you're not really thinking about it enough.