The app is FT. We worked on it for straight 19 months and only to be disappointed at end. The app is novice stock simulation game where players use virtual currency to buy, sell and trade stocks of real world sports athletes in same way as Apple Inc and Google are traded on Nasdaq. We started first with a prototype which was developed back in 2009. The prototype took nearly 6 months to develop but finally reached app store in late 2009. Walla! The app received 900 downloads in first three hours of launch without no sort of advertisement. Except on TA. And our test servers crashed. Later - Long story short. We end up spending three times more then our initial of 10k to "polish" the idea. However, atlast giving away for free and little help with a press release. The app did manage to crack Top200 games sub-category list.
I am sorry to here this... Just out of interest, what do you see that were the biggest factors in this? I'm curious because I am making plans to invest about 40k into a game and are looking at ways to stack the odds for success.
it is a common story heard around these parts. developing an app is like buying a lottery ticket. You can keep pouring money into it to "chase" it if you like, but either it will hit, or it won't. I think you guys have a great and novel app, but the overall issue is the same everyone else faces. the App Store is an oversaturated mess and you cannot expect people to just "know about" and download your app. If it is free it has a slightly better chance (people DL free stuff relentlessly), but then the free charts are even more competitive than the paid ones so you are fighting a different battle over there. The usual advice holds. Best you can do is "buy another lottery ticket" which means learn from what you've already done and build a whole new game, which is more marketable than what you've done. Include links/store to upsell to your existing product(s) and then at least if your new game does any business, then you will get fresh eyeballs on your existing property. Otherwise, and I'm a bit blue in the face from saying it now is that you really need to concentrate on promotion and marketing and all that it entails. So many developers treat it as an afterthought, when in reality this is one of the most crucial parts of the entire development from the word GO. People need to know your name, your brand, and you have to worked damned hard to trumpet those things. Your app name, your icon, they must all speak to your targeted market. Press releases must be written, promotions should be held (contests and such). Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, any kind of energy you can pour into social networking will all help your cause. If you don't want to deal with any of this stuff, there's plenty of people willing to take your money who will cover it for you (but you get what you pay for, and if you don't pay much, don't expect much) Even after all of that time & money spent, there's still no guarantee of success on your app (or a small suite of them). You need to closely study the market and see what does well, and what would do well. Go out and test your app during development to see how people respond, in betas (online) and also in person - the iPhone is a casual device, people play with them on trains and in bars! You have a very specific app here which would definitely appeal to a particular niche of the market which may not be very catered to - my ears perked up when I heard of it. Go where your audience is (different websites/magazines relative to that industry) and send them carefully-designed and informative press material. A mention from some of those guys might do wonders for you. Long story short, you've worked hard but the real hard work is yet to come! If you can hang, you might find some success yet __________________ twitter - HeadcaseGames.com Puzzling has Evolved - Enter the 180 Hi-score Facebook contest! FreeAppTracker.com Win ANY app you want, daily!
Sorry to sound harsh, but. You might want to check target audience first before putting money in developing of such apps. Let's have a look, what we got in appstore: Casual, very polished, short session games: Angry Birds Doodle jump Cut the rope Plants vs Zombies Great graphics games with great gameplay: Dead Space Infinity Blade GTA Lego Harry Potter Remakes of old known games: you name it I just checked full top-100 of games, do you know how many manager games are there? Zero. None. Null. One might expect if he gets a game like football manager, which has some appeal to certain (small) audience, he might get some attention, but going after a virtual stock trading with player names instead of company names (?!), seriously? Did you ever think, if you were completely out of that developing, would you be one to buy your game? I highly doubt it. Maybe getting game concept first and developing after thinking about it might be a wise idea, instead of jumping into developing right away.
I have to agree with the people before me. Although your app looks very polished and the idea is unique and may be very fun for some people, I dont think it has mass appeal value. 1. The app doesn't look at all like a game. It looks like a stock portfolio managing software that something like e-trade or one of those sites would employ. When I am looking for a game under the games section of itunes I want to see something that actually looks like a game, or I am going to just skip right over it. 2. This really is targeted at a very specific niche audience which unfortunately means that it likely won't have the appeal to sell to enough people to reclaim the investment put in to it. On the up side, I think the interface is awesome.
to follow-up, and I don't say this to rub anyone's nose in it but rather as a warning to other prospectors (and only because so many people still echo the exact same sentiment to this day "I have a great idea, I wanna make money, this is a sure thing!") - the app store/mobile gaming in general is a new and unique animal with it's own set of rules, and culture. The gold rush days "for Joe Schmoe" have long since gone by. It is not wise to develop apps for this market unless you know what you are doing and have already got some history with the process. It is very unwise to spend real time/money doing this stuff without "getting your feet wet" first (doing a much smaller project) to at least learn the lay of the land. Unless you don't mind burning money.. __________________ twitter - HeadcaseGames.com Puzzling has Evolved - Enter the 180 Hi-score Facebook contest! FreeAppTracker.com Win ANY app you want, daily!
Quoted for truth. I'm quickly finding this out with my first game. Since launch I've done about as much research into marketing as I did in objective c programming. The app store is absolutely flooded with software and it seems like an almost impossible battle to win to even carve out a small chunk for yourself. Like me, you just gotta keep at it. Listen to feedback, hit the forums, hit up websites, social network, etc. If you feel like you've made a quality app then hit the road and market the sucker until you are blue in the face.
I agree with this 100%. With my first game I spent $600 creating for sound, music, developer license and a few other things (link in my sig). I also spent 8 months of my life working on it in my free time, but of course I don't factor that in to my costs because I had fun doing it. I've currently sold enough copies through the publisher to cover my costs for making the game, after the publisher and apple take their cut, and even a little bit extra for myself. This is a far cry from making real big money with an app, but it was a learning experience and something I enjoyed making. Now that I have a little experience with the app store though, my next game I'm gonna go bigger, better, and invest more in the game. If that succeeds I'll do it again for the next game, but I'm starting small with little risk, and if it works out I'll move up the chain. If not I've risked little enough that it should have virtually no financial impact on myself.
Never invest money into software projects. Ever. The advantage of software is that it requires almost no investment to develop. You can't expect to make $30k on the app store. What were you thinking? I don't even expect to make $30k with my new app and my investment sofar is $0 with a $1k maximum investment plan if I decide to promote. I'm sorry about your luck but you could have avoided it with more planning and market research.
It's definitely a risk releasing a game aimed at such a small target audience. A shame too, the app looks really polished and usually I'd be tempted to buy it due to the clean and professional looking menus alone, but I won't... because I have no idea what any of it means. More than happy to give you a little boost on the free downloads though.
FantasyTrader is a really cool concept for a game that I'm sure there's a small niche group of people who are super in to sports that would love it. That being said, the sign up process is absolutely horrible. Before you're able to do anything in the game you've got to fill out a complete registration profile, with username, display name, email, and entering your password twice. It doesn't stop there though, you've got to quit the app then check your email and retrieve a six digit numerical code to then authenticate your email address by reloading the app and entering in said code. But wait, there's more- you've got to then log in with the details you previously registered. Compare that to basically any other online game, where you can play instantly and are eventually pushed in to creating a profile if you want to add friends or use online features. Seriously, I'm just blown away by the hoops you have to jump through to play this.
Ron speaks the truth here. Listen very very carefully to the part about promotion. Promotion is not an afterthought...it is the goal. As a developer or artist if your goal is to create an App then you should completely satisfied and happy when you see that "Ready for Sale" status update. But if your goal is to try and get your App into as many hands as possible (whether it be a free or paid app) then finishing/releasing an app is not your goal...your goal is marketing and promotion (the hardest part). I put around $1K into the art and animation for my first major App release. That was before I knew how the App Store really worked. Needless to say I won't be doing that again unless I feel it is worth while. Like Ron says, after you get some App experience...you'll be a better judge of where funds should be allocated to and if something is worth investing in.
Was going to write the exact same thing. I DL'd the game and was instantly put off by the whole set-up process. I got about 3/4 of the way through it and then ran out of interest in seeing the actual "game." If this was streamlined with an existing social network (OF, GC or something) then it wouldn't have been an issue. It's a shame because you'lve probably spent a good amount of work setting that part up, as it is. This isn't unfixable, if you could scrap that segment and hook it up traditionally (I dunno how much work, not light I'd suspect) you might have an easier time. Get an icon that looks good and some actual screenshots that are eyecatching and you might be able to bring this one back to life I think it might be worth it philosophically, but that depends on if you feel like spending more time and money on "the chase." It just depends how much you believe in your product! __________________ twitter - HeadcaseGames.com Puzzling has Evolved - Enter the 180 Hi-score Facebook contest! FreeAppTracker.com Win ANY app you want, daily!
First of all, I'm sorry to hear that your AppStore journey didn't go as expected so far. I'm probably one of the lucky persons in his AppStore experience so far as I've made a medi-success so far and in less than a year, it has became my primary bussiness. I won't comment on your current game directly, as I'm sure you spent a lot of passion, money, time on it but want to point a few things for AppStore as my 2 cents : The average Joe/Mary I think that, although we have a passion on creating games that we think is the most entertaining for us, this is not the way to go. A good video game developer is also a sort of good video game player which mostly means that we are a bit above the average players when it comes to expectation of entertainment from games. This leads to a few false decisions while making games as well. The average iDevice owner is not a daily player, nor does he/she have a history on playing games. So, if you want to reach the maximum audiance, you should be thinking very very simple in game mechanics. It shouldn't be surprised for you to see the top selling games are very basic in gameplay mechanic such as tilting, a tap, a flick, etc. Evaluating ideas Not all successfull games are original. AppStore is open to you, as to everyone else, to check what is inside and I strongly suggest checking out all the games no matter they are successfull or not. There are a lot of games which are made after seen an implementation in an older game, found some points which would make them much better and entertaining which lead to success. If you intend to carbon copy, I won't suggest that much as it'll highly fail although you might see some mediocre success as well (Fruit Ninja->Veggie Samurai for example). Correct Theme Theming is one important point in games. The mechanic of the game should be feeded with a very good theme to make a complete package. A game story happening in space or forest, although with same mechanics, will have a very different taste and meaning for gameplay so you should be very carefull in this selection. Stuck in the crowd Initially, this is a correct assumption as there are lots and lots of games released everyday. It might be a bit more easy to get lost in that crowd day by day but at the mean time, AppStore works with it's own unique marketing mechanism called "word to mouth". If you have a jewellery in your hand, I can tell you that there is no chance that it won't get noticed, unless you don't play your cards right. Yes, you might not see a boost in your initial release, but, you can use services like OpenFeint free game of the day to reach the mass audiance and believe me, if your game is accepted by average Joe/Mary, you'll have a success instantly after those services. One more thing, don't be afraid to give your game for free, as those free players will be your valuable marketing people that you won't be able to earn even after pouring lots of money to professional marketing guys. Risk of Loss Unless you don't have a big capital behind you, pouring all your time and earnings into a one single product is not a pretty good decision. You might need time to perfect your ideas to earn a success. So, try to have small bites at start and try to spend your budget/time on a few projects instead of just one. These are all my thoughts and hope it'll help you a bit.
tough tough world .. but true with so many games, none will make it without dedicated marketing " the goldrush days of joe shmoee are over " the gold rush days appeared in an instant, and disappeared in a wink kii
For the people investing 40K making a successful game shouldnt be so hard though. Just look at top selling console games,pick one you can program and do art for, then make your version and release it on iphone. Thats the only garunteed way. Everything else is a risk.
I'm sort of high jacking this thread This I agree with. We are actually doing this and will be going down the 2D route with a production value of a Snes/Megadrive game, with lots of online functionality - not just high score and achievements but multiplayer and other good things. My question is this. What is this game worth price wise? If a game had all this production and features would users complain about $3.99 or $4.99? The game is actually quite unique and when completed will surpass all 99c games in quality and content but to make this viable (games like this cost money to make) it will need a higher price tag. I really wish the young kids today understand this - if you want quality you pay for it. We are committed to making this game now but I do worry about the complaints from users that expect games for 99c.
Thank you so much guys for all your valuable comments and review. Hodapp, headcasegames-> yes, you are right about the login process and users will be knocked off to go through it. We developed as users tend to stay longer and are inclined with the app if they actually go and complete the login process. As far as the marketing and promotion are concerned we worked very hard on that as well. We hired a PR agency (Apalon) and they tried their best to bring the light on the app. And are continuously trying to promote through periodic press releases and few occasional add campaigns. But the most important aspect of the app is it's core experience, the trading. FT sets out a trading experience not from sports point of view but more of an stock manager game. As user Voley describes. Basically we thought of adding a social integration (facebook) and have opportunity to users trading their own stock or friends instead of sports. But thats still a sub category and the core user experience needs to be enjoyed first by user which is trading. About Ozden79 explanation of successful app. Currently FT has no such specific theme to it and may generating one could bring necessary good.
Fantasy Trader is live on App Store. I hope this time around it sticks on for longer period of time. The app includes all major sports and other which turns out to be 25+ and also including celebrity stocks as well. It is been online for over 3 weeks and seen decent response. Also took suggestion from here and did few press releases as well. Tuning in hard for marketing and promotion on web. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fantasy-trader-2-0/id1220757740?mt=8
