The Hellish World Of Self Promotion

I posted a gigantic response in the poll about what marketing works in this forum, but I wanted to reflect on a few things here.

Sadly, the only thing that has worked for our game Kunundrum http://goo.gl/kZTr8 (proud self-promotion, take pride everyone, be proud of your work) is basically give the thing away to everyone you can in a promotion like Open Feint's app giveaway, or FAAD, etc. And then make sure to update the game in a short span of time to make sure that you retain all those free cheap downloads you just gutted yourself with. Much like a game in and of itself, you keep your ratings aloft. That is mainly the only way to garner any sales or respect. It's that blasted ranking that Apple has set in place.

If there's anything we've learned from this situation it's that no one really cares what you've made or how long it took you or your background or even the accolades that you clasp on to. They just want to know if they can make money either off of the app, or off of you.

If it's the app, then it's a HUGE compliment because they are saying essentially that's a piece of software that could make both our lives happy.

If it's off of you, then they are just suckling money off of the market to keep their nests warm and full of food...and flat screen tvs Mostly this is the case among indie devs. Seems to be the case about anyone who isn't a massive slog of a company.

So you'll find that we're trying to figure out a solution based around someone else's control. Promoters offer you the sky. Deep down inside they know maybe 10% more than you do about the market. And guaranteed they are ignorant to the process that causes success.

The greatest downfall to any of our endeavours is the way the Apple storefront is organized. If you want success... you have to play the game that Apple wants you to play. Sadly...that game is basically MAKE MORE MONEY OR WE DON'T CARE. And then you get pushed to the back of the line. Consider this... 30% of every sale is in their pocket.

Now let me ask you a question:

If your house needs a new support beam, and it's just about to fall apart, would you go to Home Depot and get a premium support beam that is sure to support your house for the rest of the year, or would you buy it off of an independent seller who miraculously created the beam with only his feet because he's armless and it's an incredible story...but it will only stop your house from falling down for a week?

This is how things work. Apple promotes what makes money to make money. Unless you have popularity, clout, guaranteed sales, and/or something so innovative that it will actually do AMAZING even without Apple's help, then yes you will make it. Otherwise...it's just give away all of your work for free so more people go to the iTunes stores, click on reviewer sites, view video reviews, and consume as much advertising along the way so THAT side of the industry is healthy happy and wise.

It's sad but it's true. The key to figuring out how to get around that beast might be in a different angle.

Maybe we should all be looking Android way. 5 bucks to get on... try and promote on there, get a following and then let Apple users know that Android users have this title that they don't. Again... really hard with the AMOUNT of people doing it.

Either way... giving the game away, then updating, then getting residual sales as you slowly fall back down to your paid ranking seems to be one of the easier ways to make money. And by easy, I mean DAMN HARD to continually come out with content to update to give away for free, only to promote to kinda maybe get a sale for a day or two on a weekend sometime in the summer...once...

It's rough hahaha Everyone says be innovative, get the eye of reviewers and writers... why should I have to innovate based around the fact that the industry is understaffed, or easily bored. It's not my fault that a reviewer plays hundreds of games a week. That doesn't mean that everyone else on the store is playing those games, and that kind of thought process is very skewed and self-serving.

I watched that video about the gentlemen speaking towards the industry and getting the attention of writers/reviewers/media companies. It's ridiculous to put that kind of pressure on the industry to continually make those fat cats perk up and interested in a game that you've designed. It's not at all fair to say well I already played 100 of these types of games this week, therefor your's is instantly bogus. What if it's the best out of those? What if it's of great quality?

Do you think car dealerships look at their sedans and think, well!...Honda already has the Civic. Why even bother now? It has 4 wheels, good gas mileage, is an economical beast. Why would we even consider putting out the same exact product that everyone else does. Why? Well...not everyone WANTS a civic, or LIKES Honda, or maybe they want to support their OWN industry, and they like the different styling, etc.

I'm not buying all these little opinions based around making that single person or field or type of person happy. All these review sites are doing is the exact same thing that Apple is doing... they are just looking for the best stories to draw the most attention to get the most money out of their efforts.

Meanwhile...game devs are trying to make people happy...so they can get money... and sadly at the price point and in this anonymous market, it's a slow burn and often miserable existence.

But ya know what? I love making games. And I'm not going anywhere. And I don't think any of you should either. I think your discussions and your insights are exactly what makes it GREAT to be on this end of the fight. I love the challenge... every day I have tiny victories and I feel amazing. I might not be eating, or buying awesome gifts for people at Christmas. But if I can make this much off of the market with one game(which is like 5-10 bucks a day) then I can produce a number of those apps and multiply my profits. And then fold those profits in the Android market. And then look at paying dev teams to port my stuff to Xbox Live. And I work my fingers til they bleed just to live the life that I enjoy, regardless of how much money all the huge companies need in order to operate and maintain.

Until I'm EA, how can I even comprehend how to compete with them. I've worked at Gameloft... it's a slave shop. I quit after a week because of how miserable it was. And I've been making AAA titles since 2005 with high ranking people. And when I say high ranking I mean relevant people that choose what we all play.

It's rough. And no there isn't a major answer. But I think you shouldn't dump a butt load of cash into half assed marketing ventures. If you don't have a full fledged campaign that is pinpointed to work at the EXACT time you need it to, then don't dump the cash on that fire. It won't put it out. It will just shrug it off and you'll be stuck with a bill.

Do yourselves a favour and actually look at creating a campaign with operations included into the schedule, i.e.: if we are doing a free app promo, let's have a killer update ready to go the few days after so we stay at number 1 based on downloads then updates, then a ton of happy people. Make sure you have something sustainable in the app that even when it's free, you can still possibly make some cash off of it. That way its exposure will guarantee at least a percentage of projected profits. Make sure that if you do an advertising campaign that you make it across the board, hitting every medium you can at the RIGHT time. Otherwise your message will be disjointed and uninteresting.

Think of it this way... no one cared who Justin Bieber was one day. Then all the sudden because he did a promotional tour, stopping at Much Music, BAM, like wild fire, every 12 year old girl was screaming his name and now he's rich and powerful...that little dork is powerful hahaha

But if he showed up on Much music one day...maybe 5000 people saw him...meh... he disappears until maybe a couple weeks or a month, does one or two shows...meh...

Just keep in mind that you're dealing with a low brow gluttonous beast, and by that I'm talking about the market. Not individually, just as a massive beast. In order to get that beasts attention you have to make A LOT OF NOISE at once. And if you want to sustain that, you need A LOT OF TIME continue to make A LOT OF NOISE.

Sorry that this is so long guys... honestly I'm just trying to pour as much out to let you know that it's not the end of the world, and the puzzle/mystery isn't as complex as you might think. It just takes major coordination, major hours, and a lot of hands to help. That's why marketing and advertising costs so much... they look at how much you are saving by just saying HERE'S A COMMERCIAL ON TV!... That would take YEARS of grass roots marketing to get to that levee of 30 second exposure.

It's rough But we'll get there man!

The only thing that would fix our problem is if Apple gave us more respect and split the store up like Xbox Live does into sections where jerks like EA and Gameloft were only allowed to price as low as 5 dollars on the MAJOR dev section. And then work your way down from there based on performance. In that performance you could then say, if you have made upwards of 200k off of a game, you can move up into the MAJOR dev section.

Until something like that happens, we're all just parasites on the giant Apple money making bus. But that's cool... I'lll dig in for the long haul!

 

Yeah, FreeAppADay.com worked well with my iPad game in terms of downloads, though their prices for iPhone promotion are going over my budget ($5000 if the app has In-App-Payments, and requires 4 months having been a paid app). Hard to tell for indie devs if they're making a good long-term investment, or sucked into the "vintage press" market...

Here's an idea: similar to how Steam has an "indie" section, we could all beg the Apple Store to create an "Indie" section. Requirements for you to be featured in this section would be a team size of <= ~3 people, and the app would have to seem to be somewhat original in style or gameplay or something. There would be a submission form somewhere for indie's to ask to be put in the queue. Then review blogs or end users could browse the indie section if interested in certain types of games, and everyone would benefit. Thoughts?

 

Basically, I agree. Really, these should probably be two separate lists, two separate things. But it's hard to ignore the impact.