I like your understanding games, game, a lot i look forward to finishing it!
Show HN: I built a tool I wanted to have, but didn’t exist
31–36 of 36 posts
Re: Show HN: I built a tool I wanted to have, but didn’t exist
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for your feedback! There are some things about it that are games-specific, such as the festival calendar and the sites that Promoter is crawling for press mentions. It could be expanded to non-game apps in the future, but I wanted to start with the area I have most expertise in. The VAT pricing is due to the tax rules we have in Europe, but I can see that it adds noise to the price point. Monthly payment is so…
Is it only for iOS, or will it work for Mac App Store too?
It's targeted towards games on all platforms really, so Mac App Store should work just fine. The only features that are iOS only are the promocodes and showing the average user rating.
Re: Show HN: I built a tool I wanted to have, but didn’t exist
#33I like your understanding games, game, a lot i look forward to finishing it!
Thanks! ;)
Re: Show HN: I built a tool I wanted to have, but didn’t exist
#34Nice work. Tweeted it to all my game dev followers for you. Generalize it to non-iOS games too - for instance Newgrounds, Kongregate, Armor Games scores and Jay Is Games reviews for Flash devs. In the Flash side of casual games you have major portals (like those mentioned) who license/produce games in significant volume and can't track that stuff unless they want to spend all day in Google.
Only two features are iOS-only: promocodes and average user ratings. For everything else, it works great for Flash games as well.
Re: Show HN: I built a tool I wanted to have, but didn’t exist
#35As an iOS developer, I can say that I agree with the statement that this would be beneficial for non-game apps as well. As for the strategy, I would highly recommend you read "Business Model Generation" if you want to flush out this idea a bit more. It seems like you're on the right track, but maybe need to clarify a few points. Lastly, have you considered going with a monthly subscription based service? Possibly eve…
Thanks for the tip on the book, I'll check it out. I considered monthly subscription and want to offer it in the long run. Recurly looks like the best solution out there, but it's also pricey when you're starting out and want to keep costs low. I really went with the most simple solution I could come up with, which is one price point and Harvest+PayPal as a super cheap payment solution that does not require payment g…
Flat and unlimited pricing can often be a problem. Flat means EA pays as much to manage all their game-press for all their games as an indie dev does for one.
Also, I realize you're keeping it simple now but have you thought about figuring out scarce resources (likely bandwidth) and charging based on that? Or, even just setting a threshold at which there will be extra charges. (1GB traffic/day or 2GBs stored.)
When I see a company offer unlimited deals I wonder how long they'll be able to offer that.
Looks neat, if I had a product being released it's stuff I know I wouldn't be as on the ball with as you now are. I'll sign up (even at current prices) if I release anything.
Re: Show HN: I built a tool I wanted to have, but didn’t exist
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the tip on the book, I'll check it out. I considered monthly subscription and want to offer it in the long run. Recurly looks like the best solution out there, but it's also pricey when you're starting out and want to keep costs low. I really went with the most simple solution I could come up with, which is one price point and Harvest+PayPal as a super cheap payment solution that does not require payment g…
Flat and unlimited pricing can often be a problem. Flat means EA pays as much to manage all their game-press for all their games as an indie dev does for one. Also, I realize you're keeping it simple now but have you thought about figuring out scarce resources (likely bandwidth) and charging based on that? Or, even just setting a threshold at which there will be extra charges. (1GB traffic/day or 2GBs stored.) When I…
Yes, I thought of pretty much every single possible pricing model, and I went with the simplest one I could come up with. Figuring out the price point and payment solution was the biggest hurdle that kept me from launching while the app was in private beta, and flat pricing meant and could keep things simple.
Even though an EA division would pay as much as an indie, I think the pricing is still very fair with effectively being less then 9 EUR / month and with the fact that I don't charge people if they don't want to renew after one year, but still keep the existent data.