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Edit: found an existing thread for your game, though it would really help if you posted in the release thread to let everyone know your story and that you're actively soliciting feedback. http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=209686
Fellow (mobile) game developer here, congrats on the launch! Can you tell us about the development cycle for this game? Were you alone, did it take a year full-time, etc? I'm curious.
I would be curious as well. What is your marketing plan? I also released a game a month ago after working on it for about a year, but soon realized that it is very tough to break through the noise on the app store and get your game noticed. What has your experience been with this? I see that you are doing pay-up-front model. I'd be curious to get your sense of why you went with that as opposed to the freemium + IAP m…
This was the first time I've gone out and tried marketing one of my games, and I've learned a ton.
The number one thing I would recommend is to get eyes on the project as early as possible. I'd hit up TIGSource and start posting a dev log as soon as you can. Be sure to take it out to local events, and definitely start showing other game developers.
The game took a lot longer to make than I was originally planning for, and a lot of that was due to some design decisions that I struggled with. However when I took it out and started showing some local developers they had tons of ideas to help contribute, and actually helped me through the problems that I had been stuck on.
As for the pay model, The whole reason I made this game is because I love to make games. I don't think there was really any strategy behind the monetization. I just put it out there for a couple of bucks. Honestly I expected this to come out and maybe a few people play it, and then I'd be onto my next one; to me that was totally cool.
Actually this morning I had posted a thread on touch arcade and I got 1 response about how a mom had played the game with her daughter and they both had fun. Really if all the game amounts to is that, I'd be happy.
So far though I've been pretty humbled by the response, and all I can say is thanks!
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While the gesture is noble, you may end up hurting him/her in the long run. If media start linking to your domain rather than to the appstore page, he'll have broken links and lost pagerank if/when you decide to do something else with the domain. Having said that, what a great domain!
Plus if somehow Google thinks asteroids.com is a spammy domain (for whatever reason), it'll now be associated with his game.
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its not official but apple will dick you over on a number of things if you ship on other platforms. most specifically the highly valuable 'being featured early on the app store'. from what i've heard they have a secret internal policy of checking to see if you shipped on android before doing that... one of their submission rules is not to mention other platforms in metadata - i'd also take that as a hint that "we lik…
Moves is currently featuring on the app store and has a very successful Android app. There are often cross-platform apps that are featured. I'd be interested to see valid sources for your claims - they could very easily be by people who are annoyed their app wasn't featured.
i don't really have any great concrete sources i'm afraid, its not documented and aside from the web articles i assume you already easily found with google from my prior comment, it comes from hearsay at the pub from talking to other gamedevs and from at least one meeting with apple employees where everything discussed was NDA although i'm sure i can say that such a meeting took place. although the idea that they suggested not shipping on android for at least a few weeks after launch on ios shouldn't be too far fetched...
the fact that not mentioning other platforms in metadata is a submission requirement is a very strong hint too. its an unreasonable request however you cut it.
i despise legal gagging of this kind - i consider it thoroughly despicable and cowardly - only necessary when you know you are in the wrong and don't want anyone to find out, or are deluded into thinking that your corporate secret isn't better off in the wild where it can benefit all of humanity - i.e that you are more important than everyone else and somehow deserve a reward for acquiring knowledge or keeping secrets.
there is also a bit of 'i am going to ship something in the near future'. i've already said more than enough to do damage to myself here. :)
as i hinted at in my initial response this 'idea' is easy to uncover if you do the usual research anyone would do before shipping. (google)
EDIT: okay so not sure how i forgot this because /i worked there/ but when apple ran their 'stargazing app' promotions about a year ago they only featured ios exclusive apps - they also were regularly featuring starwalk aside from that promotion (which is ios exclusive). the app i worked on 'star chart' was not featured - it has been featured recently because it early adopted the iOS 7 UI style - but before that it got missed despite outranking most of those other apps and being a higher quality product more consistent with apple's design guidelines and ethos. now i don't think that necessarily the app was worthy of feature, but a lot of much less polished or worthy apps got a lot of screenspace on the store and the only thing they had in common was not having shipped on other platforms. as much as i dislike those guys for their disgusting attitude towards customers and employees - frankly they deserved better treatment than they got from apple in that regard. not being featured is fine, but featuring vastly inferior competitiors because they are exclusive is utterly despicable.
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Plus if somehow Google thinks asteroids.com is a spammy domain (for whatever reason), it'll now be associated with his game.
Wow, if it's that simple, that is a great way to destroy a competitor's domain's reputation in Google, isn't it?
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Moves is currently featuring on the app store and has a very successful Android app. There are often cross-platform apps that are featured. I'd be interested to see valid sources for your claims - they could very easily be by people who are annoyed their app wasn't featured.
well, there are exceptions its true. and really, if an app is very good and already successful then they will feature it - the problem is that the success of an app can depend on early features. angry birds will be featured because its already successful - if they don't feature it something is obviously amiss. i don't really have any great concrete sources i'm afraid, its not documented and aside from the web article…
Looks good. I'm wondering why you highlight "Only on iOS" as a specific thing on the screenshots?
In the App Store, I've seen the "only on iOS" category, maybe he wants to get in there.
Here's some critique of your presentation in the App Store: - Why is there a pause symbol in the middle of every screenshot? - Terrible layout on the corner banners in the screenshot. Play head to head Against your friends! [large top margin] Play with up [no leading between this line and the next] to 4 players on 1 ipad [no bottom margin] - Random placement of text next to the circles in the 'How to Play' screen. Wh…
I really wish Apple would enforce that the screenshots had to be actually screenshots. The markings like in this one make it worse, but it seems like more and more popular games are just putting marketing images there and not bothering to include any game play.
If you haven't, every iOS/OS X developer should sign up as an iTunes affiliate http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/ and use affiliate links. It is more or less transparent unlike other link wrappers. E.g. a link to the same app with my affiliate account will be https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/asteroid-smash/id730150968&a.... (no you don't have to click on it) There's just 2 additional values.
The key thing about this is you can use the campaign tag to track click throughs. It's not about the affiliate revenue.