This smacked of RIAA logic. It doesn't matter what your conversion rate is when your game is free - non-converts don't cost you money.
Where did they say it cost them money? They said they weren't getting any from selling anything.
How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness
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Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness
#121) Don't spend two years working on your iPad game before you ship it. Far too long a cycle. 2) As an indie dev, you're suppose to attack the easiest, lowest hanging fruit to build your income base. After you're past a point, you can take on ambitious long-term projects. Otherwise you are always depending on a "hit" title.
That's basically what they did. They lived off the profits from solipskier (http://mikengreg.com/solipskier/) while building this game.
Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness
#13Such a confused and poorly written article. The developers aren't homeless because they had 200,000 downloads... They're homeless despite 200,000 downloads because they're game developers and not salespeople and so didn't even consider that they have to actually make the sale! Apple and Google and Amazon provide the big parking lot where people show up and have money in-hand, but if you give away the goods and never ask for the money, of course you'll end up broke. I'm glad to see that the developers have taken some steps to change the situation, but from what can be gleaned from the article, it sounds like they're not really handling the situation well.
Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness
#141) Don't spend two years working on your iPad game before you ship it. Far too long a cycle. 2) As an indie dev, you're suppose to attack the easiest, lowest hanging fruit to build your income base. After you're past a point, you can take on ambitious long-term projects. Otherwise you are always depending on a "hit" title.
1) Don't spend two years working on your iPad game before you ship it. Far too long a cycle.
You have to wonder where Notch would've been if he hadn't sold Minecraft before he was "done". As flakey as he (all of us really) can be as a dev (he's admitted as much himself), he definitely needed people depending on him continuing work.
Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness
#15These guys are homeless? I'm willing to shell $1000 to buy ownership of the entire game :)
But it sounds like they focused too little on making money. You can't give everything away for free. Give people a taste of the good stuff, but make them pay for the rest.
Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness
#16I'm currently building a game company so I sympathize with these guys, but it sounds like most of this is self inflicted.
1. Development cycle is way too long. You have to move much faster in mobile, especially for a casual game.
2. Assume financial failure for each game. Doesn't sound very encouraging but you should never count on income from a new title, especially if you're trying out new ways of monetizing.
3. Keep a cushion. If you need to take some time off to contract then do it. Running out of cash isn't an option.
4. Don't leave customer acquisition to chance. It sounds like their customer acquisition strategy was based solely on app store visibility (and hope).
Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness
#17This smacked of RIAA logic. It doesn't matter what your conversion rate is when your game is free - non-converts don't cost you money.
non-converts don't cost you money.
They cost you money if they use your servers to transmit game info.
Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness
#18While this is a sad story, I'm finding it hard to feel sorry for them. This is a prime example of excellent execution but poor marketing. First, I've never heard of this game an it looks pretty awesome. My wife and I loved The Incredible Machine and this seems like a great derivation on that. Second, it's iPad only so you are missing out on a ton of iPhone sales. I've bought stuff on my iPhone which I didn't on my iP…
I agree about the iPad-only choice being unfortunate.
As for exposure: Surprisingly, Gabe and Tycho haven't managed to talk up themselves enough (IMO):
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pennyarcade/penny-arcade...
With an hour and a half left, I'd expected this number to be three times larger than it is. Sure they "hit their goal", but when you set up that road map of stretch goals it seems like you're really hoping/expecting to hit $1M, and that doesnt look like a remote possibility.
Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness
#19At first, 200,000 downloads sounded impressive, getting into the top apps lists is also impressive, but the problem is outlined in the second paragraph. >> Gasketball was released for free, with a one-time in-app purchase that unlocks the rest of the game offered for $2.99. The conversion rate to the paid version of the game sits at 0.67%. It seems like they should figure out why the conversion rate is low (e.g. perh…
>>“A common complaint on the release build of Gasketball was that even our friends couldn’t find out how to buy the game. Obviously that’s a huge problem and we’ve remedied that in this patch update that we just released,” Wohlwend said
Re: How an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness
#20I personally am pretty turned off to in app purchases. Most games are only getting worse. I cannot count the number of times that I have been approached by my 5 year old asking for me to "type in my name so I can have _______" while playing angry birds, jetpack joyride, or where's my water. The problem is that he doesn't realize that there is real money tied to that. To him, I just enter my iTunes password and the le…
But I felt like the authors of this game realized how predatory most IAP are and while they didn't specifically say its disgustingly exploitive to children they did say they were trying to design a game that wasn't exploitive. After reading their article I'd say they are just giving away too much. I think the free to play X levels then pay to play more is not predatory IAP. It was bread and butter of the shareware scene for the better part of a decade during the pre-internet era. And that's what we're in right now with mobile that time period where the difference between amateur and professionals is invisible. So I think they're model is right they just aren't applying it correctly.