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Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

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Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#181

Post by becauseracecar »

VonGuard wrote: post #130

Hey guys, thought I'd throw in my 2-cents as an Independent Games Festival judge, and as press. First of all, your presentation is terrific. Great art and sound. Top notch, feels like it came from a very talented team. With this game on your resume, you've got a great future ahead of yourselves. Now, the bad part: from a gameplay perspective, your game is not unique enough to win out on its own merits in any app stor…

I think this is good advice and an accurate view of how to get ahead (as much as I hate to admit how much of an advantage everyone with deep pockets has). It's definitely hard as a little guy to get started but there are ways to get some attention if you can afford to invest in buying installs.

There's of course Facebook mobile app installs, but a lot of other ways to get installs also that might be more cost effective. Some others: http://www.appoday.com/#developers http://www.curios.me/

Best of luck!

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#182

Post by UberMouse »

joeld42 wrote: post #175
VonGuard wrote: post #130

Hey guys, thought I'd throw in my 2-cents as an Independent Games Festival judge, and as press. First of all, your presentation is terrific. Great art and sound. Top notch, feels like it came from a very talented team. With this game on your resume, you've got a great future ahead of yourselves. Now, the bad part: from a gameplay perspective, your game is not unique enough to win out on its own merits in any app stor…

A less sleazy way to do this is to offer players something ("unlock the secret panda level") in return for giving you a five star review. You can't verify that they actually do, but if you give them the item and then send them to the app store, some of them will. Then, set this up as a timed promotion along with a push notification so you can get a bunch of players to hopefully respond at the same day. It's not as ef…

I would assume that's against the iOS store TOS, you can ask them for a review but you can't ask for a five star review.

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#183

Post by pmelendez »

archagon wrote: post #178
phil wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is disturbingly cynical advice. If you stand by it, why not attach your real name to it? If not, why put it in public? And by the way, you're recommending buying fake reviews. Here's a better tactic (and one that's guaranteed not to get you kicked out of the app store): get your launch announcement to the top slot on a popular discussion site, and get the real people there to leave real reviews instead. Which, i…

I agree completely. 90% of the games that are currently on my iPhone were a) made by dev teams with 1-3 people, b) provide a unique and polished experience, and c) became known mainly based on community outreach. None of them are currently in the top rankings, but as far as I can tell they make enough money for the teams to get by. People keep talking about "hidden gems" on the App Store that failed to succeed despit…

Unfortunately, that doesn't make up for the 400k indie games out there that are not making the top 100 and are competing between them to have a little piece of cake.

Asymmetry is a real problem in the App store.

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#184

Post by physcab »

VonGuard wrote: post #130

Hey guys, thought I'd throw in my 2-cents as an Independent Games Festival judge, and as press. First of all, your presentation is terrific. Great art and sound. Top notch, feels like it came from a very talented team. With this game on your resume, you've got a great future ahead of yourselves. Now, the bad part: from a gameplay perspective, your game is not unique enough to win out on its own merits in any app stor…

I'm not sure cheating helps as much as it used to, and even so is a poor tactic and will possibly get you banned.

That said, Apple's App Store is an absurdly tough market in the U.S. When your game goes live, it needs to be at its best, and even large gaming companies have trouble getting games out there that do well, even with significant legitimate ad spend.

Here are some ideas, based loosely off of the experience I have had:

- Start contacting other indie-devs with relatively high dau numbers and arrange for X-promo via notifications and features.

- Stage your ad-spend when your metrics are known. Ie, if you beta test your app in some country like Brazil or New Zealand and improve your metrics so you have a known LTV, you can spend accordingly when you launch in a big market like Canada or US.

- Start with Android first because it is an easier ecosystem to iterate upon and attain an niche audience.

- There is a growing body of proof that burst spending on launch day is not the best strategy. There are games that launch early and are unknown but gradually improve their grossing metrics and buy audience in batches over time. I believe Rage of Bahamut was one such game [1]

[1]. http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/rage-of-bahamut/ranking/hist...

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#186

Post by archagon »

VonGuard wrote: post #136
jrajav wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have any money left, spend that cash on those awful, dark-alley fake review and promotion services. Take all of Ronyeh's advice, it's excellent, but you can't stop there. To succeed today in the app stores, you have to cheat, so go buy some reviews and downloads so you can raise your ranking in the store. It's a self-fulfilling cycle: higher rankings, more sales. > You have to game the app stores to succeed.…

Hey, this is not my advice. This was given to me by someone who charts successes and sales in app stores. It sucks, it's ugly, but it's fucking true and it works.

Yeah, we got similar advice when I was working at a social gaming startup. Apparently, it's not unheard of among growing, venture-funded companies like ours. I assure you, however, that the vast majority of the indie games that make the headlines (Super Hexagon, Hundreds, Letterpress, etc.) don't use these techniques.

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#187

Post by VonGuard »

artimaeis wrote: post #169
VonGuard wrote: post #130

Hey guys, thought I'd throw in my 2-cents as an Independent Games Festival judge, and as press. First of all, your presentation is terrific. Great art and sound. Top notch, feels like it came from a very talented team. With this game on your resume, you've got a great future ahead of yourselves. Now, the bad part: from a gameplay perspective, your game is not unique enough to win out on its own merits in any app stor…

Do you have a source about Hill Climb Racing having spyware? I've seen my friends play it and was unaware of any spyware problems reported with it. Google isn't showing anything using relevant search queries; I'd love to read a source!

Verizon pointed out that Hill Climb eats battery and bandwidth. http://support.verizonwireless.com/information/app_ranking/h...

I expect that's due to sending infinite data back home. Plus it has permissions to read all sortsa data, like every free game.

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#188

Post by socialist_coder »

tonyhillerson wrote: post #108
kayoone wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Id like to know this too, do you use some kind of JS wrapper for iOS ?

Nope, Web is all custom, iOS is all native, but the data format for the levels is shared.

Why spend time writing a web version when it's not really going to help with sales?

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#189

Post by seanalltogether »

VonGuard wrote: post #130

Hey guys, thought I'd throw in my 2-cents as an Independent Games Festival judge, and as press. First of all, your presentation is terrific. Great art and sound. Top notch, feels like it came from a very talented team. With this game on your resume, you've got a great future ahead of yourselves. Now, the bad part: from a gameplay perspective, your game is not unique enough to win out on its own merits in any app stor…

I just wanted to say I appreciate your perspective and advice here, we've been spending some time in the office talking about your post and the discussion that has emerged from it.

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#190

Post by VonGuard »

phil wrote: post #176
VonGuard wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, look at the top ten apps on both app stores, then come back here and try not to be cynical about anyone's chanced of succeeding there. I've seen numbers on sales in the app stores. If yer not in the top 25, you might as well not even be in the app store, from a meaningful revenue perspective. There are very few exceptions, as far as I know. One possible one would be any app that's $20. Those probably make money,…

I have for years. Believe me, the idea that the app store is a positive feedback loop and you have to clear the inital hurdle to get anywhere is not news to me. But the advice you're giving here is roughly equivalent to telling a young cyclist in their first pro race, "hey, listen buddy. If you want to succeed, you've got to dope. Everybody's doing it. There's no other way."

Fair enough.

And yet, if he wanted to ride in the Tour De France, I think we all know he'd lose unless he did a blood transfusion every single night....

Actually, wait. No I take that back, I do not agree. A starting cyclist will compete in local, small time races. There's only one App Store, and it's Pro's take all. These guys may be just beginning, but they're already swimming with sharks.

And if that's not enough mixed metaphors, I'll edit again!

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