Yepp. One of the reasons for Diablo's huge success. Hey, I remember I had a wand called the "Terror of the Terror"! Must be a weapon which was afraid of itself. Anyway, if I only knew how to boost AppStore sales. I would be rich, very rich.
well it depends.. i assume the ads nick runs are not "cheap" either.. so questionable if he even got his advertisement back.. not to mention the developement costs.. also 800 sales in 11 days is not good.. thats around 550$ before tax lets assume another 30% and you end up with 380$ ... split through 11days thats 34$ ... before any developement/marketing expenses.. so only a complete hobbiest could see this as "good".. still a long stretch away from being to live on such sales. edit: in a western country.. i know there alot of regions in the world where such income would exceed the average income of the country by faar.. but in this case its not.. just to put it into perspective.
exactly mr.ugly. i'm a hobbyist from south-africa and live in a small town with low rent. i have no expenses except for my time and the 99$ apple developer fee (i'm a freelance web and graphic designer so all my other equipment is already there and i mainly use open source programs). if i can average 35 sales a day for the whole year i would consider doing this full time. if all my apps together can sell 35 on an average day, then the first few days and big jumps in sales can be viewed as a bonus. so my point is, from my perspective, 800 sales in 11 days is good. maybe not great, but good. and the more important thing in the numbers for me would be where the app settles on daily sales.
I bought Squid Drop even played it a couple of times but i didn't get "hooked".My humble opinion is that, given the amount of exposure this game had, it should have done a lot better, I think the problem here is the game!
non yet. first game coming end of next month if all goes well. very excited! also have an ar type app in the works, but its still way off.
I can of course not rule this out completely. And thanks for the business by the way. Squid Drop is not the game to end all games. I do believe however that it is a strong endless score-hunter with more variety than most games in the genre. I tested the game with beta testers for months before release and the number of great reviews both in the App Store and from website suggests that there are at least some people disagreeing with you. Also: Even if the game sucked completely this doesn't explain the poor sales. You agree that I got a decent amount of exposure, and this exposure was all positive. Even if all the reviewers were wrong how would the public know? Even the App Store ratings suggest that the people buying it are satisfied. I haven't sold more than roughly 1000 copies. This isn't enough to get the word-of-mouth going neither in a positive or negative way. The sales does confirm that something is "wrong" of course. As an example Air Penguin* was released one day after Squid Drop. It received a quite similar critical reception, scoring higher at some sites and lower at others. It rocketed straight into #1 Games. Squid Drop placed #677 the first day and was out of the top 1000 in two days. Personally I believe some part of the presentation is probably to blame. Possibly the art direction, subject matter, icon, screenshots, trailer, name, lack of colors or text description. Or perhaps it needed a marketing push I was unable to afford. I never expected Squid Drop to become a stellar hit, but from the reception it got, both pre- and post-launch, I believed it should have a chance to generate at least a small profit. Oh well, it's always the next title *For the record: I'm not comparing the inherit qualities of the titles just the critical reception they received.
Refresh my memory. Did you put one of those "you've launched the game 5 times, would you like to go to the App Store and rate it" notifications in Squid Drop? I'm dying to get some stats on that. I get the feeling it's fairly effective. I'm going to be adding it to some future releases that are currently coming down the tubes.
No, I didn't. It's something I find really annoying as a player, so please don't put it in your game!
I don't usually entertain the nag boxes as a player either but I can't deny the apps that include this.. umm... "feature" get a lot of reviews. Probably as a result of being nagged to leave a review. (And by nagged, of course, I mean it asks once or at most once per update.)
I also can't stand popups nagging you to review, and so don't have a rate nag for Lead Wars on principle, even though I'm sure it gets more ratings. I do have a Rate button on the credits screen though so players can get to it easily without searching the store - I'd like to see that become standard (so players expect to find a Rate button on any games' Credits screen).
I agree that naging the player is bad, so don't nag him but keep a "rate me button" in some places that doesn't bother the player. Not having a "rate me button" is silly. JC
I think, that nagging is annoying. I always tend to ignore it. If I wanna rate, I'll do it myself - but not because some script asks me to do so. @ Nick: about Squid Drop - I was reading your latest post, and after that, I looked at the charts of the App Store's top games. Somehow all these titles are huge successes (Angry Birds, Tiny Wings, Air Penguin and all the others) and so I tried to compare them. All these games seem to have something in common; something that made them successful, but I don't see what. On the other side - none of these games is especially appealing to me. I wouldn't expect them to be successful if they were brand new. Squid Drop is appealing to me. I like the art style and the flow of the game - and it's not the same old thing over and over again. I guess it's not the game itself, it's maybe just not mainstream enough.
I think timing has a lot to do with it, and for mass sales jumping on the right bandwagon at the right time. Currently it's all about bird games - Vovin, unless you were being ironic saying you don't see what those three games have in common notice they're all bird themed - being a bird game guarantees getting noticed at the moment. (yes, a penguin is a bird). Previously all you had to do was make a game with doodle in the name and you'd sell. The 'jump' theme had its day with Doodle Jump of course (which ticked off two of those boxes!) and Squid Drop appears to be the same sort of thing (only falling instead of going up), but perhaps it has just come out too late. If it was called "Pigeon Drop" you'd probably sell a lot more. It's a shame but it does appear you need to either follow current trends to sell well, OR, what many of us are trying to do, is SET a current trend. The sad fact is in all walks of life it is far easier to look cool and trendy by following fashion rather than by being different.
Will see if you are right DemonJim... My next game is called Jump Birdy Jump and is about to be submited very soon.
Thanks guys. I've often joked about the fact that every game needs birds to be successful. I do believe that reskinning/rebranding the game with more colorful graphics featuring birds might sell more copies. Furious Fowls pehaps? But, I don't feel comfortable doing something like that. As this is all done on my spare time I need to create games I feel passionate enough about to stick with them to the end. Trying to mimic whatever hot trend's currently on the App Store is probably a wiser commercial decision, but it is no guarantee. I'm not sure I'd manage to stay focused long enough to deliver a good enough product if I did it purely to cater to the current market trends.
That game has more boxes ticked than a filled-out 2011 UK census form! I'd wish you luck with it but I don't think you need it, I will tell you now (even without needing to see a video) you've got a chart topping game right there going by that screenshot. Review sites in particular (who seem most keen to report on anything trending) will lap it up. The only danger is these trends get over-saturated and suddenly everyone will eventually have had enough of bird games. It happened with doodle games, and means review sites don't take a second look at them now. The App Store just needs a new theme to knock the birds off their perch, but it won't be for a while by my reckoning, those Angry ones are just too riled
