The above is a rather nice result from being on /whoadude for only 2 days! I know, its not staggering sales, but I just thought I’d post this up as what I think is an interesting example of what some small marketing efforts can yield. The owner of the subreddit /whoadude emailed me and mentioned he was going to feature the game, and that if I could provide some promo codes, that would draw even more attention. A free app service of some kind on twitter picked it up and tweeted it as well, so hard to know if that also had an effect.
I had no idea reddit even had these kinds of ‘header’ posts, but /whoadude has one, its just a small line of text which said “App feature, Unknown Orbit” or something along those lines. Check it out here. The owner changes it every couple of days to something he think his audience will like, and I can somewhat see the link between his audience and my game :) I might have to have a second attempt at getting my game in front of an astronomy kind of audience, as surely they would love the game?
So all I had to do was write in /whoadude asking people to message me if they wanted a free code, and that was it. Sales stayed quite “high”(er!) all month!
The 5 star ratings continue to flood in, and when I get quite good effects from small marketing efforts like this, it is encouraging, so as soon as I get a spare moment, I’ll be adding a couple of new planets to the game. Will see how sales increase once there’s more to do within the game, different environments, challenges, etc. Hopefully it wont be too long!
The last blog I posted, I outlined how Unknown Orbit had dropped to around a sale a day, and that my next step would be to try setting UO to be free for a day or two.
Soon after, I was contacted by a new free app company called 3 Magic Shots, who claim to “… find top rated apps and get the developers under our spell to have them make it free for you.” I hadn’t really looked into any other free app a day services after hearing how expensive they were, and these guys sent me a professional, hand crafted email with a very professional looking website and app to go with it. So I said, sure why not! They had only launched a few weeks ago, and I was able to use the service for free, whereas it sounds likely to one day become a paid service.
I ended up giving them a bunch of marketing, text and image resources, some review quotes, that sort of thing, and then a week or so later I set UO to be free. On that day, 3 Magic Shots featured my game on their website, app and twitter. I got a push notification saying that it was available, and UO did look really nice within 3MS’s app interface on my phone. The game was also featured on a few other free app sites, and it ended up getting downloaded 26,000 times that day, tailing off to a few hundred 4-5 days later.
Overall the free version was downloaded over 45,000 times, and when it returned to a 99c app, sales were up to 10-15 a day, where they still are now. It will remain to be seen if I can stay at that level or not, but it would be nicer pocket money than $365 a year! I’d like to say a big thanks to 3 Magic Shots for providing a hassle free and very professional promotion service, their staff are great and my game was featured in the best light possible. A 10x sales increase is quite good (though of course, my sales were miniscule to begin with!), and perhaps with an app that was a bit stickier or more fun, I’d have seen even better results. I highly suggest you contact them if you’re considering some kind of free period for your game.
Surprisingly, while I was fully expecting to get a deluge of poor reviews from free users, reviews stayed at mostly 5 stars in the USA and Australia. Not many people appear to like it in the UK, however!
In terms of how UO has gone in general, on the one hand I feel like I did really well to get a highly rated and reviewed game out there, in front of all the big sites, yet it has been a fairly standard app store flop. On the other hand, I do understand that the game has its shortcomings, and I certainly don’t have any kind of feeling that I deserved to do better from it. I think if I did have this feeling, I would perhaps be doing more updates and trying to promote it further. I did my best with the skills and time I had, and decided to release when the game was ‘good enough’, while not spending too long on such a simple game.
In the mean time I’ve been prototyping a couple of games with the composer of Unknown Orbit and Class 3 Outbreak/Zombie Outbreak Simulator, Rhys Lindsay. This has mostly taken the form of board game mockups which have been really enjoyable. Despite apparently being a game designer, I had never done this before and it was really illuminating. It gives me much greater confidence to begin creating a computer prototype, knowing that I’ve almost played through the finished game a few times. If all goes well I hope to begin sharing details on that next game soon.
January 22, 2013 / Jay / Comments Off on Unknown Orbit, 1 Month On + 2012 Wrap Up.
If you didn’t catch my first post-release wrap up, you can read it here. In a nutshell, the release of Unknown Orbit went well, and I got reviewed by a lot of big sites, but sales didn’t launch in a big way.
So how’s it all going now that things are well and truly settled? Here’s the sales graph by week:
Things started out alright, and sales haven’t been a total embarrassment, but now I’m down to around 1-5 sales a day, its just pocket money. I’m going to try offering the game free for a day or four to promote the game a bit more soon, but this is probably where I leave it for now. I was seriously considering doing an update, but its just not worth it for the sales and initial reaction I got. I’m getting more and more eager to begin work on something with some more depth and meaning.
Despite the rather average sales, I felt like the game was well worth my time and effort. I learnt a lot in 2012 about Unity, Playmaker (the visual state editor that I use instead of programming) and met some great people in London. Also got an article published in Gamasutra, so I’m overall quite pleased and ready to move on to the next game.
I’ve just moved back to my home town of Adelaide, so I’m using this opportunity to think, ponder and dream about next game possibilities while I get setup. I’m also going to take this chance to study some more game design, and branch out some more creatively. I’ve been reading Mastery by Robert Green, Art of Game Design, and I’m generally just trying to shake things up a bit more by doing some more drawing, guitar, and reading before I decide on the next game. I’m also going to commit to a more constant study process, whether that’s specific game design books, philosophy, psychology, art, design, etc. I’ll also be continuing to practice and flesh out my skills in Unity and Playmaker so I can prototype and build the next game even faster.
I’m also going to be thinking about partnering up with someone for the next game, perhaps once I’ve gotten a ways into the prototype development, game design, etc. Making UO on my own was fun, but if I want to develop something more in depth, then I shouldn’t fool myself that I can do it solo!
The only thing I can say almost for sure about the next game is that it will be about people. Something I’m very interested in is getting players attached to characters, so I will see what I can do to turn this effect up in my next game as much as possible. I’ve got a few great ideas I’m throwing around at the moment, its just a matter of choosing one!
Stay tuned for future updates, looking forward to sharing my next game.
Unknown Orbit went live 1 week ago, and my trigger finger is sore from pressing refresh on AppFigures, Twitter, and Google. I’ve gone from being very disheartened on release day, with none of my planned reviews going live, to unbelievably stoked that I got a video review by the one and only Touch Arcade! The video was mixed but mostly positive, and it was a shame that the guy playing it wasn’t the greatest at it, but seeing that video was one of the biggest professional thrills of my career. Its amazing how much importance I (developers in general?) place on these reviews. I could pretty much die happy after seeing it! If I ever got featured by Apple, I think I would explode! Having gotten that review plus one on 148 and AppAdvice, I’m now pretty happy that I’ve gone almost as far as I possibly can with promoting the game. Hopefully I’ll see a few more reviews spawn from the TA/148/AppAdvice ones, but chances are this is probably as good as it gets.
The 3 reviews, plus a prmac press release, some twitter, reddit and facebook managed to keep UO around the 125 ranking mark in the app store (for iPad/iPhone Arcade/Action) for the whole week, and sales have been ok, but nothing to shout about. If this is my initial sales spike, and I’m about to fall off a cliff, I’ll be making $1 a day soon :) I’ll post a graph maybe in a week or so, so that there’s some decent data to look at. Even getting reviewed by all the big sites doesn’t seem to have that big an effect, but my greatest hope now is that because I’ve gotten on those sites, I now may get noticed and featured by Apple in some way. I’m prepping my Featured artwork now, just in case!
Unknown Orbit Response/Feedback
Feedback on the game itself has mostly been mixed, and I’d summarize that most people think that the concept, visuals, sound, music, and atmosphere are good/great, but the game lacks a little something in terms of goals, fun, progression and content. Namely more planets, which is one of the hardest things for me to add due to the hardware/loading times. I’m now thinking about what I can do in this regard, and whether its even possible to do an update where I remove support for older phones (as load times for the planet on 3gs/iPhone 4 is a huge 35-40secs). I’m going to look into potentially procedurally generating planets/systems as well – I like the idea of having a different system each time, but procedural generation can be quite tricky. I spent a long time hand making this one planet, however I did begin with mostly random perlin noise type setups, which played well too. This would be quite a task, so I’d have to decide whether the game is really doing well enough to justify it.
UO Release Date
I chose to release UO on the Tuesday for a couple of reasons, a) because I figured most developers like Thursday, and I didn’t want to compete with them at this time of year, and b) Press have more time to get onto the game, and during a more quiet time of the week. This certainly seemed to work well with TA reviewing me on Friday, right before the weekend, but who knows if they just planned to do the review at that time anyway *shrug*. I certainly failed to “get all the reviews out on the same day” as seems the classic strategy. At the end of the day you have no control over this, and just have to hope for the best. I imagine the better your game, the more likely you’ll get it featured/reviewed closer to your release date.
Gamasutra Article
I also managed to get an article published on Gamasutra called “Suck at Coding, But Make Games Anyway“, which has gone over well. Whether this had much/anything to do with getting some of the reviews, or helped my rankings, I’m not sure. It was published the day after the game went live on Wednesday. I then posted it on Reddit, which seemed rather popular too. Reddit is my new favourite site for just about everything!
Problems
There wasn’t much in the way of problems – probably the only thing that’s gone a little awry is that I had to use my company, Hyperfocal Design, to publish the game (long story, I’m in London, company is Australian, couldn’t form a new company…) so I just had to use it and say it was developed by Exbleative. Most people reported that the game was made by Hyperfocal, because that’s how it appears on the app store.
End!
Looking at my current ranking on Monday night GMT, it seems I’m still up around the 150 ranking mark (iPad/Aracade) in the US app store, which is nice considering I don’t think any major press has done features in the last couple days. If I could carry on making $30-50 a day or so, then that’d be a nice additional income stream.
Next? I’m thinking a lot about what game/update I’d like to do next. Its also coming up on Christmas/New Year, and I’m moving back to Australia in mid January, so I doubt I’ll get a huge amount done before then. I’ll be talking to some people about the procedural generation stuff, brainstorming new ideas, and eating XMas turkey. I’m glad I got this thing out before Christmas, its a load off!
Thanks for everyone who helped me with the game, reviewed or chatted with me on the forums.
Also a big thanks to this guy on the UK app store for this thoughtful and hilarious review. I’ll end with it, for the lols:
You lot should thank me for buying this before you
by Stumpyjay on Friday, December 07 2012 version 1.0
“69p is way too much for this catastrophe of a game. Trust me shoemaker levy 9 moved better than this rubbish after it had smashed into jupiter. I just wish it had taken this tripe with it. Utter drivel. If i see 1 more negative review then you should really read reviews first you idiot and it serves you right. 69p is all this guy should ever make from this tripe. The other review is obviously fake”
I have sent out a press release via PRMac, and I believe I will get a couple of reviews from some big name sites as well, but I wont hold my breath until they actually appear! I’m going to now do a little more promotion on Reddit and Twitter, some token Facebook ads and then I’m finished fo’ realz. Or at least until a future update!
I’ve also been been talking to Gamasutra about an article on making games with no code (how Unknown Orbit was made), so that may appear soon. If not I’ll be posting it here.
Cross your fingers for me, and please lend a hand if you can by sharing/retweeting, etc!
I’m now days away from submitting to the app store, after a year of developing Unknown Orbit, I’m super excited/terrified/(?) to see how it goes. I feel like I’ve ticked all the boxes in terms of marketing, screenshots, trailers, press packs etc, I like the icon I’ve developed and I quite like the game I’ve made, so I like my chances of it doing at least reasonably well.
I actually feel like UO is the first game I’ve ever made. While I have worked with other people on games before, this is the first game that I conceived of, prototyped, then created all on my own. When I was a game designer with Ratbag, I recreated stock car racing rules, and then worked on a game design for a GTA/Mad Max style game which was never finished, and barely started. At Binary Space, I was never happy with how much gameplay we put in to the zombie games, and I was reliant on Saxon, my programming/biz partner to implement things. We also often disagreed about what features should go in, and being part time, many of my plans for the game just never made it in. So again, this feels like its ‘all me’, which is sort of scary… unless it’s a huge hit, in which case I will do an extravagant dance.
The game is probably 90% of what I wanted it to be. That 10% is probably half due to technical limitations and half lack of time, skills and resources. I imagine this is true for most games, though, and if things go well I’ll certainly be investigating updates or sequels.
Right now I’m waiting for Apple to change my account from an individual to a company. It will change from Jay Weston to Hyperfocal Design (my texture/hdri company), unfortunately I can’t use a trade name (Exbleative) nor do I want to form another pty ltd company, so I felt like this was the only option. Luckily Hyperfocal’s name somewhat translates well to games, and hopefully there isn’t much confusion as I try to promote the game under the Exbleative name!
Once I’m set to go with Hyperfocal, it’ll be one release candidate round on Testflight for super-final-for-realz testing, then I’ll submit and lose around 1 weeks worth of sleep.
Cross your fingers for me that some press like the game and review it!
