Ok, I gotta admit. I read the first post, and didn't read another post after that. Here are my thoughts though. I am a marketing and a systems guy, so this is how I break it down to make sense to me. 1). the whole goal of making a game is to make money 2). the only way to make money is to get sales 3). the only way to get sales is to get people to know about your game Now, the question is, how can you do that? One of the only, and the most effective method, is to get in the Top 50 on the App Store. The only way to do this tho, is to have a ton of sales at once. So, I think the best method is a wave of marketing to get on the top 50. You have to make your game appealing to the audience. Make sure you have a appealing description, something that talks about your game, even make it embellish. Next, make sure your screenshots are showing the good sides of the game. I can't tell you how many times I skip the description and go to the screenshots. and then if the screenshots interest me, then I read the description. Treat your game like a model, if your menu's are ugly, then for gods sake, dont show a picture of your menu's! Next, make sure your game name and icon are interesting. I always pass up games, if there name is iRun, or Uber Racer, or iJump etc. And, the icons are important, they catch your eye as your flipping through the pages. Next, make sure you have a gameplay video on youtube. Release a press kit. (There was a thread earlier, that showed what needs to be in a Press Kit) Hold contests for your game, It could be a "Highest score contest" or even something like a "Write a game description and win a iTunes gift card." Next, get beta testers for your games, so they can give you feedback and spread some hype. Also, make an "Upcoming Game Thread." You need to post about your game, anywhere and everywhere you can get. Anywhere they let you, it needs to be there. Don't buy Admobs, or anything like that. That almost never works. I can't stress this enough, you need to make your game look pretty! I'm not talking about the graphics, I am talking about your company logo/startup screens, and your menu's. Its the first thing people see when they open your game. Make a good first impression Those are some of my tips, some other strategies: iShoot Strategy: Release your game for a higher price point then most games, and after a few weeks release a lite version. Your game actually has to be good, plus follow everything I said above Pocket God Strategy: Release a decent game, but reward owners with consistent CONTENT updates to your game, keep your game at a low fixed price. Remember, Pocket God wasn't featured by Apple until they were already the number one game. Finally, remember, just because your game is "original", doesn't mean its good!
Thanks for the tips. (It's not for Buttonia. It's for an action game I'm currently prototyping. I'm trying to give marketing some attention during the development of the game)
Angry birds initially cost them $125,000 I found an interesting interview of Rovio. They spent quite a big chunk of money to develop this game. It's an interesting interview. http://mobilewebgo.com/how-did-angry-birds-become-blockbuster-rovio-video-interview-and-transcript
Thanks for the link. Bookmarked for future reference when someone comes in here thinking they can build "The Next Angry Birds" for some pizza and beers.
Heyo, I'm new to Touch Arcade, but not new to game development or building hype. I'm just starting up a studio but I'm approaching it with a very heavy emphasis on marketing. I can't count the number of post-mortems I've read of games that were awesome, great concepts, but no one knew about them. You can get by purely on letting other people do word-of-mouth, but the Internet has so many free options for advertising that it's silly not to take advantage of them: Game 1, Day 6 How to distribute a Press Release when you have no money haha - This is what I'm attempting right now, it's got a list of 100% free Press Release services. They may or may not do much, but it's free, why WOULDN'T you use them? I scored two interviews out of it and I don't even have my first game on the App Store yet haha You can submit your Press Release to sites yourself, but you'll submit to 30 and get shot down by most if not all of them...these services submit to 1000+. At least a few of them are going to publish your news. Game 1, Day 2 Working on my first marketing test! - This covers Press Kits. I summarized/modified the Press Kit info in this thread. Day 26, the epic marketing plan! - This covers an all-around long-term marketing plan for when I'm a bigger studio down the road...I took a business course and we had to make a 3-year plan haha Ideally you want to build hype for your game in advance so that when the game hits, you have a ton of guaranteed downloads to make it into that Top 50. The Behemoth is a great role model for this...they only have a few games out, but they've fostered such a huge fanbase that any game they put out has a guaranteed jillion downloads, just out of support (plus their games are quality of course). A big part of going with a publisher in the 90s was that we needed their money to get cardboard boxes on store shelves and reviews and ads in gaming magazines. Those mediums are old and dying now...digital distribution solves the in-store issues, and websites are where people get their latest game information. This is the best time there's ever BEEN to try marketing your games because you can do it for free. Hope this helps! I'm going to post numbers and stats on what my marketing attempts do for me when I have a couple week's worth of data. I'll be doing more marketing experiments down the road! - Quickdraw
Doodler Why do you not ask Lima SKy to feature their Doodler in your game and vice versa? YOu must of course ask if you are not infringing copyright
@Quickdraw : Some of us indie devs don't know how to do proper marketing. It's true there are free tools, however although we may be good with coding but we may not know how to communicate our product. That is why after seeing all these posts on this thread (Thank you all btw), I have decided to leave the marketing part to professionals for the next project. It will probably be some publisher or respectable PR company.
Thanks for the advice and congrats on Ramps success. I got it and It's a very well made game. Keep it coming.
You are clearly a PR person and not a gamer. Unfortunately, the entire games industry seems to be filled with people that only care about the cash and not the enjoyment of creating (and playing) enjoyable games.
In my opinion unless you have already an established brand name reputation or a huge marketing budget at your disposal (and a good app), your chances of making it to the Top50 are very limited. Here's a summary of my latest experience: http://www.indieappsalliance.org/content/app-store-prices-and-invisible-hand
Gotta disagree... Personally I run a business to pay my rent/ to make money... The reason I CHOOSE to do this rather than something else is as I enjoy the process of creating games more than other businesses... Thats not to say my primary aim isn't to make money (as quite frankly it is, as I need to pay rent! If push came to shove I would do something else) but my decision to do it via games was a choice... I'm fairly good at business/ could easily pay my way thru the world via day trading (which I do a lot of anyways)/ other business ventures... But I choose to do it primarilly via games... However that does not change the fact that my primary conscern is making enough money to live confortably. So I dont think that the industry having some financially focused people within it is at all a bad thing. As quite frankly, if there wern't people in that mindset then it WOULD NOT be an industry, it would be just a hobby... It's those people that do focus on the money that allowed this to become a 50 Billion dollar industry employing such a vast number of people and keeping everyone in a job doing what they enjoy; and I find it quite frustrating when people critiscise those those people who focus on the commercial side, as quite frankly, without the commercial side there would be no industry and we'd all be doing this as a hobby while stuck in some dull job trying to pay our way thru life... Anyways <End of slightly tipsey/ drunk rant>.
I've had a read through the thread, so pardon me if i've missed it, but. Adding gamecenter to your game will highlight it in the appstore. Apple like to push gamecenter games, so I presume that should have a positive effect on sales. Add 100 achievements that are easy to get, and let everyone know. You'll be taking a slice of the achievement addict market too. That's extreme, but i'm sure you see what i'm getting at. Just my thoughts from the end-user who is interested side of things.
Great thread. I have plans to release my first game soon and I'm sure all this information will help me. Thanks a lot!
