You know, that's actually a good question, we dont see stopping developement unless the sales completely dry up. The number of sales per day is a direct correlation to your rank in the top 100. We are slowly decaying from where we were when we first beat iDracula but we are still selling really well. We might have enough sales to carry the rest of this week, but we need a couple of bumps to extend our rank past that. that said though, we want to be another Touch Grind. even past our life at #1, we want to be in the top 5 for a month after we hit #2 and want to stay in the top 20 for months after that. In order to do that, we need to keep updating like crazy and keep making it a fresh experience for everyone. And we realize that it might not happen like we plan, but we want to try our hardest to accomplish it. Let's say though, if we all of a sudden did a nose dive to #70. Allan and I have spoke about it, and there is a minimum feature list that we want to build into the app before we pull back significantly on updates. We want to add a replayable experience to the game, either through some mini games, stat management, or whatever. I have been trying to finish a second app that has been on my plate, but hopefully it will be done this week so we can start moving toward this goal over the next month. Allan is currently full time on Pocket God, a lot of his work now is doing marketing materials, but he will also be sketching out our roadmap so we can move beyond just a collection of features. And even if we pull back on weekly updates in the future, thats not to say we wont do bi weekly or monthly updates. But while we are hot, we want to do weekly updates because that's what drives the most interest in the game, it would be stupid for us to get rid of the momentum we have by slowing down our updates now.
dave i really like you as a developer =). Love how you communicate and you respond to all the members of TA. Thats actually one of the reasons i bought Pocket God along with the amazing reviews of it. Keep up the great work! I will probably buy your other mystery app just cause you are the dev.
i doubt pocketgod will suddenly plummet - 70 on the top ranking list. it might fall eventually thats for sure..every app does. but i have a feeling pocketgod will still stay up high for months. and biweekly or monthly updates are totally fine when sales do slow down. i agree that replayability should be the big focus in the following weeks to come.
Wow thanks for the full response! I do understand your goals, but I guess the point I'm trying to make is the game only costs $1. While Touchgrind has been in top 100 forever it seems, it does cost $5. Your game is practically a no-brainer at that price, so your sales must be catching up to Touchgrind's relatively quickly, no? Maybe I'm just thinking on too small a scale, but the only problem I see with the $0.99 tag is market saturation. Sure, it's good to get your game to everyone and anyone, but the life cycle of your game will be cut drastically short I would think. People months from now who dive into the iDevice scene will have to actively search for your game to find it. Then again, maybe a dollar holds a higher value to potential customers than it does me. I just see this game as an absolute steal at $1. For all the support you give to the community and updates you guys provide for free, it's really a steal.
The fish on the back of a car is called ICHTUS (Greek word for Fish) and the letters I - CH - T - U - S all stand for a word, which means (translated): Jesus Christ, God's son, savior. So maybe we'll be able to feed fish to the pygmies? Or maybe the pygmies will be able to catch fish? Then the mini game could be how many fish you can catch? (I know I'm not the first to guess that fish are in the update, just wanted to share some background info and include some guesses)
ohhh spmwinkel is even smarter..ichtus~whistles..a mini game involving fishing awesome i guess that beats the tsunamii theory.
Didn't the developer say games were coming later? I think the new update will be a flood. Where God decides to restart and flood the world. "Noah's Ark" i wanted to be first to post noahs ark but someone beat me. D:
are their any features of the new SDK that you will implement into the new game? Maybe two player mode, where you both control the same island in realtime, so you can do two things at once with your friend. Also I thought of a cool update that would be pretty easy to do. So, you double tap the tree or pinch out, and it brings you to a close up picture of the tree's bark. You write something there or draw something, via the touch screen and then you hit done. It zooms out and you just carved your own personal emblem into the tree!
I would get this game if i could build things... It would be cool to be able to design a hut for them or something
How about Dave creates a banner for Pocket God and then we all post it on our websites to get people to buy it?
I'm tempted by this, but it doesn't seem compelling enough for me to download it. Part of this is because of the general entertainment value of the app - once you do the things you can do in the app a few times, it will most certainly get boring. I know part of the value in the app comes from the dollar price point and the incremental updates which are coming regularly, and I don't want to pooh pooh your efforts, but to be honest I'm sick of really cheap games that are low on features. I would happily pay $10 for Pocket God if it had proper gameplay, like virtual villagers or stat building or just something more than flicking pygmies into the water for shark bait. I will hold off for now and see if gameplay comes.
The constant updates have really made it worth $1 in my book. Even with my complaints with the game, what it provides is pretty great. I find it hard to get that worked up over the things it lacks, especially considering it costs less than a bottle of Mountain Dew. Pocket God is usually the app I load up when people want to see my iPhone.
I see what you're saying, but dollar games are dime a dozen on the Store, lots of them much more fully featured than Pocket God. If I spend a dollar on PG that's a dollar I can't put towards another game. A buck is a buck of course, but I'm starting to want more features for my cash. If fully fledged games came out at $20 a pop I'd certainly be spending that easily, as long as it provided lasting value. Right now we have a situation where you'll buy a dollar game, play it for an hour (or worst case scenario, 5 minutes after you picked it up) and then buy another because the first one was too short. I'd pay $20 for Peggle on iPhone.
