Towers is live! Here's what went wrong and what went right.
by Michael or something like that · 04/21/2012 (8:19 am) · 6 comments
Let's start this off with the obligatory screenshot, shall we?
There we go, now for the interesting stuff. And by that, I mean a long marketing rant!
Nearly a month ago, I wrote about completing Towers, the game I planned to make my first foray into the App Store with. As of the 19th, Towers is finally live, retailing at 99 cents. You can find it right here: itunes.apple.com/us/app/towers/id509478507?mt=8
As an indie developer, actually figuring out how to sell your game can be the most difficult part of the process, and that was one of the things I was most interested in learning about through this launch. This blog is going to be about the things I've learned so far -- hopefully some of you will find it helpful!
As a rather unorthodox take on the bullet hell genre, I decided to submit Towers in the Adventure and RPG categories. My decision was based on something I started to suspect while doing client work, and tracking how the games of my clients performed... That little bit of insight was that chart synergy is important. In the case of Towers, Adventure is a rather crowded category, while RPG is a considerably less crowded category, with a more focused player-base. My hope is that Towers will stick somewhere in the RPG category, and if meets with some success, the sales numbers will help push it up the charts in the more competitive Adventure category... Where it will then become accessible to a much bigger pool of potential customers.
How's that doing so far? Well, we're on the RPG charts. www.topappcharts.com/509478507/app-details-towers.php If sales continue to improve for a while, hopefully it'll prove my theory correct.
What else does Towers have going for it right now? A couple of good preview and review articles. I've seen a lot of complaints in various game developer communities that reviews are incredibly hard to get, due to the crowded condition of the App Store... Here are some things that worked for me.
-Approach review sites with a Beta version of your game. Writing about an interesting game early makes a review site look good, so a nice-looking preview offer is more likely to get some attention. (I highly recommend TestFlight as an easy way to get your Beta to interested parties.)
-Post about your game EVERYWHERE. People who run review sites follow game dev forums and boards. Some of our best coverage came from iFanzine.com, a wonderful site that approached me after seeing a preview post.
-Make screenshots and video available as early as possible.
-When writing to a review site, make sure to include a promo code and a little bit of information about your company, what category your game is, etc. before you dive into talking about your game's features. Review sites are swamped with requests -- it helps them out if they can see all of the really important stuff at a glance.
Last, but not least, here are a few big things that I wish had gone a bit differently.
1) After my initial preview posts, one of the people that approached me was a gentleman from a big Apple news site based in China. He was very interested in writing a preview article about the game. I thought this was way too good to be true, and as I couldn't immediately verify that he was who he said he was, I took a couple of days to get back to him. Unfortunately, I haven't heard from him since -- and who can blame him? These people have a lot of news to cover! I probably lost out on a big promoting opportunity there, when in retrospect, I really didn't have anything to lose.
2) Our first attempt at launch actually did not go well. About a week ago, we were approved and the game hit the App Store... With the OS requirements set to 5.1. Needless to say, this would have cost us a lot of sales, so we were forced to pull the game, put our publicity efforts on hold, and re-launched a week later. The obvious lesson here is, don't just double-check everything before you submit to Apple -- quadruple check it. There is no quick way to change the OS requirement or the categories of your game once you submit your binary.
That about does it for now. I'll post again in a few weeks with an update on how these efforts translate into actual sales. In the meantime, if you found this blog useful, consider giving Towers a try!
There we go, now for the interesting stuff. And by that, I mean a long marketing rant!
Nearly a month ago, I wrote about completing Towers, the game I planned to make my first foray into the App Store with. As of the 19th, Towers is finally live, retailing at 99 cents. You can find it right here: itunes.apple.com/us/app/towers/id509478507?mt=8
As an indie developer, actually figuring out how to sell your game can be the most difficult part of the process, and that was one of the things I was most interested in learning about through this launch. This blog is going to be about the things I've learned so far -- hopefully some of you will find it helpful!
As a rather unorthodox take on the bullet hell genre, I decided to submit Towers in the Adventure and RPG categories. My decision was based on something I started to suspect while doing client work, and tracking how the games of my clients performed... That little bit of insight was that chart synergy is important. In the case of Towers, Adventure is a rather crowded category, while RPG is a considerably less crowded category, with a more focused player-base. My hope is that Towers will stick somewhere in the RPG category, and if meets with some success, the sales numbers will help push it up the charts in the more competitive Adventure category... Where it will then become accessible to a much bigger pool of potential customers.
How's that doing so far? Well, we're on the RPG charts. www.topappcharts.com/509478507/app-details-towers.php If sales continue to improve for a while, hopefully it'll prove my theory correct.
What else does Towers have going for it right now? A couple of good preview and review articles. I've seen a lot of complaints in various game developer communities that reviews are incredibly hard to get, due to the crowded condition of the App Store... Here are some things that worked for me.
-Approach review sites with a Beta version of your game. Writing about an interesting game early makes a review site look good, so a nice-looking preview offer is more likely to get some attention. (I highly recommend TestFlight as an easy way to get your Beta to interested parties.)
-Post about your game EVERYWHERE. People who run review sites follow game dev forums and boards. Some of our best coverage came from iFanzine.com, a wonderful site that approached me after seeing a preview post.
-Make screenshots and video available as early as possible.
-When writing to a review site, make sure to include a promo code and a little bit of information about your company, what category your game is, etc. before you dive into talking about your game's features. Review sites are swamped with requests -- it helps them out if they can see all of the really important stuff at a glance.
Last, but not least, here are a few big things that I wish had gone a bit differently.
1) After my initial preview posts, one of the people that approached me was a gentleman from a big Apple news site based in China. He was very interested in writing a preview article about the game. I thought this was way too good to be true, and as I couldn't immediately verify that he was who he said he was, I took a couple of days to get back to him. Unfortunately, I haven't heard from him since -- and who can blame him? These people have a lot of news to cover! I probably lost out on a big promoting opportunity there, when in retrospect, I really didn't have anything to lose.
2) Our first attempt at launch actually did not go well. About a week ago, we were approved and the game hit the App Store... With the OS requirements set to 5.1. Needless to say, this would have cost us a lot of sales, so we were forced to pull the game, put our publicity efforts on hold, and re-launched a week later. The obvious lesson here is, don't just double-check everything before you submit to Apple -- quadruple check it. There is no quick way to change the OS requirement or the categories of your game once you submit your binary.
That about does it for now. I'll post again in a few weeks with an update on how these efforts translate into actual sales. In the meantime, if you found this blog useful, consider giving Towers a try!
About the author
#2
04/21/2012 (1:50 pm)
Congratulations on getting your game out! It definitely seems difficult to get over that marketing hump but sounds like your doing okay:) Thanks for posting your experience. 
#4
04/27/2012 (12:48 pm)
Great writeup, postmortems like this are a vital part of the process that many tend to forget. If you never analyze the things that went wrong or right you won't improve as a developer. Interesting game too, I see myself playing this one quite a bit (I have a high tendency toward mostly iOS gaming these days for some reason).
#5
I'm wondering if there might be a way to incentivize the user for leaving a rating or review. It would need to be something inconsequential but might give the user warm fuzzies for getting, perhaps an achievement.
04/27/2012 (12:58 pm)
I was just thinking, getting a user to submit a review or rating for an app is a difficult thing. Most people aren't going to go out of their way to do it if they like it, and if they had a bad experience then they're very likely to leave negative feedback. Not to mention that notification boxes to nudge the user to leave a rating, which seem to be getting very popular, don't seem that effective.I'm wondering if there might be a way to incentivize the user for leaving a rating or review. It would need to be something inconsequential but might give the user warm fuzzies for getting, perhaps an achievement.
#6
However, there is nothing that prevents you from incentivizing them to at least hit the "Review" button and do the fast app switch to the App Store (Apple likes this because it gets them into the App Store). We have found this to be pretty effective, especially since most people assume they actually have to do the review *and* give it 5 stars to get the reward =)
04/27/2012 (1:18 pm)
I believe that Apple frowns pretty firmly on incentivizing a review. I also don't think that it is possible to tell if a user actually gave a review or not.However, there is nothing that prevents you from incentivizing them to at least hit the "Review" button and do the fast app switch to the App Store (Apple likes this because it gets them into the App Store). We have found this to be pretty effective, especially since most people assume they actually have to do the review *and* give it 5 stars to get the reward =)
Torque Owner Scott Wilson-Billing
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