Invaders World Tour 2.0 - Monster Update - Out Now

#1 Hi Scott, I've d/l the new version and played a few levels, and it looks great. Still using TimelineFX for your gfx effects? I recoginise the shields around those invaders ;). I'm using that in my game too.

#2 Hi Mark, thanks, yep I love TimelineFX - sometimes you need to experiment a bit with it, but I'm always pleased with the results. How soon before your game is ready do you think?

#3 I'm hoping to get my get out soon, but my progress seems to have slowed down a lot recently. I ended up spending a lot of time on the C++ side of things, but I think a lot of what I did was unnecessary as it didn't really improve things that much on the 1st gen iPod. Also, it's bad timing right now with new versions of the OS and new devices coming out, so it's a bit frustrating.

#4 Mark, you want to try and get it out before the new device - think about all those new iPhone users looking for apps :D

One of our developers in Vietnam did a short video of iWT running on 2nd gen touch with an ad-hoc that I put together that used PNG throughout, no PVR. Performance wise it wasn't as bad as I expected:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NDlsXEcpzA

#5 Scott, it would be nice to get my game out when the new iPhone arrives, but I've decided I want to spend some time marketing my game before I release it. I'm hoping that might make a big difference, if some marketing effort is made up front before the games hits the apps store. At least I hope so.

BTW, I also do not see a big advantage of using PVR compression in everything I've done so far. I suppose it must depend on how large the textures are, and the pros/cons of using PVR compression are probably app dependent. In my case, I've tried everything I can think off to improve performance on the oldest device (the 1st gen iPod Touch), and nothing has really improved the FPS any higher than about 20. I think the bottleneck on that device is the engine itself actually, and I didn't even see much improvement after I ported a lot of stuff to C++. I think the engine is in need of some streamlining, because the bottleneck should really be in the GPU in my opinion. But, with the newer devices and faster CPUs/GPUs, the engine will probably do a lot better.

Having said all of the above, I'm still impressed with the engine. I think the scripting engine is nice, and I've not experienced any major bottlenecks due to scripting. I'm happy with the results I've achieved so far, and my only complaint is lack of docs, which has caused an overall slowdown in my progress. With good docs, I would have easily completed my game by now.

BTW, regarding your experiences with 2nd gen iPod Touch. I have all three versions here for testing, and I've noticed a big drop in performance when I go to the 1st gen iPod Touch. For my game, the overall performance on 2nd and 3rd gens are very good, and I've only really had slow performance on the 1st gen. So keep that in mind, and def test it on the 1st gen.

#6 Thanks Mark. TBH I'm less likely to support the 1st gen touch now - I really wish Apple gave us stats on who downloaded the game :( Now that new iPhone is almost out, iPad is out and we are sure to get 4th gen touch in September - no doubt faster than the new iPhone. I just don't see the point in spending the effort optimizing for the older devices.

Agreed on the marketing campaign. You need everything timed to launch at the same time to maximise the first rush of sales when you hit the app store. I did some upcoming videos on Touch Arcade and a few other forums. Tried to get some of the reviewers interested, but unfortunately failed.

I'm gonna try out a little prize draw on Touch Arcade once Apple finally approve the lite update for USA/Australia/UK and Italy - it has now been three days in review which is a bit worrying for an update :(

#7 @Scott

Congrats on your release, the amount that you packed into the update really warrants the major digit change.

The free promotion just ended for War Evolved, and it got up to the #4 free app in the US. I have flurry integrated into it, and it doesn't look like it is worth your time to worry about the first generation devices:

Device Model,Sessions,% of Sessions
Apple iPod Touch 2G - 889578 - 43.3%
Apple iPhone 3GS - 545836 - 26.6%
Apple iPhone 3G - 288205 - 14.0%
Apple iPod Touch 3G - 231117 - 11.3%
Apple iPod Touch 1G - 54215 - 2.6%
Apple iPhone 1G - 28073 - 1.4%
Apple iPad - 7901 - 0.4%
Apple iPod Touch - 4619 - 0.2%
Apple iPhone - 2699 - 0.1%
Apple iPhone Simulator - 376 - <0.1%

This is a sample of about 2 million sessions. Of course, this is a small subset of the total population but it's the best that I have.

#8 Thanks for that data Justin, that is very valuable information. I've been concerned about the 1st gen devices for a while, and I've probably spent a couple of weeks at least trying to improve the performance on those oldest devices. After seeing your data I am inclined to forget about 1st gens.

Thanks!

#9 Justin, congrats on the #4 slot - that is awesome! How many downloads did you get and did you get a sales boost the day after (if you don't mind me asking) ?

Also, thanks for posting that session info - absolutely confirmed for me now that I wont focus on the 1st gen devices.

#10 I'm glad I could save you guys some time.

I plan on posting a more detailed analysis this weekend on my blog, but so far the promotion has been a success. In the 6 days War Evolved was free (Friday-Wednesday), War Evolved got a little bit more than 650,000 downloads (I don't remember the exact number). I plan on posting a graph of the specific days, but I think the most we ever got in a single day was 173,000.

In turns of a sales boost, it is still too early to tell if it is worth it (FreeAppADay cost us $1200 for War Evolved, plus a little bit more for a cross promotion), but so far it is looking like it was. Before sending the money to FAAD, I did quite a bit of research into the success of apps that were featured on FAAD. What I found was that generally, if you were ranked 70-150 in your category (strategy in my case), FAAD helped. If you wern't on the charts at all, it was a waste of money. If you were already high, it didn't give you enough of a boost to make any difference. I'm not saying that is true for all cases, that is just what I found.

War Evolved was bouncing back and forth between 80 and 140, so I thought that I would try FAAD. As of last week, we were generally making $50-$60 on the weekday and $100-$120 on the weekend. Yesterday, after we flipped the switch back to paid, there were still about 6 hours left in the day. We made about $300 yesterday (after Apple's 30% cut). We have never been in the $300 range for a weekday, even when it was first released (the highest we got was around $250 xmas time). War Evolved is currently ranked #42 in strategy games, so I'm anxious to see how it does for a full day.

Sorry for taking over your thread, I figured that I had to have some explanation to go along with the numbers.

#11 Justin, first off, congrats on a successful campaign, that is one heck of a lot of downloads and a very good sales boost - I hope it continues for you :) Thanks for posting those figures and sharing the results - also - don't worry about the thread - I think this information is incredibly useful to developers.

I've applied for the OpenFeint free app of the day campaign but I don't think I would ever come anywhere near those sort of figures - they are just awesome!

How do you keep your app in the 80 - 140 ranks - how do people find your app?
Cheers

#12 To be honest, I have no idea. I hardly did any marketing before this (I tried about $100 worth of Internet ads, but that was a complete waste of money). I believe that the keywords you put make a big difference though. War Evolved is one of the first results that come up if you search for the popular flash game that I modeled it after, "Age of War". I did a search for "Space Invaders" and didn't see Invaders World Tour listed - is that in your keywords? If I were to search for your game, that would be the keyword that I would search for.

The other thing that I think that helps it is the price. There could be a perception that since it is $1.99, it is a better made game that just $0.99. I know for a fact that there are $0.99 games that do more than War Evolved, but I decided that we spent 9 months on this game, I don't want to give it away for $0.99. Who knows, that could have helped it.

#13 Also, I just looked at OpenFeint's fee game of the day program. They said that they take a percentage of the profit if you have an increase. How much do they take?

#14 I think it is 15% - if we get the numbers up then I'd be happy with that.

Good point about the $1.99 - perhaps I will put the price up after the free day - assuming we get accepted.

You are right about the search words - we had an app called HoloChess which was a strategy game based on the HoloChess game rules in Star Wars. We used all our own material, no reference to star wars etc. Well, we had star wars in the keywords, some time went by and then we got a a letter from Lucas Arts threatening legal action unless we pulled the app. We had no choice but to pull the app and it is still pulled.

So, for the new update to 2.0 I added the key word "Galaga" and this was okay by Apple and I'm assuming probably okay form now by Taito. I wanted to use space invaders but it concerns me that we will just get pulled. Sod it, I just searched for space invaders - there are lots of apps that have used those keywords. Well, we have a bug fix in progress so I will update the keywords.

Okay, I've added space invaders and galaxian as keywords. Cheers Justin.

#15 Thanks for posting those numbers Justin, and congrats on #4 slot. Those download numbers are excellent, and very encouraging actually. With those kinds of numbers, it should be possible to make a decent income, especially once you have a few games out. I would imagine that, working full time, it should be possible to create a new game every couple of months or so. The first game always takes a lot longer, because of the learning curve and getting used to the tools etc.

I remember reading something a while ago about the apps store and marketing, and these people were saying that's not unreasonable to expect something like 100 d/l per day, if there is sufficient marketing effort. Seems like you are getting very close to that already, so that's great news!

Very encouraging, thanks for sharing your data!

#16 Scott, that's very interesting to hear about the letter from Lucas Arts. How rediculous it that? They asked you to pull the app just because of the keywords? Wow!

#17 Mark, it wasn't just the keywords ... this is a quote from the letter:

"It has come to our attention that the following application posted on your iPhone store uses STAR WARS Copyrights and Trademarks without Lucasfilm's authorization"

We didn't believe we had any copyrights and trademarks in our application, nevertheless, we still had to pull it.

#18 @Scott

Finally got around to checking out your updates and you knocked it out of the park with the new features.

#19 Thanks Dean, glad you liked the update :)

#20 Hey Scott I tried you're demo version it's impressive to see what you did with iTGB!

I don't know if you want feedback on the game design: I did find it quite challenging - you might consider giving the player 3 lives to make it less frustrating for beginners. Also adding the ability to tap and skip the end sequence might be cool as well - so people can get back in the game quickly when they die.

Anyway good luck to you, hope the sales pick up. Clay Gunfighters is on just over 3000 downloads right now after two weeks which is obviously very low especially as it's free, but I'm treating it like an open Alpha/Beta learning process and don't plan on doing any promotion at all until the quality/value is there (which will be a while...). My next release will have better search words, OpenFeint Leaderboards and Achievements, and the one after will have OpenFeint Forums enabled so it will be interesting to see if those have any effect. I have heard from guys at companies like Gameloft that it's not a successful strategy to just rely on the App store so we definitely have to do more to market our titles. That said I don't plan on marketing spend until the game is profitable. Great to see Justin doing so well - there is hope for all of us!