Last week we received an e-mail from Apple’s App review team notifying us that after 14 days of review, our latest update to iCombat Lite would not be accepted because of “inappropriate keywords.” The offending keyword was “wii tank,” and we had chosen this because many of our users have told us that our game reminded them of the tank mini game that is part of Wii Play.

While we knew not to use current iPhone app names as keywords, it had never in a million years occurred to us that “wii” might be problematic.  In Apple’s words, they “cannot post applications that contain irrelevant keywords in their search criteria” and suggested that “it would be appropriate to remove ‘wii tank.’”  Interesting since they: 1) had already approved our iCombat paid version with the same keyword, 2) have approved an app with Wii in the title, and 3) they had already rejected iCombat Lite two weeks prior for some other reason without mentioning any problems with the keywords.

What is so frustrating about this latest round of trivial rejections is that the app review “feedback” seems to always come on day 14 (at the earliest), and happens serially.  To give you an idea, we first submitted iCombat Lite update 1.1 on September 8th, 41 days ago!  After being rejected for an issue Apple reported with the code on September 22nd, and spending several days working on replicating the bug (which we never even managed to), we resubmitted the exact same keywords and code on September 28th.

On October 12th (14 days later) we received notice that the entire update would need to be resubmitted because of the “wii tank” keyword.  Had anything changed from the approved iCombat Paid version or the previously rejected lite version?  Nothing at all…and so we deleted the words, resubmitted and for the third time started another 14 day approval cycle.  All in all, if we are lucky we expect the iCombat Lite update to be approved on October 26th, just 48 days to get to market (42 if we subtract the days we took to work on the first rejection).

Reasons to Avoid Developing for the iPhone

Ignoring how illogical this last keyword rejection has been, the real damage of the current app approval process is that it has created a slow and arbitrary development environment that does nothing but discourage indie developers.  The biggest issues with this setup are:

1. Slower development cycles – As if figuring out what users wanted wasn’t hard enough, now add a 14 day approval delay which quickly turns into 1 month with any rejection and you have a buffer that really starts to isolate developers from their users and this constrains the feedback – iteration loop
2. Product/ Market fit is replaced with Product/ Apple fit – To use Andreesen’s advice (worth a read), entrepreneurs should “do whatever is required to achieve product/ market fit.”  Here the only thing that matters is finding what users want and giving it to them.  Yet with Apple as the gatekeeper success is not determined by the market but first by whether Apple will LET you play in its garden. This perverts the goals of the developer and ultimately reduces the chances that an efficient product/ market fit can occur.  You could even argue that on the off chance that you find an exceptional product/ market fit you are at even a higher risk of being cannibalized or pulled or copied by Apple itself.
3. Impossible ROI calculations – If you are trying to run a business based off of App development, how can you possibly calculate the return on your investment when you have no control over your launch to market? Unless you are ngmoco with funding from Kleiner Perkins then how can you build a business on top of such uncertainty (market and execution risks should be more than enough to contend with without having to worry about the d-bag app reviewer risk)
4. App approval amnesia and the lack of a fast track system – What seems to be happening all too often is that previously approved apps, after waiting weeks in the queue, get rejected for features that had already been approved in past releases.  This approval amnesia combined with being lumped in with new app approvals creates a developer disincentive to work on refining applications.  Does it make sense when iCombat Lite, having been live for 3 months with 100k installs and no complaints, suffers a 40+ day delay because it is being forced to the back of the line over and over again to wait amongst what is new crapware?  The sooner these apps can get updates out the sooner they can deliver high quality experiences to Apple users.

All of these factors serve to undermine developer confidence, reduce the quality of apps in the store, and ultimately choke app development activity.  Developers are already looking to other platforms and are limiting investment as the environment has simply become too unpredictable to work with.  Sure Apple has its reasons, namely pushing its 85k or 100k or 250k apps commercials to prove it has the most evolved app ecosystem versus its peers.  But if Apple doesn’t fix these problems soon, those numbers will begin to mean less and less, and at some point the number of apps in the App store will be about as meaningful as the number of videos uploaded to YouTube.

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See some screenshots of the game below:

You can check it out in iTunes here or visit our Silver Skull site here

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And while part of my hesitation had to do with my optimism about iCombat’s potential and my marketing ability, it also had to do with the fact that I rarely buy full versions of games (although I do occasionally). After just launching my lite version yesterday I can say that my concerns about the lite version were misplaced and might have cost me quite a bit in lost income. Below are my main takeaways from having waited on launching the lite version and why I think too many indie iPhone developers wrongly steer clear of lite versions:

1. Know your Apps Core value and its core user: This sounds douchey but it really is harder than it sounds to have the discipline to know the profile of your core user and then choose that feature you think will resonate most.  For example, if you are making a game it is easy to think kids and adults will like it and they will all get hooked on the game play AND the graphics AND the story equally.  Odds are your app will not resonate with everyone, and one salient feature will be the hook so the sooner you figure it out and admit it to yourself the better. You may be wrong, but better to know your target than water down your strategy by pursuing too many angles.  Needless to say once you have your app’s core value outlined it will also be that much easier to design your lite version.
2. The App store is not a lemonade stand: The App store is one of the largest, most seamless content delivery platforms ever and when it comes to pricing most of us fail to understand just how fundamentally different this is from anything we have ever seen.  As a result we apply our personal conceptions of scarcity, value or what it means to transact with someone to something that is totally different.  If you have released an app you will agree that pricing decisions or the debate about a lite version are often more emotional than rational.  I am sure more than one developer has though “I don’t want to give it to someone for free when I worked 3 months on it every night after work while my wife was screaming at me because I was never around.”  That would be okay to think if you toiled on a model airplane or a painting for that period and were selling the one unit you had created, but in the App store you can divide that effort across 40MM+ people so who really cares if 5MM users get your app for free if in the end 250k of them buy it?
3. Be careful about buying into the media hype: I am not going to preach like everyone else about how little is being made on average. I don’t care about that because no one gets into App development to be average – if we didn’t all think we were working on the next Enigmo we probably wouldn’t be doing it.   I am talking more about the marketing angle.  Don’t fool yourself about how hard it is to get noticed, especially as the bigger game makers start to move to the iPhone platform.   It is getting more and more difficult to get blog coverage  so if you don’t have either a major platform to launch from or an existing fan base to leverage, your main form of exposure will be the lite version.
4. The blogosphere is like steroids (but it won’t make you #1): Many developers see Gizmodo or Techcrunch as the definitive tipping point, and it could be for an app but if your app does not deliver the viral hook no blog will save it.  As far as I can tell there haven’t been any cases of a blog breaking an app that then jumped to #1 and stayed there for a long amount of time (please correct me if wrong).  Blogs are like steroids, can help you get from 10th to 1st or from 500th to 400th, but not from 10,000th to 1st.
5. Don’t hide from App store criticism & negative ratings. Tying back to the second point, it is hard to take criticism for something you have worked hard on and so there is a natural hesitation to launching a lite app as users can be much more harsh reviewers. Again the goal is to get die hard fans to buy a copy, so it is OK if tons of people don’t like your game or review it poorly because all you need is some that really love it to spread the word. Maybe not launching a lite version allows for more control over the reviews (as there seems to be a natural bias of paying users to give better reviews) but this helps no one. This only reduces the total amount of people discovering your app and limits your earning potential.

Bottom line developers need to stop pricing their apps and deciding strategy based on vague feelings of what is value or what is deserved.  With frictionless transaction costs and so many users, your worst enemy for getting noticed may just be yourself.  So we should all stop thinking about how our 3 months of work is selling for less than a cup of coffee (or could be given away for free) and start focusing on increasing the amount of people using our apps.

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As a first time developer I wanted to protect my effort but did not want to pay an upfront fee to Ripdev without having made a dime so I opted to go for the more benign yet not totally passive option.  I chose to detect when they cracked the application and then have a pop-up screen say something inoffensive along with a button routing them away from game play after 5 levels.  The button redirected the pirate to a hidden page I created on my site called “You Jacked My App” where the text read:

“Hi if you have been directed to this page it’s because we see that you have a pirated copy.  While we are glad you are interested please understand that we want to continue making it better, but to do that we need people to each pay for their copy.  If you want to continue using please purchase today.”

The idea was to get the user to empathize with my cause and maybe convert a tiny fraction of those users into sales.  While it was a cheesy move and probably a bad idea I figured it couldn’t hurt to try (maybe I should have just rickroll’d them all!).  For a great example of a better executed version of this strategy see developer Ben Chatelain’s pop-up here which mentions needing the sales to help feed his 1 year old!  I just found this but had I seen it pre-iCombat 1.0 I would probably have implemented something similarly guilt evoking.

See below some stats to give you an idea of the scope of the problem for iCombat as well as some conclusions I have drawn from the experience:

A few thoughts on the data:

1) Pirates are extremely early adopters:

• iCombat was cracked and posted to Twitter before even propagating through all of Apple’s servers (I’d say within 30 minutes from going live).  Their adoption on the front end was much quicker than the paying user.  Nothing beats free…

2) There is no feedback culture among app pirates

• I am not sure whether they rely on legit app reviews or just word of mouth, but surprising that no one anywhere posted a warning that iCombat was blocked after just 5 levels (of 20).  As far as I know the cracking apps only utilize the plist hack so it is not an issue of hackers having found a workaround to my pop-up (I could be wrong here)

3) The overall pirate community is smaller than I had expected, but much more active

• 5 to 1 ratio off the bat in terms of pirated copies to purchased
• leveled off at about 1 to 1 ratio over the last few weeks before I removed the block (since then it has gone back up but on much smaller volume)
• iCombat has had dozens of Tweets about cracked versions of the game
• Cracking is a source of pride for pirates, and this pushes them to disseminate more aggressively

4) There was a high clickthrough rate to my site (only way user could avoid would have been to press home button) but once there ZERO users clicked through to purchase a copy.  Maybe if I had mentioned a 1 year old baby this would have been higher.

Some considerations specific to iCombat:

• iCombat was priced at $0.99 throughout this period
• Initial coverage in Gizmodo at launch plus the fact that iCombat is a familiar theme (tank game reminiscent of Combat for Atari or Wii Tanks game) might have also pushed an abnormal amount of geeks/ pirates to download it

Conclusions:

1) Piracy is still not that big of a problem when talking about the apps with larger download volumes

• Dave Castelnuovo from Pocket God was generous enough to share with me that they are only seeing a 5%-10% piracy rate for example.  While this could be in part because of Pocket God’s rapid update cycle which renders each pirated version outdated after just a week or two, it might also be a sign that the cracking community still isn’t that large on a relative scale.  This argument is supported by my declining per cent of pirates relative to overall downloads.

2) Blocking pirates is not worth it unless you can push conversion by giving them a lite style version

• Strategically structure the cracked game so pirates get the upsell, in iCombat’s case I would do (planning on a lite version soon) limited weapons, limited levels, no global high scores (coming in 1.2), etc.  Again for a good example of this see the link to Ben Chatelain’s 10 day demo strategy (above).
• A full block risks damaging the brand for non-pirates (could be perceived as a bug) or of creating a backlash by disgruntled pirates.  Not worth the risk.

3) Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face

• The goal behind launching an app isn’t thwarting pirates, it is getting users and generating sales so leave the “making a point” anti-piracy measures to the big guys. The competition is so fierce to get noticed in the App store that any attention is good attention.  Ethan Nicholas from iShoot fame probably isn’t too worried about the small pirate minority seeing as how he sold a couple hundred thousand copies of iShoot at $2.99.
• In most cases there is not a direct cannibalization of your sales by people using cracked copies – unless you have a high priced niche app the cost is negligible and the market is not zero sum (see my upcoming posts on my conversations with pirates that backs this up)
• There is a ton of anger and energy spent thinking about pirates (see the iPhoneDevSDK forum here for examples), this energy should be put into creating better apps and focusing on the top line potential.  In my case there are design issues that I should have focused on rather than trying to spoil the pirate’s experience.

So What Do We Do?

Assuming you have a relatively cheap app with a wide potential audience and what you perceive to be a long term value proposition, I think the best solution is to create a version akin to a lite version of the app for pirates.  It is no good to shut off access to the app completely, but it also doesn’t get you very far to give away the core value you are offering to the paying user.  I have decided I am going to do this for the next update of my app and hope that happy users, be they paying or pirates, will help spread the word and get iCombat above the App store noise.

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The rise of the fractured, multichannel market has created dozens of sites that developers now need to visit to build goodwill and help gain exposure, something that is fundamentally different from what they probably want to be doing. In my case this translates into 18-20 hours a day since launch to manage the marketing effort and frankly it is still more than I can handle. While I have enlisted friends and an intern to help, most developers don’t have the luxury of dedicating all of their own time to managing their launch.

I have compiled a list of some of the tools and sites I think necessary to use today:

Top Down channels – kissing the ring

1. Bloggers – what some refer to as the “digital influencers” – sites with major traffic like Gizmodo, Techcrunch, GigaOM
2. Targeted review sites – Touch Arcade, 148Apps, Pocket Gamer, etc. – I have counted 60+ serious ones in all

Bottom Up channels – connecting with your users

1. Facebook – both personal status and group page
2. Twitter
3. MySpace
4. App/ Development/ Gaming Forums - Touch Arcade, maybe iPhonedevSDK, etc.
5. Product website & blog – here you need to have a demo, maybe a news section and your blog
6. YouTube – a great way to communicate with avid gamers
7. iTunes App store summary

Analytics Tools – monitoring usage, downloads, buzz

1. User downloads – iTunes Connect – Heartbeat App or AppViz (super easy to use but less flexible than Heartbeat)
2. Usage behavior – Pinch Media – gives you uniques, geo data, version & device stats, as well as unique data by action in your App (very cool)
3. App ranking – AppRanking by Michael Dorn or Mobclix
4. Web traffic - Google Analytics or Wordpress Stats
5. Affiliate data – Linkshare – here if you are an Apple affiliate you can earn back 5% of your 30% cut that goes to Apple – and monitor clickthrough conversion data from your site
6. Brand management – ScoutLabs or Google Alerts – Scout doesn’t really seem to work for small apps or early on in a campaign as it is, for these smaller apps Google Alerts is a great basic filter

While this list is not comprehensive this is basically everything I am using for the marketing of iCombat. I didn’t realize just how many channels and tools this involved until trying to post an urgent piece of news.  When iCombat was reviewed in Gizmodo’s weekly roundup of iPhone apps I quickly wanted to update every channel I was using.

Spreading the word for that first update went something like this: first update Twitter, then my Facebook status, then the Facebook “Fans of iCombat” group news section, then the iCombat website news page, then the Touch Arcade forum thread discussing iCombat, then I finally shot some e-mails to friends (funny I actually just realized in writing this that I forgot to update my App description in iTunes for the good review – add that to the list).

Once I had finished with the news updates, 2 hours later, I started to comb the anaytics tools: first Pinch media, then user reviews in iTunes, then Mobclix to see if rankings had hit, then Wordpress stats to see website hits, then Linkshare to see the conversion rates, then Scout Labs to check for buzz.

What I experienced was the effects of the new multichannel model where the developer has had to become a social media explorer, pushing into every nook and cranny of the social web.  From gamer forums to niche blogs by 12 year old app reviewers (they do exist), developers risk ignoring these communities at their own expense.  With users fatigued by so much new product noise, it is easy for an unmonitored launch to go unnoticed by these users.

Not all products are good enough to sell themselves, and even if they are amazing, the system isn’t efficient yet at rewarding quality (more on this later).  So while I concede part of the problem is that most developers don’t have the time, especially amateur ones, to dedicate to marketing, I do think we all still need to shift our attention to just how important app marketing is.  Traditionally, developers seem to look at rising to the top in the App store as primarily a question of the product.  I would argue that in most cases it is equal parts product and packaging (dare I say it may be even more about packaging).  This new balance should be weighed when estimating the time, cost and energy it will take to execute your idea – i.e. when laying out a development time line, product features and depth of marketing focus should be weighed as equally relevant factors (as each is a drain on your resources, be it time, money or energy).

I don’t know the reason developers ignore marketing as much as they do.  While it is undeniably a question of bandwidth, it must also have to do with the underlying personality traits of developers as a group.  The desire to code, to focus on the hard part leads to a natural urge to ignore the boring marketing and a disdain for the whoring out that is pushing a product.  In the case of iCombat, we too struggled to stay engaged once we launched the app, but had to remember that we were only half the way there.  In our case, I was planning and handling marketing all along, so like a relay, my work began as the coding ended.

As a lone developer, the combination of fatigue at the end of a project and the lack of desire to get into “marketing” mode is what leads to developers choosing to focus on the wrong thing.  Here is where most developers launch, email their friends and family and a few review blogs, and then return to working on updates for their app.  This decision to immediately turn back to updating is precisely where most developers doom their apps (I am not talking about gimmicky apps or super early launch and iterate strategies like Pocket God).  In my mind this is just like carrying a child around for nine months, giving birth and then deciding to not feed the baby.

The reason that post partum neglect is such a travesty (I will leave that horrible metaphor alone from here out I promise) is that the App store is the PERFECT place to get into marketing mode.  Content discovery is inefficient and the market is young so you can make an impact and experiment without knowing the landscape.  It’s like Junior Prom, in the App store; it’s basically everybody’s first time.

To understand the opportunity it helps to look to the music industry where content discovery dynamics are similar.  Here, the highly subjective nature of determining “quality” and the huge breadth of options makes ranking what is good difficult.  And it is precisely in this type of inefficient discovery marketplace – where success is not necessarily deserved that a system of patronage becomes key.  Since the music industry is a highly evolved market (although getting rocked by technology shifts), an elaborate web of connections has developed where bribes, quid pro quos, image consulting, content engineering and the like, all thrive.  The app market will eventually trend toward this, as do all markets, where market leaders seek to protect and enhance their competitive advantage, but for now it is still young.

In the App store the definition of what is “good” is all over the place, open to interpretation across the huge breadth of gaming, niche, utility, gimmicky and entertainment apps as well as age and demographic groups – so the opportunity to define what is good is wide open for anyone willing to get down into the dirt and push.  While it is fantastic that there is no system of patronage or well laid tracks in the app store in terms of rankings and exposure (as occurs in music), it is a bit like the Wild West in that everyone is in a land grab racing for market position (whether it be in App reviews, app analytics, brand management, or the apps themselves).  What’s clear is that the ones who will triumph aren’t those sitting waiting for the meritocracy to kick in, but rather those who act aggressively and start thinking creatively about how they can get noticed.

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While I have been vague about what iCombat would be until now, I wanted to give you some background as to why we chose to do a classic arcade style tank game.  I grew up in the mid 80’s playing a beat up Atari 2600 – it was behind the times even then (let alone now!) but the good side of having the outdated console was that I could buy old Atari games at used book stores for under a dollar. I didn’t have the money, or need, back then to buy a newer console and it didn’t matter because the Atari had some of the best game play design of any console I have ever played.  Simple rules, easy to use controls, a fast learning curve, all of these things helped make it much easier than picking up today’s games (except maybe the Wii).

The game that captured my attention most was Combat, a 27 game in one combo pack that included the Tank game.  There were many variations of play, one of which was Tank pong – here you fired missiles (squares) at the other tank (a rectangle) and they could bounce off of walls and hit the enemy.  For me the bouncing missiles and fierce 2 player versus mode hooked me, and so when the iPhone launched we saw the opportunity to bring a similar type of game play to the younger generation of gamers.  The idea was to stick to simple game logic but utilize the powerful features of the iPhone to create something great.  Truthfully, we just created it also because we wanted to play it – and we tried to stay true to the game play fundamentals that made the original games so addictive.  And while there are half a dozen tank style games in the App store, we hadn’t found one that scratched our itch for this classic arcade style play.

We hope, after playing, you will start to share our enthusiasm for tank games and that you will become a fan of iCombat.  We also want to make iCombat better in future updates, so please send us your feedback at icombatgame@gmail.com or post something here.  We are planning to offer prizes of some sort (maybe t-shirts or something) to anyone whose idea is implemented in future updates so send us your best suggestions for future changes such as new weapons, levels, enemies, etc.  If your idea is good and others support it in the comments we will do our best to make it happen.  I will be posting some ideas of my own in the coming days so don’t be shy to shoot them down if you think they are weak!

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Enter developer Owen Goss, creator of Dapple, who posted a self described “brutally honest” description several weeks ago about how he had done in his first month of sales. While Owen just came out with a lite version of his app and his experience is far from over, the numbers he provides highlight just how disheartening the launch period can be.  To sum it all up, in the first 24 days of Dapple being available it sold 131 copies worldwide.  That wouldn’t be such a bad deal if it were a side project, but Owen spent 6 months and over 30k developing the game (we should back out that he paid himself a salary throughout though).

While the reviews of Dapple have been strong and it clearly is a quality product, the game had a few key factors going against it.  First of all it entered a competitive game genre and had a $4.99 price point which couldn’t have helped much early on.  I won’t get into the full discussion around the pros and cons of Owen’s marketing strategy but check out the full story here if you are interested (also check out Owen’s awesome slides on his experience with Dapple here – pdf).  I am more interested in how he is dealing with the early setbacks.

Surely publishing sales data got Dapple noticed, evidenced by the fact that I am writing about Dapple now, but is this really going to help? And just how long do we tinker with our formulas until you know it is time to give up and try another app?  Is it until the lite version fails to boost paid downloads, or until or the price is dropped to $0.99, or maybe just until all of the major sites refuse to review the app?  As I get within a few days of submitting iCombat (that’s right, bugfixing is almost over!) I am trying to be optimistic but also prepared for a long hard slog of self promotion, begging, and screaming to get my app noticed.  We’ll see if I can avoid having to post a “brutally honest” entry of my own once my app launches…

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With the iPhone and iPod touch, Apple is winning in two formerly very different spaces: The smart phones market… really, the mobile phones market: Apple is already one of the largest phone makers in the world (#3 in revenues after only Nokia and Samsung), and hands-down the leader in smart phones and next-gen devices

The handheld gaming devices market. Who’d’ve thunk in July of 2007 that Apple would be rivaling Nintendo and Sony for leadership in the handheld games devices market? Well, six months into the App Store, there are three times more games available on the App Store than for the Nintendo DS, five times more than for Sony PlayStation Portable – and, says BusinessWeek , Apple is on track to sell as many game-capable handsets in twelve months as Nintendo, the current market leader, has sold in its most recently reported 18 months.

At Tapulous, we’re still getting used to that idea, and trying to shake our habits of assuming that all our users are above the legal drinking age, on an iPhone, and always online.”

Bart offers a much needed dose of enthusiasm and reminds his readers that last year, over 100 million app downloads were done in 90 days.  The numbers are astonishing, and while many of these downloads are free applications, the amazing fact is that developers have access to well over 13 million devices by now (was around 12+ million by Q4 ‘08 see here) for almost no upfront or fixed costs at all.  And now with Apple’s new focus on marketing the App store more aggressively (just check out your local Apple store or turn on the TV) you get free marketing as well.  Perhaps for me the best part about accessing users though the iPhone is the near frictionless 1-click purchase solution that removes all of the trouble associated with purchasing something online.  By lowering this friction, Apple has effectively made the dollar cost of most apps the new free (Europe has known this with SMS campaigns for over 5 years).  This is well worth the 30% cut that Apple takes and in return they get to offer mobile users the most impressive deep resource in mobile computing.  So I say ignore the 25,000 apps (as of 03.05.09) and negative usage stats and focus on creating a quality app for the 13mm+ users waiting for you.

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1. With people you know, you will never get the brutally honest answers you need so try to go outside of your immediate circle.
2. Getting a thoughtful, helpful review takes more time and thought than most people you demo it to are willing to give. it is not as easy as it looks to try something for 15 minutes and then offer intelligent suggestions or feedback so usually people will just shout out their first thoughts to give you something.
3. Sometimes you don’t actually want to hear what testers have to say – by the time you are testing your game on them the idea is pretty near finished so adding or shifting anything major (which people always suggest) is basically out of the question.
4. For many applications, it is impossible to know your end market – you may think it is high school kids, but in the end it might be picked up by an entirely different demographic. The only way to know is to put it on the market.
5. Relating to number 4, if you don’t have a clear vision of where you game should go from the beginning don’t expect your testers to answer that for you.  Odds are your sample set will not be big enough to lead you to one conclusion over another.
6. Unless you are careless and sloppy, testing it yourself will spot the glitches / bugs in the game better than your testers – you shouldn’t rely on someone else to do this who probably has a more forgiving eye and definitely less of an interest in seeing your game work flawlessly.  The flip side of this one though is that you may sweat unnecessary details more than you need to.
7. It is easier just to go to the local mall and find people to test your product on the spot than do Ad Hoc testing (in this case Starbucks gift certificates work great)

I guess the issue I have is that it is hard to separate the review from the reviewer.  And as soon as you start to look at the different demographics in your test group you find yourself needing to decide what group you want to cater to.  Herein lies my app game design dilemma – do you take the feedback of one of your groups over the other or try to cater to all of them?  For example I had my 11 year old cousin try my game and he loved it, but then several older people played and said it was just too difficult.

Well I know that the younger demographic is more active with sharing and consuming these games but it is the older people with the credit cards on file – so what do you do?  The iPhone with its diverse user base runs the full range of casual to experienced gamer so you have to decide early who you are going after.  Ultimately you just have to stick to your original idea and wait until the users in the App store validate your product one way or another.

But the question is a good one, how do you let user feedback – before or after launch for that matter – affect the vision you have behind your application?  While listening to users is incredibly important, in the era of rapid updates and constant new releases, where you draw the line is getting challenged more and more.  I wonder how long it will be before someone crowd sources the design of an iPhone game from beginning to end?

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iPhoneSavior wrote a post recently about how Imaginuity New Media’s new game Rocky Artue had been cracked and was being downloaded online hundreds of times for free.  Perhaps most interesting was the fact that they discovered that the game had been cracked through the use of Pinch Media’s user analytic tools.  While Pinch Media markets their mobile analytics solutions more for usage behavior (as seen in their AppStore Secrets presentation so widelyin the press over the last week) their ability to audit App store data by comparing actual downloads to App store downloads may become increasingly relevant to developers.

Quoting an e-mail to Imaginuity founder Allen Restrepo from Pinch Media’s Jesse Rowland (from the iPhoneSavior post):

“Unfortunately I have bad news for you that you might not want to hear. We typically see these large discrepancies between our numbers and Apple’s for paid applications that have been pirated.  I did a quick search for cracked versions of your application in the wild, and like most, it’s definitely available for people to steal. Your case is actually one of the largest cases of piracy we’ve seen where typically we see paid applications receiving around 5x more users from piracy then from legitimate downloads.”

The question of just how bad is App store piracy is one that I haven’t really found many answers to yet.  Part of the problem I imagine is that no developer really wants to put out press releases announcing to the world that their application has been cracked.  And writing about the problem might only contribute to the issue (I cringe at the thought that I may be helping propagate Crackulous by even mentioning it) but what is the alternative? By putting the burden of cracking an application on only one person and making it easier for everyone else to follow, Crackulous could be the application that makes App store piracy grow exponentially (especially amongst the high school and college kids that are the most active application users).

While the good news is that we can quantify whether the problem is ocurring at all on our own applications by using analytics tools already out there, the question though is what about blocking piracy altogether?  While developers have to primarily look to Apple for protection, there do seem to be a few solutions developers can choose from.  TUAW wrote about Ripdev’s launching an anti-piracy service several weeks ago here and while it seems to be an effective solution, it certainly isn’t cheap.  It requires an upfront fee and a percentage of revenue generated (varying depending on volume of sales), for pricing see here (PDF).  While this seems like a very high price to pay, it could be well worth it if Jesse Rowland’s statement that “paid applications [are] receiving around 5x more users from piracy then from legitimate downloads” is correct.

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