iCombat

There is a great post in ngmoco’s blog from several months ago that talks about the complexity behind tuning games.  Specifically referring to Star Defense, Allen Ma talks about how any one factor when changed impacts the entire flow and resulting difficulty level of the game:

“For example, if the game allowed you to pause it while you placed towers or if there were a few more seconds between wave launches, Star Defense would lose its fast pace. If we altered the strength of the towers or how much it cost to upgrade them, it would influence how you played the game. If we handed out more credits for each enemy unit killed, it would change how you managed tower purchases and upgrades.”

Players underestimate just how difficult it is to design a game with a nice balance between being rewarding to play but challenging enough to want to continue playing.  Even with iCombat, which has a very simple game mechanic, it took several weeks to refine the level design and lay them out in a way that provided a steady progression from level 1 through 60. And this initial design has been refined and tuned throughout every update.

Aside from the level design which is the most visible factor that can affect game play, there are things like enemy AI (firing frequency, movement paths, speed, etc), the scoring mechanism, the frequency of power-ups or bonus items, the number of lives, upgrade prices and so one that are crucial to getting the game right.

An example of just how intentional these design elements are can be seen in iCombat’s score system, where many users wondered why we chose to go with a countdown (Enigmo style) method where each level begins counting back from 10,000.  The decision was focused at creating a scoring mechanic that rewarded speed, thus creating a nice interplay between playing it safe to preserve lives or playing fast to get points.  The result is that no 2 scores are ever alike.  This might seem like a small detail, but for the avid users it creates an entirely different decision tree when facing the harder, more involved levels.  Do you hide to preserve life, let the time expire, and then execute a level safely?  Or do you go guns blazing to finish with as many points as possible?  To extend this decision tree further and equalize players across difficulty level we made the countdown 12,000 for Hard mode, 10,000 for Medium and 8,000 for easy.

Another great example of where we made a decision to point the user behavior a certain direction came from the fact that one shot equals a player kill.  Here the logic was to force users to play more conservatively, pushing creative calculations with ricochet’s and bonus items.  And by limiting the map size, we managed to create a campaign mode that could be done in bite sized chunks, 5 minutes here and there.

So the next time you play a game think about how every single detail in the game was deisgned intentionally that way.  There are no default game layouts or settings so if it is in a game then the developer wanted it there.  Whether it was the right choice or not is a separate issue, but sometimes it helps to remember just how difficult it is to get the balance right.

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When I initially launched iCombat in April, I decided to wait on releasing a lite version to first see if I could manage to get up the charts without one. My fear was that a lite version would cannibalize my potential user base if I accidentally put too much of the game’s “secret sauce” out there for free. Looking back, I realize now I was so afraid to get the feature mix for the demo wrong that I irrationally avoided the option much longer than I should have.

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? Read more…

Some readers who read my post “My Experience Getting Owned by App Store Pirates” criticized my approach to handling piracy so I thought I would explain my point of view by sharing a recent encounter I had with an app pirate.  About a month ago someone posted a comment to my “You Jacked My App” page (all pirates were sent here after 5 levels of play if using a cracked copy) that said the following:

WTF man. Nobody does this. Ever. And the damn point of Installous is to let you try before you buy. And you just f—– up the whole system. So f— you dude, I would have bought it after trying it out, IF it was any good. I think it probably sucks so you don’t want people to test it out first…Nice job man. Way to suck at life. And I hope that nobody will buy from you just because of this.

I was in customer service mode when I saw this post so I quickly fired off one of the most unnecessarily nice e-mails of my life:

Hey dude,
Thanks for the post.  I disagree with you that most people use Installous to try before they buy.  So you know, I spent the last 3 months on this project and currently over 60% [of users] are not paying.

I get your point…and what I was trying to do here was convert the type of people you are not talking about (those that pirate everything with no intent to buy) as opposed to letting it just go unchecked.

I would like you to try the game though…would you download it if I sent you a promo code?  Let me know.
Thanks.

Now me sending this e-mail was crazy I know but from my point of view iCombat had just launched and I didn’t want to have anyone be negative on my app.  What followed my e-mail was surprising, the pirate responded in a very conciliatory tone, apologizing and so I sent him the promo code.  His response several days later was enthusiastic, saying “I love the app dude, it’s awesome.”  And this is where the craziness begins, he then proceeded to make a YouTube clip of the game and he even offered to host a contest and do a more serious quality demo. I even found a comment of his on YouTube where he actually attacked a pirate who linked through to a piracy site.  This pirate had gone from cursing me out to cursing out other pirates, defending my interests and helping get the word out about Combat.

Now maybe this pirate was emotionally unstable or just a kid, but either way I learned quite a bit from the experience.  Key lessons below: Read more…

I came across an interesting post on “How to use Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to market your mobile games” and it reinforced what I have noticed since readying to launch iCombat – there are too many channels to manage when it comes to reaching the end user!  This may sound like a high class problem to all of the game and content developers that have faced the gatekeepers of distribution over the years but the sudden blossoming of dozens of channels to reach users has created its own set of problems.  Now the burden of brand management and marketing has fallen into the lap of the developers, where they must become “marketers” of their product if they hope to get noticed.

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. Read more…

With all of the media hype success stories like Pocket God, iShoot, and Trism receive it is tempting to think that App store success is right around the corner.  All it should take is to make something and launch it, and then just watch the bills come rolling in.  While all of us developing apps would like for this to happen, the reality is that success, if it comes at all, usually takes much longer than expected.  Take for example iShoot, where Ethan Nicholas had his game in the app store several months before releasing the lite version that pushed his paid version to No. 1.  Or Pocket God, that launched after only a week of development but took 6 (or 7?) weeks of updates and community building to get it to the No. 1 spot.  These were not overnight Sound Grenade or iFart gimmicky successes, but took a long term perspective and a prolonged marketing effort. Read more…

Being a first time game developer, I am finding that the final stages of game development, namely bug fixing and adding final polish (game menus, transitions, etc) take much longer than I could have anticipated.  It is only now that I am beginning to appreciate some of the complexities behind product development and launch.  From a technical point of view, it is difficult to know on the front end just how much time will be necessary to debug properly but also from a psychological point of view I am beginning to understand just how hard it is to finish well.  At some point, when you have done the most interesting part of app development (where progress on a day to day basis is much faster and noticeable) you are stuck sanding down the rough edges and a sort of development fatigue sets in.  With so little to show in terms of progress, i.e. spending days changing menu layouts or touching up fonts, the developers and the entire team get eager to just push it out the door already and see what happens.  This is where we, and I assume most developers, debate the merits of fine tuning their app versus just launching it in the market, where it can start to make money and give some immediate feedback. Read more…

There has been quite a bit of negative press about the App store in recent weeks where fears are being stoked about downward pricing pressure and poor user engagement rates after download.  I think all of this negative press is missing the point and serves as little more than fodder for bloggers and journalist eager to write anything other than the old news of App store success.  While the data in terms of averages may point to weak trends, this is because most pundits do not back out the effect of the gimmicky and one off free apps on the App store.  The reality is that in the Games market and especially in the niche application space (like productivity or medical) applications are selling well for over $5 and some for as much as $100.  I came across an e-mail to investors by the CEO of Tapulous Bart Decrem (posted in Techcrunch in January of this year) that summarizes why the opportunity is still so great.  While dated slightly in terms of the stats, the answer is that it is not all about the App store but also about riding the incredible growth in iPhones and the iPod Touch: Read more…

I decided this weekend that I would get one last round of user feedback before we begin our final phase of development and debugging in the coming weeks. This was the first close to fully baked test I had done and I even prepared a list of survey questions for everyone that tested the game. In it I had questions regarding the user’s usage patterns (average number of applications downloaded a month, average amount of time playing games a week, how much spent in the last month on apps, etc) but I focused primarily on which aspects of the game they liked and disliked (best aspect, worst aspect, what would you add/ remove, any confusion, etc). Here I found the range of user opinion to be huge, so much so that I wonder how useful the entire exercise was. Here are some of the general observations I noticed in my small game test experiment: Read more…

As we get set to launch our first iPhone application in the coming weeks I have started to see some discussion around the piracy issue in the App store.  The release of Crackulous has caused concern because of the supposed ease with which it makes sharing a cracked app easy – removing all of the complexity that keeps most people from engaging in app piracy in the first place.

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.” Read more…