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I don't have much patience for articles like this. Look, if you can't get someone to open your app more than 3 times, maybe it's because you are not making int

by jblow 14y ago

I don't have much patience for articles like this. Look, if you can't get someone to open your app more than 3 times, maybe it's because you are not making interesting things. If you build something that is high-quality and that makes a difference in peoples' lives, they will flock to you, because there is so little of that. On the other hand, there is an overabundance of 99-cent and free-to-play software that has no real reason to exist other than to try and make the developers money. But this is the mindset that this article comes from (evidence: the author's first three pieces of advice are "cross-promote", "market well", and "internationalize", things that have nothing whatsoever to do with what is being made or how good it is. These are not useful tactics, at least not in isolation, because they don't address the core problem: that a developer in this situation is a dime-a-dozen. The solution is to stop being a dime-a-dozen. You don't need to differentiate your particular piece of software so much; work on differentiating yourself as a developer, in terms of the quality and interestingness of what you produce; be a thought-leader rather than a follower who mainly thinks about cross-promoting; and once you manage these things, you will automatically be doing okay. (And you are much more likely to be satisfied with your life, which is quite a nice side-benefit). Of course, most people will not follow this advice, because it requires effort, introspection, course-changing, all that stuff. Most iOS developers will continue going as they are and continue suffering the consequences. Not pretty but that is just how it is!

5hoom 14y ago
Very well said. Articles like this reduce games to some grey, by the numbers marketing exercise. The reason so many games on the app store sink like a rock is because they just plain aren't enjoyable experiences and treat their players very cynically. It's totally disappointing that micro transactions, sneaky psychological tricks and nagging the player at every stage is so actively encouraged in the mobile space. Gameplay and designing experiences for the player is seen as some sort of afterthought. Games can be such a wonderful immersive medium, but it's hard to get lost in another world while there's a bright bouncing icon asking for your credit card or facebook details every three seconds. Mobile games really could be so much better than this. I for one would love to see more focus on building great things and less on monetization. Long live the indies and hats off to people like yourself who are out there pushing things forward.
- rrradical 14y ago
  I spent two years building an iOS game without any special psychological or monetization tricks. My goal was simply to make an interesting and engaging game, and charge people a few bucks up front to play it. But making a living doing this is not as simple as it seems. My game (http://buttonbrigade.com http://buttonbrigade.com) is completely unique and those that play it love it, but so far the market has shown very little interest, even for the free version. From this side of the fence, it seems much easier to market and make money off of a clone of an existing game. I wish it were simply a matter of making a great game and enjoying success, but if I want to keep doing this for a living, it seems I need to put much more effort into marketing than actually making great games.
jonnathanson 14y ago
This is generally good advice, and it's well articulated. But respectfully, I don't think it's a fair critique of the article. First, because marketing and product development are not dichotomous operations. Both seem to be necessary to break out of the increasingly crowded app marketplace, and a "build it and they will come" strategy is not sufficient. There are plenty of beautiful, elegant, astoundingly creative games that are languishing in the App Store for lack of discovery (driven by insufficient or inattentive marketing). I did not find that the author was advocating marketing tactics to the exclusion of development efforts, or to the exclusion of product differentiation. You say that his tactics, "in isolation," are not effective -- but the author wasn't claiming that they should be used in isolation. He happened to be focusing on them in this article, because this article was specifically about launch tactics. It was covering one small area of a broad spectrum of efforts required in app development. That doesn't imply a suggestion that this is the only area. While it's true that a developer should focus first and foremost on making an amazing product (and on making himself amazing), he shouldn't ignore the tactics offered by this article and others like it. There will come a time when his app is built, and when he's getting ready to launch. When that time comes, he would be well served to have a launch strategy, and some tactics he can draw upon to execute that strategy. Building a magnificent app, then simply tossing it into the wind and hoping for the best, is doing disservice to the effort you put in to build that app.

by jblow 14y ago

5hoom 14y ago

Very well said. Articles like this reduce games to some grey, by the numbers marketing exercise. The reason so many games on the app store sink like a rock is because they just plain aren't enjoyable experiences and treat their players very cynically. It's totally disappointing that micro transactions, sneaky psychological tricks and nagging the player at every stage is so actively encouraged in the mobile space. Gameplay and designing experiences for the player is seen as some sort of afterthought. Games can be such a wonderful immersive medium, but it's hard to get lost in another world while there's a bright bouncing icon asking for your credit card or facebook details every three seconds. Mobile games really could be so much better than this. I for one would love to see more focus on building great things and less on monetization. Long live the indies and hats off to people like yourself who are out there pushing things forward.

rrradical 14y ago
I spent two years building an iOS game without any special psychological or monetization tricks. My goal was simply to make an interesting and engaging game, and charge people a few bucks up front to play it. But making a living doing this is not as simple as it seems. My game (http://buttonbrigade.com http://buttonbrigade.com) is completely unique and those that play it love it, but so far the market has shown very little interest, even for the free version. From this side of the fence, it seems much easier to market and make money off of a clone of an existing game. I wish it were simply a matter of making a great game and enjoying success, but if I want to keep doing this for a living, it seems I need to put much more effort into marketing than actually making great games.

jonnathanson 14y ago

This is generally good advice, and it's well articulated. But respectfully, I don't think it's a fair critique of the article. First, because marketing and product development are not dichotomous operations. Both seem to be necessary to break out of the increasingly crowded app marketplace, and a "build it and they will come" strategy is not sufficient. There are plenty of beautiful, elegant, astoundingly creative games that are languishing in the App Store for lack of discovery (driven by insufficient or inattentive marketing). I did not find that the author was advocating marketing tactics to the exclusion of development efforts, or to the exclusion of product differentiation. You say that his tactics, "in isolation," are not effective -- but the author wasn't claiming that they should be used in isolation. He happened to be focusing on them in this article, because this article was specifically about launch tactics. It was covering one small area of a broad spectrum of efforts required in app development. That doesn't imply a suggestion that this is the only area. While it's true that a developer should focus first and foremost on making an amazing product (and on making himself amazing), he shouldn't ignore the tactics offered by this article and others like it. There will come a time when his app is built, and when he's getting ready to launch. When that time comes, he would be well served to have a launch strategy, and some tactics he can draw upon to execute that strategy. Building a magnificent app, then simply tossing it into the wind and hoping for the best, is doing disservice to the effort you put in to build that app.