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> If you have any money left, spend that cash on those awful, dark-alley fake review and promotion services. Take all of Ronyeh's advice, it's excellent, but yo

by jrajav 14y ago

> If you have any money left, spend that cash on those awful, dark-alley fake review and promotion services. Take all of Ronyeh's advice, it's excellent, but you can't stop there. To succeed today in the app stores, you have to cheat, so go buy some reviews and downloads so you can raise your ranking in the store. It's a self-fulfilling cycle: higher rankings, more sales. > You have to game the app stores to succeed. What the hell? Edit: As antoko points out, this doesn't really add anything to the discussion, which I was aware of. I just felt the need to express disgust at what I feel to be blatant and inexcusable dishonesty. Never mind the risk of getting caught or some other backlash, what if you value honesty and pride in your work as much as the money?

VonGuard 14y ago
Hey, this is not my advice. This was given to me by someone who charts successes and sales in app stores. It sucks, it's ugly, but it's fucking true and it works.
- alberich 14y ago
  Hm, so why make a unique game after all? Just make a crap one and buy the reviews. 1. write crap game. 2. buy reviews. 3. profit.
  - VonGuard 14y ago
    Well, the way it works, you get an initial boom for your buck, and you get more eyes on your product during your launch week, which is your critical time to make an impression. If your game or app is shit and no one ever uses it again, that money spent on cheating is an immediate ROI, and drops off as soon as you stop promoting the app. However, if your app is awesome, that initial burst of cheating allowed your game to push through the crowds of 50,000 other apps to get the eyeballs it needs. If it's a great app, those initial users who were suckered in by cheating the system, are now happy, satisfied customers telling their friends about your app. You don't need to game the system anymore: you've broken through the brick wall that is the first 10,000 or so sales. After that, you can rely on the quality of your game to win people over, but when you're naked, alone and review-less, the app store can be a terrifying and unfriendly place.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      Interesting, how much does a successful app usually have to spend on fake reviews to have a shot? The way you are describing it basically makes it sound like a hidden listing cost to be on the app store. Eventually though people are simply going to stop believing reviews at which point Apple/Google will have to start taking some action against this.
  - tinco 14y ago
    That wouldn't work at all. Did you even think about writing this comment? A crap game doesn't get good reviews, so boosting the app rating by buying fake reviews is just throwing good money after bad.
    - alberich 14y ago
      Ok, maybe "crap" is a bit of exaggeration. The point was that you really wouldn't need to really struggle to make a great game, as people would download it just because they saw good (fake) reviews. As long as it doesn't really suck, there won't be negative reviews to counter this. Anyway, I wonder how long will it take before this tactic becomes too widespread so that only huge players will have enough cash to game the system like this.
      - tinco 14y ago
        Fair enough, I think the amount of reviews (and buys) influences your position too so just the absence of negative reviews isn't enough. I don't want to sound cynical, but why do you think it hasn't already spread so wide that only huge players can game the system enough to gain the top spots? There was an article on HN this month about how book publishers even game the NYT book rankings.
  - beachstartup 14y ago
    i'm guessing because you can't buy the removal of bad reviews.
  - lnanek2 14y ago
    Initial ad spend to get in top rankings of an app store with a game is about 75k. A generally considered successful tactic is to do that spend, get in the top, then grow organically from there if you can. I played 10 levels of this game on the web site, though, and it never even encouraged me to brag to anyone else about how quick I solved a puzzle, and had no replay value, e.g. I can't solve a puzzle better or worse really. The game has nothing to get each user to draw in more users, so it would be a waste to do the ad spend at all...
- archagon 14y ago
  Yeah, we got similar advice when I was working at a social gaming startup. Apparently, it's not unheard of among growing, venture-funded companies like ours. I assure you, however, that the vast majority of the indie games that make the headlines (Super Hexagon, Hundreds, Letterpress, etc.) don't use these techniques.
  - VonGuard 14y ago
    Definitely true. And frankly, I only found out about some of the games yer mentioning through the IGF. Festivals and such are a great way to get yer name and game out there, but those are kinda limited to quality, unique games. And, as for Super Hexagon, I'll play anything Terry Cavanagh makes. He is a fucking god. 4-Letter-Word melted my brain.
    - chii 14y ago
      if you game isn't good enough to be in the IGF then may be it isn't high quality enough to succeed with out cheating the app store. therefore indoor game devs should strive to make these unique games instead of piling same old clones into the app store and resort to cheating to get noticed
antoko 14y ago
It is obvious you take exception to the GPs quotes but you've not done a very good job of explaining why. Do you believe the quoted statements from the GP are false? Or do you not care if they are true, and rather believe that that kind of advice is always wrong?

by jrajav 14y ago

VonGuard 14y ago

Hey, this is not my advice. This was given to me by someone who charts successes and sales in app stores. It sucks, it's ugly, but it's fucking true and it works.

alberich 14y ago
Hm, so why make a unique game after all? Just make a crap one and buy the reviews. 1. write crap game. 2. buy reviews. 3. profit.
- VonGuard 14y ago
  Well, the way it works, you get an initial boom for your buck, and you get more eyes on your product during your launch week, which is your critical time to make an impression. If your game or app is shit and no one ever uses it again, that money spent on cheating is an immediate ROI, and drops off as soon as you stop promoting the app. However, if your app is awesome, that initial burst of cheating allowed your game to push through the crowds of 50,000 other apps to get the eyeballs it needs. If it's a great app, those initial users who were suckered in by cheating the system, are now happy, satisfied customers telling their friends about your app. You don't need to game the system anymore: you've broken through the brick wall that is the first 10,000 or so sales. After that, you can rely on the quality of your game to win people over, but when you're naked, alone and review-less, the app store can be a terrifying and unfriendly place.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Interesting, how much does a successful app usually have to spend on fake reviews to have a shot? The way you are describing it basically makes it sound like a hidden listing cost to be on the app store. Eventually though people are simply going to stop believing reviews at which point Apple/Google will have to start taking some action against this.
- tinco 14y ago
  That wouldn't work at all. Did you even think about writing this comment? A crap game doesn't get good reviews, so boosting the app rating by buying fake reviews is just throwing good money after bad.
  - alberich 14y ago
    Ok, maybe "crap" is a bit of exaggeration. The point was that you really wouldn't need to really struggle to make a great game, as people would download it just because they saw good (fake) reviews. As long as it doesn't really suck, there won't be negative reviews to counter this. Anyway, I wonder how long will it take before this tactic becomes too widespread so that only huge players will have enough cash to game the system like this.
    - tinco 14y ago
      Fair enough, I think the amount of reviews (and buys) influences your position too so just the absence of negative reviews isn't enough. I don't want to sound cynical, but why do you think it hasn't already spread so wide that only huge players can game the system enough to gain the top spots? There was an article on HN this month about how book publishers even game the NYT book rankings.
- beachstartup 14y ago
  i'm guessing because you can't buy the removal of bad reviews.
- lnanek2 14y ago
  Initial ad spend to get in top rankings of an app store with a game is about 75k. A generally considered successful tactic is to do that spend, get in the top, then grow organically from there if you can. I played 10 levels of this game on the web site, though, and it never even encouraged me to brag to anyone else about how quick I solved a puzzle, and had no replay value, e.g. I can't solve a puzzle better or worse really. The game has nothing to get each user to draw in more users, so it would be a waste to do the ad spend at all...
archagon 14y ago
Yeah, we got similar advice when I was working at a social gaming startup. Apparently, it's not unheard of among growing, venture-funded companies like ours. I assure you, however, that the vast majority of the indie games that make the headlines (Super Hexagon, Hundreds, Letterpress, etc.) don't use these techniques.
- VonGuard 14y ago
  Definitely true. And frankly, I only found out about some of the games yer mentioning through the IGF. Festivals and such are a great way to get yer name and game out there, but those are kinda limited to quality, unique games. And, as for Super Hexagon, I'll play anything Terry Cavanagh makes. He is a fucking god. 4-Letter-Word melted my brain.
  - chii 14y ago
    if you game isn't good enough to be in the IGF then may be it isn't high quality enough to succeed with out cheating the app store. therefore indoor game devs should strive to make these unique games instead of piling same old clones into the app store and resort to cheating to get noticed

antoko 14y ago

It is obvious you take exception to the GPs quotes but you've not done a very good job of explaining why. Do you believe the quoted statements from the GP are false? Or do you not care if they are true, and rather believe that that kind of advice is always wrong?