4 ms·

I'm not sure I agree entirely on the press thing - although my experiences are from owning a mobile game company, not a mobile app company. For games, online pr

I'm not sure I agree entirely on the press thing - although my experiences are from owning a mobile game company, not a mobile app company. For games, online press is great to start to be recognized within the community of peer groups/companies, but has never moved the needle for us, user-wise. We haven't been featured either, but that's made things harder on us. Getting featured is still huge for visibility. We're pressing for it pretty hard when we release our next game. It's 90% likely we won't get one, but its a huge win if you can pull it off. (It does increase the already silly graph of first-week downloads vs. the-rest-of-time-ever downloads, but it definitely makes sure that second part averages a bit higher.)

prawn 11y ago
What has moved the needle for you? We had a dev relations contact and got featured worldwide with Hexiled, then a smaller feature later when we added more language support. I argue with my dev partner about press - I think the best tactic is more decent apps in the store trying to get a home-run feature by honing the app style, rather than begging little app reviewers for coverage. I think if your feature gives your virality a launch pad, that's the best bet. We had the feature, but at the time our app was flawed and we had not yet introduced a couple of sharing functions.
- raphael_o 11y ago
  Totally agree with that. The key with the App Store is to get a perfect storm of PR and feature to rise above the noise at least for a few hours/days. Then it's up to the product. Without this storm, even a good product (unless it has an immediately high viral coefficient) risk oblivion.
- archagon 11y ago
  Out of curiosity, if you're willing to share, how did you get in touch with a dev relations person at Apple for (what looks like) your first game? I'm going to release my first big app soon (music creation) and having someone at Apple know about my product would be so helpful! I agree with your thoughts on tactics, BTW, which is why I'm working hard on polishing the UX.
  - prawn 11y ago
    Co-developer has built apps in the past and met a dev relations guy at a conference or WWDC or something. We give them heads up on product releases or major updates and they forward it to editorial teams (local or worldwide) for consideration.
    - archagon 11y ago
      Thanks!

prawn 11y ago

What has moved the needle for you? We had a dev relations contact and got featured worldwide with Hexiled, then a smaller feature later when we added more language support. I argue with my dev partner about press - I think the best tactic is more decent apps in the store trying to get a home-run feature by honing the app style, rather than begging little app reviewers for coverage. I think if your feature gives your virality a launch pad, that's the best bet. We had the feature, but at the time our app was flawed and we had not yet introduced a couple of sharing functions.

raphael_o 11y ago
Totally agree with that. The key with the App Store is to get a perfect storm of PR and feature to rise above the noise at least for a few hours/days. Then it's up to the product. Without this storm, even a good product (unless it has an immediately high viral coefficient) risk oblivion.
archagon 11y ago
Out of curiosity, if you're willing to share, how did you get in touch with a dev relations person at Apple for (what looks like) your first game? I'm going to release my first big app soon (music creation) and having someone at Apple know about my product would be so helpful! I agree with your thoughts on tactics, BTW, which is why I'm working hard on polishing the UX.
- prawn 11y ago
  Co-developer has built apps in the past and met a dev relations guy at a conference or WWDC or something. We give them heads up on product releases or major updates and they forward it to editorial teams (local or worldwide) for consideration.
  - archagon 11y ago
    Thanks!